Petra Zikmundová Libri

The daughter of an illustrious French family whose members include a former Prime Minister, a model, and a journalist, Constance Debré abandoned her marriage and legal career in 2015 to write full-time and begin a relationship with a woman. Her transformation from affluent career woman to broke single lesbian was chronicled in her 2018 novel 'Play boy', praised by Virginie Despentes for its writing that is at once "flippant and consumed by anxiety." In 'Love Me Tender', writing graphically about sex, rupture, longing, and despair, Debré deals courageously with love in its many forms, reframing what it means to be a mother beyond conventional expectations

"Vernon Subutex is still on the streets. Hanging around with alcohol-soaked Charles in the Parc de Buttes Chaumont, feverish and hallucinating, he is completely cut off from the wider world and unaware that he is the subject of a frantic search by a crowd of hunters hot on the trail of the last recordings of the famous dead musician, Alex Bleach. But just imagine that one of these hunters finally gets hold of the precious tapes. What might they contain? The answer could have shocking - almost apocalyptic - consequences."--Publisher's description

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL 2018** WHO IS VERNON SUBUTEX? An urban legend. A fall from grace. The mirror who reflects us all. Vernon Subutex was once the proprietor of Revolver, an infamous music shop in Bastille. His legend spread throughout Paris. But by the 2000s his shop is struggling. With his savings gone, his unemployment benefit cut, and the friend who had been covering his rent suddenly dead, Vernon Subutex finds himself down and out on the Paris streets. He has one final card up his sleeve. Even as he holds out his hand to beg for the first time, a throwaway comment he once made on Facebook is taking the internet by storm. Vernon does not realise this, but the word is out: Vernon Subutex has in his possession the last filmed recordings of Alex Bleach, the famous musician and Vernon's benefactor, who has only just died of a drug overdose. A crowd of people from record producers to online trolls and porn stars are now on Vernon's trail. Translated from the French by Frank Wynne "Thrilling, magnificently audacious" Irish Times "Brimming with sex, violence and deviant behaviour" Sunday Times "Virginie Despentes's Vernon Subutex trilogy is the zeitgeistiest thing I ever read" NELL ZINK