After the disappearance of Leon Owenby, his younger brother and central narrator, Martin, returns to the family’s Willoby County, N.C., mountain town from his life as a destitute writer in New York City to aid in the search for Leon and support his other siblings. The year is 1986; Martin leaves behind his ex-lover, Dennis, and their many friends sick and dying from AIDS. Back home, he must face his painful past, his extended family to whom he is closeted, and his high school girlfriend (who still carries a torch for him). Many months of searching reveal more about the searchers than about Leon; the secrets and resentments in the Owenby family run deep and bubble to the surface unexpectedly. It’s problematic that with so many family issues coming to light, Martin’s sexuality is ignored and remains a secret, but Newton’s use of multiple viewpoints and distinct voices is adept and lively, and helps to fill in the thin premise of Leon’s disappearance. With many novels of this construction, a reader tends to favor one voice over the rest. Not so here; Newton delivers across the board with these characters, who run the gamut from perky to depressive, desperate to schizophrenic.

    His grandfather, silver-screen heartthrob James Ringer, died tragically at twenty-one, and Brandon looks exactly like him. But that’s where the resemblance ends. Brandon is unknown, unemployed, and up to his ears in bills after inheriting his grandparents’ Hollywood mansion. He refuses to sell it—it’s his last connection to his grandmother—so to raise the cash he needs, he joins a celebrity look-alike escort agency.Percy Charles is chronically ill, isolated, and lonely. His only company is his meddlesome caregiver and his collection of James Ringer memorabilia. When he finds “Jim Ringer” on Hollywood Doubles’ website, he books an appointment, hoping to meet someone who shares his passion for his idol.Brandon? Not that person.But despite their differences, they connect, and Percy’s fanboy love for James shows Brandon a side of his grandfather he never knew. Soon they want time together off the clock, but Percy is losing his battle for independence, and Brandon feels trapped in James’s long shadow. Their struggle to love each other is the stuff of classic Hollywood. Too bad Brandon knows how those stories end.

    From there, Anshaw intricately traces three possible paths for Jesse, spinning exhilarating variations on the themes of lost love and parallel lives unlived. Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina, writes, "I found myself wishing I could buy a dozen copies and start a discussion group, just so I'd be able to debate all the questions this astonishing novel provokes." A Reader's Guide is available.

    Each landing on the packed dirt is a jarring reminder of reality. Rodeo camp is a tough way to spend a summer, but John is having the time of his life. No clingy girlfriends, no nagging moms, no annoying sisters. Just him and the guys and the biggest bulls he's ever seen. All he has to do is stay on a bull for eight seconds. It may feel like an eternity to his aching body, but for once John feels in control of his own fate. Then he learns his new rodeo buddy Kit is gay. Shaken by the news, he tries to deal with the other guys' reactions and his own self-doubts.Suddenly, riding a bull seems easy. . . .

    It starts with a minor meltdown at work that leaves Danny under house arrest with a cast on one leg and an ankle monitor on the other, courtesy of the San Diego Police Department. On top of that, he’s battling a chronic case of virginity, with no relief in sight.Oh, and there’s one more little glitch. A serial killer is stalking the city, murdering young men. And when strange sounds are heard in the house behind Danny’s, the neighborhood kids think they’ve found the killer. But not until Danny learns he's next on the madman's list do things really begin to get desperate.Damn! And Danny had plans to come out this summer—maybe even get laid! He doesn't have time for ankle monitors and serial killers!Then ginger-haired Luke Jamison moves in next door. Not only does Luke solve a few of Danny's more urgent problems, he also manages to create a couple more that Danny never saw coming. Gee. If he can survive it, this summer might not be so bad after all.

    Still, they're as close as sisters can be. Until Eva deletes Roz from her life like so much junk e-mail for no reason that Roz understands. Now Eva hangs out with the annoyingly petite cheerleaders, and Roz fantasizes about slipping bovine growth hormone into their Gatorade.Roz has a suspicion about Eva. In turn, Eva taunts Roz with a dare, which leads to an act of total insanity. Drama geeks clamor for attention, Shakespearean insults fly, and Roz steals the show in Lauren Bjorkman's hilarious debut novel.

    teen who is cruelly transported to a small town in Iowa by parents who delight in my suffering. It tells the tale of my struggles against such obstacles as flannel, packs of bullies, lack of car, hoodies, crazy English teachers and vengeful former friends. It is an epic tale of survival in a savage denim wilderness.

    He’s just been elected class president! Now all the girls want to go out with him even more, only a public coming out will save him, or will it? Now there are all these guys coming out of the woodwork, (even a teacher aide? who knows!) and he can’t catch a study break. All anyone seems to want to know is, who will get to plant the kiss that sticks?Photo Description: Two young men recline arm in arm against a striped cushion. They are wearing blue-striped shirts and black trousers. The boy on the left, the taller of the pair, is giving his companion a look of extreme dubiousness. The boy on the right’s smirk is pure mischief. Their shirts are somewhat rumpled. Hijinks have either ensued, are ensuing or are about to ensue.This story was written as a part of the M/M Romance Group's "Love is an Open Road" event. Group members were asked to write a story prompt inspired by a photo of their choice. Authors of the group selected a photo and prompt that spoke to them and wrote a short story. This story may contain sexually explicit content and is intended for adult readers. It may contain content that is disagreeable or distressing to some readers. The M/M Romance Group strongly recommends that each reader review the General Information section before each story for story tags as well as for content warnings.

