An Entertainment Weekly "Best Romance Novels of Spring 2023" Pick! One last summer.  For Manuela del Carmen Caceres Galvan, the invitation to show her paintings at the 1889 Exposition Universelle came at the perfect time. Soon to be trapped in a loveless marriage, Manuela has given herself one last summer of freedom—in Paris, with her two best friends.  One scandalous encounter. Cora Kempf Bristol, Duchess of Sundridge, is known for her ruthlessness in business. It's not money she chases, but power. When she sees the opportunity to secure her position among her rivals, she does not hesitate. How difficult could it be to convince the mercurial Miss Caceres Galvan to part with a parcel of land she’s sworn never to sell? One life-changing bargain. Tempted by Cora’s offer, Manuela proposes a her beloved land for a summer with the duchess in her corner of Paris. A taste of the wild, carefree world that will soon be out of her reach. What follows thrills and terrifies Cora, igniting desires the duchess long thought dead. As they fill their days indulging in a shared passion for the arts and their nights with dark and delicious deeds, the happiness that seemed impossible moves within reach…though claiming it would cause the greatest scandal Paris has seen in decades.

An unflinching story about Arab masculinity and homoeroticism Furat, a Syrian in his early 20s, visits Sibki Park in Damascus, one of the city’s most popular cruising areas. There he learns about the hammams, secret meeting places for gay men located throughout the old city. Inside these public baths, the air is thick with the scent of bay laurel soap, and naked men hide in the steam. Furat faces sometimes violent disapproval from all levels of society—regime, religion, the man in the street—and yet he manages to find the love he’s been seeking just before his world collapses and he’s forced to flee. Selamlik is the story of Furat’s journey, along with that of other refugees. It’s a journey in which they face physical and economic hardship, draconian migration laws, and the unwelcome grief, shame, and hatred they’ve carried with them from their ever more distant pasts. Despite everything, Furat remains steadfast in his pursuit of passion, pleasure, and love.

Gay & Lesbian Studies, Homosexuality, Women's Studies

There hasn’t been a winner of the Miss Meteor beauty pageant who looks like Lita Perez or Chicky Quintanilla in all its history. But that’s not the only reason Lita wants to enter the contest, or why her ex-best friend Chicky wants to help her. The road to becoming Miss Meteor isn’t about being perfect; it’s about sharing who you are with the world—and loving the parts of yourself no one else understands. So to pull off the unlikeliest underdog story in pageant history, Lita and Chicky are going to have to forget the past and imagine a future where girls like them are more than enough—they are everything. Witty and heartfelt with characters that leap off the page, Miss Meteor is acclaimed authors Anna-Marie McLemore and Tehlor Kay Mejia’s first book together.

A candid and captivating memoir from award-winning and beloved actress Kelly Bishop, spanning her six decades in show business from Broadway to Hollywood with A Chorus Line, Dirty Dancing, Gilmore Girls, and much more.Kelly Bishop’s long, storied career has been defined by landmark achievements, from winning a Tony Award for her turn in the original Broadway cast of A Chorus Line to her memorable performance as Jennifer Grey’s mother in Dirty Dancing. But it is probably her iconic role as matriarch Emily in the modern classic Gilmore Girls that cemented her legacy. Now, Bishop reflects on her remarkable life and looks towards the future with The Third Gilmore Girl. She shares some of her greatest stories and the life lessons she’s learned on her journey. From her early transition from dance to drama, to marrying young to a compulsive gambler, to the losses and achievements she experienced—among them marching for women’s rights and losing her second husband to cancer—Bishop offers a rich, genuine celebration of her life. Full of witty insights and featuring a special collection of personal and professional photographs, The Third Gilmore Girlis a warm, unapologetic, and spirited memoir from a woman who has left indelible impressions on her audiences for decades and has no plans on slowing down.

