The woman cares nothing for Rowan's company, but nor does she seem perturbed by the powers that burn within her.Rowan soon learns that the scope of their journey is more than a desperate grasp at adventure. She breaks away from the weighty judgement of her village, but has no choice but to abandon her Kingdom altogether. Sir Ightham's past leads them through Kastelir, a country draped in the shadow of its long-dead Queen—a woman who was all tusks and claws and great, spiralling horns.Hiding her necromancy is no longer Rowan's greatest challenge, and what leads them across Kingdoms and through mountains is a heavier burden than she ever could've imagined.

    Everyone in town knows the Dickinsons are a bad lot, but Bo doesn’t care what anyone thinks.Agnes Atwood has never gone on a date, never even stayed out past ten, and never broken any of her parents’ overbearing rules. Rules that are meant to protect their legally blind daughter—protect her from what, Agnes isn’t quite sure.Despite everything, Bo and Agnes become best friends. And it’s the sort of friendship that runs truer and deeper than anything else.So when Bo shows up in the middle of the night, with police sirens wailing in the distance, desperate to get out of town, Agnes doesn’t hesitate to take off with her. But running away and not getting caught will require stealing a car, tracking down Bo’s dad, staying ahead of the authorities, and—worst of all—confronting some ugly secrets.

    Both are in every obvious respect what is generally termed masculine. There is no suggestion of the effeminate – nothing that could evoke the characterization of gay. Their backgrounds and personalities are thoroughly American, and they live and work in a completely normal man's social and professional world. Other men respect and admire their courage and ability and even their physical prowess. Women are very much attracted to both of them.Tim, the older the two, has already recognized and resolved the problem of his sexual deviation. Phillip has not. A product of rural American mores and attitudes, he has a fierce contempt for "queers" and at the same time a deep and secret dread that the germ of homosexuality maybe buried somewhere within himself. One or two incidences in his life have shaken him profoundly and have made him determined ruthlessly to crush any tendencies in himself as well as to avoid any close relations with other men. He is engaged to be married as soon as he is discharged from the Navy, and he intends to rear a big family, to take over the operations of his family's bank and other interests, and to become a responsible and civic-minded leader in his community.As the story opens, he has almost reached the refuge and security he has carefully planned. But then he meets Danelaw. From that moment the struggle begins – a tense and shattering emotional upheaval composed of aversion, self-contempt, admiration and – finally – love. There are other well-drawn characters in this drama – Phillip's exceptional family; his fiancée and her mother; Tim's fascinating wife; Lt. Bruner, the blackmailer; Stuff, the hard-boiled sailor who worshipped Philip. QUATREFOIL is a deeply moral novel. Two men of integrity and intellect are confronted with the knowledge that they are deviants from the normal pattern of our society – that most people in that society would abhor and persecute them if they openly avowed their difference. Both men avidly desire to live within the social conventions and to attain the ends that motivate all men – a home, a family, respecting in their community, an opportunity to do honest and satisfying work, to realize their ambitions.This is their problem and QUATREFOIL is their story. It will evoke some disturbing thoughts.

    Lovecraft and his circle. Marina Willett, M.D., has a problem. Her husband, Charlie, has become obsessed with H.P. Lovecraft, in particular with one episode in the legendary horror writer's life: In the summer of 1934, the "old gent" lived for two months with a gay teenage fan named Robert Barlow, at Barlow's family home in central Florida. What were the two of them up to? Were they friends--or something more? Just when Charlie thinks he's solved the puzzle, a new scandal erupts, and he disappears. The police say it's suicide. Marina is a psychiatrist, and she doesn't believe them.A tour-de-force of storytelling, The Night Ocean follows the lives of some extraordinary people: Lovecraft, the most influential American horror writer of the 20th century, whose stories continue to win new acolytes, even as his racist views provoke new critics; Barlow, a seminal scholar of Mexican culture who killed himself after being blackmailed for his homosexuality (and who collaborated with Lovecraft on the beautiful story The Night Ocean); his student, future Beat writer William S. Burroughs; and L.C. Spinks, a kindly Canadian appliance salesman and science-fiction fan -- the only person who knows the origins of The Erotonomicon, purported to be the intimate diary of Lovecraft himself.As a heartbroken Marina follows her missing husband's trail in an attempt to learn the truth, the novel moves across the decades and along the length of the continent, from a remote Ontario town, through New York and Florida to Mexico City.The Night Ocean is about love and deception -- about the way that stories earn our trust, and betray it.

