Hirons Library & Archives: LGBTQ: Fiction

Fiction

Terminal Velocity by Blanche McCary Boyd
ISBN: 9780307766649
Publication Date: 1997
"In 1970 I realized that the Sixties were passing me by. I had never even smoked a joint, or slept with anyone besides my husband. A year later I had left Nicky, changed my name from Ellen to Rain, and moved to a radical lesbian commune in California named Red Moon Rising, where I was playing the Ten of Hearts in an outdoor production of Alice in Wonderland when two FBI agents arrived to arrest the Red Queen . . ."
Afterlife by Paul Monette
Call Number: PS3563 .O523 A69 1990
ISBN: 9780517573396
Publication Date: 1990-02-17
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.
Blue Heaven by Joe Keenan
Call Number: PS3561 .E365 B56 1988
ISBN: 0140107649
Publication Date: 1988-08-01
Set in contemporary New York, Blue Heaven is the hilarious tale of a most unlikely couple and their brilliant plan to earn a fortune in gifts on their way to the altar.
Putting on the Ritz by Joe Keenan
Call Number: PS3561 .E365 P87 1991
ISBN: 0140149899
Publication Date: 1992-11-01
The witty duo from Blue Heaven invade the entourage of a tasteless real estate/media magnate, attempt to turn his talentless wife into a chanteuse, and vie for the affections of a suave magazine editor, in this deftly delicious comedy of bad manners, financial skullduggery, and romantic infighting.
A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood
Call Number: PR6017.S5 S4 2013
ISBN: 0374533873
Publication Date: 2013-06-11
Welcome to sunny suburban 1960s Southern California. George is a gay middle-aged English professor, adjusting to solitude after the tragic death of his young partner. He is determined to persist in the routines of his former life.A Single Man follows him over the course of an ordinary twenty-four hours.
Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera
Call Number: PS3607.I94 J85 2016
ISBN: 9781626012516
Publication Date: 2016-01-28
Juliet Milagros Palante is leaving the Bronx and headed to Portland, Oregon. She just came out to her family and isn't sure if her mom will ever speak to her again. But Juliet has a plan, sort of, one that's going to help her figure out this whole "Puerto Rican lesbian" thing. She's interning with the author of her favorite book: Harlowe Brisbane, the ultimate authority on feminism, women's bodies, and other gay-sounding stuff.
Plays Well with Others by Allan Gurganus
Call Number: PS3557.U814 P57 1999
ISBN: 9780375702037
Publication Date: 1999-02-02
With great narrative inventiveness and emotional amplitude, Allan Gurganus gives us artistic Manhattan in the wild 1980s, where young artists--refugees from the middle class--hurl themselves into playful work and serious fun.
Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan
Call Number: PS3562.E922175 B69 2013
ISBN: 9780375832994
Publication Date: 2005-05-10
This is the story of Paul, a sophomore at a high school like no other: The cheerleaders ride Harleys, the homecoming queen used to be a guy named Daryl (she now prefers Infinite Darlene and is also the star quarterback), and the gay-straight alliance was formed to help the straight kids learn how to dance.
Nothing Is Terrible by Matthew Sharpe
Call Number: PS3569.H3444 N68 2000
ISBN: 9780812992274
Publication Date: 2000-02-22
Her name is Mary White, though she prefers to be called Paul, the name of her ill-fated twin brother. Bright, pragmatic, irreverent, and orphaned, she is being raised by her clueless aunt and uncle and fears she may be about to drown in dull suburban torpor-until she falls in love with her new sixth-grade teacher, Miss Skip Hartman.
A Boy's Own Story by Edmund White
Call Number: PS3573.H463 B6 2009
ISBN: 9780143114840
Publication Date: 2009-02-24
Originally published in 1982 as the first of Edmund White's trilogy of autobiographical novels, A Boy's Own Story became an instant classic for its pioneering portrayal of homosexuality. The book's unnamed narrator, growing up during the 1950s, is beset by aloof parents, a cruel sister, and relentless mocking from his peers, compelling him to seek out works of art and literature as solace-and to uncover new relationships in the struggle to embrace his own sexuality. Lyrical and poignant, with powerful evocations of shame and yearning, this is an American literary treasure.
The Absolutist by John Boyne
Call Number: PR6102 .O96 A27 2012
ISBN: 9780552775403
Publication Date: 2012
It is September 1919: twenty-one-year-old Tristan Sadler takes a train from London to Norwich to deliver a package of letters to the sister of Will Bancroft, the man he fought alongside during the Great War.
Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green; David Levithan
Call Number: PS3607 .R43 W55 2011
ISBN: 9780142418475
Publication Date: 2011-04-05
When two teens, one gay and one straight, meet accidentally and discover that they share the same name, their lives become intertwined as one begins dating the other's best friend, who produces a play revealing his relationship with them both.
