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Lush by Rochelle Dowden-Lord
Belletrist X Tertulia
Lush by Rochelle Dowden-Lord
Belletrist X Tertulia

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This month’s selection

Lush
Rochelle Dowden-Lord
June 2025

June 2025

Lush

For fans of Sweetbitter and The Bear, an intoxicating debut novel set in the glamorous, exclusive, and unexpectedly raucous world of wine.

Four wine experts, each at a crucial point in their lives, arrive at a French vineyard estate for an unforgettable experience-but not the kind they expected. Avery gave up her hard-won but exploitative sommelier job to come, while wine prodigy Cosmo is trying to disguise that his life is in freefall. The chemistry between the pair is unmistakable, but so are the signs of danger. Millionaire Sonny owns a tacky wine brand and can't help aggravating Cosmo, while caustic magazine writer Maëlys hovers with her pen poised.

It seems at first that these four have little in common except for their love of wine and their belief in its transformative power. But, as the quartet awaits the penultimate night of the trip, when they will taste the only bottle of one of the rarest wines in the world, it becomes clear that each of them grapples with a private crisis. Each projects their ultimate hopes and fears onto the contents of this bottle, a bottle rendered divine by age and scarcity.

Unfolding over several days of indulgence in delicious food and drink, raucous debauchery, and transformative truths that will leave each character changed forever, Lush is a sensuous tour of the wine industry's extreme pleasures and pains, a captivating summer read that, like a fine vintage, will linger long after you've finished turning the pages.
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belletrist COVER REVEAL ♄ @___adorn AMERICAN SPIRITS ✹A love letter to pop music, American Spirits charts an icon’s fall—and an obsessive fangirl’s rise Thirty-eight-year-old Blue Velour has finally achieved the critical acclaim she’s long been chasing. Over the last decade, she’s released six studio albums to mixed reviews, landing her somewhere between performance artist and niche legend. But her latest album, Blue’s Beard—a cheeky reference to the subreddit fanatically dedicated to her suspected secret relationship with longtime producer Sasha Harlow—has rocket-launched her reputation. Blue hires nerdy superfan Rose Lutz as her assistant to handle the pressures of the upcoming tour. When the pandemic shuts down the tour, however, Blue decides to hole up in the redwoods with Sasha to make another album. An aspiring singer herself, Rose is frothing at the mouth to be isolated in a cabin with these two legends, but what begins as a creative retreat spirals into a flurry of chaos and betrayal—culminating in a tragic act that changes their lives forever. Smart, entertaining, and edgy, American Spirits is a compelling exploration of the dark side of fame. Cover designer @mathmonaham says the following of the cover: “I had Lana Del Ray playing constantly to keep me in a dreamy atmospheric mood. The colors obviously evoke the two characters Blue and Rose, and I wanted the specific blue to feel impossible or unattainable in the way Rose talks about Blue with her fan group. The relaxed but direct eye contact hovers between beautiful and unnerving. And of course, I wanted to add some Hollywood glamour with that big romantic typeface.” The book is now available for pre-order via @skylightbooks via link in bio.

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