Grief


Andrew Holleran - 2006
    to escape his previous life. What he finds there — in his handsome, solitary landlord; in the city's somber mood and sepulchral architecture; and in the strange and impassioned journals of Mary Todd Lincoln — shows him unexpected truths about America and loss.

Without Sin


J. Tomas - 2008
    He's picked on because he likes boys, and fighting gets him kicked out of public school. As a last resort, his parents place him in St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Boarding School for Boys.At his first mass at St. Thomas he sees Avery Dendritch, a senior who serves as altar boy during the service. When they meet, the attraction between them is hard to deny. The two become fast friends, and as the school year progresses, their friendship deepens until Jacob feels he's found a place where he belongs.But the other students gossip about their growing relationship. Avery can ignore them; Jacob can't. As the rumors and slurs start up again, can he curb his temper, or will his fighting get him expelled from St. Thomas, too?

Perfect Freedom


Gordon Merrick - 1982
    Tropez -- dapper American expatriate Stuart Cosling, his ravishing French wife Helene, and their stunningly handsome son Robbie. To his parents, Robbie was still a boy, but in the spring of 1938, on a cruise of the Greek islands, Robbie discovered the pleasures of manhood. It wasn't until a certain season in St. Tropez that Robbie discovered the endless passion that comes only once with first love.

The Easy Way Out


Stephen McCauley - 1992
    His lover, Arthur, whom Patrick can't quite commit to, wants to cement their relationship by buying a house. Then a call comes in the middle of the night. Patrick's younger brother, Tony, has fallen in love - unfortunately she's not the woman he's already pledged to marry.

The Last Exit to Normal


Michael Harmon - 2008
    But he never thinks he’ll end up yanked out of his city life and plunked down into a small Montana town with his dad and Edward, The Boyfriend. As if it’s not painful enough living in a hick town with spiked hair, a skateboard habit, and two dads, he soon realizes something’s not quite right with Billy, the boy next door. He’s hiding a secret about his family, and Ben is determined to uncover it and set things right. In an authentic, unaffected, and mordantly funny voice, Michael Harmon tells the wrenching story of an uprooted and uncomfortable teenaged guy trying to fix the lives around him–while figuring out his own.From the Hardcover edition.

We Think the World of You


J.R. Ackerley - 1960
    Ackerley as “a fairy tale for adults.” Frank, the narrator, is a middle-aged civil servant, intelligent, acerbic, self-righteous, angry. He is in love with Johnny, a young, married, working-class man with a sweetly easygoing nature. When Johnny is sent to prison for committing a petty theft, Frank gets caught up in a struggle with Johnny’s wife and parents for access to him. Their struggle finds a strange focus in Johnny’s dog—a beautiful but neglected German shepherd named Evie. And it is she, in the end, who becomes the improbable and undeniable guardian of Frank’s inner world.

A Place To Call Home


Callie Hall - 2020
    She had a loving wife, a beautiful home, and the promise of a child to call their own. However, after a devastating loss, Beth’s ex walked out on her, leaving Beth to pick up the pieces of their broken family.Now, at forty years old, Beth spends her days walking the empty halls of a house that no longer feels like home. Comfortable in her solitude, Beth’s night is interrupted when a woman shows up on her doorstep asking for shelter from the cold.Stranded and drenched by the pouring rain, 28-year-old Abby's night has gone from bad to worse. From her cheating ex to a fallen tree that’s blocked her path, Abby’s had it with the rest of the world. The company could be also better, but with nowhere else to go, Abby must depend on the kindness of a stranger that, while rough around the edges, can be quite warm if given the chance.A Place to Call Home is a sweet lesbian romance with no cliffhangers and a happily ever after.

Love Drugged


James Klise - 2010
    But when a classmate discovers the truth, a terrified Jamie does all he can to change who he is. At first, it's easy. Everyone notices when he starts hanging out with Celia Gamez, the richest and most beautiful girl in school. And when he steals an experimental new drug that's supposed to "cure" his attraction to guys, Jamie thinks he's finally going to have a "normal" life.But as the drug's side effects worsen and his relationship with Celia heats up, Jamie begins to realize that lying and using could shatter the fragile world of deception that he's created-and hurt the people closest to him.Told with equal doses of humor and suspense, Love Drugged explores the consequences of a life constructed almost entirely of lies . . . especially the lies we tell ourselves.

What's Not Broken


D.J. Parker - 2013
    He goes to school and hates it, plays football and loves it, and goes to church because it's expected. Everything in his life is right on track until an incident in the football locker room with a fellow teammate ignites feelings he didn't know he had and turns it all upside down, setting him on a life-changing journey to find out the truth about the secret he's now harboring. A secret that makes him question everything. A secret that has the potential to change the way everyone else feels about him. A secret that no one on earth knows but his best friend Sam.What's Not Broken follows the life of sophomore Eli Ridgewood on his search for truth and how it affects those around him in a poignant story of life and love and loss.

The Celibate


Michael Arditti - 1997
    An ordinand, he has had a breakdown while serving at the altar. The Church has sent him to a London therapist, rather than a priest, for confession. During the course of his cure, while living in an unfamiliar world of outcasts, fundamentalists, and AIDS sufferers, he is forced to face the reality of his own physical passion: first for a humble rent boy, then for a sadomasochistic pimp, and, finally, for a priest. The healing begins as he gradually comes to terms with his own history.

Sucking Sherbet Lemons


Michael Carson - 1988
    Then he is sent to learn to be a monk which makes him a permanent temptation for the older brothers who lust for fresh meat in a most unBiblical way. A great book with a new introduction by Simon Callow.

Better Angel


Forman Brown - 1933
    Today, it remains a touching story of a young man's discovery of his sexuality in the 1920s and 1930s and is considered to be one of the most important gay books ever written.

After the Fire


Jane Rule - 1989
    Canadian-Japanese Karen, who has left her lesbian lover of eight years, befriends Red, a young woman with an unknown background who cleans houses for three others--acrid Milly, divorced by her husband after a 20-year marriage; Henrietta, whose husband is institutionalized in Vancouver; and Miss James, an eccentric, elderly spinster. Birth, illness and death follow one another, uniting the five independent and incisively drawn protagonists. "All that time I was trying to teach you how to live alone and really take care of yourself, I was teaching myself, too," Henrietta tells Red. The resulting warmth is not saccharine but realistic, as Rule illuminates the vagaries and pain of abandonment and loss, and the fragile joy of new bonds.

My Body and I


René Crevel - 1925
    Exploring the tension between body and spirit, Crevel’s meditation is a vivid personal journey through illusion and disillusion, secret desire, memory, the possibility and impossibility of life, sensuality and sexuality, poetry, truth, and the wilderness of the imagination. The narrator’s Romantic mind moves from evocative tales and sensations to frank confessions, making the reader a confidant to this great soul trapped in an awkward-fitting body. A Surrealist Proust.

The Woman Who Owned the Shadows


Paula Gunn Allen - 1983
    "An absorbing...fascinating world is created...not only is it an exploration of racism, it is a powerful and moving testament..."--New York Times Book Review