New in July: David Rakoff, Thomas Glave, Annie Rachele Lanzillotto, and Georgeann Packard

Author: Edit Team

July 2, 2013

New Month! New books!

This July, almost a year after his passing, Doubleday is posthumously releasing David Rakoff’s first full length novel Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish. The never-before-published book is an expansive, humane, and witty examination of twentieth century America.

From the publisher:

Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish: A Novel leaps cities and decades as Rakoff sings the song of an America whose freedoms can be intoxicating, or brutal.

The characters’ lives are linked to each other by acts of generosity or cruelty. A daughter of Irish slaughterhouse workers in early-twentieth-century Chicago faces a desperate choice; a hobo offers an unexpected refuge on the rails during the Great Depression; a vivacious aunt provides her clever nephew a path out of the crushed dream of postwar Southern California; an office girl endures the casually vicious sexism of 1950s Manhattan; the young man from Southern California revels in the electrifying sexual and artistic openness of 1960s San Francisco, then later tends to dying friends and lovers as the AIDS pandemic devastates the community he cherishes; a love triangle reveals the empty materialism of the Reagan years; a marriage crumbles under the distinction between self-actualization and humanity; as the new century opens, a man who has lost his way finds a measure of peace in a photograph he discovers in an old box—an image of pure and simple joy that unites the themes of this brilliantly conceived work.

Thomas Glave fans rejoice! This month sees the release of the O. Henry award-winning author’s new collection, Among the Bloodpeople (Akashic Books). Glave’s new essay collection lyrically mines both the political and the erotic.

From Akashic Books:

Thomas Glave has been admired for his unique style and exploration of taboo, politically volatile topics. The award-winning author’s new collection, Among the Bloodpeople, contains all the power and daring of his earlier writing but ventures even further into the political, the personal, and the secret.

Each essay in the volume reveals a passionate commitment to social justice and human truth. Whether confronting Jamaica’s prime minister on antigay bigotry, contemplating the risks and seductions of “outlawed” sex, exploring a world of octopuses and men performing somersaults in the Caribbean Sea, or challenging repressive tactics employed at the University of Cambridge, Glave expresses the observations of a global citizen with the voice of a poet.

This month, readers can explore themes of collapsed faith and redemption with Georgeann Packard’s new book Paint the Bird (Permanent Press):

The Reverend Sarah Obadias is broken, bitter and stripped of the reassurance of faith when she walks into a West Village restaurant in Manhattan. Here she encounters Abraham Darby, a rumpled but well-regarded painter who seduces the minister into his life of excess and emotional intensity. “I’ve run away from my life,” Sarah tells him. “I know,” Darby replies. “take mine.” But for Sarah, each day with the artist will bring a new reality, or lack of it.

Dancing through the novel is the mystical Yago, the gay son of Darby and the Costa Rican painter Alejandra Morales Diaz. But Alejandra’s appearance further discomposes Sarah, and Yago provides no calm or clarity when she encounters him: “It’s all bizarre, surreal. Finally she draws closer to Yago, intending to caress him in some horrible mix of mothering and lust.”

Bloodlines becomes squiggles and unreliable as the novel explores the ever-changing relationship between fathers and sons and what constitutes a family[….]

Bi: Notes for a Bisexual Revolution (Seal Press), by Shiri Eisner, delves into the current state of bisexual culture and the potential political force bisexuality infers:

[Eisner’s book] takes a long overdue, comprehensive look at bisexual politics—from the issues surrounding biphobia/monosexism, feminism, and transgenderism to the practice of labeling those who identify as bi as either “too bisexual” (promiscuous and incapable of fidelity) or “not bisexual enough” (not actively engaging romantically or sexually with people of at least two different genders). In this forward-thinking and eye-opening book, feminist bisexual and genderqueer activist Shiri Eisner takes readers on a journey through the many aspects of the meanings and politics of bisexuality, specifically highlighting how bisexuality can open up new and exciting ways of challenging social convention.

