A year ago Patrick Winter was in Namibia completing his military service. Now, during the its first free elections, Patrick has returned to the country he defended, the place where he fell in love for the first and only time. With the country poised to change forever, Patrick is forced to revisit his past and scale the wall that he has built around his painful memories of love and war, and loss.

Valencia is the fast-paced account of one girl's search for love and high times in the drama-filled dyke world of San Francisco's Mission District. Through a string of narrative moments, Tea records a year lived in a world of girls: there's knife-wielding Marta, who introduces Michelle to a new world of radical sex; Willa, Michelle's tormented poet-girlfriend; Iris, the beautiful boy-dyke who ran away from the South in a dust cloud of drama; and Iris's ex, Magdalena Squalor, to whom Michelle turns when Iris breaks her heart. Valencia conveys a blend of youthful urgency and apocalyptic apathy.

"...a passionate indictment of tyranny." --  The New Yorker Twice confiscated by Cuban authorities and rewritten from memory, this is Arenas' most celebrated novel  In this brilliant, apocalyptic vision of Castro's Cuba, we meet a young couple who leave the dreariness of Havana and spend six days at a small seaside retreat, where they hope to recapture the desire and carefree spirit that once united them. In a stunning juxtaposition of narrative voices, the wife recounts the grim reality of her marriage, the demands of motherhood, and her loss of freedom, innocence, and hope; while her husband, a disillusioned poet and disenchanted revolutionary, recalls his political struggles and laments the artistic and homosexual freedom that has been denied him. Rich in hallucination, myth and fantasy, Farewell to the Sea is a fierce and unforgettable work that speaks for the entire human condition.

Alternate cover edition for 9780802135162 This is the story of Jeanette, adopted and brought up by her mother as one of God's elect. Zealous and passionate, she seems destined for life as a missionary, but then she falls for one of her converts. At sixteen, Jeanette decides to leave the church, her home and her family, for the young woman she loves. Innovative, punchy and tender, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a few days ride into the bizarre outposts of religious excess and human obsession.

This is the first English translation of Liane de Pougy’s 1901 novel A Woman’s Affair (Idylle Saphique) which shocked French readers with its lesbian lover story, and is based on Liane de Pougy’s affair with Natalie Barney. Despite her beauty and her riches, Annhine de Lys, one of the most notorious courtesans of 1890s Paris, is bored and restless. Into her life bursts Flossie, a young American woman, and everything changes. The love she offers Annhine is dangerous, perverse and hard to resist. Ignoring the warnings of her best friend, Annhine encourages the affair. Yet she cannot commit: she advances, retreats, becomes bewildered, ill. After a tragic incident at a masked ball, Annhine leaves Paris to make a long tour through Europe. But the attempt to put time and distance between them comes to nothing and the fateful relationship must run its course.

Don't Go Back To Sleep answers the Sufi call to wake up to this life in the here and now where ecstasy serves its summons, inviting us to break out of the mundane quotidian. Timothy Liu winds the clock back to the Nanking Massacre in 1937, then traces its consequences on his family of origin, his mother's mental illness, his father's religious fundamentalism, and Liu's obsessive search for love. As trauma begets trauma the poems slowly accrete, and Liu takes on a legacy of poetic witness where carnal violence ultimately turns to spiritual joy.

Outsider Classics is Dead Ink's resurrection ground for the strange, the silenced, and the outcasts. This series exhumes lost literary voices that were ahead of their time to restore them to the cult status they always deserved. From forgotten masterpieces to once-censored provocations, each title is a reaction against the canon curated for readers who want to stray into the margins and away from the mainstream. Dick and Reggie are 'leather boys', working-class London teens with an affinity for leather jackets and motorcycles who become friends through their involvement in a gang. For Dick, the money he gets from the gang's thefts helps to support his ailing grandmother; for Reggie, membership in the gang provides relief from an unhappy home life and a loveless marriage. When Reggie decides to leave his unfaithful wife and move in with Dick, the two soon discover their feelings for each other are much stronger than mere friendship. As they make plans for their future together, will they find the happiness they seek, or is their love doomed to end in tragedy? The first novel to offer an authentic portrayal of love between ordinary, working-class young men, Gillian Freeman's The Leather Boys is a groundbreaking classic of gay fiction that remains moving and compelling today. Freeman's novel and its 1964 film adaptation played a vital part in liberalizing British attitudes towards homosexuality.

Prior to Melvin Dixon’s death from AIDS in 1992 when he was on the verge of breaking out as an acclaimed novelist, his talent was compared to that of Toni Morrison and James Baldwin. In Vanishing Rooms, the author amply demonstrates his literary promise with a compelling love story of interracial sex and urban violence set in Manhattan’s West Village in the 1970s.

