I’m not sure I agree. Sitting on the threshold of not quite a man, not quite a boy isn’t a very comfortable place to be. My name is Jonah and in 1999 I was sixteen. That summer was the summer that changed everything. My parents sent me to camp to find God… I found him in the eyes and actions of a sweet country boy named Neil.This is a story about love… first love so pure and true. This is a story about faith and finding the courage to be who you are regardless of what anyone else thinks. It’s a story about growing up and realizing what makes the measure of a man. Hint, it’s not how tall you stand or how wealthy or intelligent you are.It’s about having the courage to admit to yourself the truth… whatever that may be. This is my heart song. This is my battle cry. This is my threnody. It’s the words birthed from the heart of a boy who fell in love with his best friend at summer camp… his only friend.

    That was until Keylon committed the ultimate betrayal and Jalisa finally decided she’d had enough. She swore off trying to be with someone until she met Smoke. Smoke was probably the most gorgeous man she had laid eyes on. After experiencing heartbreak, Jalisa wasn’t sure moving on with Smoke was smart, until she realized she was connected with Smoke long before she laid eyes on him. Cortez ‘Smoke’ Campbell is hood royalty. After experiencing tragedy at a young age, Smoke did what he had to do to take the financial burden off of his Granny. Smoke is hesitant on giving his heart out until he and Jalisa ran into each other... literally. Being crossed by the last person he ever expected, Smoke realizes Jalisa is more for him than he could have ever imagined. Or is she? Even though they both had trust issues and were skeptical at first, Smoke and Gunz decided to give love a chance. Take a ride on this love journey to see if Jalisa is really ready to move on wholeheartedly or will her past destroy the new future she wants so desperately. Some say love conquers all, but does it?

    

    She tries to distance herself from the game by getting a degree and trying to do something positive with her life. When the system takes her older brother prisoner and death’s knock takes her daddy and her other brother away from her, those beliefs are more evident than ever. Never knowing her mother, since she died during her delivery of Fawn, Fawn feels all alone in this world aside from having her best friend, Amiko. Still reeling from the loss of her father, she is confronted by his right-hand man to learn she controls her daddy’s empire. Although she wants no part of the street-life, he’s able to convince her to attend a meeting that will change her life forever. Meeting Lark ‘Law’ Gutierrez makes Fawn want to reevaluate all her life choices. The only problem is that he is kingpin in the streets of Laredo. It’s like she can’t escape the streets that have taken her family, because something about Law is pulling her to him like a fish on a hook. He shares her sentiments. This meeting forces her to take some sort of control of her father’s empire, and she soon learns that the hate that took her family from her isn’t over. As she and Lark become close, she realizes that he has her back in more ways than one, and will protect her, whatever the cost of that may be. Can she withstand the grit of the street-life and hang on to what she’s built with Lark? Or will it overtake her and swallow her whole?

    

    Her only care in the world is fast money, partying and designer labels. She doesn’t have real responsibilities or plans for the future. As far as she was concerned, only today was important. She will worry about tomorrow when it comes. No one is going to stop her from enjoying her life to the fullest. She refused to live the life she watched her mother endure by the hands of her father. Her and her brother, Tone struggled together after their parent’s death. Jiera is determined to make up for all the years she struggled as a young girl. No one else's opinions about her life mattered to her. King Owens is a twenty-five-year-old, handsome rich man. He was taken from his unfit mother and raised by his father and stepmom. King wants out of the life his father was determined he inherit. He doesn’t want the throne to his father’s drug empire. For now, he is living the life that he's determined to get away from. He has a beautiful, career-oriented woman in his life. A successful career, wealth, and a beautiful family was his goals in life. He is determined to have everything he wants, even if it means going against his father’s wishes. King and Jiera have totally different plans for their future. Upon laying eyes on Jiera, King couldn’t deny himself from having her for just one night. What happens when one night of passion binds the two together for the rest of their lives? The ones that supposed to love them the most are the ones trying to hurt them the most. Will lies, betrayal and deceit take the two on a journey together? Or will it tear them apart?

    Taylor self-identifies as a complicated woman, and there's nothing Lexie enjoys more than a good fixer upper. But Taylor's complications run deep, and way into her past. Surrounded by an eccentric and spirited group of family and friends, including a spunky and lovable dog named Cashmere, the two women navigate a series of obstacles that have them questioning their choices. As their journey unfolds, neither women is prepared for what happens when they start to break down the old and discover the new.

    The result is Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme. The stories in these pages resist simple definitions. The people in these stories defy reductive stereotypes and inflexible categories. The pages in this book describe the lives of an incredible diversity of people whose hearts also pounded for some reason the first time they read or heard the words "butch" or "femme."Contributors such as Jewelle Gomez (The Gilda Stories), Thea Hillman (Intersex), S. Bear Bergman (Butch is a Noun), Chandra Mayor (All the Pretty Girls), Amber Dawn (Sub Rosa), Anna Camilleri (Brazen Femme), Debra Anderson (Code White), Anne Fleming (Anomaly), Michael V. Smith (Cumberland), and Zoe Whittall (Bottle Rocket Hearts) explore the parameters, history, and power of a multitude of butch and femme realities. It's a raucous, insightful, sexy, and sometimes dangerous look at what the words butch and femme can mean in today’s ever-shifting gender landscape, with one eye on the past and the other on what is to come.Includes a foreword by Joan Nestle, renowned femme author and editor of The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader, a landmark anthology originally published in 1992.Ivan E. Coyote is the author of seven books (including the novel Bow Grip, an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book) and a long-time muser on the trappings of the two-party gender system.Zena Sharman is the assistant director of Canada's national Institute of Gender and Health.

    It is divided into sections to read when you feel you need them most. Make a cup of tea and let yourself feel.

    

    It never occurs to Logan that maybe Natalia has been thinking about her too.

    It sort of just happened. With an unmistakable chemistry lingering between them, their attraction towards one another seems inevitable. But there's only one problem. Cue is hiding a deep, dark secret that could potentially destroy everything they worked so hard to build. Kylie thought her troubles were over after leaving her no good ex, Jamaal. Finding solace in the arms of another bad boy, she soon discovers that the grass isn't always greener. Will her new love interest give her the storybook ending she envisioned? Or will he ultimately be her downfall?

    

    28 authors from North America converge in a single volume to showcase the future of trans literature and the next great movements in queer art.

    Siken writes with ferocity, and his reader hurtles unstoppably with him. His poetry is confessional, gay, savage, and charged with violent eroticism. In the world of American poetry, Siken's voice is striking. In her introduction to the book, competition judge Louise Glück hails the “cumulative, driving, apocalyptic power, [and] purgatorial recklessness” of Siken’s poems. She notes, “Books of this kind dream big. . . . They restore to poetry that sense of crucial moment and crucial utterance which may indeed be the great genius of the form.”