All-Night Pharmacy

More about the book

*An instant national bestseller* and winner of the National Jewish Book Award for Debut Fiction, this novel explores the tumultuous life of a young woman in Los Angeles who commits a drunken act of violence just before her sister vanishes. On graduation night, she follows her older sister Debbie to Salvation, a bar filled with misfits, where they indulge in unidentified pills. Their toxic relationship leads to a haze of risky interactions, but everything changes when Debbie disappears. As the narrator spirals deeper into the life they shared, she takes a job as an emergency room secretary, stealing pills to sell. Enter Sasha, a Jewish refugee from the former Soviet Union claiming to be a psychic and the narrator’s spiritual guide. Their relationship evolves into a complex mix of friendship, sex, mysticism, and power dynamics. With prose that pulses like a neon sign, the novel presents an intoxicating portrait of a young woman grappling with her identity. As she navigates sobriety and sexual embodiment, she faces a critical choice: to search for her estranged sister or let her remain a relic of the past.