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Good Times/Bad Times
James Kirkwood Jr. - 1968
Hoyt, Peter begins to pen the letter that makes up the pages of Good Times/Bad Times.From Peter’s elaborate involvement on campus and meeting the closest friend he’s ever had to the unwelcome sexual advances he received from Mr. Hoyt, this letter tells of the ups and downs of Peter’s time at school.As the good times give way to bad and a series of compelling incidents steadily heighten the tension of his time as a student at Gilford Academy, readers fall under the spell of the magnificent storyteller Peter exposes himself to be. Good Times/Bad Times pulses with warmth and laughter of the young and still honest, complete with strong and memorable characters.
Sucking Sherbet Lemons
Michael Carson - 1988
Then he is sent to learn to be a monk which makes him a permanent temptation for the older brothers who lust for fresh meat in a most unBiblical way. A great book with a new introduction by Simon Callow.
Albert Nobbs
George Moore - 1918
Set in a posh hotel in nineteenth-century Dublin, Albert Nobbs is the story of an unassuming waiter hiding a shocking secret. Forced one night to share his bed with an out-of-town laborer, Albert Nobbs' carefully constructed facade nearly implodes when the stranger disovers his true identity-that he's actually a woman. Forced by this revelation to look himself in the mirror, Albert sets off in a desperate pursuit of companionship and love, a search he's unwilling to abandon so long as he's able to preserve his fragile persona at the same time. A tale of longing and romance, Albert Nobbs is a moving and startlingly frank gender-bending tale about the risks of being true to oneself. With a foreword by Glenn Close.
Torch Song Trilogy
Harvey Fierstein - 1978
The four hour-plus play begins with a soliloquy in which he explains his cynical disillusionment with love.Each act focuses on a different phase in Arnold's life. In the first, Arnold meets Ed, who is uncomfortable with his bisexuality. In the second, one year later, Arnold meets Alan, and the two settle down into a blissful existence that includes plans to adopt a child, until tragedy strikes. In the third, several years later, Arnold is a single father raising gay teenager David. Arnold is forced to deal with his mother's intolerance and disrespect when she visits from Florida.
God of Vengeance
Donald Margulies - 2004
For his daughter Rivkele, however, Jack aspires for something more—respectability through her marriage to a religious scholar. But Rivkele’s tender love affair with Manke, one of Jack’s prostitutes, threatens to destroy the upcoming marriage, and with it, Jack’s dream of redemption. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Donald Margulies transforms Sholom Asch’s classic mortality tale into a work of spellbinding power.Donald Margulies received the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Dinner with Friends. The play received numerous awards, including the American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award, the Dramatists Guild/Hull-Warriner Award, the Lucille Lortel Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award and a Drama Desk nomination, and has been produced all over the United States and around the world. In addition to his adaptation of God of Vengeance, his many plays include Collected Stories, The Country House, Sight Unseen, The Model Apartment, The Loman Family Picnic, What’s Wrong with This Picture? and Time Stands Still. Mr. Margulies currently lives with his wife and their son in New Haven, Connecticut, where he teaches playwriting at Yale University.
Letters to Montgomery Clift
Noel Alumit - 2002
Following the Filipino tradition of writing letters to the ghosts of ancestors, Bong Bong Luwad begins to write letters to the ghost of Montgomery Clift, at first asking to be reunited with his family, but as he undergoes the pains of adolescence, sexual discovery, and mental illness, the letters form a journal of self-discovery.
New Tricks
J.D. Light - 2019
What he finds is a gorgeous, sweet, funny and patient man... with a penchant for tricks and manipulation... but in a good way. Of course, he falls for the sexy older man. The thing is, Haven Hills is a small town, and he knows all too well how hard a small town can kick you when you’re down. Could he ever feel comfortable coming out to Byrum? To the town? Byrum Rodgers knows there is joy to be seen under the dark cloud of gloom that weighs Jefferson down when they first meet, and he makes it his mission to bring it to the surface. He knows it’s a bad idea to bring someone into his home that he is so attracted to and completely inappropriate for, but he can’t just leave the guy hanging in the wind. Their friendship comes easily, and Byrum loves that Jefferson seems to be trusting him more and more with each day that passes, and he’s not surprised at all to find himself in love with the young man. Acting on their attraction is scary because they both value what they have already, but spending so much time together... something’s got to give.
The Celibate
Michael Arditti - 1997
An ordinand, he has had a breakdown while serving at the altar. The Church has sent him to a London therapist, rather than a priest, for confession. During the course of his cure, while living in an unfamiliar world of outcasts, fundamentalists, and AIDS sufferers, he is forced to face the reality of his own physical passion: first for a humble rent boy, then for a sadomasochistic pimp, and, finally, for a priest. The healing begins as he gradually comes to terms with his own history.
