Every Little Thing in the World
Now in Stores!
Sixteen-year-old Sydney Biggs is a “good kid”—smart, pretty, self-aware. No one doubts that she’ll go far in life. But lately her mother worries that Sydney is wandering down the wrong path and getting all caught up in petty teenage rebellion and shenanigans. When Sydney and her best friend, Natalia, “borrow” a car to go to a party and then get escorted home by the police, their parents pack them up and ship them off to a hard-love wilderness camp to stop this behavior before it gets out of hand, before things go too far. The problem is, they already have.
Sydney the “good kid” is pregnant.
In the wilds of Canada—where the girls are to spend the next four weeks canoeing, camping, and foraging for food—time is ticking, because Sydney isn’t sure what she wants to do about this baby. And she certainly isn’t expecting the other heady issues that will confront her as she forges friendships with her adventure mates, including a guy who makes it no secret that he is a major thug, and a teen television heartthrob with a secret of his own, not to mention her own best friend—who is very adamant about what Sydney should do.
Gossip of the Starlings
Available in stores
From Publishers Weekly
In this poignant novel, de Gramont explores a loyal and destructive friendship between two girls at a New England prep school. Catherine Morrow, the book’s relatable protagonist, can’t believe her luck when Skye, the popular daughter of acclaimed senator Douglas Butterfield, befriends her. A symbol of idealistic American wholesomeness, Skye is quick to push the boundaries at the Esther Percy School, and soon she joins Catherine in a blur of drunken nights and cocaine binges. But as Catherine cleans up and focuses on school work and extracurricular activities, Skye spirals deeper into her addiction and has an affair with a teacher. Despite Catherine’s efforts, she can’t untangle herself from Skye’s daring escapades, and soon the girls are again involved in dangerous situations. Though Catherine warns the reader of the story’s tragic finale from the opening chapters, the ending still reverberates with heartbreak. De Gramont’s coming-of-age story distinguishes itself with sincere prose and complex characters.
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Of Cats and Men: Stories
Now available!
From Publishers Weekly
While cats make an appearance in each of the 10 stories in this accomplished debut collection, there’s nothing kitschy or cute about de Gramont’s feline tales. In each case, a cat subtly teaches the protagonist something essential about human relationships. The cats, which all manifest distinctive personalities, act according to their natures (ailurophiles will be delighted with acutely observed details), and their natural, instinctive behavior contrasts with that of the conflicted, variable human characters. In “The Wedding Bed,” an act of charity toward a feral cat mends a rift in the marriage of a couple from different social classes. The WASP half of another socially mismatched couple in “The Politeness of Kings” is too paralyzed by good breeding to confess that a fat Bengal cat aggravates her asthma until she finds that the cat represents a freedom she craves. In one of the collection’s standouts, “By His Wild Lone,” an edgy former stray adopted and later abandoned by a wife and mother who leaves her family teaches the narrator some surprising truths about emotional independence. De Gramont bases her tales in Colorado and Cape Cod, evoking the atmosphere of each region with deft assurance. While several of the stories, notably “In His Shoes” and “The Closest Place,” don’t quite ring true, the remainder are beautifully and deftly crafted. In cleverly demonstrating how human beings reveal themselves in their relationships to animals, de Gramont has produced illuminating and moving narratives about fear and loss, connection and love. Agent, Peter Steinberg.
Choice
Now available on Kindle!
From Publishers Weekly
This collection, compiled by two savvy fiction writers fed up with the bumper-sticker mentality of most pro-life and pro-choice arguments, illuminates the volume of options, obstacles and ambivalence that reproduction brings through personal, often painful stories of real women. Examining almost every angle of the pregnancy experience are two dozen writers, editors and educators, including novelist Jacquelyn Mitchard (The Deep End of the Ocean), writer’s writer Francine Prose (Reading like a Writer) and editor Elizabeth Larsen (one of the creators of Sassy magazine). Collectively celebrating the courage of the choice-whatever that choice may be-Bender and de Gramont offer these stories as a bulwark against the criminalization of women’s reproductive options (the book was conceived amidst South Dakota’s proposed abortion ban); among these tales of women choosing to terminate pregnancies, to have children with men unfit to raise them, to fight against their own bodies to become pregnant, to keep an at risk-pregnancy both doctors and ministers advise against, that purpose is powerfully realized. Each tale is unique, and politically charged buzz terms (RU-486, Roe V. Wade, etc.) gain new impact nestling alongside these writers’ honest quests for basic human needs: love, nurturing, and above all, possibility.