3 Biting Books For Those Bitter On Valentine's Day

This novel chronicles one week in the life of Kenny Becker, a young door-to-door salesman who throws away a stagnant, albeit loving, relationship with his amateur-singer girlfriend, La Donna. Kenny is the living, breathing definition of a sex addict, and when he banishes La Donna from his life, he is left to his own lascivious devices. It's the story of a lonely, depraved Valentine's week in New York City circa 1978. When Kenny isn't on the floor of his apartment doing his daily sit-ups, he's out roaming a Times Square littered with peep shows, and a Greenwich Village booming with gay sex clubs. The reader follows Kenny as he moves through an underworld of cheap sex and empty feelings. And did I mention this is hilarious? For anyone familiar with Price's later tough-talking, criminal-investigation novels, this earlier one will delight you with its rapid-fire one-liners and offbeat humor.

Dorothy Baker's novel is the tragicomic tale of Cassandra Edwards, a Berkeley grad student who returns to her family's California ranch to attend her twin sister's wedding. Cassandra's the type of heroine who may decide to stop at a roadside bar for vodka, or make drunken calls from a pay phone hoping that her sister Judith will talk her down from doing anything impulsive. This classic weekend-wedding set-up is a tipsy comedy of manners and rumination on love's ultimate unfairness. Cassandra sets out, intent on sabotaging the marriage with sly insults and a fistful of pills. Because the sisterly bond she once had with Judith is now threatened, her world comes spiraling down, and we can't help but watch her fall. And it is Cassandra's faults, her coy, everywoman on the verge of proper adulthood that will comfort you through the night.

Nathanael West's classic short novel is the story of a newspaper columnist — a man who receives letters of heartbreak from the city's desperate souls. He comforts them in his weekly column, offering not only advice about love, but solace and escape from their depressed and unfortunate lives. But Miss Lonelyhearts himself may be one of the most desperate, an unsatisfied man searching for meaning in what he sees as a morally bankrupt city. West's novel is also a brilliant period piece of Depression-era New York. Set in speak-easies and newsrooms, its hero is one tainted by love's darker side — the affairs, the broken engagements — and its ultimate failure to bring about true happiness.