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In Spite of You - Pantera Press

A gloriously spiky modern rom-com that will have you falling head over heels in love (and spite).

When Jeremy is invited to the 10-year reunion of his prestigious writing program, his life is a horrible mess. He’s a pop-culture journalist with no money, he’s permanently single and he now has to face his cheating ex-boyfriend – the reunion’s guest of honour.

Like any well-adjusted individual, Jeremy develops a revenge plan: fix his life by becoming super hot and successful and, most importantly, find a handsome and successful boyfriend to bring to the reunion.

Enter Sam – irritatingly perfect, disgustingly hot and generous to a fault – who agrees to help with Jeremy’s scheme. When Sam suggests they start fake-dating each other, the simmering tension between them threatens to boil over. Now Jeremy must choose between nursing his grudges and giving himself another chance at love.

'Romantic, sharply observed, and wickedly funny, In Spite of You is the perfect rom-com for people who love love – and also love the delicious pleasure of holding a really good grudge.' Jodi McAlister

'What a breath of fresh air to read a book like this, that's as clever and funny as it is full of vulnerability and heart. Patrick Lenton astutely observes modern culture and romance through the lens of someone who's been through it all. These characters are the people we all love to hate, or hate to love – and ultimately, love does win.' Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen

'A cross between Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion and the craziest Reddit thread you've ever been sent. Made me feel like I was eavesdropping on a juicy conversation at the next table.' Sinead Stubbins

'A funny and sexy queer romp about finding out who you are throughout the messiness of life, and the friends who put up with you support you every step of the way. Come for the horny love story between men, come again for the love story between friends.' Rebecca Shaw 

'Genuinely funny and smartly observed, In Spite of You channels the charm of classic rom-coms - idealistic and entertaining - but adds a fresh twist with a plot driven by high stakes and gay shenanigans... Lenton's protagonist is so insistently relatable that readers can't help but laugh along, as if encouraging their own messy friend... a delightful experience, a snapshot of millennial anxieties and queer frustrations wrapped up in a satisfyingly current romance. Recommended for readers who enjoy Andrew Sean Greer and Claire Thomas.' Abe Theobald, Books+Publishing

Praise for ‘In Spite of You’

  • Bec Shaw

    “In Spite of You is a funny and sexy queer romp about finding out who you are throughout the messiness of life, and the friends who put up with you/ support you every step of the way. Come for the horny love story between men, come again for the love story between friends.”

  • Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen

    “What a breath of fresh air to read a book like this, that's as clever and funny as it is full of vulnerability and heart. Patrick Lenton astutely observes modern culture and romance through the lens of someone who's been through it all. These characters are the people we all love to hate, or hate to love – and ultimately, love does win.”

  • Jodi McAlister

    "Romantic, sharply observed, and wickedly funny, In Spite of You is the perfect rom-com for people who love love - and also love the delicious pleasure of holding a really good grudge."

Shortlisted for the SPN Book of the Year Award 2022 and the Russell Prize for Humour Writing 2023.

A pile of rats having an identity crisis. A sexy robot rebellion. A velociraptor revenge wedding. The world’s horniest scientist. Enter Sexy Tales of Paleontology: a world of queer romance, (dis)connection, and artificial intelligence told with Patrick Lenton’s idiosyncratic bizarreness and heart.

Lenton’s short stories combine laugh-out-loud humour with an honest-to-goodness sensibility. Sci-fi oddities, pop culture, a lesser-known Kardashian who lives on the moon, and a deft turn of comic absurdity bound through this truly queer romp of a book. But beyond all this, at the beating heart of the book, is the foolishness, horror, and delight that is love and heartbreak and 43 rats.

Praise for Sexy Tales of Paleontology

  • Nina Oyama (Utopia, The Weekly)

    Patrick Lenton is a hot little piece of ass, and his book is a hot little piece of ass (for the mind).

  • Julie Koh (Portable Curiosities)

    Wildly inventive, refreshingly bonkers. I verify this attempt at humour by this human male.

  • Rick Morton (One Hundred Years of Dirt, My Year of Living Vulnerably)

    Lenton has an imagination like dropped pudding — delicious, and a crime to waste it. This collection is wicked, witty and only occasionally horny. Here Lenton writes with enviable verve around the intersection of science, inhumanity and the clarifying force of love. It is a book teeming with life and brilliance and I am very mad that I did not write it.

Uncle Hercules and Other Lies is a book of true stories about the nature of lies. The stories range from silly to sadly funny, and include stories that are about queer identity in action, rather than queer identity in theme—you’re not gonna read a coming out story. But every story is queer culture! Also, Skyrim Dog.

Prepare to have your heart warmed, tickled, shattered, and put back together with sticky tape as Uncle Hercules and other lies barrels through a collection of tender and tenderised non-fictions.

Shortlisted for the Scribe Non-fiction Prize, Uncle Hercules and other lies is gooey with incroyable half-fibs, formative moments, and bad life choices.

Praise for Uncle Hercules and other lies

  • Ben Jenkins (Story Club, Dragon Friends, The Checkout)

    Wonderful, infectious and genuinely hilarious. Patrick Lenton is the Cormac McCarthy of being a huge idiot.

  • Rebecca Shaw (No To Feminism, Get Krack!n, Tonightly)

    Patrick’s writing inspires something unusual in me: the desire to hear men tell me stories.

A Man Made Entirely of Bats is a collection of short stories and flash fiction by one of Australia’s newest voices. Comedic and absurd, these stories are an entertaining exploration of the concept of super heroes and of the super strange in our world.

A Man Made Entirely of Bats was shortlisted for the Most Underrated Book Award 2016.

Praise for A Man Made Entirely of Bats

  • The Sydney Morning Herald

    These startling, often surreal and sometimes very funny microfictions seem at first glance to be no more than little jokes and deliberately whipped-up confections, but most have more to them on reflection. While some  do seem a little forced, they are mostly the sort of joyously crazy pieces that you’d expect from a book with a title such as this.

  • Bookseller + Publisher

    In this collection of short stories and flash fiction, Patrick Lenton careens wildly across genres and draws on elements of surrealism, horror, fairytale, stand-up comedy and pulp fiction to generate tiny worlds that are surprising, original and frequently hilarious…  the stories are propulsive and readable, buoyed by a sharp and generous wit. There are echoes of David Sedaris’ surreal animal fables Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk. Like Sedaris, Lenton is hugely entertaining, which renders occasional moments of emotional tenderness all the more poignant.

  • Readings Monthly

    Lenton’s writing is confident, witty and unashamedly fun, playing with genre tropes and narrative conventions… Like any comedian, some jokes land better than others, but the delight Lenton takes in wordplay and narrative experimentation is infectious, and there are frequent moments that are laugh-outloud hilarious. But there are moments of poignancy and melancholy too, and juxtaposed against the overall playfulness and strangeness of the collection, these moments, when they come, knock the wind out of you.