In FUNNY BOY we follow the life of the family through Arjie's eyes, as he comes to terms both with his own homosexuality and with the racism of the society in which he lives. In the north of Sri Lanka there is a war going on between the army and the Tamil Tigers, and gradually it begins to encroach on the family's comfortable life. Sporadic acts of violence flare into full scale riots and lead, ultimately, to tragedy. Written in clear, simple prose, Syam Selvadurai's first novel is masterly in its mingling of the personal and political.

    H. Auden, and James Merrill. Their poems of love are among the most perceptive, the most passionate, the wittiest, and the most moving we have. From Michelangelo’s “Love Misinterpreted” to Noël Coward’s “Mad About the Boy,” from May Swenson’s “Symmetrical Companion” to Muriel Rukeyser’s “Looking at Each Other,” these poems take on both desire and its higher power: love in all its tender or taunting variety.

    Lily has a small apartment, a family who kicked her out, and a son she loves, but with no support her life seems to be crumbling around her. When the two of them meet, sparks fly—but will that be enough? Lily is adamant she can do everything alone and Kat seems unwilling to talk about her life? When Lily’s relative tries to contact her and Kat’s homophobic sister wants to be back in her life, how will Lily and Kat find time for each other? Please Note: This book contains adult language & steamy adult activities, it is intended for 18+ Adults Only. Novel, approx. 35,000 words in length. HEA (happy ever after ending). Does not end with a "cliffhanger." Themes include: Urban, Single Parent, Single Mother, Middle-School Teacher, Young Adult, Neighbor Romance, Newborn.

    It’s a book with the flow of poetry but the ebb of short stories – rightfully called “Shoetry”. This creation takes you to the roots of humanity - stripping back the veneers of life, society and interaction to see people and their ways in an entirely new light.

    Following the death of his domineering father, a middle-aged man tries to uncover a truth about their sometimes difficult relationship. When a grade-six teacher tyrannizes a student without apparent reason, the boy learns an unexpected lesson and his young life is changed irrevocably. An elderly widow falls prey to a con artist, revealing what we are capable of sacrificing to appease what we dread the most. A twelve-year-old boy is shunted off to his grandmother's farm and becomes part of an adult world he scarcely understands. A group of high-school students play on a classmate's self-delusions and set up what promises to be the most loaded boxing match ever staged. Whether writing from the point of view of a child, an adolescent, or a man in his seventies, Guy Vanderhaeghe takes us into the lives of his characters with razor-sharp insights laced with gentle humour.

    Natalie Diaz’s brilliant second collection demands that every body carried in its pages—bodies of language, land, rivers, suffering brothers, enemies, and lovers—be touched and held as beloveds. Through these poems, the wounds inflicted by America onto an indigenous people are allowed to bloom pleasure and tenderness: “Let me call my anxiety, desire, then. / Let me call it, a garden.” In this new lyrical landscape, the bodies of indigenous, Latinx, black, and brown women are simultaneously the body politic and the body ecstatic. In claiming this autonomy of desire, language is pushed to its dark edges, the astonishing dunefields and forests where pleasure and love are both grief and joy, violence and sensuality.Diaz defies the conditions from which she writes, a nation whose creation predicated the diminishment and ultimate erasure of bodies like hers and the people she loves: “I am doing my best to not become a museum / of myself. I am doing my best to breathe in and out. // I am begging: Let me be lonely but not invisible.” Postcolonial Love Poem unravels notions of American goodness and creates something more powerful than hope—a future is built, future being a matrix of the choices we make now, and in these poems, Diaz chooses love.

    Previously published under ISBN 978-1-7321153-1-6. She is the only female hoplite in Spartan history. She is a royal guard to King Leonidas. She is the Iron Edge. In an age when men rule, Halcyon rises above and is the master of her own life. At home, Halcyon controls her lands and her personal slaves with a strict hand, until the day she purchases an unusual slave. Thora is a fair skinned woman who stands taller than the Greek gods, with hair the color of gold, and blue eyes that rival the skies. Halcyon must own the unusual woman, but she is hardly prepared for the thunder that follows. Step back into the glory of Ancient Sparta when the city-state becomes a formidable military power. Learn about Sparta’s unique social system including women’s dominant roles in both the house and in public affairs, and follow one slave owner’s journey as she learns to accept her slave’s spirit. Thora is a 45,000-word 3rd-person omniscient Historical Lesbian Romance Fiction novel. It includes a glossary for minor Greek terminology. No rape. No BDSM. No cliffhanger. Happy ending.

