New in June: Steve Berman, Kate Worsley, Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, and David Margolick

Author: Edit Team

June 9, 2013

New Month! New books! June is here and with it a plethora of new LGBT titles—ranging from high adventure to romance.

Author David Margolick resurrects the life of gay cult writer John Horne Burns in the biography, Dreadful: The Short Life and Gay Times of John Horne Burns. Burns, a once renowned author whose popularity has been obscured by time, is given a full-throttled re-examination in Margolick’s thoughtful book.

From the publisher:

American author John Horne Burns (1916–1953) led a brief and controversial life, and as a writer, transformed many of his darkest experiences into literature. Burns was born in Massachusetts, graduated from Andover and Harvard, and went on to teach English at the Loomis School, a boarding school for boys in Windsor, Connecticut. During World War II, he was stationed in Africa and Italy, and worked mainly in military intelligence. His first novel, The Gallery (1947), based on his wartime experiences, is a critically acclaimed novel and one of the first to unflinchingly depict gay life in the military. The Gallery sold half a million copies upon publication, but never again would Burns receive that kind of critical or popular attention.

Dreadful follows Burns, from his education at the best schools to his final years of drinking and depression in Italy. With intelligence and insight, David Margolick examines Burns’ moral ambivalence toward the behavior of American soldiers stationed with him in Naples, and the scandal surrounding his second novel, Lucifer with a Book, an unflattering portrayal of his experiences at Loomis.

The heart is a lonely hunter, and just to drive the point home, Ig Publishing is releasing Damn Love, a new relationship-centered short story collection by Jasmine Beach-Ferrara.

From Ig Publishing:

Set in San Francisco and North Carolina, the linked stories in Damn Love introduce us to characters struggling with love in all its complicated forms, including a young doctor getting over a breakup with the help of a patient, a newly married gay man who reconnects with his estranged mother, a trio of physicists caught in a surprising love triangle, and a soldier who takes secrets with her to the Iraqi desert. Together, these stories report out from the fault lines of American life, uncertain territory where identity, risk, and desire co-mingle, and where reconciliation can be found in even the most flawed efforts to connect.

This month, take to the the seas with Kat Worsley’s new book She Rises (Bloomsbury):

It is 1740 and Louise Fletcher, a young dairymaid on an Essex farm, has been warned of the lure of the sea for as long as she can remember–after all, it stole away her father and brother. But when she is offered work in the bustling naval port of Harwich, as maid to a wealthy captain’s daughter, she leaps at the chance to see more of the world. There she meets Rebecca, her haughty young mistress, who is unlike anyone Louise has encountered before: as unexpected as she is fascinating.

15-year old Luke is drinking in a Harwich tavern when it is raided by His Majesty’s Navy. Unable to escape, Luke is beaten and press ganged and sent to sea on board the warship Essex. He must learn fast and choose his friends well if he is to survive the brutal hardships of a sailor’s life and its many dangers, both up high in the rigging and in the dark below decks.

Louise navigates her new life among the streets and crooked alleys of Harwich, where fine houses concealing smugglers’ tunnels are flooded by the Spring tides, and love burns brightly in the shadows. And Luke, aching for the girl he left behind and determined to one day find his way back to her, embarks on a long and perilous journey across the ocean.

The worlds they find are more dangerous and more exciting than they could ever have imagined, and when they collide the consequences are astonishing and irrevocable.

Rejoice speculative fiction lovers! This month sees the release of Wilde Stories 2013: The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction (Lethe Press) edited by Steve Berman.

From Lethe Press:

Lethe Press’s most acclaimed series—twice a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Best Queer Fantasy/Horror/Science Fiction—is Wilde Stories. Our crown jewel celebrates its sixth volume with some familiar names (Richard Bowes, Chaz Brenchley, and Hal Duncan, and ones perhaps unfamiliar, but no less imaginative and gifted (Rahul Kanakia, L. Lark, and Steve Vernon). Under one cover can be devoured stories of adolescents suffering growing pains in the midst of lake monsters, boyfriends seeking a safe pest-free shelter in an infested dystopian world, the most unique story of a boy and his dog/wolf ever written, a forbidden tryst between prison guard and (possibly dead) inmate, and a pirate ship encountering a fabled living island.

