Through all the insanity in my life, there was only one thing I could control: myself. On the outside, obviously, but on the inside, too. I focused on not letting other people’s opinions have any effect on me whatsoever, and that’s how I’ve lived my life ever since.” —Amanda LeporeSpend an evening getting intimate with Amanda Lepore, the internationally renowned walking work of art and New York City’s reigning queen of nightlife for three decades. Paving the way for today’s “trans revolution,” Amanda is one of the world’s most famous transsexuals. In this poignant and revealing memoir, Amanda takes off the makeup, peels back the silicone, and reveals to the world the woman she truly is, all with a sense of divine certainty, humor, and charm. “I hate everyone but Amanda Lepore.” —Miley Cyrus “Amanda is pure heaven on earth, a dream come true. I adore her!” —Francois Nars “Amanda is truly a living work of art. I’ve never witnessed such devotion to the art of high glamour. In my book, she is a glambassador of the very highest order, a true fascinatrix!” —Dita Von Teese “As an Icon, Amanda is one of a kind because of her unique and singular look in the art of fashion. She has established herself as the most original and glamorous image in the world of transgender.” —Patricia Field “Amanda Lepore is a self-creation that governs her own splendid reality.” —Steven Klein, photographer

    From his time at Soaps in Depth and Entertainment Tonight to his influential stints at TV Guide and Entertainment Weekly to his current role as co-founder of the wildly popular website TVLine.com, Michael has established himself as the go-to expert when it comes to our most popular form of entertainment.What many of his fans don’t know, however, is that while his professional life was in full swing, Michael had to endure the greatest of personal tragedies: his longtime boyfriend, Kit Cowan, was diagnosed with a rare and very aggressive form of neuroendrocrine cancer. Over the course of eleven months, Kit and Michael did their best to combat the deadly disease, but Kit succumbed to his illness in February 2015.In this heartbreaking and darkly hilarious memoir, Michael tells the story of his harrowing and challenging last year with Kit while revisiting the thirteen years that preceded it, and how the undeniably powerful bond between him and Kit carried them through all manner of difficulty—always with laughter front and center in their relationship. Instead of a tale of sadness and loss, Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies is an unforgettable, inspiring, and beautiful testament to the resilience and strength of true love.

    A seedy Depression-era boardinghouse in Chicago plays host to a game of emotional chairs (Guardian) in a novel initially condemned for its frank depiction of abortion, homosexuality, and life on the margins of American society."

    After 20 years, the trauma from a childhood assault resurfaces as he grapples with the fate of his ex-husband, a colleague accused of sexually harassing a student. To gain perspective, Ari arranges to reconnect with his high school crush, Justin Jackson, a bold step which forces him to reflect on their relationship in the segregated suburbs of Detroit during the 1990s and the secrets they still share. An honest story about recovery and coping with both past and present, framed by the meteoric rise and fall of the band Nirvana and the wide-reaching scope of the #metoo movement, Nirvana Is Here, explores issues of identity, race, sex, and family with both poignancy and unexpected humor. Deftly told intertwining stories with rich, real characters are reminiscent of the sensuality and haunting nostalgia of André Aciman’s Call Me by Your Name blended with the raw emotion of Kurt Cobain’s lyrics.  Written by award-winning writer Aaron Hamburger, Nirvana Is Here is “a wonder of a book,” according to acclaimed novelist Lauren Grodstein (Our Short History). “As a Jewish Gen-Xer, the novel reminded me exactly of who I once was—and all that I still want to be. A brilliant accomplishment.”

    On social networks and dating sites, his image and identity—a forty-year-old straight white male—had been used to hook countless women into believing in lies of love and romance. Was it all an ironic cosmic joke? Almost a decade prior, William himself had been living a lie that had lasted for more than twenty years. His secret? He was a gay man, a fact he hid from his wife and two daughters for almost as long as he had hidden it from himself.In this emotional and unflinchingly honest memoir of coming out of the closet late in life, owning up to the past, and facing the future, William Dameron confronts steroid addiction, the shame and homophobia of his childhood, the sledgehammer of secrets that slowly tore his marriage apart, and his love for a gay father of three that would once again challenge the boundaries of trust. At the true heart of The Lie is a universal story about turning self-doubt into self-acceptance and about pain, anger, and the long journey of both seeking and giving forgiveness.

