Showing results by publisher "Lethe Press" in Literature & Fiction

Born into an extraordinarily talented family, 29-year-old Michael Van Allen is the gay son of a well-known concert pianist and an equally famous painter. All his life he has yearned for the talent and creativity that should have been his birthright but have somehow been denied him. When he wakes up in a mental hospital, his memory gone, his former life erased, his doctor tells him of his screaming breakdown during one of his father's performances. This is the story of Michael's journey in search of his former self.

A satirical romp through the lives of 20-something queer ne'er-do-wells in Wales. Caroline and her Dom live out their normal lives among the poverty, alcoholics, and street preachers of Swansea. But when Dom and his straight roommate fall in love - a passionate, secret, nonsexual love - their lives are transformed into a queer chaos. The battle between preachers and drag queens, skinheads and sex workers, boyfriend and girlfriend, is set to change the city forever in an inventive story that embraces queer life today.

On a scorching summer's day in 1903, the sheriff of Creek County, Eugene Grey, unexpectedly finds himself partnered with feisty young federal marshal Forest O'Rourke. The marshal is hell-bent on capturing a wanted man - a man Eugene knows as nothing but an amiable old geezer living quietly in the hills. But, of course, all is not as it seems.

Set in the post-Napoleonic years of the 1820s, Standish is a tale of two men - one discovering his sexuality and the other struggling to overcome his traumatic past. Ambrose Standish, a studious and fragile young man, has dreams of regaining the great house his grandfather lost in a card game.

Artie's performing career has him traveling more. Aunt Ruth tries to wean herself from San Francisco into married life in Hillsborough. Tim's family - both adopted and blood - are beset by drama amid a rash of armed robberies in the neighborhood. There's a sexy new cop on the beat. And people are getting shot. Nick is in Europe with his grandmother, and Tim is left behind to figure out the rules of a modern gay relationship.

In his new collection, Bitter Waters, Brenchley has assembled stories queer and weird: a man with morbidly sensitive hearing sets sail to chart dangerous rocks called the Silences; a ship's chandler from among his shadowed stock gives an old friend a compass that guides through Hell rather than point north; a eunuch and his dwarf lover leave the Sultan's harem to visit the baths of a city poisoned by magic; a youth who climbed the echelons of power thanks to his looks and guile finds being on the losing side of war has forced his to return to his sordid, early life.

Everyone in the sleepy little town of Bodey, Colorado knows Jack Tulle as a widower, a doting father, and the honest owner of the general store. He sits on the town council. He dotes upon his eight-year-old, headstrong daughter, Abigail. But when the local saloon announces plans to host a poker tournament, Jack realizes it could spell trouble. One of the many secrets he's been hiding is that he used to be a swindler - mainly cheating at poker, but he had done worse when a situation presented itself.

Harry George Alexander Bircham: Not necessarily an infamous name in the annals of gay fictional characters - yet. But listeners of Erastes' newest historical novel should prepare themselves for many pages of suspenseful intrigue as the miscreant Bircham, a cultured man of Wildean excesses and humours, will do anything it takes to bend Fate to his will. And that sinister will is to keep the affections and attentions of another English young man.

From the titular tale of a farmer in low-slung jeans growing a peculiar crop to gypsy magic that brings out the "bear" in a bottom to the tale of a grand hunt by an immortal who feeds off the talent, as well as flesh, of musicians, Strawberries and Other Erotic Fruits promises listeners words that will conjure desire like a mythical aphrodisiac. But there's a price to pay for such magic, as several of the men in these stories learn.

At 14, Kit St. Denys brought down his abusive father with a knife. At 21, his theatrical genius brought down the house. At 30, his past and his forbidden love - nearly brought down the curtain for good. This is a compelling Victorian saga of two men whose love for each other transcends time and distance and the society that considers it an abomination.

