But his luck turns when he is asked to house-sit wannabe but talentless actress Fawn Farrar's $10 million Beverly Hills estate. Capitalizing on his new position, he is soon befriended by his all-time favorite star, Marina Stetson, a Janis Joplin-esque singer just out of rehab and trying to make a comeback -- and whose husband Jason secretly covets.Adding to the drama is Jason's ex-roommate, the incredibly pretentious Tricia Cox, whose struggles to make it as a talent agent take a wrong turn when she contracts her meal ticket, the talented and beautiful Violet Cyr, to a hip-hop sitcom called "Chillin' with Billy."When Billy turns out to be a talking goat, all hell breaks loose. The trashy, hip young heroes suffer through humiliations galore before they have a chance to make it -- but not before Christian McLaughlin has laid bare in hilarious detail all the foibles and fumbles of a group of happening young people in La La Land in their shameless pursuit of fame, fortune -- and sex.

    The meteoric rise and sudden, dramatic fall of a young gay male porn star.

    Her mother, a distant relative of William Faulkner, told neighbors and family that her daughter had died. The two never saw each other again. Nearly twenty-five years later, after building her own family and happy home life, a lawyer called to say her mother was dead. In this story about the fragility of memory and the complexity of family, Beam decides to look back at her own dark history, and for the secret to her mother’s madness.

    Almost one hundred years later, a groom-to-be prepares for his gay wedding.Queers celebrates a century of evolving social attitudes and political milestones in British gay history, as seen through the eyes of eight individuals.Poignant and personal, funny, tragic and riotous, these eight monologues for male and female performers cover major events - such as the Wolfenden Report of 1957, the HIV/AIDS crisis, and the debate over the age of consent - through deeply affecting and personal rites-of-passage stories.Curated by Mark Gatiss, the monologues were commissioned to mark the anniversary of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, which decriminalised homosexual acts in private between two men over the age of twenty-one. They were broadcast on BBC Four in 2017, directed and produced by Gatiss, and starring Alan Cumming, Rebecca Front, Ian Gelder, Kadiff Kirwan, Russell Tovey, Gemma Whelan, Ben Whishaw and Fionn Whitehead. They were staged at The Old Vic in London.This volume includes:The Man on the Platform by Mark GatissThe Perfect Gentleman by Jackie CluneSafest Spot in Town by Keith JarrettMissing Alice by Jon BradfieldI Miss the War by Matthew BaldwinMore Anger by Brian FillisA Grand Day Out by Michael DennisSomething Borrowed by Gareth McLean

     The murder of the Tsarina’s ‘Mad Monk’ sent shock waves through pre-revolutionary Russia. Many foretold it would mean the end of the monarchy — and they might have been right. But the murderers and their leader, the notorious Prince Yusupov, saw Rasputin’s hold over Nicholas II and his wife as an evil influence that was destroying Russia, whose armies were being slaughtered in the First World War. Yusupov was one of the richest men in Russia. He was also handsome, amusing and vain, boasting of the smallest waist of any man in Europe. Though married to the Tsar’s niece, Irina, he was homosexual and often paraded in women’s clothes — as such he even excited the attention of King Edward VII at the Théâtre des Capucines. During the revolution he was rescued at the eleventh hour with other members of the Imperial Family and went to Paris where he settled. His flamboyant lifestyle, his business adventures, court cases and struggles to raise money on the Yusupov jewels, as well as his friendships with the great of the time, including the Windsors, make exciting reading. Based on personal interviews and meticulous research, this enthralling biography captures the flavour of a bizarre, eventful and extraordinary life. Christopher Dobson is an author and foreign correspondent who has travelled the world in the pursuit of news. His front-line coverage of the wars in the Middle East and Vietnam won him widespread acclaim and he was voted International Journalist of the Year in 1968. He now specializes in writing about terrorism and is recognized as one of the leading experts in this field. Married with four children, he lives in Sussex where he spends as much time as he can fishing, shooting, gardening and reading. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.

    Confronting, revealing and candid, the book traces his life from adoption towards the end of World War II, to a most unusual childhood on Sydney's North Shore, to his fascination with Russia and his time spent studying in Cold War Moscow, and to his years spent criss-crossing the globe from Kashmir to Peru on various study trips. But a life that might have been exciting to others, to Robert was empty at its core. Constantly haunting him was the realisation that there was a "shaft of silence" running through his being - the question of who his natural mother was and what his origins were. A story of coming to terms with a new identity.

