New in June: Brontez Purnell, Janet Mock, Christopher Bollen, and Roxane Gay

Author: Edit Team

June 7, 2017

New month, new books!

Writer Roxane Gay’s long-awaited memoir Hunger (Harper) is a candid exploration of the writer’s relationship with food and trauma.

From the publisher:

New York Times bestselling author Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and bodies, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. As a woman who describes her own body as “wildly undisciplined,” Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care. In Hunger, she casts an insightful and critical eye on her childhood, teens, and twenties—including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life—and brings readers into the present and the realities, pains, and joys of her daily life.

In his new novel, Since I Laid My Burden Down (Feminist Press), irreverent writer Brontez Purnell details one young man’s riotous coming of age in 1980s Alabama.

From the publisher:

DeShawn lives a high, creative, and promiscuous life in San Francisco. But when he’s called back to his cramped Alabama hometown for his uncle’s funeral, he’s hit by flashbacks of handsome, doomed neighbors and sweltering Sunday services. Amidst prickly reminders of his childhood, DeShawn ponders family, church, and the men in his life, prompting the question: Who deserves love?

Author Christopher Bollen’s latest novel, The Destroyers (Harper) is a masterful thriller that examines friendship, familial strife, and the intoxicating thrall of wealth and power:

Arriving on the Greek island of Patmos broke and humiliated, Ian Bledsoe is fleeing the emotional and financial fallout from his father’s death. His childhood friend Charlie—rich, exuberant, and basking in the success of his new venture on the island—could be his last hope.

At first Patmos appears to be a dream—long sun-soaked days on Charlie’s yacht and the reappearance of a girlfriend from Ian’s past—and Charlie readily offers Ian the lifeline he so desperately needs. But, like Charlie himself, this beautiful island conceals a darkness beneath, and it isn’t long before the dream begins to fragment. When Charlie suddenly vanishes, Ian finds himself caught up in deception after deception. As he grapples with the turmoil left in his friend’s wake, he is reminded of an imaginary game called Destroyers they played as children—a game, he now realizes, they may have never stopped playing.

Activist and author Janet Mock’s new book, Surpassing Certainty: What My Twenties Taught Me (Atria Books), is a snapshot of the author’s turbulent young adulthood:

Riveting, rousing, and utterly real, Surpassing Certainty is a portrait of a young woman searching for her purpose and place in the world—without a road map to guide her.

The journey begins a few months before her twentieth birthday. Janet Mock is adjusting to her days as a first-generation college student at the University of Hawaii and her nights as a dancer at a strip club. Finally content in her body, she vacillates between flaunting and concealing herself as she navigates dating and disclosure, sex and intimacy, and most important, letting herself be truly seen. Under the neon lights of Club Nu, Janet meets Troy, a yeoman stationed at Pearl Harbor naval base, who becomes her first. The pleasures and perils of their union serve as a backdrop for Janet’s progression through her early twenties with all the universal growing pains—falling in and out of love, living away from home, and figuring out what she wants to do with her life.

In her new novel, Marriage of a Thousand Lies (Soho Press), Lambda Literary Fellow SJ Sindu maps one woman’s struggles in navigating love, tradition, and family life:

Lucky and her husband, Krishna, are gay. They present an illusion of marital bliss to their conservative Sri Lankan–American families, while each dates on the side. It’s not ideal, but for Lucky, it seems to be working. She goes out dancing, she drinks a bit, she makes ends meet by doing digital art on commission. But when Lucky’s grandmother has a nasty fall, Lucky returns to her childhood home and unexpectedly reconnects with her former best friend and first lover, Nisha, who is preparing for her own arranged wedding with a man she’s never met.

As the connection between the two women is rekindled, Lucky tries to save Nisha from entering a marriage based on a lie. But does Nisha really want to be saved? And after a decade’s worth of lying, can Lucky break free of her own circumstances and build a new life? Is she willing to walk away from all that she values about her parents and community to live in a new truth? As Lucky—an outsider no matter what choices she makes—is pushed to the breaking point, Marriage of a Thousand Lies offers a vivid exploration of a life lived at a complex intersection of race, sexuality, and nationality. The result is a profoundly American debut novel shot through with humor and loss, a story of love, family, and the truths that define us all.

If you are looking to pick up some last minute beach reads, check out these new fiction titles from Nick White, Julia Glass, and Sean Eads.

