A Boy Worth Knowing


Jennifer Cosgrove - 2017
    But they aren’t the only ones making his high school years a living hell. All Nate wants is to keep his secret and keep his head down until he can graduate. That is, until the new boy, James Powell, takes a seat next to him in homeroom. James not only notices him, he manages to work his way into Nate’s life. But James has issues of his own.Between dead grandmothers and living aunts, Nate has to navigate the fact that he’s falling in love with his only friend, all while getting advice from the most unusual places.Ghosts, bullies, first love: it’s a lot to deal with when you’re just trying to survive senior year.

Jay's Gay Agenda


Jason June - 2021
    While all this friends can't stop talking about their heterosexual hookups and relationships, Jay can only dream of his own firsts, compiling a romance to-do list of all the things he hopes to one day experience—his Gay Agenda.Then, against all odds, Jay's family moves to Seattle and he starts his senior year at a new high school with a thriving LGBTQIA+ community. For the first time ever, Jay feels like he's found where he truly belongs, where he can flirt with Very Sexy Boys and search for love. But as Jay begins crossing items off his list, he'll soon be torn between his heart and his hormones, his old friends and his new ones...because after all, life and love don't always go according to plan.From debut novelist Jason June comes a moving and hilarious sex-positive story about the complexities of first loves, first hookups, and first heartbreaks—and how to stay true to yourself while embracing what you never saw coming.

The Pilgrim Hawk


Glenway Wescott - 1940
    Alwyn Tower, an American expatriate and sometime novelist, is staying with a friend outside of Paris, when a well-heeled, itinerant Irish couple drops in—with Lucy, their trained hawk, a restless, sullen, disturbingly totemic presence. Lunch is prepared, drink flows. A masquerade, at once harrowing and farcical, begins. A work of classical elegance and concision, The Pilgrim Hawk stands with Faulkner’s The Bear as one of the finest American short novels: a beautifully crafted story that is also a poignant evocation of the implacable power of love.

The Dangerous Art of Blending In


Angelo Surmelis - 2018
    His strict Greek mother refuses to see him as anything but a disappointment. His quiet, workaholic father is a staunch believer in avoiding any kind of conflict. And his best friend Henry has somehow become distractingly attractive over the summer. Tired, isolated, scared—Evan’s only escape is drawing in an abandoned church that feels as lonely as he is. And, yes, he kissed one guy over the summer. But it’s his best friend Henry who’s now proving to be irresistible. It’s Henry who suddenly seems interested in being more than friends. And it’s Henry who makes him believe that he’s more than his mother’s harsh words and terrifying abuse. But as things with Henry heat up, and his mother’s abuse escalates, Evan has to decide how to find his voice in a world where he has survived so long by avoiding attention at all costs.

Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932


Francine Prose - 2014
    Paris in the 1920s shimmers with excitement, dissipation, and freedom. It is a place of intoxicating ambition, passion, art, and discontent, where louche jazz venues like the Chameleon Club draw expats, artists, libertines, and parvenus looking to indulge their true selves. It is at the Chameleon where the striking Lou Villars, an extraordinary athlete and scandalous cross-dressing lesbian, finds refuge among the club's loyal denizens, including the rising Hungarian photographer Gabor Tsenyi, the socialite and art patron Baroness Lily de Rossignol; and the caustic American writer Lionel Maine. As the years pass, their fortunes - and the world itself - evolve. Lou falls desperately in love and finds success as a race car driver. Gabor builds his reputation with startlingly vivid and imaginative photographs, including a haunting portrait of Lou and her lover, which will resonate through all their lives. As the exuberant twenties give way to darker times, Lou experiences another metamorphosis - sparked by tumultuous events - that will warp her earnest desire for love and approval into something far more.

The Gallery


John Horne Burns - 1947
    However, Burns's early death at the age of 36 led to the subsequent neglect of this searching book, which captures the shock the war dealt to the preconceptions and ideals of the victorious Americans.Set in occupied Naples in 1944, The Gallery takes its name from the Galleria Umberto, a bombed-out arcade where everybody in town comes together in pursuit of food, drink, sex, money, and oblivion. A daring and enduring novel—one of the first to look directly at gay life in the military—'The Gallery' poignantly conveys the mixed feelings of the men and women who fought the war that made America a superpower."The first book of real magnitude to come out of the last war." —John Dos Passos

Jules et Jim


Henri-Pierre Roché - 1953
    Together they embark upon a riotously Bohemian life, full of gaiety, color and bustle. And then there is Kate, the enigmatic German girl with the mysterious smile.Capricious, untamed and curiously innocent, Kate steals their hearts in turn, and so begins the moving and tender story of three people in love, with each other and with life. Francois Truffaut, whose film of the novel is one of cinema's greatest achievments, has called Jules et Jim "a perfect hymn to love."Henri-Pierre Roch devoted his life to the arts, numbering Duchamp, Brancusi, Braque, Satie and Picasso amongst his closest friends. Jules et Jim, an autobiographical novel, was originally published in France in 1953 and was followed by Deux Anglaises et le Continent, which Truffaut also made into a film."A delightful account of people sharing and unsharing each other."?Times Literary Supplement

The Boys in the Band


Mart Crowley - 1968
    . . [Mart] Crowley's point is about how the humor is shaped and defined by the pain."-The New York TimesThe Boys in the Band was the first commercially successful play to reveal gay life to mainstream America. Alyson is proud to release a special fortieth anniversary edition of the play, which includes an original preface by acclaimed writer Tony Kushner (Angels in America), along with previously unpublished photographs of Mart Crowley and the cast of the play/film.Mart Crowley's other plays include the autobiographical A Breeze from the Gulf (1973) and The Men from the Boys (2002).

