Bidding War


Julia P. Lynde - 2013
    Sam is in trouble after a last minute cancellation of one of the bachelorettes, so Pamela demands to be allowed to help. The only thing is, she doesn't ask the right questions.What ensues is at times funny, poignant, playful, and adventurous as Pamela learns a few things about herself, and about what it might be like to love the right person. Or people.This novel of 84,000 words features warm, sometimes troubled characters, sweet and lovely dates, and perhaps a little bit of hot, graphic sex.

A Matter of Life and Sex


Oscar Moore - 1992
    From the stirrings of his adolescent libido to his eventual death from AIDS, Oscar Moore's hero confronts his destiny with raw candour, shocking self-awareness, and frightening fatalism.

Chaos


Edmund White - 2007
    White explores different aspects of aging, romance, and sex, inviting his readers to come with him to Florida, the Greek Isles, and Turkey — and into the chaotic gay demimonde of contemporary New York.

These Things Happen


Richard Kramer - 2012
    They share a 15-year-old son, Wesley, who lives on the upper East Side with his mother and doctor stepfather. Trying to get to know his impressive, distant father better, he moves in for a semester with him his male partner in a mid-town brownstone. George, the partner, is a former actor — by his own account “fifteen years past fabulous.” Charming, funny, smart and compassionate, George manages a struggling theater district restaurant and becomes the model for the kind of man Wesley would someday like to be.

Sea of Grass


Kate Sweeney - 2010
    When she’s called back to the sprawling Double R cattle ranch and her ailing father, Tess is thrown back into the world she had nearly forgotten since the death of her brother two years earlier.Unsettling memories boil to the surface for Tess, and her only pleasant distraction is the new cook Claire Redman and her son Jack. However, there is more facing Professor Rawlins than dealing with the memory of her brother or her attraction to Claire. Tess must figure a way to save the Rawlins’s five thousand acres of rich grassland. It has thrived for five generations, when her great-grandfather started the dynasty in the 1880s; now she may lose it all to an unscrupulous land developer.Set in the foothills of the Bitterroots, Tess and Claire find themselves in the fight of their lives—for love and the sea of grass.

Metes and Bounds


Jay Quinn - 2001
    The novel follows Matt as he leaves home after his high school graduation to work for his uncle, a land surveyor. Matt's story of claiming his place as a surfer and as a gay man in the small and large world of construction sites, fishing piers, and surf breaks is a triumph of storytelling.

Deviant Propulsion


C.A. Conrad - 2005
    The title refers to the idea that those who are deviant propel the world forward at top speed. Delving into the center of the endless webs of repression against our bodies, desires, politics, and imaginations, are those whose actions and motion cut away at the systemic limitations of society. This collection of poems was written with the inspiration and work of these people in mind.As a working class queer poet, Conrad has had to fight through different stratifications of oppression his entire life. His poems vibrate with the flamboyant desire that manifests itself in queer culture, where the right to act on basic desires can become a battleground, and everyday acts of love and devotion must be enacted as a political form of defiance. The poems that emerge from this life long struggle illustrate the sharp edge of that defiance and desire, where joy is closely linked to death. In a world ruled by those who govern with fear, and in a landscape barbed with those who are terrified of desire, moving at speed of deviants is the only way to transform potential into action, and desire into positive change.

Inner Secrets


Suzie Carr - 2011
    She's a lesbian. In a moment of weakness, she gets caught in a love affair. Now, she must start all over as a divorced woman with little clue how to navigate the complex world of being single. Along this new path, she gets tangled up in a web of euphoric highs and lows that test her character, friendships, and future. As Hope struggles to preserve what's left of her integrity, what ensues is a dance between right and wrong and truth and forgiveness. This book beats a tantric rhythm as it explores romance, sexuality, women in love, bisexuality, and infidelity.

Dog Years


Mark Doty - 2007
    Beau joins Arden, the black retriever, to complete their family. As Beau bounds back into life, the two dogs become Mark Doty's intimate companions, his solace, and eventually the very life force that keeps him from abandoning all hope during the darkest days. Their tenacity, loyalty, and love inspire him when all else fails.Dog Years is a remarkable work: a moving and intimate memoir interwoven with profound reflections on our feelings for animals and the lessons they teach us about life, love, and loss. Mark Doty writes about the heart-wrenching vulnerability of dogs, the positive energy and joy they bring, and the gift they bear us of unconditional love. A book unlike any other, Mark Doty's surprising meditation is radiantly unsentimental yet profoundly affecting. Beautifully written, Dog Years is a classic in the making.

