Beautiful, wild, funny, and lost, Katie Kampenfelt is taking a year off before college to find her passion. Ambitious in her own way, Katie intends to do more than just smoke weed with her boyfriend, Rory, and work at the bookstore. She plans to seduce Dan, a thirty-two-year-old film professor. Katie chronicles her adventures in an anonymous blog, telling strangers her innermost desires, shames, and thrills. But when Dan stops taking her calls, when her alcoholic father suffers a terrible fall, and when she finds herself drawn into a dangerous new relationship, Katie's fearless narrative begins to crack, and dark pieces of her past emerge. Sexually frank, often heartbreaking, and bursting with devilish humor, Undiscovered Gyrl is an extraordinarily accomplished novel of identity, voyeurism, and deceit. "Imagine an 18-year-old Lolita, updated for the 21st century, blogging her own provocative adventures. By turns charming and crude, disturbingly reckless and achingly tender, Undiscovered Gyrl seduces you into her downy arms, locks her long legs around your waist, and doesn't let go." — Rachel Resnick, author of Love Junkie

Undiscovered Gyrl (Vintage Contemporaries Orig)

Literature & Fiction

Burnett, Allison

United States

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

“Either he’s channeling Truman Capote’s spirit, or Allison Burnett has created, all by himself, one of the more assured narrative voices in recent memory. His B. K. Troop is a pitch-perfect creation: bitchy-funny with a twist of rue.” —Louis Bayard, author of Fool’s Errand and Endangered Species “Christopher is the literary equivalent of sparkling banter whose aftermath is trenchant poignancy. The deep, sad truths of this slyly funny novel continue to gather force long after you’ve finished reading.” —Kate Christensen, author of In the Drink and Jeremy Thrane The delicious debut of a hilarious new voice in fiction. It’s Oscar Wilde meets Nabokov meets something entirely new. Unemployed, middle-aged, bipolar, gay, bitingly witty, erudite, unattractive, and lonely, B. K. Troop, the narrator of Christopher, isn’t exactly looking forward to a life of exciting prospects—until he meets his new neighbor. Christopher Ireland is a twenty-five-year-old idealist and aspiring novelist still reeling from a bitter divorce. Even though B.K. knows full well that Christopher is hopelessly heterosexual, he wants nothing more than to seduce him, so he sets about his self-appointed mission with all the cunning and zeal of the Big Bad Wolf. Christopher recounts B.K’s year long attempt to consummate his lust, with hilarious results. But it also charts the coming of age of Christopher who, like all true idealists, throws himself body and soul into the quest for a meaningful life. He develops a crush on a married waitress, gets involved in politics, enrolls in a New Age workshop, struggles to begin his first novel, and battles to free himself from the clutches of his monstrous mother. Thankfully, all of this is seen through B.K’s eyes and narrated in his deliciously incisive and witty voice. As often happens in tales of seduction, the seducer winds up being seduced by his prey, and that is precisely what, to his horror, B.K. discovers as his feelings turn more tender than predatory. Both darkly ironic and poignantly romantic, Christopher is a remarkable debut by a brave, acerbic, and original new writer.

Christopher: A Tale of Seduction

Humor & Satire

Broadway Books

The sequel to the novel, Undiscovered Gyrl, which became the feature film Ask Me Anything, starring Britt Robertson, Martin Sheen, and Christian Slater.

Another Girl (The Katie Kampenfelt Trilogy)

Literary

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

“Like Truman Capote, Allison Burnett knows how to pull up a chair and whisper a juicy story into his lucky reader’s ear. Death By Sunshine is a quickly-paced tale inhabited by fascinating and funny creatures.” — Nell Scovell, Vanity Fair "In this age when the genuine comic novel seems to be an extinct species, Allison Burnett gives us reason to rejoice. Death By Sunshine is a return trip to the world of B.K. Troop, one of the most appealing characters ever put on a page." - Charles Busch, author of The Tale of the Allergist's Wife and Die, Mommie, Die! “Death by Sunshine is classic Burnett: hilarious, gut-wrenching, and entirely entertaining. He takes us on a journey across the country into the darkest recesses of the human psyche – with a few detours into the excesses of the human flesh along the way. A terrific read!” - Claire LaZebnik, author of Epic Fail and Families and Other Non-Returnable Gifts "B.K. Troop is that rarest find: an unexpected and entirely engaging new character." - Seduced by a Literary Original by Robin Russin, Los Angeles Times B.K. Troop is an aging, erudite, chemically imbalanced, gay, alcoholic novelist living in Manhattan. His life is turned upside down when he is invited to Los Angeles to adapt one of his novels into a screenplay. Soon after his arrival, B.K. is thrust into the heart of a mystery that only he can solve. With the help of his trusty Mexican chauffeur, B.K. penetrates the lower depths of Hollywood with hilarious and surprisingly poignant results.

Death by Sunshine

Writers Tribe Books

For the past ten years, Malcolm Poe has dreamt of escape. His plan is simple: The day his youngest child starts college, Malcolm will leave his devoted wife to resume the creative life he abandoned for marriage. As the hour of his departure nears, Malcolm buys a blank notebook to chronicle the riot of his memories, passions, regrets, and aspirations. The Escape of Malcolm Poe is a hilarious ascent into the deluded imagination of a middle-aged man who believes it is never too late to start over.~NOVELIST RICHARD KRAMER WRITES: "Meet Malcolm Poe. He has decided, at a turning point in his life, to keep a journal in which he intends to confront his present, his past, his choices, and -- most of all -- his ghosts, which have all come back to haunt him, in a way that anyone who's reached fifty will identify with all too well. He tells us, as the book opens on New Year's Eve, that "this year my only resolution is to escape." Whether he does or doesn't is the tension of Allison Burnett's marvelous new novel, The Escape of Malcolm Poe. Malcolm is soon to be fifty. He hates his job. He is or isn't very ill. And he's been married for twenty-five years to a gracious and loving woman with whom he feels hopelessly trapped.  The book opens with the announcement to his readers that he's gone off his anti-depressants, and now, all that he's been numb to for so long breaks through -- his fears, his ideas about himself and the choices he's made, and his alternately scabrous and loving feelings toward those who love him. He can no longer hide from the truth and no longer wants to, and we accompany him as he tumbles back and forth through time, to those moments half a life earlier when he believes it all could have gone differently. Malcolm is mean-spirited, self-deceiving, hurtful to others, and foolish. He is also hilarious and deeply sympathetic, despite his considerable efforts not to be. He infuriated me, and he broke my heart, and I was with him every step of the way.   The Escape of Malcolm Poe is haunting, elegant, and wise. Burnett knows Malcolm well and clearly loves him, and because of this, I felt for his prickly hero from the first pages and realized how he'd gotten to me when, in the course of my day, I found myself seeing things as he might. I read it straight through, as I didn't want to leave his company. He has much to say, and a reason to say it all right now, as authentically as he can. He knows that time is running out, because that's what time does, and not much more. Sometimes we're lucky enough to see this.  When we do, we realize we have to try to know ourselves and let others know us; that it is now or never.  Malcolm Poe chooses now. We choose it with him. The way he faces it is a triumph, as is this book."- Richard Kramer is the author of the novel These Things Happen, as well as the Emmy and multiple Peabody award winning writer, director and producer of numerous TV series, including Thirtysomething, My So-called Life, Tales of the City, and Once and Again.

The Escape of Malcolm Poe

Contemporary