Eighty-six-year-old Betty Halbreich is a true original who could have stepped straight out of Stephen Sondheim’s repertoire. She has spent nearly forty years as the legendary personal shopper at Bergdorf Goodman, where she works with socialites, stars, and ordinary women off the street. She has helped many find their true selves through fashion, frank advice, and her own brand of wisdom. She is trusted by the most discriminating persons—including Hollywood’s top stylists—to tell them what looks best. But Halbreich’s personal transformation from cosseted young girl to fearless truth teller is the greatest makeover of her career.

It is 1873. Mrs. Eliza Touchet is a Scottish housekeeper of many interests. Andrew Bogle, meanwhile, grew up enslaved on the Hope Plantation, Jamaica. When Bogle finds himself in London, star witness in a celebrated case of imposture, he knows his future depends on telling the right story.

The “Tichborne Trial”—wherein a lower-class butcher from Australia claimed he was in fact the rightful heir of a sizable estate and title—captivates Mrs. Touchet and all of England.

Based on real historical events, The Fraud is a dazzling novel about truth and fiction, Jamaica and Britain, fraudulence and authenticity and the mystery of “other people.”

Prince Eagle

by Elizabeth Peyton

Blue Sisters

by Coco Mellors

The three Blue sisters are exceptional—and exceptionally different. Avery, an addict turned lawyer, lives in London; Bonnie, a boxer turned bouncer, lives in Los Angeles; and Lucky, the youngest, models in Paris. They also had a fourth sister, Nicky, whose unexpected death left the family reeling.

As the sisters reckon with the disappointments of their childhood and the loss of the only person who held them together, they realize that the greatest secrets they’ve been keeping might not have been from one another but from themselves.

The Woman Destroyed

by Simone de Beauvoir

One of the most influential thinkers of her generation draws us into the lives of three women, all past their first youth, all facing unexpected crises in these three “immensely intelligent stories about the decay of passion” (The Sunday Herald Times). Suffused with de Beauvoir’s remarkable insights into women, The Woman Destroyed gives us a legendary writer at her best. Includes “The Age of Discretion,” “The Monologue,” and “The Woman Destroyed.”

 When Lilly Dancyger’s beloved cousin was murdered just as both girls were entering adulthood, Dancyger’s devotion to the women in her life took on a new urgency—a desire to hold her friends close while she still could. 

Sheila Heti collected half a million words from a decade’s worth of journals, put them in a spreadsheet, and sorted them alphabetically. She spent the next ten years cutting and refining, and was left with 60,000 words of brilliance and mayhem, joy and sorrow. These are her alphabetical diaries.

A woman lives an ordinary life with her boyfriend and cat in Brooklyn. One night, she meets another woman at a bar, and an escape hatch swings open in the floor of her life. She falls into a consuming affair—into queerness, polyamory, kink, power and loss, humiliation and freedom, and an enormous surge of desire that lets her leave herself behind.

Maggie Millner’s captivating, seductive debut is a love story in poems that explores obsession, gender, identity, and the art and act of literary transformation. In rhyming couplets and prose vignettes, Couplets chronicles the strictures, structures, and pitfalls of relationships—the mirroring, the pleasing, the small jealousies and disappointments—and how the people we love can show us who we truly are.

Since 2019, Araks has had the pleasure of collaborating with the extraordinarily talented photographer Chloé Horseman. Chloé’s keen eye for detail and her ability to capture the essence of quiet unexpected beauty have made her a part of our creative journey. Her work transcends the ordinary, revealing layers of emotion and artistry that resonate deeply with our philosophy.


The photographer has just published her first monograph, In Between, a stunning collection that encapsulates her unique vision and profound sensitivity. This book is more than just a compilation of photographs; it’s a journey through moments that linger in the space between what is seen and what is felt.

You can purchase In Between here on our website.