And there was no known solution to being stuck between the sexes. Laura Dillon did all she could on her own: she cut her hair, dressed in men's clothing, bound her breasts with a belt. But in a desperate bid to feel comfortable in her own skin, she experimented with breakthrough technologies that ultimately transformed the human body and revolutionized medicine. From upper-class orphan girl to Oxford lesbian, from post-surgery romance with Roberta Cowell (an early male-to-female) to self-imposed exile in India, Michael Dillon's incredible story reveals the struggles of early transsexuals and challenges conventional notions of what gender really means.

    And that’s heaven.”—poet, essayist and performer Eileen Myles’ chronicle transmits an energy and vividness that will not soon leave its readers. Her story of a young female writer, discovering both her sexuality and her own creative drive in the meditative and raucous environment that was New York City in its punk and indie heyday, is engrossing, poignant, and funny. This is a voice from the underground that redefines the meaning of the word.

    An evocative, moving and at times hilarious true-life story about growing up gay in a small town, finding out you're adopted, and losing your father at the age of fourteen. Always an outsider, the Rhona of 1979 was desperate to fit in at any cost, and here lies the bittersweet humour. At the heart of the book is the Clubhouse, a place that symbolises all that is normal, happy, and secure. And behind the club, outside, Rhona and her friends are smoking, fighting, kissing and drinking. In this darkly funny and deeply biographical first book, Rhona Cameron takes us back to a year when everything seemed to change. A new British government came to power, the Eighties were approaching and at times life felt so precarious that it really looked like she and her family might never make it through the next year, let alone the next decade.

    Even the most self-possessed singleton may come to doubt herself. ?"You're too picky. Just find a good-enough guy and you'll be fine." "You're too desperate. If men think you need them, they'll run scared." "You're too independent. Smart, ambitious women always have a harder time finding mates." "You have low self-esteem. You can't love someone else until you've learned to love yourself.""You're too needy. You can't be happy in a relationship until you've learned to be happy on your own." It's Not You is structured around the many messages that singles, especially single women, get about who they are and who they're supposed to be. Supported by the latest psychological and sociological research, as well as interviews with single women, Eckel creates a strong argument for why you should love yourself as you are--no change necessary. By debunking the myths that have kept single women doubting themselves, Eckel encourages singles to stop picking apart their personalities and to start tapping into their own wisdom about who and what is right for them, as they begin to understand and accept there's no one reason they're single--they just are.

    Here is an author who takes neither love nor the power of language for granted, and her book is as provocative and lively as the love it evokes. An extraordinary performance by a writer who renews our wonder at the complexity of human connection."—Bernard Cooper"Barrie Jean Borich wins my respect with her ingenious and original description of feelings which, for many, need translating into a familiar language. She writes about her lover and their life together with a rare deftness, clarity, and antic sense of humor, never strident or defensive, rather self-confident and as if she herself were curious to discover what she is thinking about their relationship." — Rosellen BrownWinner of the American Library Association GLBT Book AwardFinalist for the Lambda Literary Award

    Part memoir, part ground-breaking polemic, it looks beneath the shiny facade of contemporary gay culture and asks if gay people are as happy as they could be – and if not, why not?Meticulously researched, courageous and life-affirming, Straight Jacket offers invaluable practical advice on how to overcome a range of difficult issues. It also recognizes that this is a watershed moment, a piercing wake-up-call-to-arms for the gay and wider community to acknowledge the importance of supporting all young people – and helping older people to transform their experience and finally get the lives they really want.

