Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in LGBTQ+

We know Will as a multi-platinum recording artist, Olivier-nominee and the first winner of the Idol franchise. But his story began long before his first audition. Looking back on a world where growing up being called gay was the ultimate insult and coming out after a lifetime of hiding his sexuality, Will explores the long-lasting impact repressing his true self has had. Here you will find a friend, champion and mentor, breaking taboos with frank honesty and offering invaluable practical advice on overcoming the difficult issues too often faced within the LGBTQ+ community.

Lux has lost everything when Else finds her, alone in the woods. Her family, her lover, her home—all burned. The world is suspicious of women like her, neither maiden nor mother. But Lux is cunning; she knows how to exploit people's expectations, how to blend into the background. And she knows a lot about poisons. Else has not found Lux by accident. She needs her help to seek revenge against the man who wronged her, and together they pursue him north. But on their hunt they will uncover dark secrets that entangle them with dangerous adversaries.

A smog has spread. Food crops are disappearing. A chef escapes her career in London to take a job at a decadent mountaintop colony seemingly free of the world's troubles. There, her enigmatic employer and his visionary daughter have built a lush new life for the global elite, one that reawakens the chef to the pleasures of taste, touch and her own body. In this atmosphere of hidden wonders and seductive violence, the chef's boundaries undergo a thrilling erosion. Soon she is pushed to the center of a startling attempt to reshape the world far beyond the plate.

In this funny, poignant and unflinchingly honest memoir, one of the world's best-loved storytellers explains how he evolved from a conservative son of the Old South into a gay rights pioneer whose novels inspired millions to claim their own lives. It is a journey that leads him from the racism and misogyny of midcentury North Carolina to a homoerotic navy initiation ceremony in the jungles of Vietnam to an awkward conversation about girls with President Richard Nixon in the Oval Office of the White House.

Grace has what one might call a 'full and interesting life', which is code for not married and has no kids. Her life is the envy of her straight friends, but all this time she has been waiting in secret for love to hit her so hard that she would run out of breath, like the way a wave in a rough sea bowls you over, slams you into the sand and nearly drowns you.

June 28, 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, which is considered the most significant event in the gay liberation movement, and the catalyst for the modern fight for LGBTQ rights in the United States. Drawing from the New York Public Library's archives, The Stonewall Reader is a collection of first accounts, diaries, periodic literature, and articles from LGBTQ magazines and newspapers that documented both the years leading up to and the years following the riots.

From the moment he began writing his syndicated sex-advice column, "Savage Love", Dan Savage has never been shy about expressing his opinion on controversial topics - political or otherwise. In the height of his activism, he addresses issues ranging from parenting and the gay agenda to the Catholic Church and health care. Speaking to a broad range of subjects with brutal honesty and irreverent humor, American Savage is a pivotal piece that cements Dan Savage’s place as a provocative and insightful voice in American culture.

At first, America knew the only child of Sonny and Cher as Chastity, the cherubic little girl who appeared on her parents' TV show. In later years, she became famous for coming out on a national stage, working with two major organizations toward LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) rights and publishing two books. And just within the past 18 months, Chaz Bono has entered the public consciousness as the most high-profile transgender person ever.

Thora, August and Hugo come from different worlds—one an art school dreamer, one a wealthy scion of the old elite and one an ordinary boy from out of town. But over the course of two sky-blue summers in Stockholm, they are drawn together magnetically. The novel opens years later, when Hugo, long estranged from Thora and August, is visited by their daughter—who has questions about her parents that she believes Hugo can answer—and the memories of those luminous days come flooding back.

1800: Three years after escaping to London with her bisexual lovers, Bella Rushdale wakes one morning to find their delicate ménage a trois about to shatter. Vaughan, Marquis of Pennerley, has left abruptly and without any explanation. Determined to reclaim him and preserve their relationship, Bella pursues him to his family seat on the Welsh Borders, where she finds herself embroiled in his preparations for a diabolical gothic celebration on All Hallows Eve - a phantasmagoria.

