Between Boyfriends


Michael Salvatore - 2010
    Single, slightly neurotic Steven Bartholomew Ferrante loves his sharp-tongued, loyal friends, his chaotic job as producer for the daytime soap "If Tomorrow Never Comes, " and his crazy Sicilian mother, not necessarily in that order. Yet at thirty-three, his life is a little like the peppermint mocha coffee drinks that are his favorite indulgence--fun, frothy, but only superficially satisfying. Four years after his boyfriend kicked him to the curb, Steven is still trying to find a replacement. There's been no shortage of casual couplings and one night (or less) stands, but while other body parts are catered to, his heart wants something more. Someone to share sexy Sunday mornings and shopping trips to buy unnecessary kitchen appliances. Someone he can trade knowing smiles with while dishing dirt with his crew at their favorite Chelsea haunts. Somebody to love. And maybe he's finally found it. Because if Steven's learned one thing from "If Tomorrow Never Comes, " it's that every storyline has its twists--and the beauty of living spoiler-free is that you never know who's waiting in the wings. . . "Outrageous and over the top, Between Boyfriends is the ultimate roller-coaster ride of the highs and lows of dating and mating." --Drew Ferguson, author of "The Screwed-Up Life of Charlie The Second" "Sexy, funny and drama-filled!"--Michael Thomas Ford, author of "The Road Home" Michael Salvatore is an award-winning writer and one of six playwrights whose career will be tracked by WritersInsight.com until 2010. He is a graduate of New York University, has studied at Playwrights Horizons and Gotham Writers Workshop, and has written several screenplays.

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh


Michael Chabon - 1988
    An unforgettable story of coming of age in America, it is also an essential milestone in the movement of American fiction, from a novelist who has become one of the most important and enduring voices of this generation.

Odd Girl Out


Ann Bannon - 1957
    With Odd Girl Out, Bannon introduces Laura Landon, whose love affair with her college roommate Beth launched the lesbian pulp fiction genre.

What Belongs to You


Garth Greenwell - 2016
    There he meets Mitko, a charismatic young hustler, and pays him for sex. He returns to Mitko again and again over the next few months, drawn by hunger and loneliness and risk, and finds himself ensnared in a relationship in which lust leads to mutual predation, and tenderness can transform into violence. As he struggles to reconcile his longing with the anguish it creates, he’s forced to grapple with his own fraught history, the world of his southern childhood where to be queer was to be a pariah. There are unnerving similarities between his past and the foreign country he finds himself in, a country whose geography and griefs he discovers as he learns more of Mitko’s own narrative, his private history of illness, exploitation, and disease.What Belongs to You is a stunning debut novel of desire and its consequences. With lyric intensity and startling eroticism, Garth Greenwell has created an indelible story about the ways in which our pasts and cultures, our scars and shames can shape who we are and determine how we love.

Rainbow Boys


Alex Sanchez - 2001
    Jason Carrillo is a jock with a steady girlfriend, but he can't stop dreaming about sex...with other guys. Kyle Meeks doesn't look gay, but he is. And he hopes he never has to tell anyone—especially his parents. Nelson Glassman is "out" to the entire world, but he can't tell the boy he loves that he wants to be more than just friends...In a revealing debut novel that percolates with passion and wit, Alex Sanchez follows these very different high-school seniors as their struggles with sexuality and intolerance draw them into a triangle of love, betrayal, and ultimately, friendship.

Peter


Kate Walker - 1991
    I dreamed he came into my room and sat on my bed.” “And!” Tony’s eyes got wider. Wider than usual.“He talked about lawnmowers.”“And!”“That’s it, he just talked.”Actually, it hadn’t been a dream, not totally. It was one of those half-awake ones where I knew what was going on so I let it run just to see what would happen. We’re all curious…“You ever dreamed about a bloke?” I asked him.“No!” Tony’s eyebrows went dead flat. “Never!”With a denial like that, maybe he had, but he sure as hell wasn’t talking about it.

A Secret Edge


Robin Reardon - 2007
    He hits the books, hangs with his friends, flirts with girls, and omits the full truth of his life from his Aunt Audrey and Uncle Steve, who have raised him since his parents died. But there's one way that Jason Peele is very different: when he dreams at night, it isn't about girls; it's about David Bowie. At sixteen-years-old, Jason is just beginning to understand that he might be gay.The one place Jason feels comfortable is on the track where he can run fast and hard. He loves the feel of the wind at his back, of his legs propelling him furiously around, the roar of the crowd in his ears. But now, even his sanctuary feels threatening. It isn't just the jerks who call him "faggot" in the locker room. A new guy has joined the team, and everything about him will challenge the way Jason sees life. From late-night showings of "La Cage Aux Folles" to reading Gandhi, he's running a new race on an uncertain course, and only one thing's for sure--his senior year is going to be unforgettable...With "A Secret Edge, "Robin Reardon delivers a sexy, sensitive coming-of-age novel about identity and courage, love and honor, anger and hope, and the many ways the truth can really set you free.

The Last Nude


Ellis Avery - 2012
    In the heady years before the crash, financiers drape their mistresses in Chanel, while expatriates flock to the avant-garde bookshop Shakespeare and Company. One day in July, a young American named Rafaela Fano gets into the car of a coolly dazzling stranger, the Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka.Struggling to halt a downward slide toward prostitution, Rafaela agrees to model for the artist, a dispossessed Saint Petersburg aristocrat with a murky past. The two become lovers, and Rafaela inspires Tamara's most iconic Jazz Age images, among them her most accomplished—and coveted—works of art. A season as the painter's muse teaches Rafaela some hard lessons: Tamara is a cocktail of raw hunger and glittering artifice. And all the while, their romantic idyll is threatened by history's darkening tide.Inspired by real events in de Lempicka's history, The Last Nude is a tour de force of historical imagination. Avery gives the reader a tantalizing window into a lost Paris, an age already vanishing as the inexorable forces of history close in on two tangled lives. Spellbinding and provocative, The Last Nude is a novel about genius and craft, love and desire, regret, and, most of all, hope that can transcend time and circumstance.

