Showing results by publisher "Audible Studios" in Literature & Fiction

Tales of love and lust in contemporary gay culture, Best Gay Romance 2014 is a Valentine to listeners and a wonderful reminder of how love can begin - at the grocery store, the gym, the library, or even on the world wide web. Real romances with relatable characters, each of the stories in this collection represents a facet of the oh-so-human heart.

Sydney Skate considers himself shockproof. For as long as he can remember, he's known that his fashionable Manhattan mother is secretly a lesbian, although he's never let on that he knows. He spends his summer days caring for snakes at the local pet shop before leaving for college at Cornell, shrugging off his father's demands that he skip college and join the exciting world of swimming pool sales for suburbanites.

Combining glittering wit, an atmosphere dense in social paranoia, and a breathtaking elegance and precision of language, White's first novel suggests a hilarious apotheosis of the comedy of manners. For, on the privileged island community where Forgetting Elena takes place, manners are everything. Or so it seems to White's excruciatingly self-conscious young narrator who desperately wants to be accepted in this world where everything from one's bathroom habits to the composition of "spontaneous" poetry is subject to rigid conventions.

It's just one night. Just a surreal one night stand with a virtual stranger, a gypsy-eyed drifter with an inexplicably infectious passion for Thoreau. Yet for would-be screenwriter Greg Cannon, the fleeting encounter bears the promise of something even more elusive in this jaded town than coveted stardom. Then, in a violent instant, Harry Dawes is gone, wrists slashed, found naked in a hot tub with the body of Hollywood's hottest - and also closeted - actor.

National Book Award-winner Paul Monette presents a transcendent, powerful novel of three AIDS widowers who have seen each other through the worst of times -- and have found the courage to hope for the best.

All it took to destroy Andy Nocera's seemingly perfect life was an anonymous tryst at an Interstate rest area. Sentenced to probation and thrown out by his wife, he spends his week as a traveling salesman, and his weekends at his mother's house where no questions are asked - and no explanations are offered. To clear his record, the State of North Carolina requires Andy to complete one year of therapy without another arrest. He attends his sessions reluctantly at first, struggling to comprehend why he would risk everything.

When Ahmed's parents send him to a residential treatment center known as Serenity Ridge, it's with one goal: to "fix" their son, at any cost. But eleven months of abuse and overmedication leave him desperate to escape. And when the opportunity comes, Ahmed runs away to San Francisco. There, he moves into a secret safe house shared by a group of teens. Until they become independent at eighteen, the housemates hide away from authorities, bound by rules that both protect and frustrate.

A year after the AIDS-related death of filmmaker Clarence Laird, known to friends as Angel Clare, his young boyfriend, Michael, is still in deep mourning. Clarence’s older, sophisticated friends—male and female, gay and straight—find themselves the custodians of Michael, a callow kid they never liked much to begin with. What follows is a dark, intimate comedy about real grief and false grief, misunderstanding, friendship, love, and forgiveness.

The winter of 1799 is falling fast on the small Ohio Territory settlement of Hugh's Lick. Food is scarce, and relations with the Delaware tribe are strained; but things are about to get much worse. In the midst of a storm, frontiersman Cole Seavey is attacked by a creature that is neither man nor beast but something burst forth from the bowels of hell and reeking of the grave. Badly injured, he is rescued by Pakim, a young Delaware brave, and is taken to safety at the home of John Chapman.

In an age of hookups and cybersex, who has time for a little romance? For all those who think love's gone the way of the 8-track tape comes a collection of new gay fiction designed to reignite their belief in love and romance. Follow the travails of a dog walker enchanted with his new client, a restaurant owner who catches the eye of his most loyal customer, a blind date fix-up, and other seekers of the lost flame as they stumble upon romance and a possible chance at love.