    His neighbors know him as a mild mannered music teacher, but to his fellow monster hunters he’s a senior agent with one of the best track records in the organization. Werewolves, malignant spirits, and other oddities—you name it, he can track it. And kill it if necessary.But when a vampire shows up in Belar’s parlor, his two worlds crash into each other. The vampire is named Cassian, and if he had any sense of decency he would be dead since Belar has already tried to kill him. Twice. Luckily, Cassian isn’t interested in holding a grudge. He wants to hire the hunter. Someone in vampire society wants Cassian dead and they’ve been using Belar to do their dirty work. Finding the culprit will save them both.Their search for answers takes them through a nighttime world of ancient vampires, demon tailors, and monsters of pure shadow. But Belar hasn’t been the only one lying, and enemies and allies are harder to tell apart in the dark.From the Dark We Came is a 50,000 word paranormal novel with a demisexual protagonistContent warnings: sex and sexual situations, fantasy typical violence and injury, minor character death, beheading, blood, blood drinking, and blood magic

    There he meets Mitko, a charismatic young hustler, and pays him for sex. He returns to Mitko again and again over the next few months, drawn by hunger and loneliness and risk, and finds himself ensnared in a relationship in which lust leads to mutual predation, and tenderness can transform into violence. As he struggles to reconcile his longing with the anguish it creates, he’s forced to grapple with his own fraught history, the world of his southern childhood where to be queer was to be a pariah. There are unnerving similarities between his past and the foreign country he finds himself in, a country whose geography and griefs he discovers as he learns more of Mitko’s own narrative, his private history of illness, exploitation, and disease.What Belongs to You is a stunning debut novel of desire and its consequences. With lyric intensity and startling eroticism, Garth Greenwell has created an indelible story about the ways in which our pasts and cultures, our scars and shames can shape who we are and determine how we love.

    Paps and Ma are from Brooklyn — he’s Puerto Rican, she’s white — and their love is a serious, dangerous thing that makes and unmakes a family many times.Life in this family is fierce and absorbing, full of chaos and heartbreak and the euphoria of belonging completely to one another. From the intense familial unity felt by a child to the profound alienation he endures as he begins to see the world, this beautiful novel reinvents the coming-of-age story in a way that is sly and punch-in-the-stomach powerful.Written in magical language with unforgettable images, this is a stunning exploration of the viscerally charged landscape of growing up, how deeply we are formed by our earliest bonds, and how we are ultimately propelled at escape velocity toward our futures.

    It is a powerful and compelling novel about a young man navigating the depths of his emotional life, finding his moral center, trying to forgive himself, and accepting the gift of love.

    And he’s having a midlife crisis.Charley gets suspended by the Agency after forgetting to pay his taxes. Only days earlier, yet another marriage proposal has been spurned. In his grief and confusion, Charley befriends Electra, a high-powered Manhattan socialite-turned-dominatrix rebuilding her life in San Francisco. Then he meets Frankie, a disgruntled lesbian police sergeant who has been demoted by the SFPD for being a whistle blower.Together they uncover a Christian fundamentalist’s lethal plot to destroy the ‘hedonists’ of San Francisco. Yet, neither the SFPD nor the CIA will take the threat seriously due to the trio’s outsider status. Can they get anyone to listen to them? Or are they on their own? Find out in this funny thriller filled with San Francisco’s spectacular scenery and inimitable, quirky characters.

