Join Loyalty in welcoming Casey McQuiston and Justinian Huang for a VIRTUAL event to celebrate their books The Pairing and The Emperor and the Endless Palace!  This event will be held digitally via Crowdcast and is free to attend. Click here to register for the event. You can also order the book from our website to be added to the event's registration list, and there will also be an option to snag the book during the event.

In #1 New York Times bestselling author Casey McQuiston's latest romantic comedy, two bisexual exes accidentally book the same European food and wine tour and challenge each other to a hookup competition to prove they're over each other—except they're definitely not.

Theo and Kit have been a lot of things: childhood best friends, crushes, in love, and now estranged exes. After a brutal breakup on the transatlantic flight to their dream European food and wine tour, they exited each other's lives once and for all.

Time apart has done them good. Theo has found confidence as a hustling bartender by night and aspiring sommelier by day, with a long roster of casual lovers. Kit, who never returned to America, graduated as the reigning sex god of his pastry school class and now bakes at one of the finest restaurants in Paris. Sure, nothing really compares to what they had, and life stretches out long and lonely ahead of them, but—yeah. It's in the past.

All that remains is the unused voucher for the European tour that never happened, good for 48 months after its original date and about to expire. Four years later, it seems like a great idea to finally take the trip. Solo. Separately.

It's not until they board the tour bus that they discover they've both accidentally had the exact same idea, and now they're trapped with each other for three weeks of stunning views, luscious flavors, and the most romantic cities of France, Spain, and Italy. It's fine. There's nothing left between them. So much nothing that, when Theo suggests a friendly wager to see who can sleep with their hot Italian tour guide first, Kit is totally game. And why stop there? Why not a full-on European hookup competition?

But sometimes a taste of everything only makes you crave what you can't have.

ABOUT THE EMPEROR AND THE ENDLESS PALACE:

"A sweeping triumph in queer romance." -Booklist

"What if I told you that the feeling we call love is actually the feeling of metaphysical recognition, when your soul remembers someone from a previous life?"

In the year 4 BCE, an ambitious courtier is called upon to seduce the young emperor--but quickly discovers they are both ruled by blood, sex and intrigue.

In 1740, a lonely innkeeper agrees to help a mysterious visitor procure a rare medicine, only to unleash an otherworldly terror instead.

And in present-day Los Angeles, a college student meets a beautiful stranger and cannot shake the feeling they've met before.

Across these seemingly unrelated timelines woven together only by the twists and turns of fate, two men are reborn, lifetime after lifetime. Within the treacherous walls of an ancient palace and the boundless forests of the Asian wilderness to the heart-pounding cement floors of underground rave scenes, our lovers are inexplicably drawn to each other, constantly tested by the worlds around them.

As their many lives intertwine, they begin to realize the power of their undying love--a power that transcends time itself...but one that might consume them both.

An unpredictable roller coaster of a debut novel, The Emperor and the Endless Palace is a genre-bending romantasy that challenges everything we think we know about true love.

Casey McQuiston is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of romantic comedies, including One Last Stop, I Kissed Shara Wheeler, and Red, White & Royal Blue, whose writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Bon Appetit. Born and raised in southern Louisiana, Casey now lives in New York City with a poodle mix named Pepper.

Born to immigrants in Monterey Park, California, Justinian Huang studied English at Pomona College and screenwriting at the University of Oxford. He is now based in Los Angeles with Swagger, a Shanghainese rescue dog he adopted during his five years living in China. THE EMPEROR AND THE ENDLESS PALACE is his debut novel.

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Casey McQuiston and Justinian Huang for THE PAIRING and THE EMPEROR AND THE ENDLESS PALACE