But a chance meeting by the river soon becomes an intense, exhilarating, and all-consuming affair. After their camp duties are fulfilled, the pair spend a dreamlike few weeks camping in the countryside, bonding over an illicit copy of James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room. Inhabiting a beautiful natural world removed from society and its constraints, Ludwik and Janusz fall deeply in love. But in their repressive communist and Catholic society, the passion they share is utterly unthinkable.Once they return to Warsaw, the charismatic Janusz quickly rises in the political ranks of the party and is rewarded with a highly-coveted position in the ministry. Ludwik is drawn toward impulsive acts of protest, unable to ignore rising food prices and the stark economic disparity around them. Their secret love and personal and political differences slowly begin to tear them apart as both men struggle to survive in a regime on the brink of collapse.Shifting from the intoxication of first love to the quiet melancholy of growing up and growing apart, Swimming in the Dark is a potent blend of romance, post-war politics, intrigue, and history. Lyrical and sensual, immersive and intense, Tomasz Jedrowski has crafted an indelible and thought-provoking literary debut that explores freedom and love in all its incarnations.

    Caring for people is what Sami does. Unfortunately, putting his loved ones first is also part of the reason Sami is single. As accepting as his parents are, he isn’t sure how they’d react if he brought home a boyfriend. So he spends more time than he should dreaming of what might be, and fighting with his younger sister over the perfect sunny spot on the couch. Which is probably why the perfect potential boyfriend chooses that moment to move in across the street. There’s just one problem—his new neighbor isn’t really new. He’s the son of the woman Sami’s mother has had a feud with for years. Toby and Sami grew up together but were never allowed to say more than a few words to each other despite Sami’s repeated efforts. Quiet, serious Toby was Sami’s first and biggest crush, and everyone knew it—a big part of their reason their mothers didn’t get along. Toby’s mother went as far as planting dozens of thorny rose bushes around her house to ensure Sami couldn’t even see Toby anymore. But Toby’s mother is long gone, and Toby has no interest in reviving the feud. If anything, he seems determined to end it. Finding out why, and if it has anything to do with the way he looks at Sami, means Sami will have to raise the issue with his family—and dare to step beyond the wall of roses that kept him out all those years ago.

    This is the good gay novel about suburbia and its torments that John Updike won't ever write.”—Richard Labonte“In rich, languid and perfectly nuanced prose, author Jay Quinn traces the arc of each character . . . casting a unique spell over many of the assumptions and stereotypes of suburban family life.”—Curled Up With a Good BookPraise for Back Where He Started:“Jay Quinn’s masterpiece. You don’t have to be gay, Catholic, or Southern to enjoy this wonderful book. Engrossing and inspiring.”—Gay TodayRory Fallon is walking his dog when he notices activity at the house next door. New neighbors, namely, the Hardens, are moving in—Austin and his wife Meg, along with their two kids. Rory introduces himself, and can’t help but notice how intrigued Austin is when it’s mentioned just who Rory lives with: his partner of many years, handsome Bruno Griffin. Indeed, the last thing Austin expected in this small Florida enclave was having a gay couple for neighbors. But life has more surprises in store, for Austin and for Rory, and soon new questions are asked, about love and about marriage, and how their roles help define—and alter—the people around them.A main selection of the InsightOut Book Club.

    Living in New York in 1991 is Gilbert Selwyn, a young man possessed of boundless charm and an allergy to employment, who has devised a plan to wring a nice pile of loot from his mother's newest (and obscenely wealthy) husband.The scheme, simply put, is to get married for the gifts. But Gilbert, who's gay, needs a fiancée... Enter Moira Finch, a demonically conniving young woman whose own mother, having recently married the Duke of Dorsetshire, will contribute richly to the couple's receipts. Enter, too, Philip Cavanagh, Gilbert's longtime friend, former lover, and highly strung Best Man. And enter, finally, the Cellinis, Gilbert's huge internecine stepfamily, whose fortune has not been amassed as innocently as Gilbert first thought, and who conform rather more closely to Italian-American stereotypes than Gilbert would like to believe. As Gilbert, Moira, and Philip struggle to keep their plot under wraps, the scams get bigger and more perilous, deceit multiplies, and a wonderfully calamitous trail leads us towards what could be the wedding of the season.

    She’s just caught her son Jimmy in the barn with another man. She’s been accosted by Red the Twit, who claims to have done the unmentionable with her husband. And now her son’s gone and joined the only group that will have him: an army division on its way to Afghanistan.Setting aside her prim and proper ways, Our Woman promptly embarks on an odyssey of her own – one that forces her to look grief in the eye and come face-to-face with the mad agony of longing.

    That is, he loves spending time with them when they come out to Palm Springs for weeklong visits, or when he heads home to Connecticut for the holidays. But in terms of caretaking and relating to two children, no matter how adorable, Patrick is honestly a bit out of his league.So when tragedy strikes and Maisie and Grant lose their mother and Patrick’s brother has a health crisis of his own, Patrick finds himself suddenly taking on the role of primary guardian. Despite having a set of “Guncle Rules” ready to go, Patrick has no idea what to expect, having spent years barely holding on after the loss of his great love, a somewhat-stalled career, and a lifestyle not-so-suited to a six- and a nine-year-old. Quickly realizing that parenting—even if temporary—isn’t solved with treats and jokes, Patrick’s eyes are opened to a new sense of responsibility, and the realization that, sometimes, even being larger than life means you’re unfailingly human.With the humor and heart we’ve come to expect from bestselling author Steven Rowley, The Guncle is a moving tribute to the power of love, patience, and family in even the most trying of times.

