Collection: Shop Gay

A ghostwriting gig in the Hamptons becomes far more than a job as Zara and Jane repeatedly rewrite their own relationship in this sexy, atmospheric, and deliciously tense story.

Aspiring author Zara Pines, who is reeling from the death of her father, accepts a job ghostwriting Jane Bailey's memoir. Jane is the star of the hit cooking TV show 30 Bucks Tops and an iconic fan favorite. Zara is unimpressed by Jane's celebrity status and annoyed that she has to spend the summer living in her East Hampton home.

As the two women create Jane's book, an attachment grows stronger. Soon they're working out together and wearing the same clothes. They become so close that the line between them starts to blur. Then, an unforeseen incident forces Zara and Jane to ask themselves how much they really know about each other.

This dark and twisty novel about fame, lies, and obsession will make even the most open-hearted reader question how safe it is to trust the people they love.

A traveling spiritualist is found shot to death in an alley late at night with his underwear around his ankles. But the perpetrator is an enigma. Was it the young trick with a drug problem the spiritualist met in the alley? The unusual woman who runs the boarding house where the trick lives? The dead man's wife, another spiritualist with secrets of her own? The handsome, alcoholic protégé? The beautiful woman who leads the spiritualist's fan club? Or someone else altogether?

With a list of suspects a mile long, only Detective Heath Barrington will be able to crack the murder. But Heath's handsome fellow detective, Grant Riker, has an unlikely connection to their prime suspect that reveals a shady past he's ashamed to admit. With more questions than answers, a séance may be the only way to the truth. Or perhaps the answer is in the cards? While Heath searches for the murderer, he uncovers more dark secrets than he bargained for, and witnesses firsthand the relentless pressure for LGBTQ+ people in the 1940s to stay hidden in the shadows.

Two cousins entangled by memories, a romance that begins in a sleazy bar, or a real Marilyn Monroe.Dale Corvino gives us visceral access to his characters' brains. Each of these pieces delivers something whole. You can tell he's been around, and you're bowled over by the humanity that has grown from it.- Bruce Benderson, Author of The Romanian

Bonds & Boundaries is a collection of short stories written over ten years. Among the bonds explored: two women, a starlet and a homemaker, admiring each other across the constraints of their roles ("Miss Bensonhurst"); a mother and her gay child reasserting their love after estrangement ("Great White"); queer friends protecting each other ("Drowned River"); a stripper sitting next to a gay man on a long bus ride ("More Sequins than Cloth"); lovers reuniting through displacement ("The Marielito"). Though the boundaries explored include national ("The Forty-Ninth Parallel"), social, and familial ("Donor Baby"), such externalities are revealed in how they push emotional and personal boundaries.

The recurrent theme of sex work interactions (stripper/customer, kept boy/sugar daddy, escort/client), ripe for explorations of bonds and boundaries alike, reflects the author's past experience and genesis as a writer. Racial and cultural dynamics drive several stories, notably "Three-way Calls" and "Benny Aboard." Several take on the particular despair of Gen X, a cohort largely formed in an analog context and thrust into a digitally-mediated reality, though none more pointedly than "Satellite Rules, Stranded Longings," in which an aging salesman at a trade show grapples with intimacy while using a gay cruising app. As a collection, Bonds & Boundaries maps a queer journey from the moraine of our origins through the vectors of longing that form us towards the afterlives we must often build over displacement and loss.

A 2021 Lambda Literary Emerging Fellow in nonfiction, Dale Corvino found his confessional voice at the East Village queer underground literary salon "Dean Johnson's Reading for Filth," recounting his youth as an object of longing and later interactions with sex work. In 2018, he won the Gertrude Press Fiction contest, judged by Whiting Award recipient Brontez Purnell. Recent nonfiction includes a profile of Chilean writer Pedro Lemebel for the Gay & Lesbian Review, "You've Got Male," on queer longing in the digital era for Matt Keegan's 1996, and a chapter on sex worker representation for the 2021 Routledge Handbook of Male Sex Work, Culture, and Society. Upcoming projects include a memoir based on his kept-boy experience in Eighties New York City. Dale lives in Hell's Kitchen with the Sour Patch Kid of his dreams.

A groundbreaking new history of urban cruising through the lenses of urban poets

The Poetics of Cruising explores the relationship between cruising, photography, and the visual in the work of leading poets, from Walt Whitman in the nineteenth century to Eileen Myles in the twenty-first. What is it that happens, asks Jack Parlett, and what is it that is sought, in this often transient moment of perception we call cruising, this perceptual arena where acts of looking between strangers are intensified and eroticized? Parlett believes that this moment is not only optical in nature but visual: a mode of looking that warrants comparison with the ways in which we behold still and moving images.

