Hello my dears! Happy Valentine’s Day to those of you who celebrate it. Here at Family Man we prefer to honor the spirit of Valentine’s Day with grim, tense scenes in dark, airless rooms.

This week in books you should read! For the first time since my school days, a book made me cry so hard that I needed to lie down afterwards. Molly Gloss is a luminous, spare, and deep writer whose work I’ve loved since I first found out about it. She is a master of understatement who doesn’t shortchange the emotional experience of her characters, and who tackles historical and fantastical settings without . Her latest book, Falling From Horses, is a deft, crushing story set in pre-war Hollywood, following a young stunt rider and an aspiring screen writer. Gloss is a powerful damn writer, and this is a great book to start on.

Out this week, another master of form: after five years of intense work, Scott McCloud has released his new graphic novel The Sculptor. I love big, meaty, uncompressed graphic narratives (obviously, since I’m on page three-hundred-sixty-what-now?), and this book is a glorious doorstop all about art, love, death, and taking your time. Scott is currently on his US tour  and will be continuing on into Europe, so check his website to see if you can catch one of his appearances and pick up a copy from his own hands!