Historical Fiction
Outhouse East Library | 1 / 12 | ||||
Cover | Details | Summary | |||
![]() | Buenas Noches, Buenos Aires | Gilbert Adair's extraordinary new novel constitutes both the exuberant celebration of, and the melancholy elegy for, that poignantly brief period in the early 1980s when homosexuals marched collectively, arm in arm, out of the closet. Not all homosexuals, however. Adair's protagonist, Gideon, a lonely, horny young Englishman who arrives in Paris at the very beginning of the decade to take up a teaching post in the local Berlitz, is increasingly fascinated by the intoxicating atmosphere of erotic banter and bragging in the school's all-male and virtually all-gay common room. The moment has surely arrived for him, too, to overcome his own chronic timidity and actually do what he has only ever dared fantasise about. Yet Gideon has a secret - a secret he is prepared to share with nobody but the reader, a secret he is finally obliged to confront, with surprising results, when the shadow of AIDS starts to cast its sinister net over the gay community. Wise and witty, Buenas Noches, Buenos Air... | |||
Gilbert Adair | |||||
2004 | |||||
AIDS/HIV, Coming Out, Fiction, Gay, History | |||||
Book#: HF001 | |||||
![]() | In Unlikely Places | Following her dream to explore the African continent, join Lily Bascombe as she sets sail in 1895. The sea captain tells her of another white woman who has disappeared into the bush and gives Lily letters and tea should she ever find her. Along with her guides, Lily makes her way across the continent as a trader, soon finding herself obsessed with finding Miss Margery Poole. She sloshes through mosquito-ridden swamps, across raging rivers, and through endless entangled jungle paths until a piece of lace from an English corset leads her to the elusive Miss Poole, who, it appears, has shed more than her corset. | |||
ReBecca Béguin | |||||
1990 | |||||
Fiction, History, Lesbian, Travel | |||||
Book#: HF002 | |||||
![]() | The Glass Arcade | Back in the 1930s he had seen his parents shot to death by the Nazis but the nightmare had not ended there, for Michael Kurtz had been given a "reprieve," sent to become one of Herr Lorken's boy courtesans in a brother catering to all the appetites of the elite officers of the Third Reich. Here, as a boy, Michael had to learn survival...and submission to a new way of life, the life of a painted slave in a perfumed palace for soldiers. Now, as a man, he must learn to face his past, to remember the bullets and the pain...and the surprising tenderness he found at the hands of the enigmatic Herr Lorken, the magnificent lord of the fantastic Glass Arcade. | |||
Adrian Brooks | |||||
1980 | |||||
Fiction, Gay, History | |||||
Book#: HF003 | |||||
![]() | Young Men at War | Anthony Arthur Kildwick, born in 1919 to a well-to-do Yorkshire family, finds the love of his life in a German exchange student at his boarding school. Both boys are passionate to avoid another war between their countries, but when Manfred returns home he is seduced by Hitler's nationalist rhetoric, while Tony meets the outbreak of war as a conscientious objector. As the Nazi regime shows itself ever more demonic, Tony reluctantly decides he must fight, is recruited into the Intelligence Corps, and eventually parachuted into southern France, to work with the Resistance. There he discovers Manfred is now an officer with the occupying forces, and their paths cross again in dramatic circumstances. Noel Currer-Briggs, well know as a writer on history and genealogy, has drawn for this novel on his own experience. As well as a fascinating story, it conveys a vivid sense of the conflicts of the 1930s, and the interplay between friendship and internationalism, homosexuality and pacifism, patri... | |||
Noel Currer-Briggs | |||||
1996 | |||||
Fiction, Gay, History, Romance | |||||
Book#: HF004 | |||||
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Outhouse East Library | 2 / 12 | ||||
Cover | Details | Summary | |||
![]() | This Breathing World | A pair of thrillers are placed up against each other in this connected collection of murder mysteries. One takes place in first-century Rome and tells the tale of Mazuf, a homosexual scribe who is driven to kill. The second is set in the modern day United States and seems to focus on the sexual exploits of a Harvard student until it is revealed that he, too, is a murderer. The two mysteries are constructed as reflections of each other, like mirrors set up in a deserted ballroom, enveloping readers in the stories of the young murderers told through their eyes. | |||