Gay tourists are arriving in San Francisco by the planeload for the party of the decade at the Moscone Center, a tribute to a late disco star. On the same night as the dance festival, an infamous evangelist plans to bring his nationwide crusade against gay rights to the Civic Auditorium a few blocks away. Tim Snow finds himself caught in the middle when his activist friends plan a protest. For Tim, the fun and the intrigue are about to begin.

A never-ending journey awaits you along a Mobius strip that runs the circulatory system from flushed head to rapid heart, along asphalt lanes stinking of gasoline fumes and vulcanized rubber. Join Fields's feral boys, captivating Peter Pans in flight from detestable home life, school life, everyday life. Along the way, you'll pick up passengers, hitchhikers runaways plotting wicked larks, stay-at-homes longing for a nudge, grownups ready to be bent to a boy's whims.

When warned by his doctor to rest, Rick Carton, a jaded and disillusioned editor with a Boston publishing house, retires to Texas hill country to write the novel he's always intended to. But Rick discovers he is not alone at the neglected old mansion. Two lovable, Topperesque apparitions from turn-of-the-century America haunt the sometimes-bewildered Rick as struggles to face the enormous problems of contemporary society as the 21st century is about to turn.

World Fantasy Award winner Tanith Lee channels the allusive Esther Garber to tell these dark, erotic tales of lesbian ardor and obsession. The ''fatal women'' found within these pages lead exotic lives and adventures and have grim secrets. From fin de siecle Paris to Egypt of the 1930s and contemporary England, the Garber novellas create feverish dreams of danger, scandal, and sensuality.

Escaping into the fantasy of his books when he's not working in the general store, Ethan Keller has lived a sheltered life in his mother's boarding house. One day, an enigmatic cowboy passing through the small Texas town takes an immediate liking to the shy 17-year-old. Ethan is intrigued by the attention, and the cowboy eventually charms him into signing on to a 900-mile cattle drive. Ethan soon finds that his feelings for this cowboy run deeper than just friendship.

Not every gay teen yearns for fashion and popular culture. Some boys are pure country folk and like the feel of flannel and the smell of the farm. And they're neither lithe nor muscle-bound but stocky boys, the ones who develop hairy chests, arms, and faces years earlier than their peers. One such seventeen-year-old is Travis Ferrell, shy among most of the other kids at school, but proud of his West Virginia roots. He has not yet admitted his passion for handsome guys - and his idea of what handsome is and what handsome does is not much different from him.

O. Henry Prize-winning author Keith Banner's new collection of short fiction recounts the troubled lives of ne'er-do-wells and outsiders. Few writers capture the quintessence of awkward domesticity and growing up queer like Banner. The banality of life, whether it be trapped in front of the television or popping pills for E.D., is exposed and mocked with aplomb.

What if you learned that the AIDS virus was the result of bioweapons research gone bad, and that somebody knew and was hiding the truth? What if there's a cure? Could you trust your source of information? Could you trust your own perceptions? Could you act on such information? And what would you do? This is the situation that San Francisco AIDS counselor Jonathan Stiers finds himself enmeshed in in this wisdom-tinged thriller novel by gay spiritual writer, student of Joseph Campbell and former editor of White Crane Journal Toby Johnson

An American teenager meets Adonis on a sailing cruise off the coast of Turkey. A merchant of the Silk Road encounters a dog - and a brother - from another world. An old lady on a distant planet attempts to help her great-grandson grow up in a world that will soon forget women ever existed. A Massachusetts boy refuses to visit fairyland. Another American teenager on vacation encounters three fallen angels and is transformed. Alex Jeffers’s first collection of fantastical stories is a treacherous box of delights.

Best known for being the editor of edgy gay fiction of the Velvet Mafia website, Sean Meriwether has quietly been writing short fiction and building up a body of his own work. The Silent Hustler collects his short fiction published over the last decade. Meriwether's fiction spans in range from the literary (''Things I Can't Tell My Father'') to the revolutionary (''Burn the Rich'') to the downright raunchy (''Sneaker Queen''). Slip into bed with The Silent Hustler. You won't feel guilty in the morning.