    it doesn't hurt that he's buff, boyish, and completely irresistible, with a job by day as a personal trainer...and the occasional night gig dancing on the bar for rent money. Hey, it's a living. Scotty likes his relaxed life, living upstairs from the coddling lesbian couple he calls his aunties, and hanging out with his eccentric, close-knit family -- stoner-hippie parents, Uptown but well-meaning sister, and scheming lawyer brother. And with New Orleans's biggest circuit party -- Southern Decadence -- about to hit town, Scotty's looking forward to plenty of dancing, cruising, and maybe, just maybe, an adorable Mr. Right.But then Scotty discovers one of his best clients in front of his Decatur Street apartment, shot through the head, execution style. It's even more troubling when his friend Jeremy, he of the disappearing act a year ago, reappears briefly in the bar, begging Scotty to take care of a computer disk for him and spouting something crazy about people being after him. And things get really, really bad when everyone from the cops -- who don't believe anything Scotty says -- to a shadowy man claiming to be an FBI agent is tailing Scotty's every move, waiting for a chance to arrest him...or worse.Now, with help from his best friend David and a gorgeous new lover who just happens to be a cat burglar of the real and not-Cary Grant variety, Scotty's diving into a web of tawdry Southern secrets that stretches all the way to a corrupt political machine whose members would do anything and use anyone to get to Scotty and that disk. Suddenly, the Big Easy's liveliest gay celebration has just taken on asinister glow, and Scotty's carefree living is turning into a desperate race for his life.

    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.

    Cliffy, black, and Noah, Jewish, are teens of their time, segregated by neighborhood, skin color and opportunity, yet neither boy has ever had a friend like the other.

    Try as he may, he cannot live up to the macho image expected of him by his family, by his heritage. At the age of 19 he is conscripted into the South African army and finds his every sensibility offended by a system close to its demise, and yet still in full force. Author André Carl van der Merwe transports the reader into this young man’s world with evocative realism - sometimes heart-rending, sometimes with humour, always with brush strokes of hope. This is a long overdue story about the emotional and physical suffering endured by countless young men."

    Sixteen-year-old Theo is an outsider, not altogether likable, and not particularly interested in making friends. Initial hostility turns to an unlikely friendship, masking a growing attraction neither boy understands. A powerful novel of relationships, set against the backdrop of a small New Zealand town, exploring the complicated emotions of two young men who don't yet understand what they are feeling and have nowhere to turn for help.

    Florence may have been a disappointment to her Granny, whose dream of rearing a Perfect Southern Lady would never be quite fulfilled. But after all, as Florence reminds us, no matter which sex I went to bed with, I never smoked on the street.

    But now, surprisingly, he has turned his wit and elegant storytelling gifts to a candid memoir of the first forty years of his life. Palimpsest is written from the vantage point of Vidal's library in his villa on the Italian coast. As visitors come and go, his memory ranges back and forth across a rich history. Vidal's childhood was spent in Washington, D.C., in the household of his grandfather, the blind senator from Oklahoma, T. P. Gore, and in the various domestic situations of his complicated and exasperating mother, Nina. Then come schooldays at St. Albans and Exeter; the army; life as a literary wunderkind in New York, London, Rome, and Paris in the forties and fifties; sex in an age of promiscuity; and a campaign for Congress in 1960. Vidal's famous skills as a raconteur, his forthrightness, and his wicked wit are brilliantly at work in these recollections of a difficult family, talented friends, and interesting enemies. The cast includes Tennessee Williams, the Kennedys, Eleanor Roosevelt, Truman Capote, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, Christopher Isherwood, Jack Kerouac, Jane and Paul Bowles, Santayana, Anais Nin, Norman Mailer, Leonard Bernstein, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, among others. Beautifully rendered anecdotes are intermixed with meditations on writing, history, acting, and politics. Perhaps most surprising is the leitmotif of a great, lost love. "A memoir is how one remembers one's own life," Vidal says, "while an autobiography is history." Palimpsest is a true story, but also an extraordinary work of literary imagination.

    But he never thinks he’ll end up yanked out of his city life and plunked down into a small Montana town with his dad and Edward, The Boyfriend. As if it’s not painful enough living in a hick town with spiked hair, a skateboard habit, and two dads, he soon realizes something’s not quite right with Billy, the boy next door. He’s hiding a secret about his family, and Ben is determined to uncover it and set things right. In an authentic, unaffected, and mordantly funny voice, Michael Harmon tells the wrenching story of an uprooted and uncomfortable teenaged guy trying to fix the lives around him–while figuring out his own.From the Hardcover edition.

    In 2010, at seventeen, Lucy Sutcliffe began an online friendship with Kaelyn, a young veterinary student from Michigan. Within months, they began a long distance relationship, finally meeting in the summer of 2011. Lucy's video montage of their first week spent together in Saint Kitts, which she posted to the couple's YouTube channel, was the first in a series of films documenting their long-distance relationship. Funny, tender and candid, the films attracted them a vast online following. Now, for the first time, Lucy's writing about the incredible personal journey she's been on; from never quite wanting the fairy-tale of Prince Charming to realising she was gay at the age of 14, through three years of self-denial to finally coming out to friends and family, to meeting her American girlfriend Kaelyn.

    In Vanishing Rooms, the author amply demonstrates his literary promise with a compelling love story of interracial sex and urban violence set in Manhattan’s West Village in the 1970s.