“I was two percent into Bad Words when I realized I was reading something special, the rare kind of book that not only treads new, fresh territory but does so in a way that feels startlingly inevitable. The kind of book I can’t believe doesn’t already exist, because it is just so right, so the thing I’ve been waiting for. It’s also a book that could only ever have been written by Rioghnach Robinson, whose clear, clever voice and incisive social commentary elevate the book’s punchy premise and irresistible will-they-won’t-they romance to a once-in-a-lifetime read about truth, art, vulnerability and all the sticky places they intersect. Bad Words left me buzzing.” — Emily Henry, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Great Big Beautiful Life Bad Words follows Parker Navarro, whose debut was snapped up in a million-dollar deal and pegged to be the book of the year—until notorious City Magazine critic Selina Chan tore it apart, turning it into the decade’s biggest flop. Now, four years later, Parker’s second novel is about to drop, and he’s desperate for redemption. But when Selina’s brutal new review goes viral, history repeats itself, and a fiery, very public blowout between them at a publishing party turns them into instant enemies of the literary world. As their feud plays out through snarky interviews and tense convention run-ins, their jabs about writing, criticism, and who gets to lead an artist’s life start to give way to the realization they might be more like-minded than they thought. While the feud carries on in public, a different conversation is taking place in private, especially after they're thrust together for one snowy New York evening and begin an epistolary communication that starts to feel a lot like flirting.

In a house trailer in the rural South, a married, Vietnam veteran, addicted to pharmaceuticals, haunted by memories of the past is on the brink of collapse. Just when he thinks the dream of another life is over, the unspeakable happens. He falls in love with a frail, ghostly younger man who reminds him of youth, beauty, and the possibility of a life beyond the prison he has created for himself. A Scarecrow's Bible is about what happens when love occurs at the most unexpected moment. It is the story of how working-class men and women in a small town adapt to changes that somehow seem impossible. It is a novel of hope and transformation that challenges our ideas about diversity and social change, all the way breaking our hearts.

In 1970s Mississippi, a Black detective and his temporary partner are assigned to a case that shifts from murder to paranormal conspiracy with life-altering repercussions.Wenton, Mississippi: A man enters the bathroom of a local gay bar and doesn't come back out. Instead he's found cold, on the floor, and facing the wall. And no one seems to know how this happened.Samuel Barkley is Wenton's only Black detective. Assigned to the case, Samuel's one goal is to keep his head down with eyes on moving up in the police ranks. But it's not easy with Harvey, a new, temporary partner who Samuel can't seem to like...or hate. Nor with the cold, questioning eyes and fake smiles from those in town. Persistent. Judging. Wrong. Samuel is reaching his breaking point.As his investigation leads him to a curious plane crash cover-up, Samuel's placid existence is turned on its head. Because what crashed in Wenton isn't a plane. There are others here. They like it here. And if Samuel can't stop them, they will find a way to stay.With shades of The X-Files and S. A. Cosby, There Used to Be People Here deftly explores race, queerness, and existing as other in a society that demonizes everything different.

Outsider Classics is Dead Ink's resurrection ground for the strange, the silenced, and the outcasts. This series exhumes lost literary voices that were ahead of their time to restore them to the cult status they always deserved. From forgotten masterpieces to once-censored provocations, each title is a reaction against the canon curated for readers who want to stray into the margins and away from the mainstream. Dick and Reggie are 'leather boys', working-class London teens with an affinity for leather jackets and motorcycles who become friends through their involvement in a gang. For Dick, the money he gets from the gang's thefts helps to support his ailing grandmother; for Reggie, membership in the gang provides relief from an unhappy home life and a loveless marriage. When Reggie decides to leave his unfaithful wife and move in with Dick, the two soon discover their feelings for each other are much stronger than mere friendship. As they make plans for their future together, will they find the happiness they seek, or is their love doomed to end in tragedy? The first novel to offer an authentic portrayal of love between ordinary, working-class young men, Gillian Freeman's The Leather Boys is a groundbreaking classic of gay fiction that remains moving and compelling today. Freeman's novel and its 1964 film adaptation played a vital part in liberalizing British attitudes towards homosexuality.

A dazzling tale of one young man's emotional and sexual awakening in a small Oklahoma town--"colorful, rich . . . a near perfect tale, and a compelling alternative to the spate of gay epics that have lately inundated readers" (Kirkus Review).

A compelling and timely debut novel following two Black men tasked with overseeing the destruction and gentrification of the predominantly Black neighborhoods surrounding Atlanta before the 1996 Olympics.The Fantasies of Future Things follows two Black men working for the real estate development company responsible for the revitalization of Summerhill in Atlanta, Georgia, for the 1996 Olympics. But Summerhill is a predominantly Black neighborhood, and real estate agents Jacob and Daniel know that “revitalization” is code for “gentrification”—which means they will be tasked with displacing people from their own community. Brooklyn-born Jacob, a recent Morehouse graduate, is armed with the hopes of his parents and has big dreams about the life he should be living. Daniel, a native of Atlanta, is tired, angry, and disillusioned with his career and ready for a change. While different in many ways, Jacob and Daniel are coming to grips with many of the same accepting their sexuality, dealing with the pressures of family, wrestling with the conflicting morality of their jobs, and coping with the daily trauma that comes with being Black in America. As we follow the parallel journeys of these two men, and in the face of towering obstacles, Jacob and Daniel must decide what they are willing to do for themselves and for their communities. This lacerating, bold, and moving novel deftly explores our need for intimacy and the harm of internalized homophobia, the relationships Black men have with family and each other, and the restrictive masculinity so often required of them.