General Fiction Books

For 21-year-old gay virgin Gabe Rafferty, the first decade of adulthood is unpredictable and intense. 

Flat broke upon college graduation, Gabe navigates the passage from menial work to globetrotting corporate drudge, then strives for a real chance at professional fulfillment. His journey exploring his sexuality—from inhibited innocence, to first-love crises, to random hookups—doesn’t seem to lead to the more sensual, committed relationships he wants. Then he meets Marty, an African American art student, and Gabe must face his white working-class background and racist father for a chance at true love.

Throughout, he traverses the joys and hazards of loving a headstrong cast of friends, including a lesbian couple, and Candy, a straight female friend whose life intersects with Gabe’s in unexpected ways.

For Gabe, what happens after coming of age and coming out is a scramble to survive first journeys into sex, love, and livelihood.

Andre met his best friend Amy on a night like tonight. The way Amy tells it she had to stop him from climbing over the bar at Aunty Bob’s to punch the bartender, though if you ask Andre he’ll say, “What? That never happened. I don’t even know what you’re saying to me right now.” 

Now Amy is worryingly missing in action, and Andre goes to Aunty Bob’s on a quest to find her. No sooner does he walk in with his depressingly heterosexual date than his best hat is spirited away by a lesbian in the throes of breaking up with her girlfriend. She in turn has it stolen from her when she starts a fight with two twinks at the bar. The hat makes its way around Aunty Bob’s from one head to another, giving glimpses into the dozens of stories playing out at the same time, unaware of each other but colliding in catastrophic ways. Can Andre find Amy before this party devolves into a nightmare of broken hearts, malevolent drag queens, and spontaneous human combustion? Or has it always happened this way, every night, at Aunty Bob’s Quake City Club?

Determined to record every summer day, young history teacher Luke Devlin starts school vacation imagining he’ll describe backcountry adventures in the Rockies and sun-splashed days home in Denver. But all too soon the season veers into crisis, when his older brother faces life-threatening illness and Luke becomes entangled in a love affair that’s as fast-moving and possibly as fatal as his brother’s diagnosis.

As Luke manages the household for his absent parents and struggles with the constant pressure of his unfinished master’s deadline, his fling with a Wyoming rancher grows serious just as his brother’s crisis overwhelms him. Luke’s love of his native ground and his search for romance collide with the hard realities of mortality and loss during an unexpected summer.

When struggling actor Phillip Stalworth breaks up with his girlfriend, he returns home to the Deep South to care for his ailing mother and unexpectedly falls for a local carpenter. Working through his past with his complicated family, some old high school chums, and the desperate characters who grace his hometown, Phillip ultimately finds his own voice as his mother is finally regaining hers.

Already an award-winning film, Counting for Thunder was inspired by writer Phillip Irwin Cooper’s personal experience and, like Augusten Burroughs, covers many of the universal themes of love, life, sex, and death with his own brand of gallows wit. Phillip’s three-year quest is a hero’s journey proving we truly can go home again to learn the lessons we should have mastered the first time around.

Outside a hospital in Ottawa, a heartbeat returns long enough for a good-bye. Downtown, a man steps into shadows of the past to help those who have died find their way free from their memories. In Niagara, an icewine vintage is flavored with the truth of what happened on a dark evening of betrayal. In British Columbia, the snow itself can speak to someone who knows how to listen. 

The past echoes through these queer tales—sometimes soft enough to grant a second chance at love, and other times loud enough to damn a killer—never without leaving those who’ve heard it unchanged. 

Of Echoes Born is the first short story collection from Lambda Literary Award finalist ’Nathan Burgoine.

Advance praise from Publishers Weekly: "Burgoine assembles 12 queer supernatural tales, several of which interlock...The best tales could easily stand alone; these include 'The Finish,' about an aging vintner whose erotic dalliance with a deaf young man named Dennis gets complicated, and 'Struck,' in which beleaguered bookstore clerk Chris meets Lightning Todd, who predicts his future wealth and romance. A pair of stories set in 'the Village,' a gay neighborhood, feature appealing characters and romances and could be components of a fine Tales of the City–like novel."

It’s Aaron’s big coming of age/coming out party! Date: 1967. Place: El Paso’s Rancho Sonora Motel, near Juarez, Mexico. Come early and Dollie or Scott (mother/son owners of the Rancho) will check you in; come late and Larinda (the night clerk) will show you around. Check your room for spy holes, though, unless you like to be watched! Tallulah and Jayne Mansfield are there. Meet Aaron’s favorite prostitutes and strippers. Rick (Aaron’s first infatuation) is there. In Hollywood, Aaron hangs out with TV star Mark and his brother Isaac. Mark can be playful, Isaac can be deadly with his 11-inch…knife. Meanwhile, back at the Rancho, what's with all the cars? Is Scott trying to buy the affections of our boy, Aaron? Come to the party where all will be revealed!

“Different is a brave thing to be,” a mother tells her five-year-old daughter. During the 1960s and 1970s, when things for gays and lesbians were starting to change in larger cities, in the Midwest, different was not a safe thing to be. A memorable cast of characters, a sympathetic, believable, tight-knit community of friends and rivals, fill out the interconnected stories with butches, femmes, go-go dancers, and drag queens who try to find their way in an unaccepting culture by becoming a family of choice. Anyone who has ever been on the outside looking in will feel at home on “the levee.”