José Luis de Juan | |||||
2008 | |||||
Fiction, Gay, History, Mystery | |||||
Book#: HF005 | |||||
![]() | Beyond the Pale by Elena Dykewomon | Beyond the Pale follows the lives of two women: Gutke Gurvich, who apprentices as a midwife in a Russian Jewish settlement before immigrating to New York and joining the suffrage and labor movements; and Chava Meyer, a Russian Jew whose birth is attended by Gutke. A tour de force sequence involving the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire is typical of this book's power. Both epic and intimate, the book takes readers deep inside diverse worlds, with harrowing and heroic stories of midwifery, the Russian pogroms, and early lesbian life. | |||
Elana Dykewomon | |||||
1997 | |||||
Fiction, History, Lesbian | |||||
Book#: HF006 | |||||
![]() | Maurice | Set in the elegant Edwardian world of Cambridge undergraduate life, this story by a master novelist introduces us to Maurice Hall when he is fourteen. We follow him through public school and Cambridge, and into his father's firm. In a highly structured society, Maurice is a conventional young man in almost every way―except that he is homosexual. Written during 1913 and 1914, immediately after Howards End, and not published until 1971, Maurice was ahead of its time in its theme and in its affirmation that love between men can be happy. "Happiness," Forster wrote, "is its keynote.... In Maurice I tried to create a character who was completely unlike myself or what I supposed myself to be: someone handsome, healthy, bodily attractive, mentally torpid, not a bad businessman and rather a snob. Into this mixture I dropped an ingredient that puzzles him, wakes him up, torments him and finally saves him." | |||
E. M. Forster | |||||
1995 | |||||
Fiction, Gay, History | |||||
Book#: HF007 | |||||
![]() | Some Dance to Remember | Palm Drive Publishing is proud to bring this classic of gay literature to a new generation of readers! Some Dance To Remember: A Memoir-Novel of San Francisco 1970-1982, has been referred to as "the gay Gone with the Wind." But such words do not do justice to this story. Some Dance To Remember uses the quintessential gay love story between a writer and a bodybuilder to capture the tone, setting, style, events, and essence of the Gay Liberation Generation of the 1970s. It is a lyrical romance, a comedy, a tragedy - all this and more - wrapped up in the historical context of the life and times of San Franciscans during the decade that changed the world. | |||
Jack Fritscher | |||||
1990 | |||||
Fiction, Gay, History, Humour/Comedy, Romance | |||||
Book#: HF008 | |||||
![]() | The Unlit Lamp | This early work by Radclyffe Hall was originally published in 1924. 'The Unlit Lamp' is Hall's first novel about a young girl who dreams of studying medicine and moving to London with her friend, but struggles to leave her emotionally dependant mother. Marguerite Radclyffe Hall was born on 12th August 1880, in Bournemouth, England. Hall's first novel The Unlit Lamp (1924) was a lengthy and grim tale that proved hard to sell. It was only published following the success of the much lighter social comedy The Forge (1924), which made the bestseller list of John O'London's Weekly. Hall is a key figure in lesbian literature for her novel The Well of Loneliness (1928). | |||
Radclyffe Hall | |||||
1989 | |||||
Feminism, Fiction, History | |||||
Book#: HF009 | |||||
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Outhouse East Library | 3 / 12 | ||||
Cover | Details | Summary | |||
![]() | The Well of Loneliness | 'As a man loved a woman, that was how I loved...It was good, good, good...' Stephen is an ideal child of aristocratic parents - a fencer, a horse rider and a keen scholar. Stephen grows to be a war hero, a bestselling writer and a loyal, protective lover. But Stephen is a woman, and her lovers are women. As her ambitions drive her, and society confines her, Stephen is forced into desperate actions. The Well of Loneliness was banned for obscenity when published in 1928. It became an international bestseller, and for decades was the single most famous lesbian novel. It has influenced how love between women is understood, for the twentieth century and beyond. | |||
Radclyffe Hall | |||||
1968 | |||||
Fiction, History, Lesbian | |||||
Book#: HF010 | |||||
