Moniqua Plante

"Rachel Kushner meets David Lynch in this fever dream of an LA novel about a young woman who commits a drunken act of violence just before her sister vanishes without a trace. On the night of her high school graduation, a young woman follows her older sister, Debbie, to Salvation--a Los Angeles bar patronized by energy healers, aspiring actors, and all-around misfits. After the two share a bag of unidentified pills, the evening turns into a haze of...

Makes a case for the necessity of unstructured social time as a key element of our cultural vitality and how it can help take back our social lives from the constant swirl of contemporary life.

Cassandra Reynolds can see a red flag from a mile away.
As the owner of The Ex Files, a matchmaking service based in Ocean View, she dates men nearly every day of the week in order to vet them, assuring the matches she makes are perfectly informed and free of heartache.
With her job comes pitfalls, though: every man she meets is hiding something, trying to impress, and not showing his true colors. But when she has to attend her father's wedding,...