Crazy for Vincent
Hervé Guibert - 1989
He drank a liter of tequila, smoked Congolese grass, snorted cocaine...―from Crazy for VincentCrazy for Vincent begins with the death of the figure it fixates upon: Vincent, a skateboarding, drug-addled, delicate “monster” of a boy in whom the narrator finds a most sublime beauty. By turns tender and violent, Vincent drops in and out of French writer and photographer Hervé Guibert's life over the span of six years (from 1982, when he first met Vincent as a fifteen-year-old teenager, to 1988). After Vincent's senseless death, the narrator embarks on a reconnaissance writing mission to retrieve the Vincent that had entered, elevated, and emotionally eviscerated his life, working chronologically backward from the death that opens the text. Assembling Vincent's fragmentary appearances in his journal, the author seeks to understand what Vincent's presence in his life had been: a passion? a love? an erotic obsession? or an authorial invention? A parallel inquiry could be made into the book that results: Is it diary, memoir, poem, fiction? Autopsy, crime scene, hagiography, hymn? Crazy for Vincent is a text the very nature of which is as untethered as desire itself.
Gemini
Michel Tournier - 1975
Outsiders, even their parents, cannot tell them apart, and call them Jean-Paul. The mysterious bond between them excludes all others; they speak their own language; they are one perfectly harmonious unit; they are, in all innocence, lovers.For Paul, this unity is paradise, but as they grow up Jean rebels against it. He takes a mistress and deserts his brother, but Paul sets out to follow him in a pilgrimage that leads all around the world, through places that reflect their separation--the mirrored halls of Venice, the Zen gardens of Japan, the newly divided city of Berlin. The exquisite love story of Jean-Paul is set against the ugliness and pain of human existence. " Gemini" is a novel of extraordinary proportions, intricate images, and profound thought, in which Michel Tournier tells his fascinating story with an irresistible humor.
The Nowhere
Chris Gill - 2019
Two farms. One deadly secret.
Every day’s the same on the farm. Seventeen-year-old Seb rides his quad bike alongside his dad and cattle dog, dreaming about a different life. A life that doesn’t require him to spend all day in the blistering sun. Where the nearest town isn’t a forty-minute drive away with a population of less than three hundred people. Where he can talk to someone who isn’t his little brother or short-tempered father.So when new neighbours move into the derelict farm on the opposite side of the shrub, Seb hopes his luck is finally about to change. Could Jake, the enigmatic boy with a dangerous glint in his eye, be his ticket out of The Nowhere? And if so, how far are they both willing to go to escape?Fast forward two decades and Seb’s working as a nurse back in Perth. With his dad living in his home, Seb is tormented by the demons that have followed him his entire adult life. He begins confiding in his caring colleague Sandra, who convinces him the only way he’ll be able to move forward is to exorcise his ghosts and seek closure.But when Jake calls out the blue telling Seb he’s coming to visit, Seb has to decide whether he’s ready to face exactly what happened that summer. On the night that forever changed not only the lives of the two boys, but that of their entire families.Youthful, brutal and ferociously fantastic, The Nowhere is a coming-of-age novel about aspiration and isolation, sexuality and sadness, love, loss, and how life changes. Despite his best efforts, Seb learns that secrets can’t be kept forever. The truth always comes out eventually.
You can’t keep it secret forever, the truth always comes out eventually.
Hornito: My Lie Life
Mike Albo - 2000
From a typical suburban childhood to his perpetual search for true love, Albo evokes a poignant, nostalgic past and a vibrant, energetic present. By turns vulnerable and jaded, flamboyant and obsessive, Hornito is full of subversive humor and outrageous irony.
Jack the Modernist
Robert Glück - 1985
Bob is excited and lonely. He meets and pursues the elusive Jack, a director who is able to transform others without altering himself. Bob goes to the baths, gossips on the phone, goes to a bar, thinks about werewolves, has an orgasm, and discovers a number of truths about Jack. A paean to love and obsession, Glück's novel explores the everyday in a language that is both intimate and lush. "Robert Glück has found a new way of making fiction passionate. This novel is a strange, exhilarating love story rich with invention and observation." -Edmund White
For Sam, times infinity
Suki Fleet - 2019
But it’s not as easy as he thought, especially when his social worker finds him a job miles away. And falling for the surprising boy at work only makes things harder.Evra is different, his past a mystery. Being truly himself is not something he’s ever felt safe enough to be with anyone, not until Sam, the shyest boy ever, saves his life at work and Evra finds himself inexplicably trusting him. Wanting him. Problem is, Sam is leaving, unable to stand being so far away from Tommy. And Evra can’t leave, not when he has consequences to face. Making things work might seem complicated, but sometimes falling in love has its own consequences.
The Battle for Jericho
Gene Gant - 2012
Gay activist Dylan Cussler stirs up the establishment when he moves in with his boyfriend and sues the state over its gay adoption ban. Sixteen-year-old Jericho Jiles and his best friend, Mac Travis, decide to do their bit to convince Dylan and his boyfriend to leave town. But when Dylan turns up before they can finish trashing his house, Jericho panics, leaving Dylan unconscious and wounded.Drowning in guilt, Jericho returns to Dylan’s home to make amends. He is surprised when Dylan forgives him and opens his eyes to the world around him. Soon Jericho comes to a life-changing realization: he is attracted to boys as well as girls. That’s a problem, considering Jericho has a girlfriend and very strict, very religious parents. Accepting his sexuality means he must question not only his identity and his place in the world but his relationship with his girlfriend, his parents, and with God.And so begins the battle for Jericho’s soul.