Whether it's Whitman's fixation with daguerreotypes, Langston Hughes's hybrid photographic works, or Frank O'Hara's love of Hollywood movie stars, argues Parlett, the history of poets cruising abounds with this intermingling between the verbal and the visual, the passing and the fixed. To look at someone in the act of cruising, this history suggests, is to capture, consider, and aestheticize, amid the flux and instantaneity of urban time. But it is also to reveal the ambivalence at the heart of this erotic search, where power may be unevenly distributed across glances, and gendered and racialized bodies are marked. Thus, in identifying for the first time this confluence of cruising, poetry, and visual culture, Parlett concludes that the visual erotic economy associated with gay cruising today, exemplified by the photographic grid of an app like Grindr, is not a uniquely contemporary phenomenon.

Innovative, astute, and highly readable, and drawing on compelling archival material, The Poetics of Cruising is a must for scholars of queer and LGBTQ literature and culture, modern and contemporary poetry, visual studies, and the history of sexuality.

Smooth Sailing into Retirement will guide you from your last few months of work through your first year of retirement. It identifies the many ways your life will change and prepares you for the emotions you may experience along the way. At each step, you will receive strategies for dealing with these changes.

This book will show you how to design your new day-to-day life in a way that will reflect your passions and interests. You will be inspired to create a new identity for yourself that embodies the way you plan to live in retirement and frees you from the limitations of your former job title. You will also identify and eliminate old habits and activities that may no longer serve you well in retirement.

If you are partnered, this book examines the ways your relationship with your spouse will change, whether you are both retired or one of you continues to work. If you are single, this book addresses the challenges that are specific to retiring as a single person.

Smooth Sailing into Retirement is an essential companion for your transition from work to leisure.

A love that rises with the ashes of the fallen towers and stretches across time.
Peter finds his late lover's AIDS journal on the eve of his New York City gallery debut, a journal filled with letters from Rano to a son named Mustafa. The journal's revelation of Mustafa paralyzes Peter's professional and private lives. What other secrets will the journal reveal? The trauma of a near-death experience on 9/11 compels Peter to scour Rano's journal for the clues he needs to paint again ... and to love.
Peter has company. His art dealer, Erica, must convince her brainy ex to salvage Rano's brilliant Internet research. Brice must resolve his feelings for Peter and Rano, and for his own curtailed creative career. Immigrant-turned-millionaire Linh must reconcile with her family. As the first anniversary approaches, the collector Thomas waits to see how Peter will honor 9/11, and with whom.

A drunken demon, a princess who lost her magic, and a deal to save them both...

Rei Deimos, half succubus-half satyr, is a magic-sensing, chaos-wielding mess. When her brother decides she needs to get her life together, he kicks her out of their house. With nowhere else to go, Rei finds herself at the tavern of an inn, with nothing but a bottle of red wine to keep her company. It's there that the grumpy demon runs into a mysterious cloaked figure who she soon discovers is Amora Lianna of Cerys, the runaway princess with one goal in mind: to find her missing magic.

With Rei desperately in need of a job and a place to live, and Amora equally as desperate to find her magic, the two of them strike up a deal. Rei will help Amora find her magic and, in turn, secure a job as the princess's royal advisor.

As the two women embark on their magic-seeking quest, they encounter various fae, sip warm beverages, and devour delicious pastries, all while realizing they may need each other more than they initially thought.

As love finds Rei and Amora, will it be enough to conquer the secrets that keep them up at night? Or will everything come crumbling down?

It's complicated: A thirty-year-old virgin gets more than he bargained for when his newfound magical power reveals he's the object of his male coworker's affections!

Adachi and Kurosawa's married life hits the first bump in the road when Kurosawa just won't slow down on a work project! After he brushes off Adachi's requests to let him pull some of the weight, insisting on taking care of everything himself, Adachi retaliates--by refusing to be intimate with Kurosawa until the big project is over! Will Kurosawa make it through and get his reward from Adachi?!

As for Tsuge and Minato, it's their six-month anniversary! They decide to rent motorcycles and spend a day touring around together, which proves to be the perfect opportunity for them to get a whole lot closer...

"Create a More Positive Rehoboth" was a decades-long goal for progress and inclusiveness in a charming beach town in southern Delaware. Rehoboth, which was established in the 19th century as a Methodist Church meeting camp, has, over time, become a thriving mecca for the LGBTQ+ community. In Queering Rehoboth Beach, historian and educator James Sears charts this significant evolution.

Sears draws upon extensive oral history accounts, archival material, and personal narratives to chronicle "the Battle for Rehoboth," which unfolded in the late 20th century, as conservative town leaders and homeowners opposed progressive entrepreneurs and gay activists. He recounts not just the emergence of the gay and lesbian bars, dance clubs, and organizations that drew the queer community to the region, but also the efforts of local politicians, homeowners and school boards, among other groups who fought to develop and protect the traditional identity of this beach town. Moreover, issues of race, class, and gender and sexuality informed opinions as residents and visitors struggled with the AIDS crisis and the legacy of Jim Crow.

Queering Rehoboth Beach is more than just an inspiring story about a community's resilience and determination to establish a safe space for itself in the wake of the era of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. It is also a terrific beach read.