![]() | Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander | The meddling mothers of the Regency would do anything to wed their daughters to Andrew Carrington, the wealthy, handsome, and athletic heir to an earldom. There is one problem, however. No woman in all England would suit the determined bachelor, for Andrew far prefers the company of men—at his table and in his bedroom. But with privilege comes responsibility. Andrew must take a bride. And while Phyllida Lewis, the penniless, spirited, and curvaceous author of romantic novels, is not quite what his family had in mind, a marriage to her would enable Andrew to live his life as he pleases. The arrival of Matthew Thornby, the honorable and dashing son of a self-made baronet, into their cozy arrangement makes Andrew's happiness complete. Yet a shrewd enemy is waiting in the wings, threatening to expose them all—an act that will surely lead to scandal and ruin. | |||
Ann Herendeen | |||||
2008 | |||||
Fiction, Gay, History, Romance | |||||
Book#: HF011 | |||||
![]() | Brethren | Buccaneer adventure and romance. The first of three volumes chronicling the relationship between an emotionally wounded and disenchanted English lord and an insane and lonely French exile, set among the buccaneers of Port Royal, Jamaica, in 1667. | |||
W. A. Hoffman | |||||
2006 | |||||
Fiction, Gay, History, Romance, Travel | |||||
Book#: HF012 | |||||
![]() | Matelots | Buccaneer adventure and romance. The second of a series chronicling the relationship between an emotionally wounded and disenchanted English lord and an insane and lonely French exile, set among the buccaneers of Port Royal, Jamaica, in 1667. | |||
W. A. Hoffman | |||||
2007 | |||||
Fiction, Gay, History, Romance, Travel | |||||
Book#: HF013 | |||||
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Outhouse East Library | 4 / 12 | ||||
Cover | Details | Summary | |||
![]() | The Stranger's Child | In the late summer of 1913 the aristocratic young poet Cecil Valance comes to stay at 'Two Acres', the home of his close Cambridge friend George Sawle. The weekend will be one of excitements and confusions for all the Sawles, but it is on George's sixteen-year-old sister Daphne that it will have the most lasting impact, when Cecil writes her a poem which will become a touchstone for a generation, an evocation of an England about to change for ever. Linking the Sawle and Valance families irrevocably, the shared intimacies of this weekend become legendary events in a larger story, told and interpreted in different ways over the coming century, and subjected to the scrutiny of critics and biographers with their own agendas and anxieties. In a sequence of widely separated episodes we follow the two families through startling changes in fortune and circumstance. At the centre of this often richly comic history of sexual mores and literary reputation runs the story of Daphne, from innocent g... | |||
Alan Hollinghurst | |||||
2011 | |||||
Fiction, History | |||||
Book#: HF014 | |||||
![]() | The Bisley Boy | The astonishing story of the boy from a Cotswold village who became Elizabeth I has been rumored for centuries; historical novelist Chris Hunt reconstructs Elizabeth's story in the first person. | |||
Chris Hunt | |||||
1995 | |||||
Drag, Fiction, Gay, History | |||||
Book#: HF015 | |||||
![]() | Duval's Gold | Growing up at a coaching inn in the early 1700s, young Davy Gadd is enthralled by tales of the greatest of highwaymen, Claude Duval. Seeking his fortune in London, he is entangled in the corrupt machinations of the criminal underworld. At last, equipped with horse, pistols and velvet mask, he sets out as a Gentleman of the Road. But not before he has been loved by a Jacobite lord, dressed up by Lucinda and Aunty Mary, and been married at Mother Clap's Molly House. And at the end of the road, will he pass into legend, or does his fate lead to Tyburn tree, where so many glamorous adventurers have been hanged? | |||
Chris Hunt | |||||
1997 | |||||
Fiction, Gay, History | |||||
Book#: HF016 | |||||
![]() | Gaveston | "First of all, let it be set down that Piers Gaveston was the most beautiful creation on God's earth, and if it had not been so, his joys and his pains would have been in proportion the less. Set it down that Gaveston had eyes as green as emeralds, and a smile that dazzled like the sun..". And so Edward II begins the famous tale of his excellent Gaveston. They were young lovers blinded by dreams of Camelot and knights in shining armor, but caught in a web of courtly jealousy and prejudice that eventually destroyed them both. Their story has inspired writers and dramatists from Christopher Marlowe to Derek Jarman, and is recreated here in Chris Hunt's inimitable and well-researched style. | |||
