Book picks similar to
The Beauty Queen by Patricia Nell Warren
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How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater
Marc Acito - 2004
Seventeen-year-old Edward Zanni, a feckless Ferris Bueller–type, is Peter Panning his way through a carefree summer of magic and mischief. The fun comes to a halt, however, when Edward’s father remarries and refuses to pay for Edward to study acting at Juilliard.Edward’s truly in a bind. He’s ineligible for scholarships because his father earns too much. He’s unable to contact his mother because she’s somewhere in Peru trying to commune with Incan spirits. And, as a sure sign he’s destined for a life in the arts, Edward’s incapable of holding down a job. So he turns to his loyal (but immoral) misfit friends to help him steal the tuition money from his father, all the while practicing for his high school performance of Grease. Disguising themselves as nuns and priests, they merrily scheme their way through embezzlement, money laundering, identity theft, forgery, and blackmail. But, along the way, Edward also learns the value of friendship, hard work, and how you’re not really a man until you can beat up your father—metaphorically, that is.How I Paid for College is a farcical coming-of-age story that combines the first-person tone of David Sedaris with the byzantine plot twists of Armistead Maupin. It is a novel for anyone who has ever had a dream or a scheme, and it marks the introduction to an original and audacious talent.
Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction
Lee MandeloSarah Kanning - 2012
Speculative fiction is the literature of questions, of challenges and imagination, and what better to question than the ways in which gender and sexuality have been rigidly defined, partitioned off, put in little boxes? These seventeen stories explore the ways in which identity can go beyond binary from space colonies to small college towns, from angels to androids, and from a magical past to other worlds entirely, the authors in this collection have brought to life wonderful tales starring people who proudly define (and redefine) their own genders, sexualities, identities, and so much else in between.
Beneath the Streets
Adam Macqueen - 2020
What if they had succeeded? It is February 1976, and the naked corpse of a shockingly underage rent boy is fished out of a pond on Hampstead Heath. Since the police don’t seem to care, 20-year-old Tommy Wildeblood—himself a former ‘Dilly boy’ prostitute—finds himself investigating. Dodging murderous Soho hoodlums and the agents of a more sinister power, Tommy uncovers another, even more shocking crime: the Liberal leader and likely next Home Secretary, Jeremy Thorpe, has had his former male lover executed on Exmoor and got clean away with it. Now the trail of guilt seems to lead higher still, and a ruthless Establishment will stop at nothing to cover its tracks. In a gripping thriller whose cast of real-life characters includes Prime Minister Harold Wilson, his senior adviser Lady Falkender, gay Labour peer Tom Driberg and the investigative journalist Paul Foot, Adam Macqueen plays "what if" with Seventies UK political history—with a sting in the tail that reminds us that the truth can be just as chilling as fiction.
Like People in History
Felice Picano - 1995
At crucial moments in their personal histories their lives intersect, and each discovers his own unique - and uniquely gay- identity. Through the lends of their complex, tumultuous, yet enduring relationship - and their involvement with the handsome model, poet and decorated Vietnam vet Matt Loguidice, whom they both love - Felice Picano chronicles and celebrates gay life and subculture over the last half of the twentieth century. From Malibu Beach in its palmist surfer days to the legendary parties at Fire Island Pines in the 1970s, from San Francisco during its gayest era to AIDS activism in Greenwich Village in the 1990s, Like People in History presents 'the heroic and funny saga of the last three decades by someone who saw everything and forgot nothing' (Edmund White).
Anything Could Happen
Will Walton - 2015
Which makes it hard for him to be in love with his straight best friend. For his part, Matt is completely oblivious to the way Tretch feels – and Tretch can’t tell whether that makes it better or worse. The problem with living a lie is that the lie can slowly become your life. For Tretch, the problem isn’t just with Matt. His family has no idea who he really is and what he’s really thinking. The girl at the local bookstore has no clue how off-base her crush on him is. And the guy at school who’s a thorn in Tretch’s side doesn’t realize how close to the truth he’s hitting. Tretch has spent a lot of time dancing alone in his room, but now he’s got to step outside his comfort zone and into the wider world. Because like love, a true self can rarely be contained. ANYTHING COULD HAPPEN is a poignant, hard-hitting exploration of love and friendship, a provocative debut that shows that sometimes we have to let things fall apart before we can make them whole again.
The Stone Prince
Fiona Patton - 1997
As the eternally rebellious Heathlands plot a bold new campaign of war, Crown Prince Demnor must not only overcome traitors within the court and the ever-growing rebel forces, but he must also master the birthright power which could well prove his doom.