Now It's Time To Say Goodbye


Dale Peck - 1998
    Racially polarized and desperately poor, the town is dominated by Rosemary Krebs. a white matriarch determined to resurrect her lost Southern childhood, and Abraham Greeving, the black preacher who will do anything to stop her. Now It's Time to Say Goodbye is the story of violence and prejudice in small-town America: of Divine, a black hustler who's slept with as many men as he can seduce: of Wade Painter, a white artist insulated by his wealth and hermitlike existence: of Webbie Greeving, a budding academic called back to take care of her disabled father; and of Myra Robinson, the grieving mother who lost her daughter long before she was kidnapped. As their stories unfold we learn the true story of Galatea's dark past and even darker future: of Eric Johnson, an albino black man lynched because of the color of his skin: and of Lucy Robinson, the white teenager who must pay for her parents' crimes.Now It's Time to Say Goodbye is a literary thriller writ large. An astonishing achievement that recalls the work of James Baldwin and Carson McCullers, it marks a bold new direction for a young novelist already recognized as "one of the most eloquent voices of his generation" (Michiko Kakutani, New York times).

Plays Well with Others


Allan Gurganus - 1997
    Through his eyes we encounter the composer Robert Christian Gustafson, an Iowa preacher's son whose good looks constitute both a mythic draw and a major limitation, and Angelina "Alabama" Byrnes, a failed deb, five feet tall but bristling with outsized talent.  These friends shelter each other, promote each other's work, and compete erotically.  When tragedy strikes, this circle grows up fast, somehow finding, at the worst of times, the truest sort of family.Funny and heartbreaking, as eventful as Dickens and as atmospheric as one of Fitzgerald's parties, Plays Well with Others combines a fable's high-noon energy with an elegy's evening grace.  Allan Gurganus's celebrated new novel is a lovesong to imperishable friendship, a hymn to a brilliant and now-vanished world.

Scarlet and the White Wolf


Kirby Crow - 2006
    Liall, called the Wolf of Omara, is the handsome, world-weary chieftain of a tribe of bandits blocking a mountain road that Scarlet needs to cross. When Liall jokingly demands a carnal toll for the privilege, Scarlet refuses and an inventive battle of wills ensues, with disastrous results. Scarlet is convinced that Liall is a worthless, immoral rogue, but when the hostile countryside explodes into violence and Liall unexpectedly fights to save the lives of Scarlet's family, Scarlet is forced to admit that the Wolf is not the worst ally he could have, but what price will proud Scarlet ultimately have to pay for Liall's friendship?

London Triptych


Jonathan Kemp - 2010
    A century later, David tells his own tale of unashamed decadence while waiting to be released from prison, addressing his story to the lover who betrayed him. Where their paths cross, in the politically sensitive 1950s, the artist Colin Read tentatively explores his sexuality as he draws in preparation for his most ambitious painting yet — ‘London Triptych’.Rent boys, aristocrats, artists and felons populate this bold début as Jonathan Kemp skilfully interweaves the lives and loves of three very different men across the decades

The House of Impossible Beauties


Joseph Cassara - 2018
    Burned by her traumatic past, Angel is new to the drag world, new to ball culture, and has a yearning inside of her to help create family for those without. When she falls in love with Hector, a beautiful young man who dreams of becoming a professional dancer, the two decide to form the House of Xtravaganza, the first-ever all-Latino house in the Harlem ball circuit. But when Hector dies of AIDS-related complications, Angel must bear the responsibility of tending to their house alone.As the mother of the house, Angel recruits Venus, a whip-fast trans girl who dreams of finding a rich man to take care of her; Juanito, a quiet boy who loves fabrics and design; and Daniel, a butch queen who accidentally saves Venus’s life. The Xtravaganzas must learn to navigate sex work, addiction, and persistent abuse, leaning on each other as bulwarks against a world that resists them. All are ambitious, resilient, and determined to control their own fates, even as they hurtle toward devastating consequences. Told in a voice that brims with wit, rage, tenderness, and fierce yearning, The House of Impossible Beauties is a tragic story of love, family, and the dynamism of the human spirit.

Desert Sons


Mark Kendrick - 2001
    Scott Faraday is 16, gregarious, talented, never been in a relationship, and is out to only a select few. Ryan St. Charles is 17, hot-tempered, has already has been in a long relationship, yet is barely out to himself. Behind Ryan's carefully fashioned façade is emotional scarring from a past he's never been able to reconcile. When he comes to live with his uncle in Yucca Valley, CA, he meets Scott. An unlikely pair, the boys form a tentative friendship. When Scott starts to suspect that Ryan might be gay, he plans his coming out to him. The result is that he transforms their friendship into his first real relationship. Then, Ryan's hidden past comes into view. Scott is not at all prepared for what he discovers: suicide attempts, past abuse, and loads of denial. Tightly focused on their new relationship, Desert Sons follows these two teenagers as they plunge headlong through a summer that will forever change them both.

Franny, the Queen of Provincetown


John Preston - 1983
    With genuine caring and concern for her boys, Franny looks after the gay men of Provincetown with the ultimate goal of making a place in the world for those who don't belong and making the world better for all.