Beyond the Pale - winner of the Lambda Literary Award - tells the stories of two Jewish women living through times of darkness and inhumanity in the early 20th century, capturing their undaunted love and courage in luminous and moving prose. The richly textured novel details Gutke Gurvich's odyssey from her apprenticeship as a midwife in a Russian shtetl to her work in the suffrage movement in New York.

Victor Decimus is a 2,000 year old vampire, having last seen the sun when he was a Roman soldier in biblical times. There are few rules that govern a vampire's existence, but those rules are absolute: 1) Vampires are not allowed to associate with other vampires and 2) Once a vampire convinces a human to take his place as a vampire, he must leave the earthly realm for the Dark Kingdom. Victor, unfortunately, has broken both those rules - he's sired his human lover Paul as a vampire and stayed with him on Earth.

Among the unconventional attitudes of the Beat writers as they rebelled against the conformism of the late 1940s and 1950s was their relaxed stance on sexuality. At a time when gay people were considered mentally ill or criminal, the Beats celebrated spontaneity and freedom in thought, word, and action. They were queer in the fullest sense of the word: their fluid sexuality challenged all sexual and romantic conventions.

Annice, Pat, and Barby are best friends from Iowa, freshly arrived in booming 1950s Chicago to explore different paths toward independence, self - expression, and sexual freedom. From the hip-hang of a bohemian lifestyle to the sophisticated lure of romance with a handsome, wealthy, married boss to the happier security of a lesbian relationship, these three experience firsthand the dangers and limitations of women’s economic -reliance on men.

Leathermen illuminates the kinky subculture of men who wear leather and the men who crave them. These intelligent, well-crafted, and steamy stories expand listeners' horizons and stretch the limits of imagination with some of the edgiest erotica being written today. Tales of delectably sordid adventures in sex clubs, back-room bars, and bathhouses, as well as private sex parties and first-time forays into the world of leather, take listeners on a hot and heavy journey through this definitely un-hidebound world.

Best Gay Romance 2009 is short fiction at its finest on the subject of love-first love, true love, and love everlasting (with makeup sex, wake-up sex, and everything in between). The romantic possibilities range from a surprising encounter between two blue-collar buddies to a brief airport rendezvous that become something more, and a reminder to us all that it is never too late for love. A self-confessed true romantic, Richard Labont has gathered a sensational collection of stories about finding love at home, at work, at any age, and often, in the most unexpected places.

Christine Snow, a Chicago therapist, wakes one morning to find her live-in lover gone. At first Chris thinks that Taylor has left in a funk because they fought the night before over a minor flirtation. But too many clues point to another explanation: Either Taylor has left for Morocco and a mysterious woman there, or she has come to harm. Running the emotional gamut from anger to alarm, Christine anxiously tracks the course of Taylor's disappearance, only to discover that her trust in her lover may have been misplaced.

Openly erotic and smart, the stories of Best Gay Romance deliver hope and happy endings. "The Early Show" describes the tantalizing flirtation of two writers who share an eccentric habit of showing up early to Sunday matinees to enjoy the promising half-dark of the theater. "No More Mirages" is a tale of romantic destiny set in a dojo, an oasis of bamboo, white mats, and stone sculptures where an actor, bitter from his last break-up, finds himself drawn to a charismatic sensei. In "Nudie Blues," a romance writer discovers a hole in his backyard fence and the hunky new neighbor behind it.

A paperback mystery classic. An Air That Kills is a powerful novel of lust, deceit, and betrayal. Author Margaret Millar is a Grand master of the Mystery writers of America.

Nora and Fern's relationship as mother and daughter is a tumble of love and distrust. To Nora, her daughter is an enigma - at the same time wonderful and unfindable. Fern sees her mother as treacherous - for busting up their family to move in with her lover, Jeanne. As their lives become complicated by the arrivals of a skateboarding boyfriend for Fern, a shadowy affair for Nora, a baby in need of a family, and by the failing health of Lucky, their beloved dog, this mother and daughter find their way onto a fresh footing with each other.