Wind and Sea


C.L. Ryder - 2018
    Not in high school, not in art school, and not since she’d gotten her work into major galleries across the country. It’s not that she doesn’t want it—she’s just never found the right woman—until a trip to the beach put her right onto Cammy’s canvas. The mysterious surfer in red. She’s charming and sexy, and Cammy can’t get her out of her mind… but there’s only one problem: The girl is 100% undeniably straight. Lei Castle is a real free spirit. She’s traveled the world with only her surfboard, and now she’s finally back home in the California. With her van set up on the beach, her only worry is how the waves are going to be that day. When Cammy shows up at her private cove the two are drawn into a close friendship, and Lei takes it upon herself to show the risk-averse painter how to have a little excitement. As Cammy falls deeper in love with her friend, it becomes harder and harder to keep her tremendous desires a secret. Will she suffer the pain of unrequited love for as long as they’re together? How can the tides of fate make an impossible love a reality?

After the Blue Hour


John Rechy - 2017
    Subsequent work asserts his place among America’s most important writers. The author’s most daring work, After the Blue Hour is narrated by a twenty-four-year-old writer named John Rechy. Fleeing a turbulent life in Los Angeles, he accepts an invitation to a private island from an admirer of his work. There, he joins Paul, his imposing host in his late thirties, his beautiful mistress, and his precocious teenage son. Browsing Paul’s library and conversing together on the deck about literature and film during the spell of evening’s “blue hour,” John feels surcease, until, with unabashed candor, Paul shares intimate details of his life. Through cunning seductive charm, he married and divorced an ambassador’s daughter and the heiress to a vast fortune. Avoiding identifying his son’s mother, he reveals an affinity for erotic “dangerous games.” With intimations of past decadence and menace, an abandoned island nearby arouses tense fascination over the group. As “games” veer toward violence, secrets surface in startling twists and turns. Explosive confrontation becomes inevitable.

My Two Moms: Lessons of Love, Strength, and What Makes a Family


Zach Wahls - 2012
    The nineteen-year-old son of a same-sex couple, Wahls proudly proclaimed, The sexual orientation of my parents has had zero effect on the content of my character. Hours later, his speech was posted on YouTube, where it went viral, quickly receiving more than two million views. By the end of the week, everyone knew his name and wanted to hear more from the boy with two moms. Same-sex marriage will be a major possibly the defining issue in this year s election cycle, and Wahls speaks to that, but also to a broader issue. Sure, he s handsome and athletic, an environmental engineering student, and an Eagle Scout. Yet, growing up with two moms, he knows what it s like to feel different and to fear being made fun of or worse. In the inspirational spirit of "It Gets Better "edited by Dan Savage and Terry Miller, "My Two Moms "also delivers a reassuring message to same-sex couples, their kids, and anyone who s ever felt like an outsider: You are not alone. "

Love, Lust, and Other Mistakes


Eliza Lentzski - 2012
    Meet ten women and their sometimes comic, sometimes tragic, but always erotic, journey through love, lust, and other mistakes.

Game of Hearts


Jea Hawkins - 2017
     The last thing Tori wants is to live her life by anyone else’s rules but her own. Ever since she left the world of country clubs and debutante balls behind, she has lived free of the standards imposed by others. But something is missing… …and that something is Madeleine, a carefree grad student from the same upper class social circles. The attraction is unexpected and, to Tori’s surprise, more liberating than the life she has cultivated for herself. Piece by piece, Madeleine takes down the wall that conflict and heartbreak have built around Tori’s emotions. Is loving Madeleine the key to Tori’s healing and happiness? And is Tori willing to step back into that world, even just a little, to take a chance on a love that could last?

America's Boy: A Memoir


Wade Rouse - 2006
     Wade didn’t quite fit in. While schoolmates had crewcuts and wore Wrangler jeans, Wade styled his hair in imitation of Robbie Benson circa Ice Castles and shopped in the Sears husky section. Wade’s father insisted on calling everyone “honey”—even male gas station attendants. His mother punctuated her conversations with “WHAT?!” and constantly answered herself as though she was being cross-examined. He goes to school with a pack of kids called goat ropers who make the boys from Deliverance look like honor students. And he both loved and hated his perfect older brother. While other families traveled to Florida and Hawaii for vacation, Wade’s family packed their clothes in garbage bags and drove to their log cabin on Sugar Creek in the Missouri Ozarks. And it is here that Wade found refuge from his everyday struggle to fit in—until a sudden, terrible accident on the Fourth of July took his brother’s life and changed everything. Equally nostalgic, poignant, funny, and compelling, this is a story of what it is to be normal, what it means to fit in, and what it means to be yourself.