    She isn’t expecting much from her freshman year of college until she finds herself sharing a class with Treasure, the gorgeous stripper from her sister’s party. Trisha Hamilton has finally gotten the credits and the money together to transfer to a four-year university. Between classes, studying, and her job as a stripper, she has little time for a social life, until she runs into the adorably shy baby butch from the club. Trisha can’t seem to hide her feelings for Alexis, even when Trisha discovers what she has been through, but will Alexis have the strength to be just as fearless about their new love?

    An unforgettable story of coming of age in America, it is also an essential milestone in the movement of American fiction, from a novelist who has become one of the most important and enduring voices of this generation.

    At the beginning of this novel, she drives back to her family ranch in the foothills of the Sierras to attend the wedding of her identical twin, Judith, to a nice young doctor from Connecticut. Cassandra, however, is hell-bent on sabotaging the wedding. Dorothy Baker's entrancing tragicomic novella follows an unpredictable course of events in which her heroine appears variously as conniving, self-aware, pitiful, frenzied, absurd, and heartbroken—at once utterly impossible and tremendously sympathetic. Cassandra reckons with her complicated feelings about the sister who she feels owes it to her to be her alter ego; with her father, a brandy-soaked retired professor of philosophy; and with the ghost of her dead mother, as she struggles to come to terms with the only life she has. First published in 1962, Cassandra at the Wedding is a book of enduring freshness, insight, and verve. Like the fiction of Jeffrey Eugenides and Jhumpa Lahiri, it is the work of a master stylist with a profound understanding of the complexities of the heart and mind.

    Shocked and grieving, Jessa steps up to manage the failing business, while the rest of the Morton family crumbles. Her mother starts sneaking into the shop to make aggressively lewd art with the taxidermied animals. Her brother Milo withdraws, struggling to function. And Brynn, Milo’s wife—and the only person Jessa’s ever been in love with—walks out without a word. As Jessa seeks out less-than-legal ways of generating income, her mother’s art escalates—picture a figure of her dead husband and a stuffed buffalo in an uncomfortably sexual pose—and the Mortons reach a tipping point. For the first time, Jessa has no choice but to learn who these people truly are, and ultimately how she fits alongside them.

    Crip Poetry. Disability Poetry. Poems with Disabilities. This is where poetry and disability intersect, overlap, collide and make peace."[BEAUTY IS A VERB] is going to be one of the defining collections of the 21st century...the discourse between ability, identity & poetry will never be the same." —Ron Silliman, author of In The American Tree"This powerful anthology succeeds at intimately showing...disability through the lenses of poetry. What emerges from the book as a whole is a stunningly diverse array of conceptions of self and other.”—Publishers Weekly, starred reviewFrom "Beauty and Variations" by Kenny Fries:How else can I quench this thirst? My lipstravel down your spine, drink the smoothnessof your skin. I am searching for the core:What is beautiful? Who decides? Can the lawsof nature be defied? Your body tells me: comeclose. But beauty distances even as it drawsme near. What does my body want from yours?My twisted legs around your neck. You bendme back. Even though you can't give the bonesat birth I wasn't given, I let you deep inside.You give me—what? Peeling back my skin, youexpose my missing bones. And my heart, longbefore you came, just as broken. I don't know whoto blame. So each night, naked on the bed, my bodydoesn't want repair, but longs for innocence. Ifinnocent, despite the flaws I wear, I am beautiful.Sheila Black is a poet and children's book writer. In 2012, Poet Laureate Philip Levine chose her as a recipient of the Witter Bynner Fellowship.Disability activist Jennifer Bartlett is a poet and critic with roots in the Language school.Michael Northen is a poet and the editor of Wordgathering: A Journal of Poetics and Disability.

    He studies queer theory, has a dyke best friend, makes zines, and is a flâneur with a rich dating life. But Paul’s also got a secret: he’s a shapeshifter. Oscillating wildly from Riot Grrrl to leather cub, Women’s Studies major to trade, Paul transforms his body at will in a series of adventures that take him from Iowa City to Boystown to Provincetown and finally to San Francisco—a journey through the deep queer archives of struggle and pleasure.