Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man: A Memoir
-- Bill Clegg had a thriving business as a literary agent, a supportive partner, trusting colleagues, and loving friends when he walked away from his world and embarked on a two-month crack binge. He had been released from rehab nine months earlier, and his relapse would cost him his home, his money, his career, and very nearly his life.What is it that leads an exceptional young mind want to disappear? Clegg makes stunningly clear the attraction of the drug that had him in its thrall, capturing in scene after scene the drama, tension, and paranoiac nightmare of a secret life--and the exhilarating bliss that came again and again until it was eclipsed almost entirely by doom. He also explores the shape of addiction, how its pattern--not its cause--can be traced to the past.
-- In this tuneful coming-of-age memoir, the glamorous New Wave band Duran Duran presides spiritually over the all-consuming teenage male efforts to comprehend the opposite sex. Music journalist Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape) chronicles his passage through the 1980s in a series of chapters in which period groups—from headliners like Roxy Music and Prince to one-hit wonders like Haysi Fantayzee of Shiny Shiny semifame—provides musical accompaniment to his adolescent angst. They are the soundtrack to his fumbling attempts to dance or make passes at girls, to weather a winless stint on the high school wrestling team, to survive a summer job as an ice-cream truck driver. The relationship insights he arrives at—chiefly, the imperative of unquestioning submission to female whims—are no more or less cogent than the song lyrics he gleans them from. The book really shines as a collection of free-form riffs on the glorious foolishness of Reagan-era entertainment—the movie E.T., he writes, was about a sad muppet who thought he was David Bowie—and its weirdly resonant emotional impact. The result is a funny, poignant browse from a wonderful pop-culture evocateur 
-- From Publishers Weekly: At the start of this steamy woman's novel, recently divorced Birdie Cousins is busy planning the September wedding of her older daughter, Chess, at the family house on Tuckernuck, a privately owned island near Nantucket. Birdie hopes to spend some quality time with Chess on Tuckernuck in July, but then Chess breaks her engagement to her consummate Ivy League golden boy fiancé, Michael Morgan. Michael fatally plunges off a Utah crag just when Birdie acquires her own new beau--a married man with a wife stricken with Alzheimer's. Birdie, Chess, and their support team--Birdie's computer-guru younger daughter, Tate, and Birdie's bohemian widowed sister, India--hare off to Tuckernuck. There hunky handyman Barrett Lee flutters hearts and dampens underwear in a breathless month of supercharged estrogenic imbalances. This never-never land portrait of the rich and randy will please those looking for a satisfying beach read. 
-- Holly Frick has just endured the worst kind of breakup: the kind where you're still in love with the person leaving you. While her wounds are still dangerously close to the surface, her happily married best friend confesses over a bottle of wine that she is this close to having an affair. And another woman comes to Holly for advice about her love life--with Holly's ex!
-- Twenty years ago, Holly and Nicola were best friends at camp, united in their hatred of the cabin bully, Lexi. Now, Holly, who owns a Washington, D.C., art gallery, is “pre-engaged” to controlling Randy, who will propose if she can drop 20 pounds. Nicola is an actress in L.A., struggling to follow up her one sleeper hit, but being turned down left and right for roles because she doesn't look right. As Holly sheds the weight, Randy's unpleasantness becomes impossible to ignore, and Nicola undergoes plastic surgery that leaves her unrecognizable even to her grandmother (and doesn't get her any work). Meanwhile, Lexi's father dies and her stepmother cuts her off, leaving her destitute. When Holly runs into Lexi, she realizes that undoing a prank she and Nicola played on her years ago at camp could potentially reverse her fortune.