In this second novel of the Elliot Blake series, Elliot is promoted to Head of Claims at his insurance company. While he's investigating a death claim filed on behalf of Leonard Lehnert, the star of a radio show called The Shadow's Voice, he discovers private letters written during the Second World War that upend his investigation and his relationship with his lover, Vito Vellucci. Vito's letters give a voice to the lives and loves that had to be lived in the shadows, and reveal a hidden past, never acknowledged by the world at large.

A passionate argument for LGBTQ equality within religious communities--"a book for our times and a book for the ages" (EDGE)

The myth that the Bible forbids homosexuality--the myth of "God versus Gay"--is behind some of the most divisive and painful conflicts of our day. In this provocative and game-changing book, scholar and activist Jay Michaelson shows that the Bible does not prohibit same-sex intimacy but does quite the opposite. In fact, the vast majority of the Bible's teachings support the full equality and dignity of LGBTQ people, from the first flaw it finds in creation ("It is not good for a person to be alone") to the way religious communities grow through reflection and conscience. Michaelson argues passionately for equality--not despite religion, but because of it.

With close readings of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament, the latest data on the science of sexual orientation, and a sympathetic, accessible, and ecumenical approach to religious faith, Michaelson makes the case that sexual diversity is part of the beauty of nature. The recognition of same-sex families will strengthen, not threaten, the values religious people hold dear. Whatever your views on religion and sexual diversity, God vs. Gay is a plea for a more compassionate, informed conversation--and a first step toward creating one.

Growing up in suburban Cleveland, Judah Leblang felt a deep connection with his Uncle Jerry, an orally-educated deaf man who lived an isolated life between the deaf and hearing worlds. Like Jerry, Leblang felt different too, struggling with his sexuality and trying to find his place in society, finally coming out in the mid-1980s. Many years later, after working in the Deaf Community and later, losing much of his own hearing, the author goes on a quest to understand his late uncle and to give him a voice--this man who died of a heart attack at 44, and who remained a mystery to those around him, encased in his silent world.

In Circuits of the Sacred Carlos Ulises Decena examines transnational black Latinx Caribbean immigrant queer life and spirit. Decena models what he calls a faggotology-the erotic in the divine as found in the disreputable and the excessive-as foundational to queer black critical and expressive praxis of the future. Drawing on theoretical analysis, memoir, creative writing, and ethnography of Santería/Lucumí in Santo Domingo, Havana, and New Jersey, Decena moves between languages, locations, pronouns, and genres to map the itineraries of blackness as a "circuit," a multipronged and multisensorial field. A feminist pilgrimage and extended conversation with the dead, Decena's study is a provocative work that transforms the academic monograph into a gathering of stories, theoretical innovation, and expressive praxis to channel voices, ancestors, deities, theorists, artists, and spirits from the vantage point of radical feminism and queer-of-color thinking.

This Mature-rated danmei/Boys' Love novel series originally released in Chinese-and coming to the English language for the first time-is a raunchy romantic comedy about an ancient singles club!

Dear Sir...

Lonely, poor, and pushing forty, Wu Xingzi doesn't have much to live for. In fact, the only thing he has going for him is the perfect funeral plot he's picked out for himself... That is, until he stumbles across the Peng Society and their monthly volume of personal ads for gay men.
At first, he's just looking for friendship with like-minded people, but when he finds out that it's customary for members to respond to polite letters with shockingly detailed ink drawings of their, ahem, intimate anatomy, Wu Xingzi quickly gains a new purpose in life: collecting phallic illustrations through the pigeon post!

There's just one problem. His favorite two-dimensional specimen belongs to a man who's intent on thrusting himself into Wu Xingzi's life in a very real, firm, three-dimensional fashion...

The Seven Seas English-language edition of this Mature-rated novel will feature uncensored text and exclusive new art.

It's 1937, and Heath Barrington is a naïve twenty-two-year-old about to set sail across the Atlantic on the Queen Mary. While on board, he meets the handsome Lord Simon Quimby, who invites Heath to his estate. Heath falls for Simon hard, but Simon soon becomes withdrawn and distant. Is Simon all he appears to be, or is there more to him than meets the eye? And what of the old gypsy curse Simon claims his family is under? Did it really cause his mother's death, his sister's suicide, and his father's murder, or did Simon have something to do with it all? It's up to Heath to uncover the truth, despite his heart telling him otherwise.

In this prequel to the Detective Heath Barrington Mystery series, Heath discovers that first love changes you forever and drives you to become the person you're destined to be.

I know what you are. Five words scrawled on a note, and Heath knew his life was now in jeopardy. He had no choice but to confront the blackmailer and find out what proof he had. But what then? Pay up and risk demands for future payments? Or not give in and throw his life away?

The decision's made for him when the blackmailer turns up dead. Is Heath a murderer? Even he isn't sure, thanks to several double martinis. Other suspects include a voluptuous neighbor, a smarmy grocer, a ruthless gangster, Heath's cousin Liz, who was once married to the blackmailer, and Miss Caldwell, a wily librarian who has eyes for the blackmailer's current wife, Alice. Heath tries to read between the lines to solve the case of a death overdue before he's arrested for the crime.