Reprint

Jonathan Maxwell’s life can’t get any better as the drummer of the world’s hottest glam rock superstar, Izzy Rich. Despite the money, the nonstop excitement of touring, and the groupies, Jonathan wants something more. He wants Izzy to be his lover. 

Unbeknownst to his team, his fans, and the world, for fun, Izzy transforms in drag for Jonathan, becoming a songwriter/songstress called Holly. Though meant to happen for only one day, Jonathan and Holly’s relationship lasts for weeks. Until one day, Izzy rids himself of Holly forever.  

Transitioning from boyfriend and girlfriend to boyfriends, Jonathan and Izzy are on cloud nine. Their love is still a secret, but they couldn’t be happier. Until the tour jumps across the pond to America, where a bold, teenaged fan-girl, Roxanne Shengyi, will impact their relationship—and their lives—in ways that none of them can imagine.

A school in turmoil over its senior play, a sly career as a teenage gigolo, an unpredictable girlfriend with damage of her own, and a dangerous housebreaker tied up downstairs. Any of these would make a great plot for budding filmmaker Eric's first movie.

Unfortunately, they're his real life.

When Julien, a handsome wannabe actor, transfers to Eric's class, he's a distraction, a rival, and one complication too many. Yet Eric can't stop thinking about him. Helped by Eric's girlfriend, Mary, they embark on a project that dangerously crosses the line between filmmaking and reality. As the boys become close, Eric soon wants to cross other lines entirely. Does Julien feel the same way, or is Eric being used on the gleefully twisted path to fame?

Seaton French and Dustin Marley strive to hold on to each other and preserve their bond of love against an array of terrifying enemies. Faced with devastating threats, Sea and Dusty struggle to unravel the conspiracy and expose the conspirators. While dire events unfold, shock and terror trigger Dusty's personality shifts, and Sea must cope with his beloved's multiple personalities.

Dusty and Sea descend through dissociative psychological states as the conspiracies against them grow stranger and appear to make less and less sense. During their attempts to unravel the threads of the conspiracy, the lovers explore bizarre religions and secret societies that could have ominous consequences. In the end, Dusty and Sea discover the appalling source of their problems and learn that they must survive minute by minute in the grip of soul-shuddering conditions they are powerless to change while they seek redemption in the heart's eternal desire.

Fleeing London, Thomas Newton reaches Paris full of hopes for a new life with Pierre Baptiste. The hopes are quickly shattered. There are unsettling rumors about Pierre's past and very real threats in the present. Arrested on false charges, thrown into a dank prison, Thomas must decide whether he can trust Pierre's help to winning back his freedom. But freedom will bring other risks, especially if it requires a return to London and all that he fled. The men from his past whom he betrayedand who might well want revenge. His avowed enemies, the bigots that chased him across the channel. And, worst of all, everything he doesn't know about his family. To survive, he will have to play both sides of the lifeas a thief taker.

Charlene's soul mate, Samantha, has been killed in a car accident. Daniel's partner, Martin, has been murdered in a robbery gone wrong. Seeking comfort, Charlene and Daniel attend a support group where they meet for the first time. Emotionally devastated and discarded by their loved ones' conservative families, Charlene and Daniel feel an immediate connection. Rather than reveal their pain to a room full of strangers, they decide to see each other through their shared anguish. As a beautiful friendship emerges from grief, slivers of new hope are found.

Never have there been only two gendersmale and female. A third gender, denied by society and hidden by the medical community, has always existed, and that is what Sophie Schmidt discovers when, at the age of fourteen, she learns the truth of how she was born. Sophie then embarks on a journey to learn more about her true self and to find others born like her. When Sophie moves to New York City, she enters the world of gays and lesbians, as well as those who are transgender and transsexual. Searching for her own place in society, her journey leads her to Alice Parker, and Sophie takes the final steps to accept herself enough to allow another to love her.

Joaquin Moreno and Mark Crowden have an ambiguous relationship because their disputes with each other are undermining their vows of friendship, love, and truth—the three links and the chief tenets of the Odd Fellows, a secret society formed in 1819.

Along with their friend, Theodora, and Joaquin's dog, Mister Dangerous, these two odd fellows drive to San Felipe, Mexico, to open a bed and breakfast in a rundown Victorian mansion on the Gulf of California.

Upon their arrival, they meet a real estate agent, Felix De la Santos, and a traveling British citizen, Lord Leighton, who become their first guests. Over a span of eight days, all their plans go awry and they must confront an evil force intent on killing them—with only friendship, love, and truth as their weapons.

An anthology of short fiction featuring the finalist selections from the 2013 Saints + Sinners Literary Festival.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Introduction by Felice Picano
• What Took You So Long? by Vince Sgambati
• It Only Occurred to Me Later by Anne Laughlin
• Bruno's Last Supper by Jeff Lindemann
• The Favor of a Reply by Joe Landrum
• Thou Shalt Not Lie by N.S. Beranek
• In a Chamber of My Heart by Sandra Gail Lambert
• Mountainview by James Russell
• Looking for Philip by George E. Jordan
• Bucky and the Woods Cop by Jim Stewart
• Silver Pumps and a Loose Nut by J.R. Greenwell
• Stained Glass by Karis Walsh
• Sky Blue by 'Nathan Burgoine