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"D'Stair’s prose startles, dazzles, informs, and pleases."

-- BookLife

Helen Bonaparte

BookLife 2024 Prize Finalist

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Middle-aged, middling academic Helen Bonaparte has left her husband and children at home for a week-long Italian group tour with a bunch of strangers. Craving solitude, she intends to sulk in the corners of buses and museums for a week, indulging in great art but scowling the rest of the world away. Until, that is, she meets Marieke, the tour guide, who becomes the object of erotic fantasies Helen didn't even know she had...​

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"A lurid exploration of passion, agency, and the role of art in self-actualization."
-- Kirkus Reviews

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"...a full-bodied, sumptuously written, always perceptive study of yearning

for something more..."

--BookLife

Sarah D’Stair is the author of three novels, including Helen Bonaparte, finalist for the BookLife 2024 Award, Abstract, and Central Valley, and the poetry chapbook One Year of Desire. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in Burningword, Waxing & Waning, Inwood Indiana and other publications, and her poetry reviews and interviews have appeared in West Branch, The Adroit Journal, The Rupture, and elsewhere. She also publishes academic articles in the field of critical animal studies.

Photo credit: Molly Schlachter

More books by Sarah D'Stair

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