Archives de catégorie : LGBTQ+

LAVENDER HOUSE de Lev AC Rosen

A delicious story from a new voice in suspense, Lev AC Rosen’s LAVENDER HOUSE is Knives Out with a queer historical twist.

LAVENDER HOUSE
by Lev AC Rosen
Forge Books,October 2022
(via the David Black Literary Agency)

Lavender House, 1952: the family seat of recently deceased matriarch Irene Lamontaine, head of the famous Lamontaine soap empire. Irene’s recipes for her signature scents are a well guarded secret―but it’s not the only one behind these gates. This estate offers a unique freedom, where none of the residents or staff hide who they are. But to keep their secret, they’ve needed to keep others out. And now they’re worried they’re keeping a murderer in. Irene’s widow hires Evander Mills to uncover the truth behind her mysterious death. Andy, recently fired from the San Francisco police after being caught in a raid on a gay bar, is happy to accept―his calendar is wide open. And his secret is the kind of secret the Lamontaines understand.
Andy had never imagined a world like Lavender House. He’s seduced by the safety and freedom found behind its gates, where a queer family lives honestly and openly. But that honesty doesn’t extend to everything, and he quickly finds himself a pawn in a family game of old money, subterfuge, and jealousy―and Irene’s death is only the beginning.
When your existence is a crime, everything you do is criminal, and the gates of Lavender House can’t lock out the real world forever. Running a soap empire can be a dirty business.

« Lev AC Rosen’s lushly rendered mystery sets the detective novel on its head. There’s the dishonored policeman sitting on a barstool in 1950’s San Francisco and the elegant woman who slides in next to him with a job. But this femme’s wife has been murdered, and the day-drinking cop has been brutally ousted from his job for being gay. Rosen’s smart, bittersweet tale plays with the oldest truth of all: the price we pay for our identity in America. » ―Walter Mosley

« LAVENDER HOUSE is a fabulous, genre-bending mystery-noir, told with wit, panache and style. Lev Rosen is one of a kind and just gets better and better―his eye for characters is both acerbic and compassionate, and his story-telling is top notch. » ―Dan Chaon, author of Sleepwalk

« Rosen’s deeply compelling and suspenseful historical mystery pulls readers into the 1950s with Detective Evander « Andy » Mills, who was just tossed off the force for being gay and is feeling just unmoored enough to pick up a gig investigating a maybe murder…. The mystery itself borders on cozy, and wrapping it in an exploration of WWII-adjacent queer life makes for the perfect autumn page-turner. » ―BuzzFeed

Lev AC Rosen writes books for people of all ages, including Camp, which was a best book of the year from Forbes, Elle, and The Today Show, among others, and is a Lambda finalist and ALA Rainbow List Top Ten. He lives in NYC with his husband and a very small cat.

AND THEN HE SANG A LULLABY d’Ani Kayode Somtochukwu

A searingly honest and resonant debut from a Nigerian writer and queer liberation activist, exploring what love and freedom cost in a society steeped in homophobia.

AND THEN HE SANG A LULLABY
by Ani Kayode Somtochukwu
Roxane Gay Books/Grove Atlantic, June 2023

 

August is a God-fearing track star who leaves Enugu City to attend university and escape his overbearing sisters. He carries the weight of their lofty expectations, the shame of facing himself, and the haunting memory of a mother he never knew. It’s his first semester and pressures aside, August is making friends, doing well in his classes. He even almost has a girlfriend. There’s only one problem: he can’t stop thinking about Segun, an openly gay student who works at a local cybercafé. Segun carries his own burdens and has been wounded in too many ways. When he meets August, their connection is undeniable, but Segun is reluctant to open himself up to August. He wants to love and be loved by a man who is comfortable in his own skin, who will see and hold and love Segun, exactly as he is.
Despite their differences, August and Segun forge a tender intimacy that defies the violence around them. But there is only so long Segun can stand being loved behind closed doors, while August lives a life beyond the world they’ve created together. And when a new, sweeping anti-gay law is passed, August and Segun must find a way for their love to survive in a Nigeria that was always determined to eradicate them. A tale of rare bravery and profound beauty, AND THEN HE SANG A LULLABY is an extraordinary debut that marks Ani as a voice to watch.

Ani Kayode Somtochukwu is an award-winning Nigerian writer and queer liberation activist. His work interrogates themes of queer identity, resistance, and liberation. His writings have appeared in literary magazines across Africa, Europe, Asia, and North America.

 

BEST MEN de Sid Karger

A romcom that puts a gay spin on classic favorites like Bridesmaids or My Best Friend’s Wedding.

BEST MEN
by Sid Karger
Berkley, Spring 2023
(via Writers House)

Max Moody is in his 30s and thinks he has everything figured out, not the least of which is the best-of-best-friends a gay guy could ask for: Paige. She grew up with Max. She can light up any party. She finishes his sentences. She is always a reliable splunch (NOT brunch) partner. But then everything in Max’s life is turned upside down when Paige announces some big news: she’s engaged! And it turns out there’s not just one new man in Paige’s life… There are two. The groom, who’s a perfectly nice guy. And his charming, younger, and…really (really) hot gay brother, Chasten. As Paige’s wedding draws closer, Max and Chasten realize they’re like oil and water, yet they still have to figure out how to co-exist in Paige’s life while not making her wedding all about them. But can the tiny spark between them elevate their best man roles in a wedding to the best man in each other’s lives?

