Ben Johnson: One Size Fits All

USA 2007, 257 pp., brochure, € 13.95
Kostenloser Versand ab 20 Euro Bestellwert.
Nelson Vargas is a nobody - until a »Los Angeles Magazine« profile lands the suddenly hot young designer onto the lips and hips of the Hollywood elite. And in a town that likes its tinsel, the timing for Nelson couldn't be more perfect - because it's awards season, and three of the five best actress nominees have come crawling ... er, calling on Nelson to design them the perfect dress. He's already got the most fabulous design in mind - problem is, he's promised the dress to all three of them. Cross the wrong actress, and Nelson will once again be that nobody. Who will win - The Legend? The Class Act? The Newcomer? It's all up to Nelson Vargas. And so the Oscar for the Best Dressed Actress goes to ...

Neil Bartlett: Skin Lane

UK 2007, 344 pp., brochure, € 19.95
Kostenloser Versand ab 20 Euro Bestellwert.
At 47, Mr F's working life on London's Skin Lane is one governed by calm, precision and routine. So when he starts to have frightening, recurring nightmares, he does his best to ignore them. The images that appear in his dreams are disturbing - Mr F can't for the life of him think where they have come from. After all, he's perfectly ordinary middle-aged man. As London's crooked backstreets begin to swelter in the long, hot summer of 1967, Mr F's nightmare becomes an obsession. A chance encounter adds a face to the body that nightly haunts him, and the torments of his sweat-drenched nights lead him - and the reader - deeper into a labyrinth of rage, desire and shame. Part fairy-tale, part evocation of a lost London, Bartlett's 3rd novel is his fiercest piece of writing yet: cruel, erotic, and tender.

Nick Nolan: Strings Attached

USA 2006, 291 pp., brochure, € 17.40
Kostenloser Versand ab 20 Euro Bestellwert.
17 year-old Jeremy Tyler is the puppet of Tiffany, his alcoholic mother. But when she is forced to rehab, Jeremy moves from the slums to the cliff-top estate of Katherine Tyler and Bill Mortson. Stunned by the wealth surrounding him, Jeremy thinks he's landed in paradise until the couple begins dictating his every move. Jeremy tries to fit in with the elite of Ballena Beach High. He joins the swim team and dates exotic dancer Reed Banks - the girl he hopes will obliterate his attraction to boys. But Coby Carson, a calculating swim champ who mimics the All-American boy, has other plans for the besieged Jeremy, as does rebellious ranching scion Carlo Martinez. Pulled in so many directions, Jeremy seeks guidance from teen socialite Ellie O'Neal, and Arthur Blauefee, a mysteriously gifted man with a tragedy in his own past. But as Jeremy grows more comfortable with the veneer of a fabulous life, so grows his dissatisfaction.

Sarah Schulman: The Child

USA 2007, 282 pp., hardbound, € 22.59
Kostenloser Versand innerhalb Europas.
Structured like a classic novel of legal suspense, »The Child« explores what happens when Stew, a lonely 15-year-old boy, looks for and finds an adult boyfriend online. In short order his lover is arrested in an Internet pedophilia sting and Stew's world is turned upside down. He's exposed to his family and community, leaving the young outcast to fend for himself against forces intent on his destruction. Desperate, enraged, and confused, Stew commits murder in a panic. Sarah Schulman's novel considers the impact of these events on all those involved - from the parents of the murdered child, to Stew's staunchly Catholic parents and the attorneys working on his case. Carefully untangling the actions of an isolated teenager denied a natural outlet for his feelings during a critical time in his life, »The Child« hauntingly reflects isolation and the prejudices of culture and family.

Roberto C. Ferrari: Pierce

USA/UK 2007, 370 pp., brochure, € 19.99
Kostenloser Versand ab 20 Euro Bestellwert.
Graduate student Leo Vasari's life was shattered when his lover Matt died in a car accident. Matt comes from a tragic and dysfunctional past, and suffers demons that have haunted him since early childhood. Exactly one year after Matt's death, Millie, Matt's mother and Leo's close friend, tries to kill herself. Leo, still mourning his loss, must somehow unravel the mystery that lies at the heart of the troubled Pierce family. »Pierce« is about grief and rebirth, and moving on to love once more - but the only way Leo can do that is by finding out the true reasons for his lover's death. Leo struggles with his sadness and guilt as he searches for answers. Then he discovers dark family secrets never meant to see the light of day.

Edmund White: Chaos

USA 2007, 184 pp., hardbound, € 19.99
Kostenloser Versand ab 20 Euro Bestellwert.
What happens when a life implodes? When a respected older man, a product of the liberated 1970s, is incapable of cleaning up his act in the 21st century? When he pursues sex with a rabidity his body and his reputation can no longer sustain? Chaos results. In this novella White takes an unsparing look at gay midlife. Here, nostalgia has been banished. His funny, smart but never wise hero is living on the edge in a Chelsea where everyone around him is 30 or 40 years younger. This is not fiction devoted to the dim splendors and miseries of the past but rather to the unsettling, irresistible claims of the present. In three other long stories, »Record Time«, »Give It up for Billy«, and »A Good Sport«, White explores different aspects of aging, romance, and sex. Age has been one of the great taboos of gay culture, but here White, as iconoclastic as ever, writes about maturity with the same precision and insight he brought to adolescence in »A Boy's Own Story«.

Andrew Holleran: Grief

USA 2007, 150 pp., brochure, € 11.29
Kostenloser Versand ab 20 Euro Bestellwert.
The author of »Dancer from the Dance« captures the pain of a generation of gay men who have survived the AIDS epidemic and reached middle age yearning for fidelity, tenderness and intimacy. The unnamed, silver-haired narrator has just relocated from Florida, reeling from the recent death of his invalid mother. The exhausted, lonely professor comes to Washington to escape his previous life and to start teaching a college seminar on literature and AIDS. What he finds there - in his handsome, solitary landlord, in the city's somber mood and sepulchral architecture, and in the strange and impassioned letters and journals of Mary Todd Lincoln - are unexpected truths about America and loss. As he seeks to engage with the living world around him - a challenging student, the mother of a dead friend, even his landlord's neglected dog - he comes to realize that his relationship to his grief is very different from what he had thought.

Robert Rodi: When You Were Me

USA 2007, 426 pp., hardbound, € 19.20
Kostenloser Versand ab 20 Euro Bestellwert.
In his new novel, master satirist Rodi reveals it's not so easy to walk in someone else's shoes. All work and no play have made Jack Ackerly a dull boy. It's also made him very rich. Now, at age 53, he regrets devoting his youth to capitalism over hedonism. Alas he can't turn back time. But according to a self-styled »fusion witch« named Francesca, he can trade places with a willing participant. He just has to find a hot young stud ready to make the switch. Enter Corey Szaslo, 26, a jaded party boy whose life of sex, drugs, and barhopping has left him with no education, no career, no assets, and no prospects. Jumping into the skin of a retired milionaire seems a fair way out of this predicament, even if it means doubling his age and adding five inches to his waistline. As Corey, Jack prowls the gay meat market every night, racking up a string of conquests, while Corey, as Jack, is busy socialising, globe-trotting, and pushing his new middle-aged pecs at the gym. But their successfully swapped lives soon begin to come apart at the seams.