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Jessica Anya Blau's Books

The Wonder Bread Summer
May.28.2013
It's 1983 in Berkeley, California. Cut loose by her parents, 20-year old Allie Dodgson is trying hard to make it on her own, attending college on a scholarship and working in a dress shop. But when the dress shop turns out to be a front for a dangerous drug dealing business and Allie ends up with a Wonder Bread bag full of cocaine, her studious life takes a turn for the wild. With...
DrinkingCloserToHome pb c.JPG
Jan.18.2011
There is nothing like ten days with one's family to bring forth old obsessions and childhood memories.  When Anna, Portia and Emery’s mother, Louise, suffers a massive heart attack, the three grown children return to California to be with their parents.  Anna, once certain that her free-loving parents were going to die of syphilis, continually thinks about sex with...
Drinking Closer to Home
Jan.18.2011
"Jessica Blau’s second novel is not only a wise and pitch-perfect depiction of family dynamics but also happens to be unrelentingly, side-splittingly funny. I dare you to forget this family." (Irina Reyn, author of What Happened to Anna K.) “[H]ilarious and heartbreaking....[A] testament to the impossibility of ever truly ‘leaving home,’ and the great triumph of this book is in...
The Summer of Naked Swim Parties
May.27.2008
Fourteen-year-old Jamie will never forget the summer of 1976. It's the summer when she has her first boyfriend, cute surfer Flip Jenkins; it's the summer when her two best friends get serious about sex, cigarettes, and tanning; it's the summer when her parents throw, yes, naked swim parties, leaving Jamie flushed with embarrassment. And it's the summer that forever changes the...
The Summer of Naked SwimParties
May.27.2008
THE SUMMER OF NAKED SWIM PARTIES WAS CHOSEN AS ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE! CHOSEN AS A BEST SUMMER BOOK BY: THE TODAY SHOW THE NEW YORK POST NEW YORK MAGAZINE COSMO MAGAZINE PICKED IT AS THEIR "SEXY SUMMER READ!" BARNES AND NOBLE PICKED IT AS ONE OF THEIR BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR.  Fourteen-year-old Jamie will never forget the summer of...