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The Night We Met
Rob Byrnes - 2002
He has yet to become the literary voice of his generation. And he most definitely has not met Mr. Right. Now, stuck in a dead-end publishing job, and nursing a broken heart, Andrew is resigned to a life of anti-fabulousness...until the night he meets dark, hunky Frank DeBenedetto. With his confident way of taking care of things and his shy demeanor in the bedroom, Frank wins Andrew over. But problems arise when Frank turns out to be the son of the Maria's top boss, and he's engaged to Anna Franco -- daughter of "Crazy Tommy" Franco -- a woman who does not take to catching her fiance in the act of becoming a "made man."Suddenly, Andrew's once-boring life is heating up with enough action to fuel ten novels...if only he can keep his very cute butt intact and his man from ending up on a Most Wanted poster. From a couple of "sensitivity-trained" cops to a persistent FBI agent...from guys with nicknames that all have to do with pain to a Mafia princess whose hair is nearly as big as her mouth...from ex-lovers, drag queens, and suspicious doormen to a cast of other characters as zany as New York itself, "The Night We Met" is a frantic, nonstop, madcap romp through a wild romance no reader will be able to refuse.
Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution
David Carter - 1994
Since then the event itself has become the stuff of legend, with relatively little hard information available on the riots themselves. Now, based on hundreds of interviews, an exhaustive search of public and previously sealed files, and over a decade of intensive research into the history and the topic, Stonewall brings this singular event to vivid life in this, the definitive story of one of history's most singular events.
Desert of the Heart
Jane Rule - 1964
This classic of lesbian eroticism is Jane Rule's first novel.Set in the late 1950s, this is the story of Evelyn Hall, an English professor, who goes to Reno to obtain a divorce and put an end to her disastrous 16-year marriage. While staying at a boarding house to establish her six-week residency requirement she meets Ann Childs, a casino worker and fifteen years her junior. Physically, they are remarkably alike and eventually have an affair and begin the struggle to figure out just how a relationship between two women can last. Desert of the Heart examines the conflict between convention and freedom and the ways in which the characters try to resolve the conflict.
Candle Cove and Other Stories
Kris Straub - 2015
An ancient dead thing finds its way back to life via others' dreams. An isolated man learns what it's like to be abandoned by existence itself. These stories and many more in this collection of short horror from the creator of Candle Cove. Contains work originally printed in Ichor Falls: A Visitor's Guide and But In The Dead of Night: Selections from Thirty Years of Nightmares.
Totempole
Sanford Friedman - 1965
In eight discrete chapters, which trace Stephen’s evolution from a two-year-old boy to a twenty-two-year-old man, Friedman describes with psychological acuity and great empathy Stephen’s intellectual, moral, and sexual maturation. Taught to abhor his body for the sake of his soul, Stephen finds salvation in the eventual unification of the two, the recognition that body and soul should not be partitioned but treated as one being, one complete man.Quotes:Totempole is the most audacious affirmation of the homosexual experience by an American writer I have seen, and its success is the more remarkable because nearly all the materials of this novel are not only familiar but fashionable…[Friedman] explores a recognizable terrain and leaves it deeply illumined.—Hilton Kramer, The New LeaderIt proves to be the most candid, and least pornographic, of studies of the genesis of a homosexual; paradoxically, by close concentration on the agonies of a young man searching for sexual fulfillment…This was a dangerous book to write…Its impact as a document of great honesty will, without doubt, be considerable.—Anthony Burgess, The ListenerI think Totempole an extraordinarily courageous and highly moral work. The author tells us exactly what it was like to be himself at a certain time and place and, uniquely, I believed him. Truth is rare; he seems to have it.—Gore VidalAn extraordinary book, vivid and utterly convincing…The truth of Mr. Friedman’s book is not the truth of autobiography, but the truth-making that the best fiction is.—James DickeyI do not know of any piece of fiction that deals more perceptively with preadolescent sex…Wholly honest…Friedman treats the homosexual theme, as he does the theme of infant sexuality, with great candor and no lubricity…There are episodes developed with unusual imaginative power.—Granville Hicks, Saturday Review
I Remember
Joe Brainard - 1970
In a book which uniquely captures 1950's America, Brainard constructs the story of his life through a series of brief entries, each beginning with the words "I remember", and continues with observations about family, film stars, lust, and the astonishing New York culture into which he moved to from Tulsa at the age of 18.