Also this month, expect new poetry collections from Annie Rachele Lanzillotto and Jane Miller.

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

Fiction

Bruceville by Robyn Vinten, Tollington Press
The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy by James Purdy, W. W. Norton & Company
Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish: A Novel by David Rakoff, Doubleday
Paint the Bird by Georgean Parkard, Permanent Press
The Old Arbutus Tree by Leigh Matthews, Leigh Matthews
On the Come Up: A Novel, Based on a True Story by Hannah Weyer, Nan A. Talese
Return to Lesbos (Femmes Fatales) byValerie Taylor, The Feminist Press at CUNY
Where thy Dark Eye Glances: Queering Edgar Allan Poe edited by Steve Berman, Lethe Press
A Vision of Angels by Timothy Jay Smith, Owl Canyon Press

Nonfiction

Among the Bloodpeople: Politics and Flesh by Thomas Glave, Akashic Books
Don’t Be So Gay!: Queers, Bullying, and Making Schools Safe edited by Donn Short, UBC Press
Love Into Light: The Gospel, The Homosexual and The Church by Peter Hubbard, Ambassador International
Oscar Wilde in America: The Interviews by Oscar Wilde, Matthew Hofer (Editor), and Gary Scharnhorst (Editor), University of Illinois Press
Queens of Noise: The Real Story of the Runaways by Evelyn McDonnell, Da Capo Press
Song After All: The Letters of Reginald Shepherd and Alan Contreras by Alan L. Contreras, Reginald Shepherd, Robert Philen , Evan Eisenberg, and Fernando Pessoa, Crane Dance Publications

LGBT Studies

Beyond Race, Sex, and Sexual Orientation: Legal Equality without Identity by Sonu Bedi, Cambridge University Press
Bi: Notes for a Bisexual Revolution by Shiri Eisner, Seal Press
Europe’s 1968: Voices of Revolt edited by Robert Gildea, James Mark, and Anette Warring, Oxford University Press
The Desiring-Image: Gilles Deleuze and Contemporary Queer Cinema by Nick Davis, Oxford University Press
Dressing Constitutionally: Hierarchy, Sexuality, and Democracy from Our Hairstyles to Our Shoes by Ruthann Robson, Cambridge University Press
Gentlemen’s Disagreement: Alfred Kinsey, Lewis Terman, and the Sexual Politics of Smart Men by Peter Hegarty, University Of Chicago Press
Sexual Identities and the Media by Kathleen Battles and Wendy Hilton-Morrow, Routeledge
Romanticism, Gender, and Violence: Blake to George Sodini by Nowell Marshall, Bucknell University Press

Romance

At Seventeen by Gerri Hill, Bella Books
Back to Blue by Dillon Wotson, Bella Books
But My Boyfriend Is by K A Mitchell, Samhain Publishing
Does She Love You? by Rachel Spangler, Bold Strokes Books
Code of Honor by Radclyffe, Bold Strokes Books
Laughter in the Wind by SL Harris, Bella Books
The Rarest Rose by I. Beacham, Bold Strokes Books
The Road to Her by KE Payne, Bold Strokes Books
The Truth about Riley by Henrietta Clarke, BK Publishing Trust
Shadows of Something Rea l by Sophia Kell Hagin, Bold Strokes Books

Erotica

Daddy Knows Best: Gay Erotic Stories edited by Winston Gieseke, Bruno Gmunder Verlag Gmbh
Steam Bath: Sweaty Gay Erotica edited by Shane Allison, Cleis Press

Speculative Fiction

Big Bad Wolf by Logan Zachary, Bold Strokes Books
Carniepunk by Rachel Caine, Rob Thurman, Kevin Hearne, Seanan McGuire, Jennifer Estep, Allison Pang, Kelly Gay, Delilah S. Dawson and Kelly Meding, Gallery Books
Dust Devil on a Quiet Street by Richard Bowes, Lethe Press