This book requires a trip to Venus, which means

Did we mention this is the planet of love?

Publishing March 2nd, 2026

Also available at retailers and ebook distributors. Ask your local bookstore to order.

Alita, a whiz at helping AI extract marketable trends from human sex behavior datasets, tries her hand at love.

So you like literary romance, steam, intellect and family dynamics in the setting of cyberpunk? You love a dive into a New York City in the 2050s from a native New Yorker’s perspective, through the eyes of a woman following her heart and intuition (a woman who loves to roller disco solo, uncaring about the eyes that watch her?).You can hear the siren song of the Greek isles inviting you to journey there. And you like literary fiction. Or you want to like literary fiction but need it with a little more flair. Maybe you want your romance with a little more literary?

This is your book.

To Love Like Venus is a literary novel in a near-future setting that’s all about love, relationships and how we cope with its heights and disappointments—whether partner, ideals or the symbols that become our children.

Alita Melusine is the embodiment of desire. Her appetite for pleasure drives much of her twenties and is deliciously displayed in her roller-disco dancing, a niche retro craze in Manhattan’s 2050s—itself a scene of gentrified cyberpunk. That her heart remains untouched by Eros’s arrow is one of the many attributes Jean loves about her. Yet her aged Casanova-like mentor is also the first to point out Alita’s greatest flaw: Though Alita is a whiz at making sense of datasets detailing the sexual habits of the city at her job assisting artificial intelligence, she’s less certain of her own personal life. Despite what Jean tells her, she’s always believed that somewhere in relationships there is room for love. Now she’s ready to try this theory out, despite Jean’s objections—no matter what the cost. So when she pairs with the winsome Kaveh, she finds herself on uncharted roads—and facing the rabid objections of Kaveh’s mother, Claire, who disapproves of Alita and her shameless flaunting of selfhood in the roller-disco rink. When the latest superstorm hits the city, Alita’s world begins to unravel. Jean’s imprint on her life is more than she realized—as is, unfortunately, Claire’s. On an island where life is lived in a rave of niche fantasy, in the midst of a surrender to environmental collapse, Alita must put together the pieces of her mosaic to confront the woman she really is—and learn what it means to love like the storms of Venus.

To Love Like Venus is a literary glimpse into a near future of tech-fueled human sexuality, environmental decay, and soft cyberpunk.

Portions of  To Love Like Venus were first featured  in both the short story and comic written by Stephanie Nina Pitsirilos: “Event Horizon” with art by Cris Delara and Armando Ramirez, photography by Cyrus Amir Boquín and design by Aaron Guzman; and “In The Name of Love” with sequential art by Eric Nguyen, letters by Gabriela Downie and photography by Cyrus Amir Boquín.

Cover Image Source:

januspointpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/ToLoveLikeVenusCover-scaled.jpg

ADULT FICTION / Literary FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / Love & Romance
FICTION / Science Fiction / Cyberpunk / ADULT
Think The Theory of Bastards by Audrey Schulman
Jacket design by Barış Şehri
256 pages, 5.5" X 8.5"

hardcover with dust jacket ($28) ISBN 978-1-958077-11-5
ebook epub ($9.99) ISBN 978-1-958077-12-2

Publisher: Janus Point Press

Distribution: IngramSpark & direct from publisher. Please note that on IngramSpark we cannot offer a book return option for bookstores, but we can offer them on a case-by-case basis with individual bookstores. Email

jpp (at) januspointpress(dot)com

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Pitsirilos, Stephanie Nina, author.

Title: To love like Venus / Stephanie Nina Pitsirilos.

Description: New York, NY: Janus Point Press, 2026.
Identifiers: LCCN: 2025915629 | ISBN: 978-1-958077-11-5 (hardcover) | 978-1-958077-12-2 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH Man-woman relationships. | Love--Fiction. | Family--Fiction. | Future, The--Fiction. | Cyberpunk fiction. | Science fiction. | BISAC FICTION / Literary | FICTION / Women | FICTION / Science Fiction / Cyberpunk | FICTION / Romance / Science Fiction
Classification: LCC PS3616 .I87 T65 2026 | DDC 813.6--dc23

Download a Readers' Guide (pdf) for book club discussions, teaching, or your own exercise for diving deep with guided questions.

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NYC-born and bound, Stephanie Nina Pitsirilos (To Love Like Venus, Event Horizon: Stories of No Turning Back) is a critically acclaimed writer with works in numerous prose and comics anthologies, recognized as a new voice transforming the genres of science fiction and fantasy.  Accolades for her work include: Kirkus Reviews;  The Chautauqua Institution; Publishers Weekly; Kore Press; Broken Pencil Magazine; Canzine; and AWP. Her 2024 debut short story collection Event Horizon: Stories of No Turning Back received glowing reviews, and she’s the recipient of the 2022 Chautauqua Janus Prize for her story “Jean,” called “masterful” by Publishers Weekly. Her stories reside also in the crudely folded and handsewn pages of zines and elegantly tucked inside perfumed silk clutches as artists’ books. She creates visual art as ANDROMEDA. Founder of the Lydia Garcia Author Fund at The Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College that is awarding monetary grants to writers writing from or about the Puerto Rican experience, in 2025.