For a look at a very special father and daughter relationship be sure to check out Fairyland: A Memoir of  My Father (W. W Norton) by Aysia Abbott, “a memoir about growing up motherless in 1970s and ’80s San Francisco with an openly gay father.”

From the publisher:

After his wife dies in a car accident, bisexual writer and activist Steve Abbott moves with his two-year-old daughter to San Francisco. There they discover a city in the midst of revolution, bustling with gay men in search of liberation—few of whom are raising a child.

Steve throws himself into San Francisco’s vibrant cultural scene. He takes Alysia to raucous parties, pushes her in front of the microphone at poetry readings, and introduces her to a world of artists, thinkers, and writers. But the pair live like nomads, moving from apartment to apartment, with a revolving cast of roommates and little structure. As a child Alysia views her father as a loving playmate who can transform the ordinary into magic, but as she gets older Alysia wants more than anything to fit in. The world, she learns, is hostile to difference.

In Alysia’s teens, Steve’s friends—several of whom she has befriended—fall ill as AIDS starts its rampage through their community. While Alysia is studying in New York and then in France, her father tells her it’s time to come home; he’s sick with AIDS. Alysia must choose whether to take on the responsibility of caring for her father or continue the independent life she has worked so hard to create.

Reconstructing their life together from a remarkable cache of her father’s journals, letters, and writings, Alysia Abbott gives us an unforgettable portrait of a tumultuous, historic time in San Francisco as well as an exquisitely moving account of a father’s legacy and a daughter’s love.

Also this month, expect new releases from theater director Jack O’Brien, novelist Marshall Moore, and New York City mayoral hopeful Christine Quinn.

As always, if we missed an author or book, or if you have a book coming out next month, please email us.

 

Fiction

• Best Gay Stories 2013 by Steve Berman, Lethe Press
  
• Canary by Nancy Jo Cullen, Biblioasis
• Damn Love by Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, Ig Publishing
• Maxie Mainwaring, Lesbian Dilettante by Monica Nolan, Kensington
• She Rises by Kate  Worsley, Bloomsbury

 

Nonfiction

• Gender and Sexuality For Beginners edited by Jaimee Garbacik (Author) and Jeffrey Lewis (Illustrator), For Beginners
• In a Queer Voice: Journeys of Resilience from Adolescence to Adulthood by Michael Sadowski, Temple University Press
• A Little Gay History: Desire and Diversity Across the World by R.B. Parkinson, British Museum Press
• Love Into Light: The Gospel, The Homosexual and The Church by Peter Hubbard, Ambassador International
• Loving The L Word: The Complete Series in Focus edited by Dana Heller, I. B. Tauris
• The Marrying Kind?: Debating Same-Sex Marriage within the Lesbian and Gay Movement edited by Mary Bernstein and Verta Taylor, University of Minnesota Press
• To Eat: A Country House by Joe Eyck and Wayne Winterrowd, Farrar, Strauss Giroux  

