As chaplain to the Fire Department of New York, Father Mychal Judge was officially the first to go. A loving priest with a gift for the gab-gregarious yet humble, a healer with the ability to wipe away a widow's tears and put a smile on a fireman's face.And on September 11th Father Mike rushed to the fires at the World Trade Center as quickly as those who fought them, losing his own life while tirelessly ministering to New York's bravest.Father Mike recounts the colorful, astonishing and at times troubled life of a priest who saw the potential for good in everybody-in the homeless person he slipped a dollar to on the street; the alcoholic he sought to coax to an AA meeting; the early victims of AIDS he embraced and comforted; the troubled young men he visited in jail; and the thousands of firefighters he blessed as they rushed to their rigs answering the call. Here was a priest who rejoiced in the life around him and understood that even the most terrible times present us with wonders-that good always arises from the bad in the most unexpected ways. Or as Father Mike would say, "My God is a God of surprises."In this touching book, author Michael Daly retraces the footsteps of Father Mike as his vocation takes us inside the firehouse, inside his friary and his Church, and inside the chaos that often befalls New York.This is the tale of a larger than life priest who, in death, became a symbol of how much we truly lost that Tuesday in September. Father Mike is the inspirational story of a hero priest who blessed so many lives and will long be remembered by it.

    . . . Andrew Holleran writes with enormous insight and compassion." — NewsdayAndrew Holleran's follow-up novel to Dancer from the Dance, Nights in Aruba is a classic novel of love shared and love concealed told with wry humor and subtle lyricism.This groundbreaking novel of gay life centers around Paul, an uneasy commuter between two parallel worlds. He is the dutiful son of aging, upper-middle-class parents living in Florida, and a homosexual man plunged deliriously into the world of New York City's bars, baths, and one-night stands. With wry humor and subtle lyricism, Holleran reveals the tragedy and comedy of one man's struggle to come to terms with middle age, homosexuality, truth, love, and life itself.

    In modern-day London, Robert searches for fulfillment in a world of sex, drugs, designer clothes, and hip gay clubs, during which he records his experience on his blog. Half a century earlier, Michael kept a secret diary in which he chronicled the dangers of negotiating the closet and the laws that could land himself and his friends and lovers in prison. Past and present collide when Robert moves into a new block of flats and discovers that history is alive and kicking on his doorstep. Funny, sexy, and moving, this tale demonstrates how much the world has changed, and remarkably, how much it can remain the same.

    There's his school, his boyfriend, his cat, and especially Oxford University, which Simon plans to attend just as his beloved late father planned. But all of Simon's certainties come crashing down when his mother remarries and drags him to Boston with her.Furious and unforgiving, Simon finds plenty to resent in America. His stepsister, Persie, is overindulged by her father and struggling with Asperger syndrome. And Simon's school project--coaching a young student for the national Spelling Bee--hits a complication when eleven-year-old Toby makes a confession: there's a girl trapped inside his body, and her name is Kay.Helping Kay find her way begins changing Simon too, opening him to different perspectives, revealing a strength that's gone untapped until now. And as the life he's known, and the future he envisioned, slips further away each day, he realizes he can either lose his direction entirely, or forge a new--and perhaps even better--path. . .Praise for the novels of Robin Reardon"Real and honest." --VOYA on The Revelations of Jude Connor"Mesmerizing. . ..A rare book that will appeal to young adults and adult readers alike." --Publishers Weekly on The Evolution of Ethan Poe

    They are frequently seen as obsessively reserved and secretive. "Pet Shops Boys Literally", written with their co-operation, shadows them around Hong Kong, Japan and Britain on their 1989 tour, showing two pop stars in unusally intimate detail as they work, relax, gossip, argue and, every now and then, try to make sense of what they do. "Pet Shops Boys Literally" describes the inspirations, the rows, the frustrations, the confrontations with obsessive fans and the earning and expenditure of vast sums of money. In this book Chris Heath presents more than the document of a tour. He traces the Pet Shop Boys' wider history and tells the extraordinary story of what it is to be a pop star today.

    When the naked corpse of a young West Point cadet, David Hand, is found floating in a nearby lake, the academy's official statement is startlingly at odds with what Ray Slaight, his platoon leader, knows to be true.

    A mission to retrieve an injured Navy SEAL from the treacherous mountains of Afghanistan is all in a day's work -- until he learns the missing SEAL is his former lover. This time it's personal.Publisher's Note: This short story was previously published in the Because of the Brave anthology.

    Nick, also a gay detective with the Chicago Police Department, and his older, straight partner Detective Norm Malone hunt this heinous serial killer tagged The Reaper. This odd couple encounters both personal and professional conflict as this suspenseful noir thriller races to a surprise conclusion that leaves Nick and Norm battling for their lives.

