Maggie is a funeral director from Indiana who lives a double life. Bug is a ten-year-old boy in the Pennsylvania foster care system who is sent to live with an aunt he doesn't know. Jimmy is a former paramedic and prescription drug addict on his way to meet a woman he met online who thinks he's a successful doctor. Helen is a Chicago insurance investigator who is leaving her marriage in search of the woman she wants to be. Four strangers, all traveling to Boston in search of better lives, are tied together in ways they don't even realize. Each are trying to fill the void of what's missing in their lives. Sometimes it takes a tragedy to overcome all that we lack.

    The author of the critically acclaimed collections The Frost Fairs and Spacecraft, Brighton-based John McCullough pulls no punches in this latest - and his most powerful -collection. These are poems of skill, joy and quiet musicality that reflect the conflict and complexity of being.

    Prefacing these stories are contributions from 5 local commentators who share their personal reflections on the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities in Singapore. They are: Mrs Juliana Toh, Executive Director of Counselling and Care Centre; Reverend Yap Kim Hao, former Methodist Bishop of Singapore; transgender activist Ms Leona Lo; and former Nominated Members of Parliament Ms Braema Mathi and Mr Siew Kum Hong. The book also contains a glossary of the common terms used to describe the diversity within the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities, and a listing of relevant community and professional resources in Singapore. The editor’s proceeds from sales of the ebook will be donated to Oogachaga, a counselling and support service.

     She's the ultimate career girl. Devoted to work, with no time for anything more than casual steamy encounters. But all that changes when the missing persons story leads her to the enigmatic Callie. Callie is a family friend of the missing girl and an invaluable lead. The attraction between the two women is immediate, all consuming. Does Callie hold the answers to the mysterious disappearance? And beyond that, is she the one woman who can hold Astrid's attention beyond a sensational story?

    

    Even though a car accident caused the optical illusion, Erin’s skills as a doctor were outshone by her luminous smile. Katie begins to devise a series of excuses to trek to the small town where Erin lives and works.According to Katie’s complex rating system Erin has great promise. She’s beautiful, bright, athletic and good-hearted. Erin professes to love her job and is happy with small town life. But Katie thinks that Erin is secretly a risk-taker who craves excitement—the kind of excitement that Katie would love to provide. The first time Katie sees Erin flying down a ski slope she’s hooked, and their first kiss seals the deal.That’s when the trouble begins. Erin’s nearly an indentured servant. The town paid for her education and she promised to serve as their doctor for ten years. Ten long years attached to a place that’s only sixty miles but seems light years away from Katie’s beloved Boston.Something tells them that they could be good together, and the mutual attraction is undeniable. But one or both of them is going to have to make some massive changes before they can let the sparks fly.

    He has a flourishing bar in the heart of Soho and in six months he will be marrying Ashley. There's just one problem. Phil has been married before, 20 years ago. To a woman. In fact, technically Phil and Hazel are still married. And what Phil doesn't know yet is that Hazel has a son - a 19-year-old son.

    A heart warming, slow burn, late in life, friends to lovers story.Georgina owns an independent coffeehouse. Her co-owner, ex lover and sometime friend with benefits, has recently died in a car accident. Grieving, and trying to keep the business going, she finds out the half share has been willed to a complete stranger.Catherine has flitted from job to job, always searching for an important missing piece in her life. Dumped by her boyfriend, jobless, single, penniless and soon to be homeless, Catherine receives a letter which could solve all her problems.Georgina has said she would never again date a straight woman. So why is Catherine continually invading her thoughts? Catherine knows she isn’t gay. So why is she feeling something more than friendship towards Georgina? Will Georgina let her past control her future? Will Catherine acknowledge a future different to her past?Set in a coffeehouse on a busy, bustling main thoroughfare into Bristol. The Perfect Blend introduces us to the owners and characters who frequent the establishment.

