But when he and his best friend, Bob, partake in "awful kid stuff", the experience forms Jim's ideal of spiritual completion. Defying his parents’ expectations, Jim strikes out on his own, hoping to find Bob and rekindle their amorous friendship. Along the way he struggles with what he feels is his unique bond with Bob and with his persistent attraction to other men. Upon finally encountering Bob years later, the force of his hopes for a life together leads to a devastating climax. The first novel of its kind to appear on the American literary landscape, The City and the Pillar remains a forthright and uncompromising portrayal of sexual relationships between men.

    Subsequent work asserts his place among America’s most important writers. The author’s most daring work, After the Blue Hour is narrated by a twenty-four-year-old writer named John Rechy. Fleeing a turbulent life in Los Angeles, he accepts an invitation to a private island from an admirer of his work. There, he joins Paul, his imposing host in his late thirties, his beautiful mistress, and his precocious teenage son. Browsing Paul’s library and conversing together on the deck about literature and film during the spell of evening’s “blue hour,” John feels surcease, until, with unabashed candor, Paul shares intimate details of his life. Through cunning seductive charm, he married and divorced an ambassador’s daughter and the heiress to a vast fortune. Avoiding identifying his son’s mother, he reveals an affinity for erotic “dangerous games.” With intimations of past decadence and menace, an abandoned island nearby arouses tense fascination over the group. As “games” veer toward violence, secrets surface in startling twists and turns. Explosive confrontation becomes inevitable.

    Everyone knows that Armenians never eat out. Between bouts of interrogating the waitress and criticizing the menu, Alek’s parents announce that he’ll be attending summer school in order to bring up his grades. Alek is sure this experience will be the perfect hellish end to his hellish freshman year of high school. He never could’ve predicted that he’d meet someone like Ethan.Ethan is everything Alek wishes he were: confident, free-spirited, and irreverent. He can’t believe a guy this cool wants to be his friend. And before long, it seems like Ethan wants to be more than friends. Alek has never thought about having a boyfriend—he’s barely ever had a girlfriend—but maybe it’s time to think again.

    As he tries to settle in this new environment, he cannot help but recall the events and experiences that have led him there.It is in these recollections that we meet a vast array of people--those who had either helped Andy along the way or had threatened his hope to escape. These are the stories of his hope to escape. These are the stories of his great-uncle, the one person who seemed to understand him; his father, who domineering presence and unwavering anger were the rules, not the exceptions; and Evan, an older boy who became his first true love.Rarely does a writer capture the essence of the journey from a child to adult so acutely. Cart's dazzling novel is a potent reminder of the pain and the euphoria that come from growing up and how we remember our family, friends, and first loves.

    Nate Schaper found his in high school. In the eight months since their cautious flirting became a real, honest, tell-the-parents relationship, Nate and Adam have been inseparable. Even when local kids take their homophobia to brutal levels, Nate is undaunted. He and Adam are rock solid. Two parts of a whole. Yin and yang.But when Adam graduates and takes an Off-Broadway job in New York—at Nate’s insistence—that certainty begins to flicker. Nate starts a blog to vent his frustrations and becomes the center of a school controversy, drawing ire and support in equal amounts. But it is the attention of a new boy who is looking for more than guidance that forces him to confront who and what he really wants.J.H. Trumble’s debut, DON’T LET ME GO, is a witty, beautifully written novel that is both a sweet story of love and long-distance relationships, and a timely discourse about bullying, bigotry, and hate in high schools.

    On the bus headed out of town they hook up with Finn and Critter, a couple of speed-freak boyfriends who take a shine to both of them. They also meet Ula, who is mourning the death of her fiancé and taking a trip across the United States in his memory. The five become fast allies, united by personal loss and by the allure of intimacy only friends in the throes of conflict can understand. When Jonnyboy drops out of sight, Radboy stays behind in San Francisco, where the underground world he has been introduced to inspires his own burgeoning sexual and emotional desires.

    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.

    L. Graziadei's Icebreaker is an irresistible YA debut about two hockey players fighting to be the best—and the romance that catches them by surprise along the way.Seventeen-year-old Mickey James III is a college freshman, a brother to five sisters, and a hockey legacy. With a father and a grandfather who have gone down in NHL history, Mickey is almost guaranteed the league's top draft spot. The only person standing in his way is Jaysen Caulfield, a contender for the #1 spot and Mickey's infuriating (and infuriatingly attractive) teammate. When rivalry turns to something more, Mickey will have to decide what he really wants, and what he's willing to risk for it.This is a story about falling in love, finding your team (on and off the ice), and choosing your own path.