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

Fiction

A House Among the Trees: A Novel by Julia Glass, Pantheon
American Family: A Novel by Catherine Marshall-Smith, She Writes Press
The Clothesline Swing by Ahmad Danny Ramadan, Nightwood
Cottonmouths: A Novel by Kelly J. Ford, Skyhorse Publishing
How to Survive a Summer: A Novel by Nick White, Blue Rider Press
Marriage of a Thousand Lies by SJ Sindu, Soho Press
Room for Milk: Doodles by Cole Escola, Marion Street Press
Since I Laid My Burden Down by Brontez Purnell, Feminist Press
Something Beautiful by Amanda Gernentz Hanson, Pen Name Publishing

Nonfiction

Any Other Way: How Toronto Got Queer edited by John Lorinc, Jane Farrow, & Stephanie Chambers,Coach House Books
Beyond Trans: Does Gender Matter? by Heath Fogg Davis, NYU Press
The Gay Man’s Guide to Open and Monogamous Marriage by Michael Dale Kimmel, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Identity: In & Beyond the Binary by Dave Naz, Rare Bird Books
LGBT: San Francisco: The Daniel Nicoletta Photographs by Daniel Nicoletta, Reel Art Press
The Life and Death of ACT UP/LA: Anti-AIDS Activism in Los Angeles from the 1980s to the 2000s by Benita Roth, Cambridge University Press
Live Through This: Surviving the Intersections of Sexuality, God, and Race by Clay Cane, Cleis Press
Queer City: Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day by Peter Ackroyd, Chatto & Windus
Reflections on Female and Trans* Masculinities and Other Queer Crossings edited by Nina Kane & Jude Woods, Cambridge Scholars Publishing

LGBT Studies

Anti-Gender Campaigns in Europe: Mobilizing against Equality edited by Roman Kuhar & David Paternotte, Rowman & Littlefield International
Female Trouble: A Queer Film Classic by Chris Holmlund, Arsenal Pulp Press
Inclusion in the American Military: A Force for Diversity edited by David Rohall, Morten G. Ender, & Michael D. Matthews, Lexington Books
Marginal Bodies, Trans Utopias by Caterina Nirta, Routledge
Queer People of Color in Higher Education by Joshua Moon Johnson & Gabriel Javier, Information Age Publishing
Queering The Terminator: Sexuality and Cyborg Cinema by David Greven, Bloomsbury Academic
Shame: A Genealogy of Queer Practices in the 19th Century by Bogdan Popa, Edinburgh University Press
Transgender Athletes in Competitive Sport edited by Eric Anderson & Ann Travers, Routledge
Transgender Psychoanalysis: A Lacanian Perspective on Sexual Difference by Patricia Gherovici, Routledge

Young Adult and Children’s

Grrrls on the Side by Carrie Park, Duet
His Frozen Fingertips by Charlotte Bowyer, Koehler Books
Motor Crush by Brenden Fletcher, Image Comics
My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness by Kabi Nagata, Seven Seas
Riding with Brighton by Haven Francis, Harmony Ink Press
Thirteen Mercies, Three Kills by Liv Olteano, Harmony Ink Press
When You Look Out the Window: How Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin Built a Community by Gayle E. Pitman, Magination Press

Romance

A Night with the Knight of the Burning Pestle: Full of Mirth and Delight by Julie Bozza, Libratiger
Back to You by Chris Scully, Riptide Publishing
Blind Ride by BA Tortuga, Pride Publishing
Captured Soul by Laydin Michaels, Bold Strokes Books
Chasing Mercury by Kimberly Cooper Griffin, Skeetie B’s
Crossing the Wide Forever by Missouri Va, Bold Strokes Books
Fake It Till You Make It by M. Ullrich, Bold Strokes Books
The French Way by Mary M Wright, Sapphire Books Publishing
Girls Next Door edited by Sandy Lowe & Stacia Seaman, Bold Strokes Books
More Than a Song by Chris Paynter, Companion Publications
On Point (Out of Uniform) by Annabeth Albert, Carina Press
The Practitioner by Ronica Black, Bold Strokes Books
Shadow Haven by AJ Schippers, Ylva Publishing
Unlikely Match by Fiona Riley, Bold Strokes Books
Water’s Edge by Genevieve Fortin, Bella Books
Where Love Leads by Erin McKenzie, Bold Strokes Books