We drive at high speed along back roads, through woods, vineyards, and oat fields. The bike smells like gasoline and makes a lot of noise, and sometimes I’m frightened when the wheels slip on the gravel on the dirt road, but the only thing that matters is that I’m holding on to him, that I’m holding on to him outside.Just outside a hotel in Bordeaux, Philippe chances upon a young man who bears a striking resemblance to his first love. What follows is a look back at the relationship he’s never forgotten, a hidden affair with a gorgeous boy named Thomas during their last year of high school. Without ever acknowledging they know each other in the halls, they steal time to meet in secret, carrying on a passionate, world-altering affair.Dazzlingly rendered in English by Ringwald in her first-ever translation, Besson’s powerfully moving coming-of-age story captures the eroticism and tenderness of first love—and the heartbreaking passage of time.

    Frederick Bailey is a quiet, cultured, closeted architect reluctantly drawn into the effort to save Pennsylvania Station from being demolished. But when he meets Curt, a vibrant, immature gay activist more than half his age, he is overtaken by passions he hasn't felt in years, putting everything he cares about--his friends, his family, his career and reputation--at risk. As the elegant old train station is dismantled piece by piece to make way for the crass new Madison Square Garden sports arena, Frederick must undergo a reckoning he has dreaded all his life. Award-winning author Patrick E. Horrigan delves into the fractured psyches of mid-twentieth-century gay men, conjuring a picture of New York City and the nation on the brink of explosive cultural change.

    The Carnivorous Lamb, originally written in French, won the Prix Hermes, and this, its 1984 English translation, was widely acclaimed.

    Austin Smith is pushing fifty, loveless and drifting, until one day he meets Julien, a much younger, married Frenchman. In the beginning, the lovers' only impediments are the comic clashes of culture, age, and temperament. Before long, however, the past begins to catch up with them. In a desperate quest to save health and happiness, they move from Venice to Key West, from Montreal in the snow to Providence in the rain. But it is amid the bleak, baking sands of the Sahara that their love is pushed to its ultimate crisis.

    F's working life on London's Skin Lane is one governed by calm, precision and routine. So when he starts to have frightening, recurring nightmares, he does his best to ignore them. The images that appear in his dream are disturbing, Mr. F can't for the life of him think where they have come from. After all, he's a perfectly ordinary middle-aged man. As London's crooked backstreets begin to swelter in the long, hot summer of 1967, Mr. F's nightmare becomes an obsession. A chance encounter adds a face to the body that nightly haunts him, and the torments of his sweat-drenched nights lead him and the reader deeper into a terrifying labyrinth of rage, desire and shame. Part fairy-tale, part compelling evocation of a now-lost London, Neil Bartlett's long-awaited third novel is his fiercest piece of writing yet: cruel, erotic, and tender.

    Which, in his characters' vernacular, means he's a total scream.Having made a career of deconstructing the denizens of the modern gay world, Robert Rodi now turns his hand to -- and twists the knife in -- yet another gay archetype: the kept boy.Dennis Racine is 31, but looks 23...which might be considered his good fortune, except that even 23 is a bit old for his chosen profession: pampered "companion" to the fiftyish, filthy rich Chicago theatrical impresario Farleigh Nock (a.k.a. "the Papp of the Provinces"). In fact, Farleigh has lately become so resistant to Dennis's charms that he's conferred the ultimate indignity on him: demanding that he get a job.Dennis proves himself astonishingly unemployable, then learns that his old job is in peril as well; for Farleigh's affections have been snared by the lithe young pool boy Jasper Moran. When Jasper is promoted from chlorination duties to directing Farleigh's production of Lady Windermere's Fan, Dennis knows he's in danger of losing his place in Farleigh's life (not to mention his Last Will and Testament).Lending him a hand in a spirit of common cause are his two best friends. Lonnie Roach is the kept boy of an ancient gossip columnist; Paulette Ng is retained by a member of Congress whose anonymity she protects by referring to him only as "the Spanker of the House".Together they devise a plan to whisk Farleigh away from Jaspers influence, landing him in Greece, where Dennis can re-seduce him in exotic privacy. The scheme provokes bigger repercussions than Dennis ever expected and he finds himself fighting for his man -- and his man's legacy-- more fiercely than ever before, aided only by two Iowa co-eds and a maniacal Santorini grandmother.His satiric eye sharper than ever, but never straying from the deep humanity that makes his characters and stories so appealing, Robert Rodi once again delivers a fabulous, unforgettable farce of the kind that has made him so enduringly popular.

    . . and then vanishes. Pulled from the rubble of an enemy bunker days later, he receives an award for valor and passage home to Hadley, a remote hamlet in Virginia’s western highlands. Reeling from war and influenza, Hadley could surely use a hero. Family and friends embrace him; an engagement is announced; a job is offered.Yet all is not what it seems. Joshua experiences panics and can’t recall the incident that crippled him. He guards a secret too, one that grips tight like the icy air above his father’s quarry. Over the course of a Virginia winter and an echoed season in war-torn France, The Fallen Snow reveals his wide-eyed journey to the front and his ragged path back. Along the way he finds companions – a youth mourning a lost brother, a widowed nurse seeking a new life and Aiden, a bold sergeant escaping a vengeful father. While all of them touch Joshua, it is the strong yet nurturing Aiden who will awaken his heart, leaving him forever changed.Set within a besieged Appalachian forest during a time of tragedy, The Fallen Snow charts an extraordinary coming of age, exploring how damaged souls learn to heal, and dare to grow.