Northern, working-class and shagging men three times her age, Crystal writes candidly about her search for ‘the one’; sleeping with an editor in an attempt to become a world famous journalist; getting hired and fired by a well-known fashion magazine; being torn between losing weight and gorging on KFC; and her need for constant sexual satisfaction (and where that takes her). Charting her day-to-day adventures over the course of a year, we encounter tucks, twists and sucks, heinous overspending and endless nights spent sprinting from problem to problem in a full face of makeup.

When Stella Renee Johnson's roommate invites her to a sex club party but bails at the last minute, Stella decides to use the opportunity to finally cash in her V-card. But just when things are heating up between Stella and a sexy stranger, they realize they don’t have protection and Stella, taking it as a sign this wasn't meant to be, flees.

It is summer 1956 when 15-year-old Bridget first meets Isabella. In their conservative Connecticut town, Isabella is a breath of fresh air. She is worldly, alluring and brazen: an enigma. When they receive an offer to study at the Academy in Italy, Bridget is thrilled. This is her ticket to Europe and - better still - a chance to spend nine whole months with her glamorous and unpredictable best friend. There, lodged in a convent of nuns who have taken a vow of silence, the two girls move towards a passionate but fragile intimacy.

London, 2014. Hal Lancaster – twenty-two, gay, Catholic, chops lines of cocaine with his myWaitrose card – is the reluctant heir of his father Henry, the sixteenth Duke of Lancaster. Henry is half tyrant, half martyr, with an investment in his eldest son that has grown into an obsession. While Hal floats between internships and drinking sessions, Henry keeps him in check with passive-aggression, religious guilt, and a cruelty that Hal sometimes confuses for tenderness.

Can 'no' be a declaration of love? What happens when love is savage, dangerous and all-consuming? In this gorgeous and unsettling collection, women navigate the complexities and cruelties of desire across time and place, from a medieval convent to a Victorian parlour to a 1990s high school. Intensely atmospheric, surprising and darkly funny, this collection is a richly flavoured feast from a brilliant writer in full command of the form.

Mona is the eccentric Lady of Easley House, running a bed and breakfast to keep her inherited English manor afloat. Wilfred is Mona's 26-year-old adopted son who spends his weekends in London, looking for love in the gay bars of Soho while pining after his pen pal, Michael 'Mouse' Tolliver. The current guest of the manor is Rhonda, a straight-laced southern belle who has left her abusive husband and has no idea what to do next, especially in the company of the free-spirited Mona and Wilfred.

We talk about achieving 'LGBTQ+ equality', but around the world, LGBTQ+ people are still suffering discrimination and extreme violence. How do we solve this urgent problem, allowing queer people everywhere the opportunity to thrive? In We Can Do Better Than This, 35 voices explore this question. Through deeply moving stories and provocative new arguments on safety and visibility, dating and gender, care and community, they map new global frontiers in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights.

Former painter and unreformed rake Kit Griffith is forging a new life in Cornwall, choosing freedom over an identity that didn't fit. He knew that leaving his Sisterhood of women artists might mean forfeiting artistic community forever. He didn’t realize he would lose his ability to paint altogether. Luckily, he has other talents. Why not devote himself to selling bicycles and trysting with the holidaymakers? Enter Muriel Pendrake, the feisty New-York-bound botanist who has come to St. Ives to commission Kit for illustrations of British seaweeds.

Savannah "Sav" Henry is almost the person she wants to be, or at least she's getting closer. It’s the second semester of her sophomore year. She’s finally come out as bisexual, is making friends with the other queers in her dorm, and has just about recovered from her disastrous first queer “situationship.” She is cautiously optimistic that her life is about to begin.

Like many of us, Jeffrey Marsh was conditioned to have an outward focus—to give to others, to be a good listener, and to be the one who gave the best advice. In Marsh’s case, it was a method of survival. Growing up genderfluid in an unaccepting family, Marsh did everything they could to meet the needs of others and not have needs of their own. And ultimately, this meant Marsh put themself in the backseat of their own life. In this heartfelt and sincere book, Marsh shares their story and the lessons they learned on the path back to themselves.