No matter what Maupin writes next, he can look back on the rare achievement of having built a little world and made it run.”—Walter Kendrick, Village Voice Literary Supplement Armistead Maupin's uproarious and moving Tales of the City novels have earned a unique niche in American literature and are considered indelible documents of cultural change from the seventies through the first two decades of the new millennium.  The nine classic comedies, some of which originally appeared as serials in San Francisco newspapers, have won Maupin critical acclaim around the world and enthralled legions of devoted fans.Back to Barbary Lane comprises the second omnibus of the series—Babycakes (1984), Significant Others (1987), and Sure of You (1989)—continuing the saga of the tenants, past and present, of Mrs. Madrigal's beloved apartment house on Russian Hill. While the first trilogy celebrated the carefree excesses of the seventies, this volume tracks its hapless, all-too-human cast across the eighties—a decade troubled by plague, deceit, and overweening ambition.Like its companion volumes, 28 Barbary Lane and Goodbye, Barbary Lane, Back to Barbary Lane is distinguished by what The Guardian of London has called "some of the sharpest and most speakable dialogue you are ever likely to read."

    She meets book store owner Louisa Thatcher, a woman many years her senior, who offers shelter and work... and soon, passion, and a loving place in her life.But Rayann encounters challenges to this new love—from friends who question its wisdom, from her mother who disapproves of this liaison with a woman her own contemporary, from Louisa's son who learns for the first time his mother's true sexuality.And there are profound differences between Rayann and Louisa themselves, two women who come from dramatically different places in the spectrum of age and life experience. Their only common ground seems to be the searing attraction that they both try to deny...Originally published by Naiad Press 1991. Second Bella Books edition 2012.

    Chairiste alone managed to escape, and now, living in the modern world as Christa Cruitaire, a quiet harp teacher, she is all but resigned to her inability to win her beloved’s freedom . . . until she discovers that the volume and violence of the electric guitar and heavy metal might prove brutal enough to forcibly breach the barriers between the human and fairy worlds. With the aid of her bandmates—who must themselves overcome inner demons of abuse, addiction, and prejudice—Christa is determined to use her newfound musical power to rescue the woman she loves.Audacious and heartfelt, Gossamer Axe is an entirely original hero’s journey, an ode to the power of music and the human spirit alike, charged with rapier-sharp social commentary.

    Whether bearing witness to the Holocaust and its aftermath, dealing with conflicts between being gay and traditional Judaism, or confronting anti-Semitism and homophobia, these passionate stories by a prize-winning author break new ground in contemporary fiction.

    They can also be rich and passionate, at times lonely, at times exciting. Between the Acts reflects this in the life stories of fifteen gay men in the years when homosexual acts were illegal in the United Kingdom.The interviews give a vivid impression of gay male life when documentary evidence is limited. These memories and experiences allow us exceptional insights into how gay men made sense of their needs and desires, and fashioned for themselves manageable personal and social identities. These moving accounts of individual quests for identity and community will appeal to gay readers and to those with an interest in life during the earlier part of this century.

    Set mainly in 1914-1916 and told in diary-like entries interspersed with 36 brooding illustrations by the author, the story follows the boys as they become lovers, ultimately separated by college and a tragic accident. Together they explore California's woods, beaches and mountains, and search for evidence of the earthquake that brought them together. Their excavations as well as Max's reading of Ruskin and Cicero, point to this sensitive novel's motif: how memory accretes into character and shapes perception.

    A flip book with Fraser’s critically accalaimed play "Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love," as well as the screenplay, Love and Human Remains.

    

    However he is far from happy as he is slowly awaken to his real self. His struggles to finally attain his true love is the center of the story. The background depicting the trials of Oscar Wilde and gay men's struggles in a prohibitive and often demeaning Victorian society is luminously written.

    Each film is examined in detail in relation to both film type and tradition and the sexual subculture in which it was made.

    Allen Barnett has written an extraordinary accomplished collection of short fiction, stories about the risk of desire, the pain of early pregnancy, the sullen yearning of unrequited love, the devastation of AIDS and its remedies.

    Lu and Desiree have been together twelve years; Desiree plans to use the occasion of this trip to reveal a secret that will change both their lives. Poppy Dillworth has lost her precious Irma after thirty-six years of happiness. She sees no reason to go on living and has chosen this trip for her own special purpose. Marcie is a fledgling missionary out to prove her worthiness for assignment to South America; she has deep concerns about Poppy. And there's Jane and Ramona -- conventional women who have led the most conventional of lives, until they share the intimacy of a tent in the wilderness.

    Thirty-one writers express the diversity of erotic experience in prose and poetry that is both sensual and political.

    

    --- Sarah Schulman, After DeloresBo Huston's sensitive, stately prose translates gay underclass experience with such authenticity yet acumen that it seems the work of a first rate double agent. Horse brings to the front lines of contemporary fiction, stories, characters, messages, and tones of a fascinating, even dangerous ripeness. It's a crucial debut. --- Dennis Cooper, CloserHorse is a refreshing addition to the literature of the marginal and disaffected. Bo Huston manages to articulate his characters' values without ever being seduced by the addiction-soaked romance and disconnected egotism which define American outlaws as much as bourgeois smugness defines the mainstream which they reject. The book is an important achievement by a writer whose vision and prose possess exceptional clarity. --- Tim Dlugos, Entre Nous

    

    Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos tells the story of his years working in a squalid arcade on Chicago's tough State Street. During that time he left his mark on a hundred thousand people, from youthful sailors who flaunted their tattoos as a rite of manhood to executives who had to hide their passion for well-ornamented flesh. Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos is anything but politically correct. The gritty, film-noir details of Skid Row life are rendered with unflinching honesty and furtive tenderness. His lascivious relish for the young sailors swaggering or staggering in for a new tattoo does not blind him to the sordidness of the world they inhabited. From studly nineteen-year-olds who traded blow jobs for tattoos to hard-bitten dykes who scared the sailors out of the shop, the clientele was seedy at best: sailors, con men, drunks, hustlers, and Hells Angels. These days, when tattoo art is sported by millionaires and the middle class as well as by gang members and punk rockers, the sheer squalor of Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos is a revelation. However much tattoo culture has changed, the advice and information is still sound:how to select a good tattoo artist what to expect during a tattooing session how to ensure the artist uses sterile needles and other safety precautions how to care for a new tattoo why people get tattoos--25 sexual motivations for body artMore than a history of the art or a roster of famous--and infamous--tattoo customers and artists, Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos is a raunchy, provocative look at a forgotten subculture.

    The stories and opinions of hundreds of gay men provide the core of this book about the ascent out of compulsive behaviour and athe discovery of a fulfilling life. The author examines the struggles and successes of gay men overcoming addiction and compulsive behaviour. Direct and honest, Kettelhack provides a sense of what it's like for gay men to overcome crippling self-hatred as he examines the challenges, triumphs, and setbacks they face in dealing with compulsive behaviour and addiction. Writing from his own experiences as a recovering alcoholic, the author provides guidance for the road to recovery.