LGBT Studies 

• Butch Queens Up in Pumps: Gender, Performance, and Ballroom Culture in Detroit by Marlon M. Bailey, University of Michigan Press
• Camp Sites: Sex, Politics, and Academic Style in Postwar America by Michael Trask, Stanford University Press
• Gay Men’s Relationships Across the Life Course  by Peter Robinson, Palgrave Macmillan
• Finding Out: An Introduction to LGBT Studies edited by Michelle A. Gibson, Jonathan Alexander, and Deborah T. Meem, Sage Publications
• How a Century of War Changed the Lives of Women: Work, Family and Liberation by Lindsey German, Pluto Press
• Mothering Queerly, Queering Motherhood: Resisting Monomaternalism in Adoptive, Lesbian, Blended, and Polygamous Families by Shelley M. Park, State University of New York Press
• The Radical Fiction of Ann Petry by Keith Clark,  Louisiana State University Press 
• The Same-Sex Unions Revolution in Western Democracies: International Norms and Domestic Policy Change by Kelly Kollman, Manchester University Press
• Queering Christianity: Finding a Place at the Table for LGBTQI Christians edited by Robert E. Shore-Goss, Thomas Bohache, Patrick S. Cheng, and Mona West, Praeger
• Theory on the Edge: Irish Studies and the Politics of Sexual Difference edited by Noreen Giffney and Margrit Shildrick, Palgrave Macmillan
• Just Queer Folks: Gender and Sexuality in Rural America by Colin R. Johnson, Temple University Press
• Women, Sexuality and the Political Power of Pleasure edited by Susie Jolly, Andrea Cornwall and Kate Hawkins, Zed Books
• Why Europe Is Lesbian and Gay Friendly (and Why America Never Will Be) edited by Angelia R. Wilson, State University of New York Press

 

Romance

• Broken Trails by D Jordan Redhawk, Bella Book
• Choices by Nancy Toder,  Spinsters Ink
• The Crush by Susan X Meagher, Brisk Press
• The Devil’s Orchard edited by Ali Vali, Bold Strokes Books
• Date With Destiny by Mason Dixon, Bold Strokes Books
• The Exchange by Nikki Rashan,  Urban Books
• Graceland by Ally Blue, Samhain Publishing
• Secrets and Shadows edited by L.T. Marie, Bold Strokes Books
•  West of Nowhere by KG MacGregor, Bella
• You Can’t Run From Love by Kate Snowdon, Bella

 

Erotica

• Beach Bums: Gay Erotic Fiction edited by Neil Plakcy, Cleis Press
• Boys of the Fast Lane: A Gay Erotic Novel edited by Zack, Bruno Gmunder Verlag Gmbh
• Wild Girls, Wild Nights: True Lesbian Sex Stories edited by Sacchi Green, Cleis Press

 

Speculative Fiction

• Bitter Orange by Marshall Moore, Signal 8 Press
• Change Horizons: Three Novellas by Gun Brooke, Bold Strokes Books
• The Healing & the Dying (Tooth and Claw) by L. A. Witt, Samhain Publishing
• The Plain of Bitter Honey by Alan Chin, Bold Strokes Books
• Species Zero: Incubus by Aaron Estes, Aaron Estes
• Wilde Stories 2013: The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction edited by Steve Berman, Lethe Press

 

Mystery/Thiller

• The Hardest Thing: A Dan Stagg Mystery  by James Lear, Cleis Press

 

Bio/Memoir 

• Dreadful: The Short Life and Gay Times of John Horne Burns by David Margolick, Other Press
• Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father by Alysia Abbott, W. W. Norton & Company
• The Great House by Christian Brechneff with Tim Lovejoy, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• A Heaven of Words by Glenway Wescott, University of Wisconsin
• Jack Be Nimble by Jack O’Brien, Farrar, Straus Giroux
• Passionate Commitments: The Lives of Anna Rochester and Grace Hutchins by Julia M. Allen, State University of New York Press
• Out In The Army: My Life As A Gay Soldier by James Wharton, Biteback
• With Patience and Fortitude: A Memoir by Christine Quinn, William Morrow

Poetry

• Brit Lit by D. Gilson, Sibling Rivalry Press
• Thunderbird by Jane Miller, Copper Canyon Press

 

Young Adult

• Bright Like Neon by Angelina Anderson, Topside Press
• Openly Straight by Bill Konigsberg, Scholastic

 

Art/Graphic Novel

• Catalina the Vintage Years by Catalina Photography, Bruno Gmunder Verlag Gmbh
• Le Gang Is Back by Citebeur, Bruno Gmunder Verlag Gmbh
• Wandering Son Volume 5 by Shimura Takako (Author) and Matt Thorn (Translator), Fantagraphics