Martin and John by Dale Peck
Call Number: PS3566 .E245 M37 2015
ISBN: 9781616954840
Publication Date: 2015-02-10
John's encounters range from his first girlfriend, a boy who fleetingly stays in his parents' home, his stepfather, and crucially, his long-term lover Martin, who tragically dies of AIDS. The remainder of this story maps out John's grief as he obsessively seeks a substitute for the one man he truly loved and lost.
Getting over Homer by Mark O'Donnell
Call Number: PS3565 .D594 G48 1996
ISBN: 9780679781226
Publication Date: 1997-05-27
"Wise and forgiving . . . tough-minded and tender-hearted" (The New York Times), this delicious "coming of middle age" novel takes a lyrical, winsome, and genuinely side-splitting look at the heartbreak, aging, the search for home, and the madness of love between two mismatched men."
The Untouchable by John Banville
Call Number: PR6052 .A57 U58 1998
ISBN: 0679451080
Publication Date: 1997-04-22
In a novel based on the lives of the Cambridge spies, Victor Maskell, faced with exposure after a lifetime of hiding, sits down to pen his memoirs, struggling to come to terms with his life, his friends, and their role in wartime espionage.
Comfort and Joy by Jim Grimsley
Call Number: PS3557 .R4949 C6 1999
ISBN: 9781565122505
Publication Date: 1999-01-10
How charmed is Ford's life when his own heart suspects that he is not meant to spend his life with a woman? His suspicions are confirmed when he meets Dan Crell.
The Beautiful Room Is Empty by Edmund White
Call Number: PS3573 .H463 B43 1994
ISBN: 9780679755401
Publication Date: 1994-10-04
When the narrator of White's poised yet scalding autobiographical novel first embarks on his sexual odyssey, it is the 1950s, and America is "a big gray country of families on drowsy holiday." That country has no room for a scholarly teenager with guilty but insatiable stirrings toward other men.

Fiction

Love and Other Carnivorous Plants by Florence Gonsalves
Call Number: PZ7.1.G65219 L68 2018
ISBN: 0316436720
Publication Date: 2018-05-15
Freshman year at Harvard was the most anticlimactic year of Danny's life. She's failing pre-med and drifting apart from her best friend. One by one, Danny is losing all the underpinnings of her identity. When she finds herself attracted to an older, edgy girl who she met in rehab for an eating disorder, she finally feels like she might be finding a new sense of self.
Openly Straight by Bill Konigsberg
Call Number: PZ7.K83518 OPE 2015
ISBN: 0545798655
Publication Date: 2015-04-28
Rafe is a normal teenager from Boulder, Colorado. He plays soccer. He's won skiing prizes. He likes to write. And, oh yeah, he's gay. He's been out since 8th grade, and he isn't teased, and he goes to other high schools and talks about tolerance and stuff. And while that's important, all Rafe really wants is to just be a regular guy. Not that GAY guy.
Old Soldier by Vance N. Bourjaily
Call Number: PS3503 .O77 O4 1990
ISBN: 9781556111983
Publication Date: 1990-10-22
Tough ex-soldier Joe McKay and his gifted, sensitive brother Tommy are as different as they can be, until a silent killer strikes Tommy and the roles are reversed.
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
Call Number: PS3601.L34 S56 2015
ISBN: 9780062348678
Publication Date: 2015-04-07
Sixteen-year-old, not-so-openly-gay Simon Spier is blackmailed into playing wingman for his classmate or else his sexual identity--and that of his pen pal--will be revealed.
The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth
Call Number: PS3604 .A54 M5743 2013
ISBN: 9780062020574
Publication Date: 2013-05-28
In the early 1990s, when gay teenager Cameron Post rebels against her conservative Montana ranch town and her family decides she needs to change her ways, she is sent to a gay conversion therapy center.
Full-Metal Indigiqueer: the Pro(1,0)zoa by Joshua Whitehead
Call Number: PR9199.4.W4745 A6 2017
ISBN: 9781772011876
Publication Date: 2017-11-28
Using binary code and texts from classics of the English language such as Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Joshua Whitehead unravels the coded "I" to trace the formation of a colonized self and reclaim representations of Indigenous texts. Joshua Whitehead is an Oji-Cree, Two-Spirit member of the Peguis First Nation.
Three Junes by Julia Glass
Call Number: PS3607 .L37 T48 2002
ISBN: 9780375422416
Publication Date: 2002-09-05
Three Junes is a vividly textured symphonic novel set on both sides of the Atlantic during three fateful summers in the lives of a Scottish family.