She’s also been featured most recently at Brooklyn Book Festival, NYU’s Latinx Project print fair, Latinx Visions 2.0 (University of New Mexico), PBS Kids Alma’s Way, and previously at New York Comic Con.

Who do we see with their nose lost in this book?

Adult anyone. Anyone can read any book and be surprised by what they like. Who is likely to vibe with it in more market-targeted terms? Probably:

• Women on self-journeys
• Women seeking love, and liberation from love and societal boundaries
• Women exploring 4B/6B/Decenter Men/Feminists
• Men exploring female love and layers
• Men recalibrating their masculinity for human potential (think bell hooks’ Men, Masculinity and Love)
• Fans of Latin o/a/x/e reads and authors
• Literary-inclined comic book and sci-fi nerds
• NYC lovers (the real, the fantasy) from a native NYer perspective (home, not a backdrop for self-discovery and mission journeys, which is its own niche—just not this book). The book mostly takes place in Manhattan and the South Bronx in the 2050s, except when it’s in Greece (or on Venus).
• Lovers of the Greek islands

Venusian tunes for life in the 2050s roller disco clubs of NYC, sailing the Greek islands and a woman trying her hand at love. Spotify Playlist.

Book trailer. This video contains a segment with flashing lights

The book pairs nicely with this hand sewn chapbook: Venusian Greek Wines.

Curated wine selection from the publishers of To Love Like Venus that also charts some of the Greek island travels of its main character, Alita, and Venusian themes.

A hand sewn die cut chapbook exploring themes of female sexuality and scenes in To Love Like Venus.  Themes women collectively (and differently) experience in pleasure and the circus of image and desire. Review, prose essay with photographs.

Fresh with a public health degree but moonlighting as a receptionist in a black tunnel of a Chelsea club, a young woman declines a job offer at a new museum: The Museum of Sex.

Twenty years later she revisits the tunnel and enters the museum for a tour of where adulthood has landed them both.

Cyrus Amir Boquín

Co-publisher, first reader, seamster, photographer and drink mixologist for Janus Point Press

Cyrus is principally a community physician activist concentrating his healing work within the immigrant and diverse communities of Manhattan. A Michigan-raised child of Honduran and Iranian heritage, he majored in Russian literature at Harvard and counts graffiti stylewriting, Taller Gráfica Popular and contemporary Latin American xilografía, Black printmaking greatness and Persian miniaturist art among his principal inspirations in art and fine press collecting and collaboration.  Chief among his numerous artistic curations and collaborations over the past 20+ years are major University and medical campus events involving: acclaimed and Pulitzer Prize winning authors, playwrights, musicians, poets and legendary stylewriters.

Barış Şehri

Jacket and cover design and epub packaging

“Baris has specialized in book design since 2013, after graduating from Istanbul Bilgi University (TR) with a degree in Visual Communication Design.” On top of his many interests and visually pleasing book covers that blend artistic bend with typography, Stephanie spied that he’s also a comic book fan and based in Athens, Greece.

Lewelin Polanco

Interior design & Reviewer packaging

"Lewelin Polanco is an interior book designer, and has been working in publishing for 13+ years. She currently works at a major publishing house, and also freelances book design via THE COSMIC LION."

Julie A. Hersh 

Copy editor

"Line and copy editor focusing on far-away places in literary fiction, sci-fi, poli-sci, and tech. Experience at HarperCollins and more. Also writes spec fic."

Larissa Melo Pienkowski

Proof Reader

Larissa Melo Pienkowski grew up outside of Boston and attended Simmons University, where she earned her degree in social work and sociology, wrote and performed poetry, and edited a number of literary magazines. After earning her MA in publishing and writing from Emerson College, she worked with Beacon Press and Barefoot Books before becoming the associate publisher of Dottir Press. In 2020, she started her own freelance editing company and began her career as a literary agent at Jill Grinberg Literary Management before joining Azantian Literary Agency in 2025.

In addition to working editorially with authors one-on-one, she’s had the pleasure of collaborating with publishers like Macmillan, St. Martin’s Press, Tor, Soho Press, Sourcebooks, Hub City Press, And Other Stories, Barefoot Books, and Little, Brown BFYR, among others. She also speaks at creative writing programs, MFA workshops, and writing conferences nationwide, where she shares practical guidance on craft, revision, and the publishing process.

Larissa is the daughter of Brazilian and Polish immigrants and speaks Portuguese and Spanish. As a queer, mixed-race Latine editor, she believes books are a critical tool in the ongoing fight for justice and liberation, and she’s excited to bring books into the world that challenge the status quo and make people feel authentically seen. She lives in Philadelphia with her wife and their Siberian husky, Olaf.