Sacchi Green and Rakelle Valencia, eds.
Rode Hard, Put Away Wet: Lesbian Cowboy Erotica
Suspect Thoughts Press
July 2005 * ISBN: 0976341107 * $16.95
Description: Rode Hard, Put Away Wet has gathered realistic lesbian cowboy stories. No urban cowboy crap. No wannabe Yahoos. This is authentic, get-real, can-smell-and-feel-the-leather-and-taste-the-grit, “working” cowboy lore, nowadays or historical, and totally erotic.

Michael Lassell
DECORATE: Insider’s Tips from Top Designers
Filipacchi Publications
November 2005 * ISBN: 1933231033 * $45.00
Description: In this large-format design book, Michael Lassell, who has been an editor of the magazine since 1992, goes behind Metropolitan Home‘s gorgeous photos to explore how designers achieve their goals. The book looks at thirty-three modern homes, including houses, apartments and condominiums of every size and description.

Martin Pousson
Sugar
Suspect Thoughts Press
November 2005 * ISBN: 0976341158 * $12.95
Description: “Here is the poet Louisiana has always wanted. Gulf Coast heat turns into huge trees and lush flora, which then turn into sex and dramatic dialogue. Desire so metamorphic inevitably slides toward hallucination. To convey experience at the edge, Martin Pousson has invented a new poetics that takes from the earlier art only its intense imagery and verbal economy. The few dozen pages of Sugar bring a tragic and sensuous bayou mindscape unforgettably to life.”–Alfred Corn, author of Stake and Contradictions.

Aaron Hamburger
Faith for Beginners
Random House
October 2005 * ISBN 1400062985 * $23.95
Description: Helen Michaelson, a respectable suburban housewife from Michigan, hopes a family trip to Israel will help her reclaim her confused, rebellious son. Instead, their pre-packaged vacation takes an unexpected turn that surprises them all.

Thomas Woolley
Toilet
Suspect Thoughts Press
October 2005 * ISBN: 0976341123 * $12.95
Description: “Both cheery and cantankerous, the stories and rantings of Toilet are linked by a battery-acid tone and a smart, atomic energy. Thomas Woolley is a wholly engaging original, and injects his humor with equal parts horror and sad, eerie nostalgia.”–Scott Heim, author of Mysterious Skin.

Justin Chin
Attack of the Man-Eating Lotus Blossoms
Suspect Thoughts Press
August 2005 * ISBN: 0974638889 * $16.95 Description: “A decade of performance art prose settles restlessly, hilariously, potently, and poignantly onto the pages of this collection of poet and memoirist Chin’s live appearances; good stuff, and, best of all, he’s not afraid to critique his own work, in a series of insightful introductions to each piece.”–Richard Labonté, Books to Watch Out For.

Kevin Killian ed.
The Wild Creatures: Collected Stories of Sam D’Allesandro
Suspect Thoughts Press
August 2005 * ISBN: 0976341115 * $12.95 Description: “For years I’ve scoured used book stores for copies of Sam D’Allesandro’s work, buying up what I could find and passing it on to friends with the injunction: Read this. The Wild Creatures is more than the resuscitation of a brilliant, out-of-print writer. It’s that rarest of things: a true literary event.”–K.M. Soehnlein, author of You Can Say You Knew Me When.

Wendell Ricketts, ed.
Everything I Have Is Blue: Short Fiction by Working-Class Men About More-or-Less Gay Life
Suspect Thoughts Press
August 2005 * ISBN: 0974638897 * $16.95
Description: A rich and long overdue contribution to working-class studies and LGBTIQ fiction. Contributors include Timothy Anderson, Rane Arroyo, Keith Banner, James Barr, C. Bard Cole, CAConrad, Marcel Devon, Dean Durber, Rick Laurent Feely, John Gilgun, Rigoberto González, Jim Grimsley, Ryan Kamstra, Christopher Lord, Alfredo Ronci, Jan-Mitchell Sherrill, and Royston Tester.

Katherine V. Forrest
Lesbian Pulp Fiction: The Sexually Intrepid World of Lesbian Paperback Novels 1950-1965
Cleis Press
June 2005 * ISBN 1-57344-210-0
Description: In the overheated prose typical of the genre, this collection documents the emergence of a lesbian subculture in postwar America with excerpts from the novels of twenty-one classic lesbian pulp authors, including Ann Bannon, Vin Packer, Paula Christian, Valerie Taylor, and Brigid Brophy.

Richard Labonté
Best of Best Gay Erotica 2
Cleis Press
June 2005 * ISBN 1-57344-213-5
Description: Editor Richard Labonté brings together the most daring, intense, and memorable stories from the past five years of the Best Gay Erotica series, with pieces by such celebrated authors as Simon Sheppard, JT LeRoy, Matt Bernstein Sycamore, and Andy Quan.

Tristan Taormino
Best of Best Lesbian Erotica 2
Cleis Press
June 2005 * ISBN 1-57344-212-7
Description: The best stories from the second five years of the Best Lesbian Erotica series. These stories look for the edge of lesbian desire, and trace it in rich, believable detail. Contributors include Cecilia Tan, MR Daniel, Cara Bruce, and Rachel Kramer Bussel.

Tristan Taormino
Hot Lesbian Erotica
Cleis Press
June 2005 * ISBN 1-57344-208-9 Description: Tristan Taormino, the biggest name in lesbian erotica, picks twenty-two tales of lesbian desire to send the mercury soaring. Lust, love, strip down, strap-on —- it’s all here.