Black Deutschland by Darryl Pinckney
Call Number: PS3566 .I51 B58 2016
ISBN: 9780374113810
Publication Date: 2016-02-02
Jed--young, gay, black, out of rehab and out of prospects in his hometown of Chicago--flees to the city of his fantasies, a museum of modernism and decadence: Berlin. The paradise that tyranny created, the subsidized city isolated behind the Berlin Wall, is where he's chosen to become the figure that he so admires, the black American expatriate.
Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman
Call Number: PS3601 .C525 C35 2007
ISBN: 9780312426781
Publication Date: 2008-01-22
Call Me by Your Name is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents' house, a cliff-side mansion on the Italian Riviera.
Lucky in the Corner by Carol Anshaw
Call Number: PS3551 .N7147 L83 2003
ISBN: 9780618340705
Publication Date: 2003-07-14
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.
The Lost Language of Cranes by David Leavitt
Call Number: PS3562.E2618 L6 2005
ISBN: 9781620407028
Publication Date: 2014-06-03
Set in the 1980s against the backdrop of a swiftly gentrifying Manhattan,The Lost Language of Cranestells the story of twenty-five-year-old Philip Benjamin, who realizes he must come out to his parents after falling in love for the first time with a man.
The Object of My Affection by Stephen McCauley
Call Number: PS3563.C33757 O2 1987
ISBN: 0671618407
Publication Date: 1987-03-15
George and Nina seem like the perfect couple. They share a cozy, cluttered Brooklyn apartment, a taste for impromptu tuna casserole dinners, and a devotion to ballroom dancing lessons at Arthur Murray. They love each other. There's only one hitch: George is gay.
Funny Boy by Shyam Selvadurai
Call Number: PR9440.9 .S42 F86 1997
ISBN: 0688145957
Publication Date: 1996-03-01
Arjie's understanding of the world around him--and his own gay identity--is placed against the backdrop of growing racial tension and civil unrest in Sri Lanka.
The Gallery by John Horne Burns; Paul Fussell (Introduction by)
Call Number: PS3503 .U6385 G3554 2004
ISBN: 1590170806
Publication Date: 2004-03-31
Set in occupied Naples in 1944, "The Gallery" takes its name from the Galleria Umberto, a bombed-out arcade where everybody in town comes together in pursuit of food, drink, sex, money, and oblivion. A daring and enduring novel--one of the first to look directly at gay life in the military--"The Gallery" poignantly conveys the mixed feelings of the men and women who fought the war that made America a superpower.
Two Halves of New Haven by Martin Schecter
Call Number: PS3569 .C4783 T88 1992
ISBN: 9780517584187
Publication Date: 1992-06-16
As Paul Levinson, a student at Yale Medical School, fights his way through the relentless pressure that the program presents, he struggles to come to terms with his identity as a homosexual who does not really want to become a doctor.
The Heart Is Deceitful above All Things by J. T. LeRoy
Call Number: PS3562.E773 H4 2001
ISBN: 9781582342115
Publication Date: 2002-06-01
The extraordinary stories that brought the author a cult following at the age of sixteen. These are the stories of a young boy on the run, away from his past, hellbent towards an unknown future. Connected, they form a sometimes harrowing, sometimes bleakly funny, and often tender portrait of a complicated life.

Fiction

Maurice by E. M. Forster
Call Number: PR6011 .O58 M3 1981
ISBN: 0393000265
Publication Date: 1987-09-01
Written during 1913 and 1914, "Maurice" deals with the then unmentionable subject of homosexuality. More unusual, it concerns a relationship that ends happily.
Greater Music by Suah Bae; Deborah Smith (Translator)
Call Number: PL992.6.S83 E8413 2016
ISBN: 9781940953465
Publication Date: 2016-10-11
A young Korean writer, falls into an icy river in the Berlin suburbs, where she's been house-sitting for her on-off boyfriend Joachim. This sets into motion a series of memories that move between the hazily defined present and the period three years ago when she first lived in Berlin. Throughout, the narrator's relationship with Joachim, a rough-and-ready metalworker, is contrasted with her friendship with M, an ultra-refined music-loving German teacher, whom, it is suggested, later became her lesbian lover.
The Columbia Anthology of Gay Literature by Byrne R. S. Fone (Editor)
Call Number: PN6071 .H724 C65 1998
ISBN: 0231096704
Publication Date: 1998-03-26
Gay writers and scholars have begun in earnest the search for a literary history long denied by the refusal to recognize homosexual love as an integral part of Western literature.
Beside Myself by Sasha Marianna Salzmann; Imogen Taylor (Translator)
Call Number: PT2719.A49 A9613 2019
ISBN: 9781892746443
Publication Date: 2020-02-18
Beside Myself is the disturbing and exhilarating story of a family across four generations. At its heart is a twin's search for her brother. When Anton goes missing and the only clue is a postcard sent from Istanbul, Ali leaves her life in Berlin to find him. Without her twin, the sharer of her memories and the mirror of her own self, Ali is lost.
Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead
Call Number: PR9199.4.W4745J66 2018
ISBN: 9781551527253
Publication Date: 2018-05-15
Off the reserve and trying to find ways to live and love in the big city, Jonny becomes a cybersex worker who fetishises himself in order to make a living. Self-ordained as an NDN glitter princess, Jonny has one week before he must return to the 'rez,' and his former life, to attend the funeral of his stepfather.
Pet by Akwaeke Emezi
Call Number: PZ7.1.E474 PET 2019
ISBN: 9780525647072
Publication Date: 2019-09-10
There are no monsters anymore, or so the children in the city of Lucille are taught. Jam and her best friend, Redemption, have grown up with this lesson all their life. But when Jam meets Pet, a creature made of horns and colors and claws, who emerges from one of her mother's paintings and a drop of Jam's blood, she must reconsider what she's been told.
The Promise of Rest by Reynolds Price
Call Number: PS3566 .R54 P76 1995
ISBN: 9780684825106
Publication Date: 1996-11-05
Reynolds Price tells the complex, moving story of a man's return home to die of AIDS and of the unexpected effect that his arrival -- and his death -- has on his family.
The Easy Way Out by Stephen McCauley
Call Number: PS3563 .C33757 E27 1992
ISBN: 067170818X
Publication Date: 1992-06-03
atrick O'Neil is a travel agent who never goes anywhere. His lover, Arthur, whom Patrick can't quite commit to, wants to cement their relationship by buying a house. Then a call comes in the middle of the night. Patrick's younger brother, Tony, has fallen in love - unfortunately she's not the woman he's already pledged to marry.
The Farewell Symphony by Edmund White
Call Number: PS3573 .H463 F37 1997
ISBN: 9780679754763
Publication Date: 1998-09-01
Named for the work by Haydn in which the instrumentalists leave the stage one after another until only a single violin remains playing, this is the story of a man who has outlived most of his friends.
One Man Guy by Michael Barakiva
Call Number: PZ7.B229538 ON 2016
ISBN: 125007357X
Publication Date: 2016-06-14
Alek Khederian should have guessed something was wrong when his parents took him to a restaurant. Everyone knows that Armenians never eat out. Alek's parents announce that he'll be attending summer school to bring up his grades. Alek is sure this experience will be the perfect hellish end to his hellish freshman year of high school. He never could've predicted that he'd meet someone like Ethan.
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz; Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Call Number: PS3619.A36 A75 2012
ISBN: 9781442408920
Publication Date: 2012-02-21
Aristotle is an angry teen with a brother in prison. Dante is a know-it-all who has an unusual way of looking at the world. When the two meet at the swimming pool, they seem to have nothing in common.
Surrender, Dorothy by Meg Wolitzer
Call Number: PS3573 .O564 S87 2000
ISBN: 0671042548
Publication Date: 2000-07-01
Depicting the aftermath of Sara's shocking death with piercing humor and shattering realism, "Surrender, Dorothy" is the luminously thoughtful, deeply moving exploration of what it is to be a mother and a friend, and, above all, what it takes to heal from unthinkable loss.
A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham
Call Number: PS3553.U484 H66 1990
ISBN: 9780312202316
Publication Date: 1998-11-15
A novel of two boyhood friends: Jonathan, lonely, introspective, and unsure of himself; and Bobby, hip, dark, and inarticulate. In New York after college, Bobby moves in with Jonathan and his roommate, Clare, a veteran of the city's erotic wars. Bobby and Clare fall in love, scuttling the plans of Jonathan, who is gay, to father Clare's child. Then, when Clare and Bobby have a baby, the three move to a small house upstate to raise "their" child together and, with an odd friend, Alice, create a new kind of family.
The Man of the House by Stephen McCauley
Call Number: PS3563 .C33757 M36 2011
ISBN: 0684810530
Publication Date: 1996-02-15
Clyde's on the verge of becoming as aimless as his handsome (and unswervingly straight) roommate, Marcus, a casualty of higher education whose going on the tenth year of his dissertation and his umpteenth doomed relationship. Enter Louise Morris. Clyde's old friend and Marcus's onetime lover is a peripatetic writer and single mother who shows up with Ben, her son, and a neurotic stray dog in tow.
Harold's End by J. T. Leroy
Call Number: PS3562.E773 H37 2004
ISBN: 9780867196146
Publication Date: 2015-02-25
A young boy finds solace in a gift from an older, seemingly compassionate man. As with other Leroy stories, it goes from dark to incomprehensibly black. Internationally renowned Australiam artist Cherry Hood has created eight unique watercolour paintings based on the character descriptions in the story.