    There wasn't even a reason for it: sometimes love just fades, as quickly and mysteriously as it appears in the first place. Enter Damien. Damien's the guy with a different man on his arm for every event, he's smooth and arrogant and always impeccably turned out. Christo hates him. But God, he's gorgeous. Damien could be exactly what Christo needs to get him over John.It's only going to be a fling. Nothing serious, nothing that will affect their working relationship or the rest of their lives. So why are they fighting through the night rather than letting go and walking away? Why does Damien's secretive nature bug Christo so much? And why does he even care that the other man might not be as tough as he pretends to be?

    Kenan speaks eloquently and with a great deal of courage."--Gloria NaylorRandall Kenan's daring and innovative first novel weaves a vivid and horrific tale through the generations of a black Southern family.Sixteen-year old Horace Cross is plagued by issues that hover in his impressionable spirit and take shape in his mind as loathsome demons, culminating in one night of horrible and tragic transformation. In the face of Horace's fate, his cousin Reverend James "Jimmy" Green questions the values of a community that nourishes a boy, places their hopes for salvation on him, only to deny him his destiny. Told in a montage of voices and memories, A Visitation of the Spirits just how richly populated a family's present is with the spirits of the past and the future.

    Light: Brightness or illumination from a particular source. Absolute brightness: The mystery of Leonard Pelkey. This is the story of a luminous force of nature: a boy who encounters evil and whose magic isn't truly felt until he disappears.Phoebe’s life in Neptune, New Jersey, is somewhat unremarkable. She helps her mom out with her hair salon, she goes to school, and she envies her perfect older sister. But everything changes when Leonard arrives.Leonard is an orphan, a cousin who Phoebe never knew she had. When he comes to live with Phoebe’s family, he upsets the delicate balance of their lives. He’s gay and confident about who he is. He inspires the people around him. He sees people not as they are, but as they hope to be.One day, Leonard goes missing. Phoebe, her family, and her community fight to understand what happened, and to make sense of why someone might want to extinguish the beautiful absolute brightness that was Leonard Pelkey.

    Technically he's a lawyer, but really he's a problemsolver. He just never expected the problem to be Caleb Sinclair, the passionate but introverted artisan carpenter who lives next to the proposed quarry site."Know your enemy." That's Caleb's philosophy. And trying to turn fertile farmland into a gravel pit earns Peter the title of "enemy." Caleb loves that land, and if he has to make peace with his homophobic neighbors to make war on Peter, so be it. Except knowing his enemy doesn't turn out anything like he expected. Peter's not the fairy-tale monster-he just might be the first step to happy ever after.

    Unemployed, depressed, mid-transition, friendless, and still living in the upstairs bedroom of his parents' house in a conservative suburb, he can think of little to do but write his memoir. In the third person, he tells the tale of his would-be love affair with his college roommate, Colin, another trans man with a girlfriend and a successful indie rock band. The plot is interrupted intermittently by Dean's first person commentary, often criticizing middle-class conformity-but also the queer counterculture from which he feels equally alienated. He is obsessed with Morrissey of The Smiths and wants nothing in life other than the same level of fame. As his far-fetched dreams become a foreseeable reality, he must decide between honesty and belonging, conformity or isolation, community or self....

    Yet Cara, the free spirit, and Pen, the stoic, craft a bond so strong it seems as though nothing could sever it: not the bickering, not the secrets, not even Cara’s infidelities.But thirteen years on, a car crash kills Cara and rips the lid off Pen’s world. Pen is still in the closet, teaching at her old school, living under the roof of Cara’s gentle father, who thinks of her as his daughter’s friend. How can she survive widowhood without even daring to claim the word? Over the course of one surreal week of bereavement, she is battered by memories that range from the humiliating, to the exalted, to the erotic, to the funny. It will take Pen all her intelligence and wit to sort through her tumultuous past with Cara, and all the nerve she can muster to start remaking her life.

    I'm sixteen (just) and I have two remarkably undivorced parents, along with a sister and a grandmother and we all live in the same house together just like in a TV show. I've just started my A levels too, which me and Al are planning to fail, which is our way of saying Fuck You to the British educational standard.So what if your parents hate each other and want you to have therapy? So what if your holier-than-thou sister and her posse have decided you're going to hell? So what if the school tyrant and his goons are hunting you down, or if your best friend has just outed you to a neo-Nazi? Jaz isn't planning to lose any sleep over it -- at least until he meets the guy of his dreams at the local gay bar. Suddenly things are a lot more complicated...Witty, acerbic, and incredibly funny, My Side of the Story is the perfectly rendered portrait of a precocious, troubled teenager faced with the awkward process of growing up and coming out.