An Arrow's Flight


Mark Merlis - 1998
    Magically blending ancient headlines and modern myth, Merlis creates a fabulous new world where legendary heroes declare their endowments in personal ads and any panhandler may be a divinity in disguise. Comical, moving, startling in its audacity and range, An Arrow's Flight is a profound meditation on gay identity, straight power, and human liberation.

Dryland


Sara Jaffe - 2015
    In Portland, Oregon, Julie moves through her days in a series of negatives: the skaters she doesn’t think are cute, the trinkets she doesn’t buy at the craft fair, the umbrella she refuses to carry despite the incessant rain. Her family life is routine and restrained, and no one talks about Julie’s older brother, a one-time Olympic-hopeful swimmer who now lives in self-imposed exile in Berlin. Julie has never considered swimming herself, until Alexis, the girls’ swim team captain, tries to recruit her. It’s a dare, and a flirtation—and a chance for Julie to find her brother, or to finally let him go. Anything could happen when her body hits water.

The Screwed Up Life of Charlie the Second


Drew Ferguson - 2008
    I'm just in an alien world. . .Being Charles James Stewart, Jr., AKA Charlie the Second, means never "fitting in." Tall, gangly and big-eared, he could be a poster boy for teenage geeks. An embarrassment to his parents (he's not too crazy about them, either), Charlie is a virtual untouchable at his high school, where humiliation is practically an extracurricular activity. Charlie has tried to fit in, but all of his efforts fail on a glorious, monumental scale. He plays soccer--mainly to escape his home life--but isn't accepted by his teammates who basically ignore him on the field. He still confuses the accelerator with the brake pedal and as a result, has not only failed his driving exam six times, but also almost killed himself and his driving instructor. He can't work on his college essay without writing a searing tell-all. But what's freaking Charlie out the most is that while his hormones are raging and his peers are pairing off, he remains alone with his fantasies.But all of this is about to change when a new guy at school begins to liven things up on the soccer team--and in Charlie's life. For the first time in his seventeen years, Charlie will learn how it feels to be a star, well, at least off the field. But Charlie discovers that even cool guys have problems as he embarks on a deliciously sexy, risk-filled journey from which there is no turning back. . .

If It Ain't Love


Tamara Allen - 2011
    In the darkest days of the Great Depression, New York Times reporter Whit Stoddard has lost the heart to do his job and lives a lonely hand-to-mouth existence with little hope of recovery, until he meets Peter, a man in even greater need of new hope.

Running With Lions


Julian Winters - 2018
    But when his estranged childhood best friend Emir Shah shows up to summer training camp, Sebastian realizes the team's success may end up in the hands of the one guy who hates him. Determined to reconnect with Emir for the sake of the Lions, he sets out to regain Emir's trust. But to Sebastian's surprise, sweaty days on the pitch, wandering the town's streets, and bonding on the weekends sparks more than just friendship between them.

Crossing


Pajtim Statovci - 2016
    Ripley --that speaks to identity, war, exile, love, betrayal, and heartbreak. In the devastation of post-Communist Albania, inseparable young friends Bujar and Agim feel trapped: Bujar struggling to come to terms with the loss of his father, Agim facing dangerous realizations about his sexuality and his feelings for Bujar. When shame, guilt, and the ruins of authoritarianism push Bujar and Agim to leave everything behind and flee to Italy, the unfamiliar life of an immigrant and asylum seeker sets Bujar on a path of reinvention. He follows an impulse to remake himself--as a man or woman of infinite nationalities and pasts--the burning desire to be seen and heard spurring a desperate search for a different existence to be seized at any cost. But Bujar's quest for identity and belonging is haunted by the mystery of what happened to Agim--his one, true beloved, who somehow got lost along the way. Like Statovci's acclaimed debut, My Cat Yugoslavia, Crossing is a powerful and symbolic novel of both unending war and unattainable love, but most of all, of the lies that give stories a singular power.

Wes and Toren


J.M. Colail - 2009
    Senior Toren Grey cares more about his family and his grades than what brand of clothes he wears. He agrees with the majority consensus that he's a nerd. So he's quite surprised when resident bad boy Wesley Carroll speaks to him in the hall, stirring feelings that Toren has to hide. Disconcerted by Wes's free and easy ways, Toren can't deny the attraction between them. As he relaxes and gets to know Wes better, he finds there's more to the sexy rebel than his public image. Before long the young men are exploring new territory and falling in love, but life just isn't that simple. After they graduate, obstacles block their relationship at every turn: Wes working versus Toren in college, the virulent disapproval of parents, and everyday trials faced by any struggling young couple. Wes and Toren have to believe in each other... and never doubt that their love can conquer all.