Romance Book Club – Games: A Love Story at 325 S Washington Ave – Royal Oak, MI

* *Note: $5 registration fee can be used as a credit toward a purchase in-store. The credit expires the night of book club.**

Join us for Book Club!

Sidetrack Bookshop is a mission-driven bookstore, which means (in part) that we are committed to providing a welcoming and inclusive space for people of all identities. In order to maintain our welcoming and inclusive space in the context of what we hope will be a lively and productive book club discussion, we have developed the following house rules.

By attending a book club meeting, you agree to the following:

1. Share the floor: Be sure to let everyone talk and express their thoughts on the book. If you feel like you're talking a lot, you probably are! Invite others to speak.
2. Be respectful: We'll no doubt have differing opinions. Seek to understand first, then to be understood. Check your privilege, and take special care with others who have lived experience differing from your own.
3. Comments or behavior that demean a specific person, identity, or culture will not be tolerated.

Book club hosts will keep these house rules in mind and will redirect you or the conversation as a whole if we feel they aren't being honored. We also reserve the right to ask an attendee to leave if we feel they're contributing to an unwelcome space.

About the Book

A sharp and provocative coming-of-age debut chronicling the turbulent romance between a brilliant economics grad student and a magnetic Wall Street banker two decades her senior.

When Lili Marwan—seeking to escape the unrelenting pressures of her master’s thesis, recent rejection from her foster family, and unresolved grief from the death of her parents—has an intense one-night stand with Aleksandr Petrov, her restless mind finally goes calm.

At twenty-two, Lili is already opinionated beyond her years: whether it’s astrology, democratic socialism, veganism, or the ravages of late-stage capitalism run rampant. But when a tall, dark stranger buys her a drink in a FiDi bar, she suddenly meets her match. Aleksandr is formidable, fiercely intelligent, and infuriatingly disarming. He’s also more than two decades older than her, a Capricorn with a birth chart full of red flags, a neoliberal capitalist, and a strong believer in the power of free markets, having escaped the Soviet Union in its dying days.

He’s the opposite of Lili in nearly every way. He challenges her at every turn. And she can’t stay away.

Over the course of a heady New York City summer, Lili and Aleksandr reach across the divide of their differences and the decades of their lives, discovering startlingly shared experiences. Their casual arrangement—rough sex, hours where Lili does not need to make any decisions—gives way fast to an unexpected intimacy, by turns breathtaking, then devastating.

As Lili struggles to understand herself and the complicated threads of her ambition, pain, and desire, she will have to decide: is she willing to risk great loss again, for the hope of profit that is finally within reach?

About the Author

Anna Maria Volkova lives and works in New York City. Personal family histories from within the former Soviet Union and the Middle East inform her writing, as do her professional experiences. Raised in the Pacific Northwest, she studied history and political science. Games is her debut novel.