Sid Karger has been a contributing writer for SNL and Billy on the Street, and has also written and directed for Comedy Central, MTV, IFC, FX, NBC, CBS, SyFy, Sundance, BET, AMC and truTV. BEST MEN is his debut novel.

HOMEBODIES de Tembe Denton-Hurst

Urgent, propulsive, and strikingly insightful, HOMEBODIES is a thrilling debut novel about a young Black writer whose world is turned upside down when she loses her coveted job in media and her searing manifesto about racism in the industry goes viral.

HOMEBODIES
by Tembe Denton-Hurst
Harper, May 2023
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

Mickey Hayward dreams of writing stories that matter. She has a flashy media job that makes her feel successful and a devoted girlfriend who takes care of her when she comes home exhausted and demoralized. It’s not all A-list parties and steamy romance, but Mickey’s on her way, and it’s far from the messy life she left behind in Maryland. Despite being overlooked and mistreated at work, it seems like she might finally get the chance to prove herself—until she finds out she’s being replaced.
Distraught and enraged, Mickey fires back with a detailed letter outlining the racism and sexism she’s endured as a Black woman in media, certain it will change the world for the better. But when her letter is met with overwhelming silence, Mickey is sent into a tailspin of self-doubt. Forced to reckon with just how fragile her life is—including the uncertainty of her relationship—she flees to the last place she ever dreamed she would run to, her hometown, desperate for a break from her troubles.
Back home, Mickey is seduced by the simplicity of her old life—and the flirtation of a former flame—but her life in New York refuses to be forgotten. When a media scandal catapults Mickey’s forgotten letter into the public zeitgeist, suddenly everyone wants to hear what Mickey has to say. It’s what she’s always wanted—isn’t it?
Intimate, witty, and deeply sexy, HOMEBODIES is a testament to those trying to be heard and loved in a world that refuses to make space, and introduces a standout new writer.

“I saw so much of myself in Homebodies, and in Mickey’s utterly delicious and sometimes aching story. Mickey made me look back and love my young Black woman self, and I loved her so much for returning me to that place.” —Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, New York Times bestselling author of The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

“HOMEBODIES is a modern marvel—Tembe Denton-Hurst’s prose is both intimate and hysterical, inflammatory and elegiac. You’ll root for Mickey as she takes on the world, questioning and searching its contours, weaving a story we can’t help but find our own worlds inside of. Denton-Hurst has written a warm, brilliant novel that’s stunning and poignant; HOMEBODIES is wonderfully witty and full of empathy and entirely original.” —Bryan Washington, award-winning author of Memorial and Lot

“HOMEBODIES is a beautiful story on becoming. Denton-Hurst’s prose is perfect with an innate attention to detail and astonishing ability to capture the shapes and colors of emotions as she brilliantly illuminates the growing pains of forging one’s own path…something which so many of us are still looking to do. This is a deeply felt, assured literary debut by a writer worth watching.” —Nicole Dennis-Benn, author of award-winning novels Here Comes the Sun and Patsy

Tembe Denton-Hurst (@tembae on the internet) is a staff writer at New York Magazine’s The Strategist, covering beauty, lifestyle, and books; she previously wrote about beauty, gender, and culture for NYLON, them., and Elle. When she’s not writing, Tembe can be found on her couch in Queens where she lives with her partner and their two cats, Stella and Dakota.

 

CITY OF LAUGHTER de Temim Fruchter

A rich and riveting work that marries centuries-old folklore to 21st-century queer literary fiction, CITY OF LAUGHTER spans four generations of Jewish women who are bound by blood, half-hidden secrets, and the fantastical visitation of a shapeshifting stranger over the course of 100 years

CITY OF LAUGHTER
by Temim Fruchter
Grove Press, Spring 2023

The exciting debut of a Rona Jaffe Award winner, CITY OF LAUGHTER is a book for the reader of Orlando, Jeanette Winterson, Andrea Lawlor, and the dog-eared Bashevis Singer paperback she still returns to after her first gay kiss. It tangles beautifully with Jewish spirituality and generational silence, with a history of displacement and a present life half-lived for fear of invoking ancestral judgment—and young queer people have a way of upsetting the familial applecart…
Ropshitz, Poland, was once known as the City of Laughter, and as this story opens an 18th century badchan, a holy jester whose job is to make the bride and groom laugh on their wedding day, receives a visitation from a mysterious stranger—bringing the laughter that the people of Ropshitz desperately need.
In the present day, Shiva Margolin, a young woman named for a mourning rite, is a graduate student in Jewish folklore getting over the heartbreak of her first big queer love amid mourning the death of her beloved father. She struggles to connect with her mother, who harbors secrets and barriers that Shiva can’t break. When the opportunity arises for her to visit Poland on a half-formed research trip, she takes it; she’s interested in her mysterious matriarchal line, in particular Mira Wollman, the great-grandmother about whom no one speaks, and who left a piece of herself behind in Poland when she emigrated. But as in most folklore, the answers to Shiva’s questions won’t come so easily. Zigzagging between our known universe and a tapestry of real and invented Jewish folklore, CITY OF LAUGHTER is epic and sharply intimate, both fantastical and hyperreal.

Temim Fruchter was raised in a Modern Orthodox Jewish household, and her faith in communal experience and the spirit world remains central to her identity; this novel was inspired by her own great-grandmother, who was born in Ropshitz. Temim holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Maryland, and was previously a founding member and drummer for The Shondes, a feminist punk band. She has received fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Vermont Studio Center, first prize in short fiction from both American Literary Review and New South, the 2020 Jane Hoppen Residency, and a 2020 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award. She lives in Brooklyn.