"By now I've read "Binary Star" twice, and I've become so entwined with it that I'm reluctant to talk about the subject at length. Let me just say that I've never read anything like it."--Harry Mathews

The language of the stars is the language of the body. Like a star, the anorexic burns fuel that isn't replenished; she is held together by her own gravity.

With luminous, lyrical prose, "Binary Star" is an impassioned account of a young woman struggling with anorexia and her long-distance, alcoholic boyfriend. On a road trip circumnavigating the United States, they stumble into a book on veganarchism, and believe they've found a direction.

"Binary Star" is an intense, fast-moving saga of two young lovers and the culture that keeps them sick (or at least inundated with quick-fix solutions); a society that sells diet pills, sleeping pills, magazines that profile celebrities who lose weight or too much weight or put on weight, and books that pimp diet secrets or recipes for success.

Sarah Gerard's work has appeared in the "New York Times," "New York" magazine's "The Cut," "Paris Review Daily," "Slice Magazine," the "Los Angeles Review of Books," "Bookforum," and other journals. She is the author of the chapbook "Things I Told My Mother" and a graduate of The New School's MFA program for fiction.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Thoracic Image Analysis, TIA 2020, held in Lima, Peru, in October 2020. Due to COVID-19 pandemic the conference was held virtually. COVID-19 infection has brought a lot of attention to lung imaging and the role of CT imaging in the diagnostic workflow of COVID-19 suspects is an important topic. The 14 full papers presented deal with all aspects of image analysis of thoracic data, including: image acquisition and reconstruction, segmentation, registration, quantification, visualization, validation, population-based modeling, biophysical modeling (computational anatomy), deep learning, image analysis in small animals, outcome-based research and novel infectious disease applications.

Retro 4 is the latest collection of the best, the funniest, the strangest, and the most affecting stories from the award winning literary magazine, Joyland.