    . . . Rediscovered after nearly two hundred years, the story of [Anne Lister's] desire--and of the comic, gallant ways in which she satisfied it--seems especially poignant . . . . What Lister's diary suggests is that . . . the passion women find together has always existed, and we have only now begun to uncover its remarkable, lyrical history."--The Women's Review of Books"An interesting historical record, edited with great sensitivity . . . . [Lister] reveals her lesbian affairs with remarkable honesty, offering a rare insight into the mores of the time."--Sunday Independent"As a document of one woman's revolt against convention and as a celebration of love between women, this is an uplifting book."--The IndependentUpon publication, the first volume of Anne Lister's diaries, I Know My Own Heart, met with celebration, delight, and some skepticism. How could an upper class Englishwoman, in the first half of the nineteenth century, fulfill her emotional and sexual needs when her sexual orientation was toward other women? How did an aristocratic lesbian manage to balance sexual fulfillment with social acceptability? Helena Whitbread, the editor of these diaries, here allows us an inside look at the long-running love affair between Anne Lister and Marianna Lawton, an affair complicated by Anne's infatuation with Maria Barlow. Anne travels to Paris where she discovers a new love interest that conflicts with her developing social aspirations. For the first time, she begins to question the nature of her identity and the various roles female lovers may play in the life of a gentrywoman. Though unequipped with a lesbian vocabulary with which to describe her erotic life, her emotional conflicts are contemporary enough to speak to us all. This book will satisfy the curiosity of the many who became acquainted with Lister through I Know My Own Heart and are eager to learn more about her revealing life and what it suggests about the history of sexuality.

    They tell just-so stories to protect their ideology, their religion, their way of life. They look to women for a nod of approval before speaking. They give socially acceptable answers and half-truths.If what they have to say resonates with men, it is only because they manage to hint at the real answer.The real answer is that The Way of Men is The Way of The Gang.Manliness — being good at being a man — isn’t about impressing women. That’s a side effect of manliness.Manliness isn’t about being a good man. There are plenty of bad guys – real jerks –who are manlier than you are, and you know it.Manliness is about demonstrating to other men that you have what it takes to survive tough times.Manliness is about our primal nature. It’s about what men have always needed from each other if they wanted to win struggles against nature, and against other men.The Way of Men describes the four tactical virtues of the survival gang.The Way of Men explains what men want, and why they are rapidly disengaging from our child-proofed modern world.The Way of Men examines the alternatives, and sketches a path out of our “bonobo masturbation society” through a new Dark Age.

    But Tango's family is not like any of the others. This illustrated children's book fictionalizes the true story of two male penguins who became partners and raised a penguin chick in the Central Park Zoo.

    Author Biography: Dr. Kevin Leman is an internationally known psychologist, humorist, and bestselling author of The Birth Order Book and Making Children Mind without Losing Yours. He is former consulting psychologist for Good Morning America and a frequent guest on The View, The Early Show, and Focus on the Family. He and his wife, Sande, live in Tucson, Arizona. They have five children and two grandchildren.

    But her husband Max disagrees - more than that, he wants a divorce. When they separate, there is no mention of the unborn children they created together, still waiting at the clinic.The Zoe falls in love again, out of the blue, and finds herself with an unexpected second chance to have a family.But Max has found a new life too - one with no place in it for people like Zoe. And he will stand up in court to say that her new choice of partner makes her an unfit mother.Jodi Picoult's most powerful novel yet asks who has the right to decide what makes the ideal family?

     A riveting, powerful telling of the story of the grassroots movement of activists, many of them in a life-or-death struggle, who seized upon scientific research to help develop the drugs that turned HIV from a mostly fatal infection to a manageable disease. Ignored by public officials, religious leaders, and the nation at large, and confronted with shame and hatred, this small group of men and women chose to fight for their right to live by educating themselves and demanding to become full partners in the race for effective treatments. Around the globe, 16 million people are alive today thanks to their efforts. Not since the publication of Randy Shilts's classic And the Band Played On has a book measured the AIDS plague in such brutally human, intimate, and soaring terms. In dramatic fashion, we witness the founding of ACT UP and TAG (Treatment Action Group), and the rise of an underground drug market in opposition to the prohibitively expensive (and sometimes toxic) AZT. We watch as these activists learn to become their own researchers, lobbyists, drug smugglers, and clinicians, establishing their own newspapers, research journals, and laboratories, and as they go on to force reform in the nation s disease-fighting agencies. With his unparalleled access to this community David France illuminates the lives of extraordinary characters, including the closeted Wall Street trader-turned-activist, the high school dropout who found purpose battling pharmaceutical giants in New York, the South African physician who helped establish the first officially recognized buyers club at the height of the epidemic, and the public relations executive fighting to save his own life for the sake of his young daughter. Expansive yet richly detailed, this is an insider's account of a pivotal moment in the history of American civil rights. Powerful, heart-wrenching, and finally exhilarating, How to Survive a Plague is destined to become an essential part of the literature of AIDS.