    An amazing first novel, a beautifully written work of historical fiction ( Lambda Book Review), American Studies tells the story of 62-year-old Reeve who, as he recovers from a brutal beating, recalls the troubled and closeted world of his former mentor, a once-famous professor who was driven to suicide during the McCarthy era.

    The nation, seething with religious and political discontent, has erupted into violence and terror. Jacob Cullen and his fellow soldiers dream of rebuilding their lives when the fighting is over. But the shattering events of war will overtake them. A darkly erotic tale of passion and obsession, As Meat Loves Salt is a gripping portrait of England beset by war. It is also a moving portrait of a man on the brink of madness. Hailed as a masterpiece, this is a novel by a most original new voice in fiction.

    Richard Garay lives with his mother, hiding his sexuality from her and from society. Stifled by his job, Richard is willing to take chances, both sexually and professionally. But Argentina is changing, and as his country edges toward peace, Richard tentatively begins a love affair. The result is a powerful, brave, and poignant novel of sex, death, and the diffculties of connecting one's inner life with the outside world.

    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.

    Howver, when he meets and falls in love with Aaron Johnson, the sexy son of a slave on the run from Virginia, Edgerton’s world is turned upside down. Separated by circumstances, the lovers pursue each other through the escalating madness of the Civil War and both find themselves forced to choose sides. After a series of outrageous adventures – including steamy woodland trysts and an impromptu jailhouse orgy that briefly reconciles the warring parties – they are reunited in the Shenandoah Valley in the autumn of 1864 — where the conflict is about to come to a bloody, burning climax.

    It is the story of Pierre and Gerard, two teenagers who share a love that no one else around them can condone. The two young men discover their destiny in each other's arms, their passion coupled with violence-and ultimately pay the price. The novel is a profoundly lyrical ode to adolescent love and sexuality, as well as a bold and elegant rejection of society's values while on the road to self-destruction.Told in two parts, the poetic love story of Wicked Angels is first told by Pierre, then by Gerard. This erotic classic follows their passionate relationship as it builds in intensity, with affection between them punctuated with rough sex and tender romance. Pierre is handsome, introverted, jealous, and sadistic. Gerard is charming, roguish, intelligent, and vain. Together they form an imperfect union of all-encompassing love that is destined to fail.Translator Thomas Armbrecht, PhD, helpfully includes an informative introduction that puts the novel into the proper context of the times and reviews the book's problems with censorship.Excerpts from Wicked Angels:Gerard took a slingshot out of his pocket, calmly picked up a pebble from the walk, aimed, and destroyed the first glass bell. The air filled with the sound of shattering crystal. I didn't protest; I was overcome. One after the other, each glass cover was broken. More than one, struck exactly in the middle, exploded like alandmine. I asked Gerard to leave the last one for me. He handed me his slingshot. I watched my stone hit the glass and reduce it to shards. Gerard grabbed me around the waist, trembling, his mouth humid with saliva, his fingers filled with earth.Before us, the neat furrows were gone; it looked like a bomb had been dropped. Gerard wanted some sort of an apotheosis. He unscrewed a watering pipe, splashed about, and then opened the valves of the cistern. Rainwater spewed out in torrents, drowning the seedlings, carrying the glass debris across the garden. A miniature tulip planted between the red currant bushes and the tool shed started to drown. Gerard's shirt, covered with spray and wet to the shoulder, stuck to his flesh. Its transparency revealed his skin. Getting up, he burst out laughing: "And that's not all, citizen!" he said to me, "On to the Bastille!" The Bastille was what we called the Decazes' pigeon house. We had to cross two vegetable gardens to get to their yard and to the slate-covered tower where they raised hunting birds.And:My heart beating, I dashed out into the hall. My cousin's voice surged forward from the depths of me, climbing into my chest and putting all of his words of love into my mouth. Their violence intoxicated me. I knocked on his door. Everything was still, and yet I could tell he was close, on the other side of the door, his head pressed against the wood. I could have drawn the outline of his body, so strongly did I sense it pressed against the door that I vainly wanted him to open. He revealed himself with every exhalation. His breath was so close that his lips had to be on the door. I kissed the wall passionately, and threw myself against it. We were like two lovers separated by a prison wall, more visible to each other now than in the suffocation of their kisses, showing more love here than through their gestures of love.Wicked Angels lives on as a passionate and ultimately tragic story of extreme and ill-fated love that transcends conceptions of gender, youth, and class in society.

    In While England Sleeps, available for the first time in two years, he moves beyond precisely controlled domestic drama to create a historical novel, set against the rise of fascism in 1930s Europe, that tells a story of love and the violent chaos of war.

    Powerful and artful, and ten years in the writing, it is a masterwork from Jamie O’Neill.Jim Mack is a naïve young scholar and the son of a foolish, aspiring shopkeeper. Doyler Doyle is the rough-diamond son—revolutionary and blasphemous—of Mr. Mack’s old army pal. Out at the Forty Foot, that great jut of rock where gentlemen bathe in the nude, the two boys make a pact: Doyler will teach Jim to swim, and in a year, on Easter of 1916, they will swim to the distant beacon of Muglins Rock and claim that island for themselves. All the while Mr. Mack, who has grand plans for a corner shop empire, remains unaware of the depth of the boys’ burgeoning friendship and of the changing landscape of a nation.