The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon
Tom Spanbauer - 1991
The narrator, Shed, is one of the most memorable characters in contemporary fiction: a half-Indian bisexual boy who lives and works at the Indian Head Hotel in the tiny town of Excellent, Idaho. It's the turn of the century, and the hotel carries on a prosperous business as the town's brothel. The eccentric characters working in the hotel provide Shed with a surrogate family, yet he finds in himself a growing need to learn the meaning of his Indian name, Duivichi-un-Dua, given to him by his mother, who was murdered when he was twelve. Setting off alone across the haunting plains, Shed goes in search of an identity among his true people, encountering a rich pageant of extraordinary characters along the way. Although he learns a great deal about the mysteries and traditions of his Indian heritage, it is not until Shed returns to Excellent and witnesses a series of brutal tragedies that he attains the wisdom that infuses this exceptional and captivating book.
My Father and Myself
J.R. Ackerley - 1968
R. Ackerley was shocked to discover that he had led a secret life. And after Ackerley himself died, he left a surprise of his own--this coolly considered, unsparingly honest account of his quest to find out the whole truth about the man who had always eluded him in life. But Ackerley's pursuit of his father is also an exploration of the self, making My Father and Myself a pioneering record, at once sexually explicit and emotionally charged, of life as a gay man. This witty, sorrowful, and beautiful book is a classic of twentieth-century memoir.
Antediluvian Tales
Poppy Z. Brite - 2007
As Poppy Z. Brite writes in the foreword to this new mini-collection, "After the events of 2005, I couldn't see pairing stories I'd written before the flood with those I'd written after; for better or worse, my life, my outlook, and, necessarily, my work has changed forever ... These are literally antediluvian tales, stories written before August 29, 2005... Whatever else they may be, the stories in this little collection now seem almost impossibly innocent to me."Antediluvian Tales contains five stories of the Stubbs family, the New Orleans clan whose adventures Brite has chronicled in her popular Liquor novels and other works. Two more stories revisit the author's fictitious alter ego Dr. Brite, the coroner of New Orleans. Completing the book is "The Last Good Day of My Life," a nonfiction look at the changes the past two years have wrought on Brite, filtered through a reminiscence about a day she spent knocking around Cairns, Australia.Any reader who loves New Orleans will treasure these antediluvian tales for the city that exists in them: a city that will never again exist in its pre-Katrina form, but which cannot be killed by hurricanes, floods, or governmental neglect as long as its artists continue to chronicle and cherish it.Table of Contents:Drink Up, Dreamers, You're Running Dry: A ForewordThe Feast of St. RosalieFour Flies and a SwatterHenry Goes ShoppingThe Working Slob's Prayer (Being A Night in the History of the Peychaud Grill)Crown of ThornsWound Man and Horned Melon Go to HellThe Devil of Delery StreetThe Last Good Day of My Life (A True Story)Appendix: Alternate Order of Stories
Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration
David Wojnarowicz - 1991
Street life, drugs, art and nature, family, AIDS, politics, friendship and acceptance: Wojnarowicz challenges us to examine our lives -- politically, socially, emotionally, and aesthetically.
Valencia
Michelle Tea - 2000
Through a string of narrative moments, Tea records a year lived in a world of girls: there's knife-wielding Marta, who introduces Michelle to a new world of radical sex; Willa, Michelle's tormented poet-girlfriend; Iris, the beautiful boy-dyke who ran away from the South in a dust cloud of drama; and Iris's ex, Magdalena Squalor, to whom Michelle turns when Iris breaks her heart. Valencia conveys a blend of youthful urgency and apocalyptic apathy.