Games by Anna Maria Volkova

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?