Confessions of a Recovering Slut

Book excerpt: Confessions of a Recovering Slut is the hilarious and often heartrending sequel to Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch, which concludes with Hollis Gillespie, the daughter of a missile scientist and an alcoholic traveling trailer salesman, at last finding a home of her own. Unfortunately that home just happens to be in one of Atlanta's most dangerous crack neighborhoods—but the place is bound to improve, right? Wrong. Gillespie is plagued by missing human torsos, murdered policemen, and a drug dealer who keeps setting fire to her neighbor's house—and all this after Hollis discovers that she is inexplicably (except, maybe, for all that acrobatic sex) pregnant. While the neighborhood might have been fine when she was a child-free urban pioneer, it's a nightmare for a mother with nothing but cake pans to bulletproof the baby's room. Gillespie must depend on her three best friends, Daniel, Grant, and Lary, to help her—although Lary makes it no secret that he hopes the paint fumes she inhaled early in her pregnancy will cause the baby to be born inside out—"that way it'll be easier to sell for parts." "Will Gillespie ever feel safe? No matter, she's still Hollis at heart—and, as Lary points out, if not safe, at least "safe from ever being normal."