Stray
- 256 pages
- 9 hours of reading
From the author of Sweetbitter comes a raw and tender memoir set in L.A, about family, addiction, love and the grief and joy of coming home.
Stephanie Danler Books
Stephanie Danler is an author whose work delves into the complexities of life, ambition, and longing. Her writing is marked by sharp character psychology and vivid environmental descriptions that draw readers into an emotional current. Danler explores themes of connection, vulnerability, and the search for identity with a unique urgency.
Sweetbitter
- 356 pages
- 13 hours of reading
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A thrilling novel of the senses and a coming-of-age tale, following a small-town girl into the electrifying world of New York City and the education of a lifetime at one of the most exclusive restaurants in Manhattan. • "Brilliantly written.... Outstanding." —The New York Times Book Review Newly arrived in New York City, twenty-two-year-old Tess lands a job working front of house at a celebrated downtown restaurant. What follows is her education: in champagne and cocaine, love and lust, dive bars and fine dining rooms, as she learns to navigate the chaotic, enchanting, punishing life she has chosen. The story of a young woman’s coming-of-age, set against the glitzy, grimy backdrop of New York’s most elite restaurants, in Sweetbitter Stephanie Danler deftly conjures the nonstop and high-adrenaline world of the food industry and evokes the infinite possibilities, the unbearable beauty, and the fragility and brutality of being young and adrift.
Sweetbitter
- 368 pages
- 13 hours of reading
A startling and stylish novel for anyone who has ever been in love and who loves food 'Let's say I was born when I came over the George Washington Bridge...' This is how we meet unforgettable Tess, the twenty-two-year-old at the heart of this stunning first novel. Shot from a mundane, provincial past, she's come to New York to look for a life she can't define, except as a burning drive to become someone, to belong somewhere. After she stumbles into a coveted job at a renowned restaurant, we spend the year with her as she learns the chaotic, punishing, privileged life of a 'backwaiter' on duty and off. Her appetites - for food, wine, knowledge, and every kind of experience - are awakened. And she's pulled into the magnetic thrall of two other servers - a handsome bartender she falls hard for, and an older woman she latches onto with an orphan's ardour. These two and their enigmatic connection to each other will prove to be Tess's hardest lesson of all. Sweetbitter is a story of discovery, enchantment and the power of what remains after disillusionment.