Bertram Cope's Year
Henry Blake Fuller - 1919
Though Fuller was well known as an accomplished realist and had published twelve previous novels, this was his first to address sexual ambivalence. Bertram Cope, a young college teaching assistant, is befriended by Medora Phillips, a rich society type who tries to match him with three eligible young women. However, Bertram is emotionally attached only to his friend and housemate, Arthur Lemoyne. The portrayal of various friendships makes it an ironic and witty comedy of manners.
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.
Lovers
Daniel Arsand - 2008
Sébastien is fifteen years old and already versed in the medicinal properties of plants and herbs when he meets the young nobleman Balthazar de Créon, whose life he saves after the latter is thrown from a horse. De Créon, struck by the boy’s beauty as much by his talents as a healer, orders Sébastien to his manor some months later so he can instruct him in the ways of the court, hoping thus to install him as Louis XV’s surgeon. His motives, however, are clouded by his lust for Sébastien, and after a brief period of restraint Balthazar and Sébastien abandon themselves to their passions and imaginations. But it is 1749 and their affair scandalizes the French court, bringing the king’s wrath down upon them. Balthazar is eventually presented with an ultimatum: repudiate Sébastien and live, or do not, and die. Daniel Arsand’s slim, sublime Lovers is many things: a song of love and an ode to sensual abandon; a richly imagined, atmospheric evocation of the French court; a fable about freedom and the heart’s indifference to social and class barriers; a heartfelt cry against those who, poor of soul, refute the legitimacy of unconventional love. Above all, with its delectable prose, Lovers is itself a delight for the senses.
Pulp
Robin Talley - 2018
It’s not easy being gay in Washington, DC, in the age of McCarthyism, but when she discovers a series of books about women falling in love with other women, it awakens something in Janet. As she juggles a romance she must keep hidden and a newfound ambition to write and publish her own story, she risks exposing herself—and Marie—to a danger all too real.Sixty-two years later, Abby Zimet can’t stop thinking about her senior project and its subject—classic 1950s lesbian pulp fiction. Between the pages of her favorite book, the stresses of Abby’s own life are lost to the fictional hopes, desires and tragedies of the characters she’s reading about. She feels especially connected to one author, a woman who wrote under the pseudonym “Marian Love,” and becomes determined to track her down and discover her true identity.In this novel told in dual narratives, New York Times bestselling author Robin Talley weaves together the lives of two young women connected across generations through the power of words. A stunning story of bravery, love, how far we’ve come and how much farther we have to go.
Leading Men
Christopher Castellani - 2019
Their encounter will go on to alter all of their lives.Ten years later, Frank revisits the tempestuous events of that fateful summer from his deathbed in Manhattan, where he waits anxiously for Tennessee to visit him one final time. Anja, now legendary film icon Anja Bloom, lives as a recluse in the present-day U.S., until a young man connected to the events of 1953 lures her reluctantly back into the spotlight after he discovers she possesses the only surviving copy of Williams's final play.What keeps two people together and what breaks them apart? Can we save someone else if we can't save ourselves? Like The Master and The Hours, Leading Men seamlessly weaves fact and fiction to navigate the tensions between public figures and their private lives. In an ultimately heartbreaking story about the burdens of fame and the complex negotiations of life in the shadows of greatness, Castellani creates an unforgettable leading lady in Anja Bloom and reveals the hidden machinery of one of the great literary love stories of the twentieth-century.
Perfect Freedom
Gordon Merrick - 1982
Tropez -- dapper American expatriate Stuart Cosling, his ravishing French wife Helene, and their stunningly handsome son Robbie. To his parents, Robbie was still a boy, but in the spring of 1938, on a cruise of the Greek islands, Robbie discovered the pleasures of manhood. It wasn't until a certain season in St. Tropez that Robbie discovered the endless passion that comes only once with first love.
Mysterious Skin
Scott Heim - 1995
Neil McCormick is fully aware of the events from that summer of 1981. Wise beyond his years, curious about his developing sexuality, Neil found what he perceived to be love and guidance from his baseball coach. Now, ten years later, he is a teenage hustler, a terrorist of sorts, unaware of the dangerous path his life is taking. His recklessness is governed by idealized memories of his coach, memories that unexpectedly change when Brian comes to Neil for help and, ultimately, the truth.
Timekeeper
Tara Sim - 2016
I got out. I’m safe now.An alternate Victorian world controlled by clock towers, where a damaged clock can fracture time—and a destroyed one can stop it completely.A prodigy mechanic who can repair not only clockwork but time itself, determined to rescue his father from a Stopped town.A series of mysterious bombings that could jeopardize all of England.A boy who would give anything to relive his past, and one who would give anything to live at all.A romance that will shake the very foundations of time.