    They don't even know about her ex-girlfriends or her fake IDs.But it's that fake ID that leads her to the hottest club in the city. While her friends tear up the dancefloor, however, Audrey meets the foil to her suppressed desires and curiosity.Dylan. The resident bad girl with an affinity for good girls like Audrey.What begins as a torrid fling soon transforms into something that opens Audrey's eyes to the life she's always wanted. The longer she's with Dylan, the more she realizes the sources of her suffocation. A toxic family. Airheaded friends. Caring for nothing but the trappings of wealth. "A bad girl is someone who refuses to accept the status quo." Dylan has dated her fair share of heiresses, but Audrey is the first one to make her believe in a chance at love.Yet it's not easy to give over to someone like Audrey. She represents everything Dylan has spent her whole life rejecting, for she knows all too well what it's like to be forced into the good girl role.And her past is constantly threatening to ruin everything she's built for herself since her darkest days. "Good girls don't go bad. They save themselves." The fatalistic love that haunts both Dylan and Audrey will last the summer. After that? Someone will have to give up the only life they've ever known.Easier said than done.Please note that this book contains examples of transphobia and growing up in an abusive cult.

    and too scared to let the world see any of those qualities. Interacting with her restaurant coworkers makes her want to melt into the floor. They're all beautiful, outgoing, and confident - terrifying to a shy lesbian. When Chloe somehow catches the most intimidating girl's eye, she wonders if their mutual attraction could develop into more. Waitressing isn't Jennie's passion, but then neither is anything else. Adrift in life, the tattooed beauty only cares about weed and her motorcycle. At least this job's paying the bills until she can move on to better things. Fooling around with coworkers isn't in her plans - but once she notices the resident wallflower is drop-dead gorgeous, those plans change. Falling for Chloe, though? That's another matter. Will Jennie chew Chloe up and spit her out? Or could Jennie be the first person to see Chloe for who she really is?

    It is the work of one of the most influential attorneys in America, who has dedicated his life to the protection of individuals' rights and our Constitution's commitment to equal justice under the law. Above all, it is a clear, straightforward book that brings into sharp focus the very human significance of the right to marry in America—not just for some couples, but for all. Why is the word marriage so important? Will marriage for same-sex couples hurt the "sanctity" of the institution? How can people of different faiths reconcile their beliefs with the idea of marriage for same-sex couples? How will allowing gay couples to marry affect children? In this quietly powerful volume, the most authoritative and fairly articulated book on the subject, Wolfson demonstrates why the right to marry is important—indeed necessary—for all couples and for America's promise of equality.

    It is a voice thick with the humidity and whirring cicadas of Kentucky, but the poems are dangerous, smelling of the crisp cucumber scent of a copperhead about to strike. Epistolary in nature, and with a novel's arc, Sister is a story that begins with a teen giving birth to a baby girl--the narrator--during a tornado, and in some ways, that tornado never ends. In the hands of a lesser poet, this debut collection would be a standard-issue confession, a melodramatic exercise in anger and self-pity. But melodrama requires simple villains and victims, and there is neither in this richly complex portrait. Ultimately, Sister is more about the narrator's transgressions and failures, more about her relationships to her sister and their mother than about that which divided them. With equal parts sass and sorrow, these poems etch out survival won not with tender-hearted reflections but by smoking cigarettes through fly-specked screens, by using cans of aerosol hair spray as a makeshift flamethrowers, and, most cruelly, by leaving home and trying to forget her sister entirely. From there, each poem is a letter of explanation and apology to that younger sister she never knew.Sister recounts a return to a place that Brown never truly left. It is a book of forgiveness, of seeking what is beyond mere survival, of finding your way out of a place of poverty and abuse only to realize that you must go back again, all the way back to where everything began--that warm, dark nest of mother.

    A timely and important contribution to the body of recovery literature, Cruise Control provides understanding, empathy and encouragement to gay men seeking healthy sexual expression.

    . . Other Girls.

    Colonel Cammermeyer's dismissal from the U.S. Army has stirred debate all the way to the Presidency; now she writes of her decision to challenge official policy on homosexuality. 16-page photo insert.