    Twenty years have passed since Joseph left behind his entire life—his wife Rebecca, his five sons, his father, and the religious Israeli farming community where he grew up—when he fell in love with a man, the genius rabbi Yoel Rosenzweig. Their affair is long over, but its echoes continue to reverberate through the lives of Joseph, Rebecca, and their sons in ways that none of them could have predicted. Now, for his fiftieth birthday, Joseph is preparing to have his five sons and the daughter-in-law he has never met spend the Sabbath with him in the Tel Aviv penthouse that he shares with a man—who is conveniently out of town that weekend. This will be the first time Joseph and all his sons will be together in nearly two decades. The boys’ lives have taken widely varying paths. While some have become extremely religious, another is completely cosmopolitan and secular, and their feelings toward their father range from acceptance to bitter resentment. As they prepare for this reunion, Joseph, his sons, and even Rebecca, must confront what was, what is, and what could have been. Evan Fallenberg is a native of Cleveland, Ohio, and has since 1985 lived in Israel, where he is a writer, teacher, and translator. His recent translations include novels by Batya Gur and Meir Shalev. He is a graduate of the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and the Vermont College MFA program. He is the father of two sons.

    What follows is a riotous magical romp with the buoyant Hal Jam as he leaves the quiet, nurturing world of the forest for the glittering and corrupt world of humans. New York and Hollywood and all that lies between serve as an expansive palette for Kotzwinkle's wickedly funny satiric brush. The Bear Went Over the Mountain skewers our age's obsession with money and fame in a delicious bedtime story for grown-ups.

    When Max Andrews, the much-loved and handsome (lonely and gay) host of "Slumber Sunday Sundown" accidentally exposes himself in front of twenty million kids and their parents during a "Toys for Tots" segment, Sellevision faces its first big scandal. As Max fails to find a job in television, another host, the popular and perky Peggy Jean Smythe is receiving sinister emails about her appearance from a stalker. Popping pills and drinking heavily, she fails to notice that her husband is spending a lot of time with the very young babysitter who lives next door. Then there's Leigh, whose affair with Sellevision boss Howard Toast is going nowhere, until she exposes him on air; and Bebe, Sellevision's star host, who finds Mr. Right through the Internet--if she can just stop her shopping addiction from taking over.

    Initially denying even the possibility that he might be experiencing a homosexual crush, De'Ath soon finds himself giving in to this "strange and bothersome distraction" by scouring teenybopper magazines for articles like "20 Facts Ya Didn't Know About [Ronnie]!!" "As someone who did not know any facts at all about him as yet," he notes, "I confess I felt a certain onset of excitement." Gilbert Adair's narrative--it might be more accurate to call it a novella instead of a novel--is a precise depiction of romantic obsession and frustration. Narrated by De'Ath, it is thus somewhat more internally driven than the excellent 1998 film adaptation starring John Hurt and Jason Priestley. Love and Death on Long Island can be easily polished off with a few hours' reading, but its nuanced characterization of a man who trades restraint for recklessness is well worth savoring. --Ron Hogan

    Frank Baum and the strangely resonant 1939 film. WAS traverses the American landscape to reveal how the human imagination transcends the bleakest circumstance.

    At the beginning of this novel, she drives back to her family ranch in the foothills of the Sierras to attend the wedding of her identical twin, Judith, to a nice young doctor from Connecticut. Cassandra, however, is hell-bent on sabotaging the wedding. Dorothy Baker's entrancing tragicomic novella follows an unpredictable course of events in which her heroine appears variously as conniving, self-aware, pitiful, frenzied, absurd, and heartbroken—at once utterly impossible and tremendously sympathetic. Cassandra reckons with her complicated feelings about the sister who she feels owes it to her to be her alter ego; with her father, a brandy-soaked retired professor of philosophy; and with the ghost of her dead mother, as she struggles to come to terms with the only life she has. First published in 1962, Cassandra at the Wedding is a book of enduring freshness, insight, and verve. Like the fiction of Jeffrey Eugenides and Jhumpa Lahiri, it is the work of a master stylist with a profound understanding of the complexities of the heart and mind.

    Friends since childhood, they become lovers at age 16 and must deal with the realities of being gay in a hardscrabble neighborhood, a traditional Catholic family, and the restaurant kitchens where they've begun to work.

    in this audacious, satirical tale of a struggling screenwriter, his media-whore best friend, and their circle of celebrity-seeking pals."(213)?" you'll likely ask.Well, the area code, of course."Misadventures?"Just the high jinks underemployed Tinseltown wannabes are usually up to. Like making off with fish from Tina Louise's koi pond. Or harassing Alicia Silverstone with tales of watermelon-loving porn stars. Or auctioning off Andrew Shue's chicken wing and Heather Locklear's lip print for charity. You know.Packed with Hollywood life lessons and more B-level celebs than you can shake a casting sheet at, Misadventures in the (213) is a brilliantly witty dagger straight through the heart of the L.A. entertainment machine.

    Thirty years later, one of the brothers-the only remaining survivor of a family he seeks both to leave behind and to preserve in words forever-narrates these precise and heartbreaking tales. Suffused with the beauty of Richard McCann's extraordinary language, Mother of Sorrows introduces us to an elegant writer like no other in contemporary fiction.