    With echoes of Gwendolyn Brooks and Sonia Sanchez, Mans writes to call herself—and us—home. Each poem explores what it means to be a daughter of Newark, and America--and the painful, joyous path to adulthood as a young, queer Black woman.Black Girl, Call Home is a love letter to the wandering Black girl and a vital companion to any woman on a journey to find truth, belonging, and healing.

    Simon, a small-time clerk in the Big City, has just two hours to buy all the items on a ridiculously detailed (and expensive) gift list. A long list provided by Joshua, his handsome boyfriend, who also happens to be a self-absorbed aspiring model. Now the race is on to check all the items on the list. For the sake of love. Simon is almost done, but there is only one item left: the latest perfume obsession for gays. Of course, it is sold-out and a desperate Simon needs to scour the city for it. But little does he know, he will have the help of a sexy and exotic stranger. Love at First Spray is a funny, romantic and cosy gay Christmas short story, about finding love in the most unexpected place.

    So far, she's been in love once (total catastrophe) and on fire twice (also pretty bad). Both love and fire have left their scars.Looking a little more burnt chicken and a little less radiant phoenix, Allison takes up residence in Dylan Hall (a.k.a. Dyke Hall) at St. Joseph's College, where she discovers the true gift of freshman year: the opportunity to reinvent yourself. Miles away from the high school she's happy to leave behind, her all-female dorm is a strange new world, home to new social circles and challenges. Allison still feels like the odd girl out ... until Shar appears. Beautiful and blinding, Shar quickly becomes the sun at the centre of Allison's universe, drawing her in with dangerous allure.Will Allison get burned again? And, if she does, what kind of scars will she earn this time?

    late 7th and early 6th centuries B.C.E.), whose work is said to have filled nine papyrus rolls in the great library at Alexandria some 500 years after her death. The surviving texts consist of a lamentably small and fragmented body of lyric poetry--among them, poems of invocation, desire, spite, celebration, resignation, and remembrance--that nevertheless enables us to hear the living voice of the poet Plato called the tenth Muse.Stanley Lombardo's translations give us a virtuoso embodiment of Sappho's voice, whose telltale charm, authority, immediacy, directness, intensity, and sudden changes of tone are among the hallmarks of his masterly translation.Pamela Gordon introduces us to the world of Sappho, discusses questions surrounding the transmission of her manuscripts, offers advice on reading these texts, and concludes with an enlightening discussion of same-sex desire in Sappho.

    It is both an unforgettable love story and an unputdownable revenge thriller.Donna and Carla run the all-female Bronte Close Gang, carving out their own empire in the toughest streets of Manchester. But when Carla is gunned down for seducing the wife of a local gangster, it is left to Donna to keep the gang together, take care of Carla’s ten-year-old daughter, Aurora, and seek retribution for her murder.A tale of friendship, survival and finding out how far you’d go to avenge and protect those you love, We Go Around In The Night And Are Consumed By Fire is a thrillingly original crime novel that unfolds at breakneck speed – at once furious, tender and heartbreaking.

    Carson envisions a present-day interview with a seventh-century BC poet, and offers miniature lectures on topics as varied as orchids and Ovid. She imagines the muse of a fifteenth-century painter attending a phenomenology conference in Italy. She constructs verbal photographs of a series of mysterious towns, and takes us on a pilgrimage in pursuit of the elusive and intimate anthropology of water. Blending the rhythm and vivid metaphor of poetry with the discursive nature of the essay, the writings in Plainwater dazzle us with their invention and enlighten us with their erudition.

    it is the facade that many of us peruse our lives carrying, often neglecting our pain, our mental health, and most importantly, the way we are more prone to hurting others when we lack this self-awareness. (w)holehearted seeks to encompass as many stories as possible, touching on several topics, namely, spirituality, feminism, colorism, domestic violence, intersectionality, mental health and more. it aims to depict that anyone with the darkest past and pitfalls can still save themselves from drowning in the difficulties that not only plague our world, but also plague our hearts.

    The wit and wisdom of the West, as documented by Dalton Wilcox, poet laureate of the West.