Kim Wallace
Erik & Isabelle Sophomore Year at Foresthill High
Foglight Press
June 2005 * ISBN: 0-9755848-1-2 * $12.95
Description: This is not your parents’ closet anymore. Welcome to the out and proud GLBTQ teen. Ripe with the angst and comedy that embody high school life, Erik & Isabelle triumph over family struggles, romantic crushes, and school bullies with resilience and humor. This is the second of a four-book series.

Edwin John Wintle
Breakfast with Tiffany: An Uncle’s Memoir
Miramax Books
June 2005 * ISBN 1-4013-5224-3 * $24.95
Description: A hilarious, poignant memoir of an obsessive-compulsive gay man who takes in his rambunctious thirteen-year-old niece.

E. M. Kahn
Deep Water, A Sailor’s Passage
Haworth Press, Southern Tier Editions
Spring 2005 * ISBN 1-56023-517-9 * $14.95
Description: A compelling memoir of a modern day sailor that captures both the exhilaration and fear of being out on the seas. Technically accurate, it is also a moving love story of two men during the early years of the AIDS epidemic. Thoughtful, yet full of action.

Robert L. Giron, editor
Poetic Voices Without Borders
Gival Press
May 2005 * ISBN 1928589308 * $20.00
Description: An international collection of poetry with a edge on a variety of topics, with nearly 150 national as well as international well-known poets, including Antler, Greg Baysans, Alfred Corn, Jim Elledge, Jewelle Gomez, Walter Holland, George Klawitter, Raymond Luczak, Jeff Mann, Jaime Manrique, Ron Mohring, Kay Murphy, Kim Roberts, Gregg Shapiro, A. D. Winans, Gerard Wozek, Helen E. Wright, among many more.

D. Travers Scott
One of These Things Is Not Like the Other
Suspect Thoughts Press
May 2005 * ISBN 0974638862 * $16.95
Description: Jake Barnes: the name of four identical brothers, all raised in rural seclusion by their identical, namesake father. From across the U.S. the brothers converge to find out if one of them is actually an outsider, but twisted lust, murderous secrets, and shifting identities threaten their lives along the way.

Richard McCann
Mother of Sorrows
Pantheon Books
April 2005 * ISBN: 0679411763 * $20.00
Description: (literary fiction) Mother of Sorrows presents ten interwoven stories of an American family starting out in the post–World War II suburbs of Washington, D.C., a world of identical brick houses and sunstruck, treeless lawns, of world of initial hopefulness from which shame and loss have seemingly been banished. The narrator looks back on this world thirty years later, the only survivor of a world of sorrow that has held him spellbound even as he has attempted to create a life of his own.

Brianne Friel and Robert L. Giron, editors
An Interdisciplinary Introduction to Women’s Studies
Gival Press
March 2005 * ISBN 1928689294 * $25.00
Description: A solid college reader for women’s studies which also includes a chapter by lesbian writer Teresa Bevin on homophobia in the classroom. Topics range from the personal to film to activism to poetry to philosophy.

Radclyffe
Distant Shores, Silent Thunder
Bold Strokes Books
March 2005 * 1-933110-08-2 * $15.95
Description: Lesbian Romance. No matter how much we plan, life-and people-have a way of surprising us. For Doctor KT O’Bannon, a near-fatal tragedy derails a career leads to a torturous path between friendship and desire. Two women–and those who love them–are forced to examine the boundaries of love, friendship, and the ties that transcend time.

Craig Hickman
Fumbling Toward Divinity: The Adoption Scriptures
Annabessacook Farm
February 2005 * ISBN 0976246201 * $27.95
Description: An inspirational vision of love and spirituality, this one-of-kind, ambitious and stunning memoir chronicles the author’s quest for his birth heritage and the aftermath. Part mystery, part history, part family saga, part divination, it bears witness to the transcendent power of spirit and love in an age of terror and madness, delivering an emotional intensity that fiction can hope to achieve.

Ali Liebegott
The Beautifully Worthless
Suspect Thoughts Press
February 2005 * ISBN 0974638846 * $12.95
Description: The Beautifully Worthless is a brilliant novel in verse about a runaway waitress and her Dalmatian, Rorschach, who leave Brooklyn to find hope in a town named Camus, Idaho. This is some of the most exquisite poetry ever written about love and heartache and madness and crushes gone far askew.

Emanuel Xavier, ed.
Bullets & Butterflies: queer spoken word poetry
Suspect Thoughts Press
February 2005 * ISBN 0974638854 * $16.95
Description: Bullets & Butterflies features vibrant, sexy, and shocking new poetry focused on sexuality, gender, class, race, religion, and politics by Cheryl Boyce-Taylor, Regie Cabico, Staceyann Chin, Celena Glenn, Daphne Gottlieb, Maurice Jamal, Shane Luitjens, Marty McConnell, Travis Montez, Alix Olson, Shailja Patel, horehound stillpoint, and Emanuel Xavier.

Dave King
The Ha-Ha
Little, Brown & Co.
January 2005 * ISBN 0316156108 * $23.95
Description: Howard Kapostash has not spoken since a head injury suffered as an infantryman in Vietnam, but as The Ha-Ha progresses he is forced to reconsider both the cost of war and possibility of life. The Chicago Tribune says King “achieved the nearly impossible by writing about grim circumstances without writing a grim book, while The New York Times says The Ha-Ha “establishes King as a writer of consequence.”

Edmund Miller
The Go-Go Boy Sonnets: Men of the New York Club Scene
Inkwater
January 2005 * ISBN 1-59299-039-8 * $ 24.95
Brief Description: The Go-Go Boy Sonnets celebrates icons of gay New York, telling their stories with humor, honesty, yet respect. It relates real-world lives to performance, depicting interaction with patrons to emphasize that there is more to the men than beauty. Each man is represented by a sonnet and a biographical note.