    Most importantly it will allow you to significantly increase the quality and consistency of the dishes you create on a daily basis. And for those of you whose lives are harried, the sous vide technique also allows you to create remarkable meals while working around your hectic schedule.Modernist Cooking Made Easy: Sous Vide is the authoritative guide to low temperature precision cooking and it will help make sous vide a part of your everyday cooking arsenal.Sous vide is a simple an extremely effective way to cook. This book covers every step of the sous vide process, from seasoning, sealing, and temperature control to how to determine the times and temperatures needed to turn out great food. There are also extensive write ups for the main types of food including steak and red meat, pork, fish and shellfish, eggs, fruits and vegetables, and much more.What You Get In This Book:•The bulk of this book is the more than 85 recipes it contains. Designed so you can skim the recipes, looking for something that inspires you, or turn to a specific recipe to learn all about how to cook the cut of meat it features.•A detailed look at the entire sous vide process, including pre-sous vide preparation, sous vide sealing, temperature control, determining time and temperatures, and finishing sous vided foods.•More than 85 recipes providing a wide variety of dishes across many cuts of meat and types of vegetables. They include:•Beef, Lamb, and Other Red Meat•Pork•Sausage and Ground Meats•Chicken, Turkey, Duck, and Poultry•Eggs•Fish and Shellfish•Fruits and Vegetables•Infusions of Alcohol, Oil, and Vinegar•Sweet and Sours such as yogurt, creme brulee, and dulce de leche•An introduction to the equipment you will need for cooking sous vide. From a simple no-cost method that will allow you to give sous vide cooking a try, to a low-cost setup that will meet all of your sous vide cooking needs.•A comprehensive sous vide time and temperature chart, as well as cooking-by-thickness times.•More than 35 "Modernist Notes" with suggestions for using modernist ingredients and techniques to turn everyday meals into upscale and elegant dishes.If you want to use sous vide to prepare amazing food simply and easily then this is the book for you!

    -- Alison Lurie

    His five happy years with his lover Russell haven't fundamentally challenged Desmond's conviction that, at best, true love is "an acute form of tolerance." He's sexually restless, and looking forward to his four-month teaching stint in Boston as an attempt to regain some of his own identity and try to complete the biography he's been writing. Jane Cody, a Boston public television producer, is similarly disenchanted with her marriage to a clumsy, kindly professor of English. Lately, Jane has been meeting her ex-husband Dale for drinks and coffee, although she's well aware that he's a jerk. With so much going wrong in her life, it strikes Jane that she and Desmond could collaborate on a series of documentaries, salvaging both of their foundering work lives. A page-turner, not by virtue of its plot, but because of Stephen McCauley's utterly engaging narrative voice, True Enough reprises some of the themes of his earlier novel, The Object of My Affection. It also has the virtues of a good Woody Allen film: Great comic lines and brilliant social observation among a small circle of successful friends. And like so much of Allen's work, the subject is married love: Fidelity and betrayal in their many guises. A funny, well-developed novel with surprising emotional depth. --Regina Marler

    One of today's most popular spiritual writers and commentators interweaves the Old and New Testament Scripture with prayers of hope and repentance, offering ancient ways of seeing Christ that will feel new to readers of all denominational backgrounds.

    In some countries, equal rights have been achieved and progress is being made against discrimination; in others, being gay still incurs the death penalty.This guide examines all the colors of the sexual rainbow, unearths hidden histories, and looks at contributions from medicine and science. It also includes a unique global survey of laws that affect sexual minorities.Vanessa Baird has been co-editor at New Internationalist magazine since 1986. Her previous books include, as compiler and editor, Eye to Eye Women.

    Using the magical and mythic language of classic stories from around the world, Fairy Tales takes familiar myths and folktales and turns them into stories about men coming out, learning to trust themselves, looking for and finding love, facing AIDS, and helping those they love.

    I always responded, 'Why would I change? Being me is the easiest person to be.' I was lying. It wasn't. At the Beijing Olympic Games, he made history with an unforgettable dive, the first to ever score perfect tens from all four judges, and won gold for Australia. Grinning with pride from front pages around the world, there was no hint of the personal demons that had led this supremely talented young dynamo to quit diving less than two years before. Joyously out and proud, Matthew was a role model for his courage both in and out of the pool. Yet the crippling self-doubt and shadow of depression that had plagued him all his life forced him into premature retirement, at one point reduced to circus diving to earn money. Even after Beijing and being ranked No 1 in the world, those closest to Matthew could not guess that beneath that cheeky, fun-loving exterior he was painfully aware of how easily it could unravel. In the lead-up to the London Olympics, when injury threatened his hopes, he will have to find the strength again to balance his striving for perfectionism with the fear of his self-doubt taking hold again. Told with the honesty and courage he is admired for, Twists and Turns is an inspiring story of a true champion, in and out of the pool.

    He was Kurt Strom, a big, good-looking southern boy who left the Detroit Tigers farm team to serve as a medic. In the blood-and-guts insanity of jungle warfare, he tended their wounds. In the comaraderie of of combat, he seduced them.

    Gagliano & Son has been a barber shop fixture in South Philly for decades. Frankie and Michael Gagliano’s Italian immigrant father—Luigi to his customers, Papa to his sons—presides over the store, enlisting his children as soon as they’re big enough to wield a broom. On their mother’s deathbed, eight-year-old Frankie swears that he and his little brother will always take care of each other, a vow he endeavors to keep through their father’s violent outbursts and the string of wives who try to take their mother’s place.After their father’s death, Frankie takes over the shop, transforming it to fit in with the gentrifying neighborhood. Michael becomes a successful prosecutor with a rising political career, still close to his big brother despite the differences between them. Then comes an unthinkable, impulsive act that will force Michael to choose between risking his comfortable life and keeping a sacred oath—made before he knew how powerful a promise can be.The Boys from Eighth and Carpenter is a stunning evocation of working-class Italian-American life—a story of brotherhood, loyalty, and the contradictory, unpredictable nature of family love.