Burning Butch is the courageous story of a trans / non-binary butch on a quest to survive conservative, religious, American culture while questioning if there is room in their heart for the traditional faith they were raised with, and what it means to come home again. When divorce moves young Rebecca Mertz away from rural Pennsylvania and their abusive father, Mertz and their mother find a new life in a conservative Catholic subculture outside of Washington, D.C. There, Mertz's adolescence is dominated by fundamentalist Catholicism. Life becomes God, saints, and babies – except, of course, for the showtunes they latch onto, voices that permeate their childhood boundaries, singing about different worlds. Mertz spends their childhood split between Pennsylvania, and Maryland – between mother and father, between Catholic homeschooling and secular Americana, between safety and violence, between their real life and the "world" they keep being warned against. It’s in homeschooling that Mertz learns what good, Catholic values are: anti-feminist, pro-life; anti-queer, pro-Jesus. The more babies, the better, so as to prove a stronger devotion to God. In an attempt to get away from their father, to interrogate their faith, and to repress the growing feelings Mertz has about a woman in their community, Mertz chooses the Franciscan University of Steubenville, a conservative Catholic school in Ohio. As Mertz comes of age at an oppressive, gender-dependent Catholic college in the early aughts, they grapple with attractions, sexual encounters, and relationships with friends and teachers – men and women whom they trust and admire, who romantically engage with them while in the same breath renounce the sacrilege of Mertz’s identity. Ever the outcast during their college years despite their affinity and aptitude for poetry, Mertz is forced to face their sexuality and what it might mean within the confines of their strict faith. As Mertz struggles to navigate this repressive environment, and questions what role they could play in this community, the vulnerable identity they create begins to threaten the life they know in potentially irreversible ways.

A story of idealism, activism, and systemic corruption, centered on a naïve young woman’s quest for agency in a world ravaged by climate change. Willa Marks has spent her whole life choosing hope. She chooses hope over her parents’ paranoid conspiracy theories, over her dead-end job, over the rising ocean levels. And when she meets Sylvia Gill, renowned Harvard professor, she feels she’s found the justification of that hope. Sylvia is the woman-in-black: the only person smart and sharp enough to compel the world to action. But when Sylvia betrays her, Willa fears she has lost hope forever. And then she finds a book in Sylvia’s library: a guide to fighting climate change called Living the Solution. Inspired by its message and with nothing to lose, Willa flies to the island of Eleutheria in the Bahamas to join the author and his group of ecowarriors at Camp Hope. Upon arrival, things are not what she expected. The group’s leader, author Roy Adams, is missing, and the compound’s public launch is delayed. With time running out, Willa will stop at nothing to realize Camp Hope’s mission—but at what cost? A VINTAGE ORIGINAL

‘For a very long time, the days went by, each just like the day before, then I began to think, and everything changed’ Deep underground, thirty-nine women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only vague recollection of their lives before. As the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl - the fortieth prisoner - sits alone and outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground.

Annie John is a haunting and provocative story of a young girl growing up on the island of Antigua. A classic coming-of-age story in the tradition of The Catcher in the Rye and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Kincaid's novel focuses on a universal, tragic, and often comic theme: the loss of childhood. An adored only child, Annie has until recently lived an idyllic life. She is inseparable from her beautiful mother, a powerful presence, who is the very center of the little girl's existence. Loved and cherished, Annie grows and thrives within her mother's benign shadow. Looking back on her childhood, she reflects, "It was in such a paradise that I lived." When she turns twelve, however, Annie's life changes, in ways that are often mysterious to her. She begins to question the cultural assumptions of her island world; at school she instinctively rebels against authority; and most frighteningly, her mother, seeing Annie as a "young lady," ceases to be the source of unconditional adoration and takes on the new and unfamiliar guise of adversary. At the end of her school years, Annie decides to leave Antigua and her family, but not without a measure of sorrow, especially for the mother she once knew and never ceases to mourn. "For I could not be sure," she reflects, "whether for the rest of my life I would be able to tell when it was really my mother and when it was really her shadow standing between me and the rest of the world."