    Lonely Christopher combines a striking emotional grammar, reminiscent of Gertrude Stein's Three Lives, with an unyielding imagination in the lovely/ugly architecture of his stories.Lonely Christopher is the author of several poetry chapbooks and is a contributor to the poetry volume Into (Seven Circles Press). His plays have been published, staged in New York City and internationally, and released in Mandarin translation. His fiction received Pratt Institute's 2009 Thesis Award. He is a founding member of the small press The Corresponding Society and an editor of its biannual journal Correspondence. He lives in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn.

    Something sexy to take my mind off being poor, living in a run-down apartment, and kicked out of college due to some plagiarism I totally did not commit. Life was going downhill fast, and a hot, anonymous hookup with a guy by the handle IceFire would make my life suck a little less—or more, but in the right way.Man, was I wrong.Hot and charming, Guy Winters and his touches leave me breathless. One night turns into two. Then a date. Then more. Except his body is always cold. Our makeouts are almost too intense. And there's something just not right. It takes a break-in and a murder in self-defense before I finally get it.And the truth about Guy has me running for my life.This book was originally published as His Touch of Ice and as Ice Born. It has been revised and updated to be more suitable for a general audience.

    His mother tells him he'll be a star one day. 'Twinkle, twinkle,' she says, giving his hair a ruffle.Not everyone shares Julian's dreams of stardom. Television is too much like hairdressing for his father's tastes. A Tasmanian man wants a son for sporting purposes. 'Boys don't like dolls,' he tells Julian, 'They like Dinky Toys.' Not this boy, thinks Julian, who knows better than to tell the truth.Besides, the family already has a sporting hero, Julian's sister Carmel aka 'The Locomotive'. Julian likes his sister, but knows better than to tangle with her bowling arm. It's the same one she uses for punching.Julian Corkle is a Filthy Liar is the ultimate feel-good novel, a book that will have the reader laughing out loud on the back of a bus as it follows Julian's bumpy journey through adolescence, fibbing his way through school and a series of dead-end jobs, to find his ultimate calling as creator of ‘The Hog.’ It's as if Crocodile Dundee has crashed Muriel's wedding and run off into the desert with Priscilla.

    But "John Reid" didn't write it. Years would pass before the writer could reveal his true identity as Andrew Tobias, America's bestselling financial guru, author of The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need. Now, twenty-five years later, Tobias, proud to use his real name, brings his remarkable life story up to date.Writing with his customary charm and frank humor, Tobias tells of love affairs and heartbreak, hot New York parties and tough political battles, the excitement of genuine social change and the tragedy of seeing dear friends die young. Here too are the unforgettable scenes of Tobias revealing his sexual orientation not only to his parents but to the president of the United States.The author is an irresistible companion as he shares with us his proud stories, embarrassing confessions, and hilarious musings on "the homosexual lifestyle." Witty, heartfelt, and wonderfully affirming in every sense, this is Andrew Tobias's finest book to date.

    Here, on a locked adolescent psychiatric ward, Keith meets the bewitching Laura. The two teens begin a passionate love affair--only to be separated and placed in different hospitals.By turns lyrical, funny, and poignant, and always informed by touching candor, The Boy with the Thorn in His Side is full of fascinating characters and unexpected twists-at once an odyssey into the extremes of the American 1970s, a universal tale of star-crossed teenage love, and an account of a deeply sensitive young person's struggle to find his place in the world. It marks the debut of a poised and compelling writer.Keith Fleming had been a pretty ordinary Midwestern kid--Little League, Boy Scouts--but the year he turns twelve, his family is torn apart by divorce when he learns that his mother and his Uncle Ed are both gay. By the time Keith is fifteen he has become disfigured by severe acne and is so wild that his father and stepmother place him in a draconian adolescent mental institution. Here he meets Laura, a pretty Mexican girl with whom he begins a passionate love affair.Keith's mother finally demands his release after a series of hospitalizations and sends him off to live with his uncle, Edmund White, in New York. Keith is soon transformed by his young uncle: He is sent to a dermatologist, to Barneys "Boy's Town" for new clothes, and to prep school. He receives a broad cultural education from Uncle Ed at home--all this despite Ed's being poor as well as completely caught up in the beehive of social and sexual activity of 1970s gay Manhattan. In the tradition of This Boy's Life and Girl, Interrupted, The Boy with a Thorn in His Side is a beautifully rendered saga of a deeply sensitive and alienated teen struggling to find his place in the world-and at the same time a very modern tale of teenage love and a young person's touching and complicated bond with an unlikely hero.

    The poems in his new collection, Sweet Machine, see the world from a new, hard-won perspective: A coming back to life, after so much death, a way of seeing the body's "sweet machine" not simply as a time bomb, but also as a vibrant, sensual, living thing. These poems are themselves "sweet machines"--lyrical, exuberant and joyous--and they mark yet another milestone in the extraordinary career of one of our most distinguished and accomplished poets.

    The object of his affections is his roommate Andrew, who is confused about his sexuality. Meanwhile, X's other roommate-a seventeen-year-old precocious partyboy-is falling for X in a big way. The result is an old-fashioned (well, sort of) love triangle peppered with savage one-liners-a touching portrait of love and lust among three very different gay men