    If the minority is always right then John is practically infallible. Growing up disabled and gay in the 1950s, circumstances force John from an early age to develop an intense and vivid internal world. As his character develops, this ability to transcend external circumstance through his own strength of character proves invaluable. Extremely funny and incredibly poignant, this is a major new novel from a writer at the height of his powers.'I'm not sure I can claim to have taken my place in the human alphabet...I'm more like an optional accent or specialised piece of punctuation, hard to track down on the typewriter or computer keyboard...'

    When the late baronet’s will tasks him with finding the lost heir and making a gentleman of him, he is determined to succeed.Thirteen years ago, Evelyn Winthrop ran away to sea. Now that his hated patriarch is dead, the ancestral home he returns to is more shadowed than what he left behind. Ungrateful relations and old friends alike tie a knot of scandal and depravity only a sailor could hope to unravel. And all the while, the siren song of the sea calls him to return at the first opportunity.Neither anticipated forming more tender attachments.To Evelyn, his unexpectedly handsome agent is the only thing anchoring him to shore. He sees a captain’s soul within Morgan, and his heart is caught upon the hook of command—if only Morgan would return his affections.To Morgan, his new employer’s charms threaten to tear down the thorns that have grown around his heart—thorns he cultivated to restrain his unnatural instincts.When the estate and all who live there are threatened by a maelstrom of bitter secrets and sinister plots, it is down to Morgan to take command, down to Evelyn to hold fast, and down to them both to navigate their own treacherous sea.

    He’s used to moving every few years, and thanks to social media, he can stay in touch with the friends he leaves behind. But shortly after he leaves Okinawa, his best friend, Brad Gray, cuts off contact and disappears. Four years and two bases later, Brad resurfaces—and announces his family is coming to Trevor’s base in Spain. But a lot’s changed in four years, and Trevor is stunned to find out Brad is now Shannon. Their reunion isn’t quite what either of them had hoped for, but they quickly find their footing, both relieved to have each other back. Except nothing is ever all sunshine and roses. The military is a small world, and there’s no keeping Shannon’s transition a secret. Parents warn their kids away from her. She can’t attend school on-base for fear of harassment or worse. And although her parents try to hide it, being ostracized by their only social circle while they’re thousands of miles from home is taking a toll on them too. More and more, Shannon leans on Trevor. But she’s also drawn to him, and he’s drawn right back to her, feeling things he’s never felt for anyone before. Trevor’s scared, though. Not of dating a trans girl. Not of damaging his chaplain father’s career or reputation. After finally getting his friend back, does he dare take things further and risk losing Shannon a second time?

    Bob is excited and lonely. He meets and pursues the elusive Jack, a director who is able to transform others without altering himself. Bob goes to the baths, gossips on the phone, goes to a bar, thinks about werewolves, has an orgasm, and discovers a number of truths about Jack. A paean to love and obsession, Glück's novel explores the everyday in a language that is both intimate and lush. "Robert Glück has found a new way of making fiction passionate. This novel is a strange, exhilarating love story rich with invention and observation." -Edmund White

    But when his publisher orders him to spend a year profiling rising stars of California’s wine country and organizing a competition between the big name wineries of Napa and the smaller artisan wineries of Sonoma, his world gets turned upside-down by an enigmatic young winemaker who puts art before business.Sotto Voce is the story of love and wine, and how both require patience, passion, an acceptance of change—and an understanding that sometimes, you have to let nature take its course.

    Its heroes are dead, its halls are ruins, and its great battles between Light and Dark are forgotten. Only the Stewards remember, and they keep their centuries-long vigil, sworn to protect humanity if the Dark King ever returns.Sixteen-year-old dock boy Will is on the run, pursued by the men who killed his mother. When an old servant tells him of his destiny to fight beside the Stewards, Will is ushered into a world of magic, where he must train to play a vital role in the oncoming battle against the Dark.As London is threatened by the Dark King’s return, the reborn heroes and villains of a long-forgotten war begin to draw battle lines. But as the young descendants of Light and Dark step into their destined roles, old allegiances, old enmities and old flames are awakened. Will must stand with the last heroes of the Light to prevent the fate that destroyed their world from returning to destroy his own.

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