Chris Hunt | |||||
1992 | |||||
Fiction, Gay, History | |||||
Book#: HF017 | |||||
![]() | Street Lavender | Maybe this all sounds shocking. All I can say is that there were boys younger than me down the coal mines every day of their lives, and boys with bleeding limbs forced up chimney flues, with brine rubbed in their wounds to harden their flesh. That's true immorality; so save your pity and revulsion for that. London in the final quarter of the nineteenth century, where the wealth and elegance of the few lies heavily on top of the squalor of the many. In its busy West End streets, Willie Smith soon learns to use his youth and beauty as a means to escape the grinding poverty of his East End background, as he discovers the real world that lies hidden beneath the veneer of Victorian respectability. | |||
Chris Hunt | |||||
1990 | |||||
Fiction, Gay, History | |||||
Book#: HF018 | |||||
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Outhouse East Library | 5 / 12 | ||||
Cover | Details | Summary | |||
![]() | London Triptych | Three men, three lives, and three eras sinuously entwine in a dark startling and unsettling narrative of sex, exploitation, and dependence set against London's strangely constant gay underworld. Rent boys, models, aristocrats, artists, and gangsters populate this bold debut novel as the lives and loves of three men interweave in three distinct and pertinent historical periods. | |||
Jonathan Kemp | |||||
2014 | |||||
Fiction, Gay, History, Sex | |||||
Book#: HF019 | |||||
![]() | Danny Hill: Memoirs of a Prominent Gentleman | It is not generally known that the celebrated woman of pleasure Fanny Hill had a foster-brother called Daniel. He too wrote his memoirs, which reveal him to have been as accommodating as his sister and as equally versed in the ways of the polite society of his time. They have been painstakingly edited by Francis King, who explains in his introduction how this priceless literary heirloom came to be in his possession. If he is to be believed, these memoirs offer a unique and intimate insight into the life of a young man in 18th century England, and his rise to prominence entirely through the diligent application of those gifts with which he was endowed. | |||
Francis King | |||||
1977 | |||||
Fiction, History | |||||
Book#: HF020 | |||||
![]() | Prince And The Pretender | Nicholas Romanov, the last Russian Tsar and his family were murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1917. Now, fifty years later, Tom Bradshaw sees a young man in New York's popular west side YMCA. The young man looks remarkably like a fellow student Tom was in love with at Yale; Eric Lindenhurst Hall, dubbed Prince Eric thanks to his good looks and wealth. Tom's love was not reciprocated and never would be as Eric had died in a boating accident several years ago. Tom befriends Eric's double, Nicky, and is soon involved in a passionate affair with Eric's 'ghost.' As Tom learns more about Nicky's birth and rearing an elaborate plan begins to unfold in his mind. A plan so preposterous that every detail must be meticulously thought out if it is to succeed. Tom was going to have Nicky Pretend to be Prince Eric. | |||
Vincent Lardo | |||||
1984 | |||||
Fiction, Gay, History | |||||
Book#: HF021 | |||||
![]() | The Girl | In November 1978, West End Press published The Girl by Meridel Le Sueur, a rewritten version of a novel the author had first completed in 1939. The original story told of women struggling to survive a harsh winter in St. Paul after having suffered the loss of their male companions in a failed bank robbery. According to Le Sueur, it was a collective work: We had a writer's group of women in The Workers Alliance and we met every night to raise our miserable circumstances to the level of sagas, poetry, cry-outs. The rewritten version emphasized the fate of the farm girl of the title as she struggled to survive the death of her lover and give birth to another girl, the hope of a new and better generation. The Girl is the most popular title published by West End Press, with over 24,000 copies sold. It has been adopted for courses in over a hundred colleges and universities, published in three foreign editions, and optioned for movie rights. The author, emerging from the political blacklist... | |||
Meridel Le Sueur | |||||
1978 | |||||
Fiction, History | |||||
Book#: HF022 | |||||
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Outhouse East Library | 6 / 12 | ||||
Cover | Details | Summary | |||
![]() | While England Sleeps | Set against the rise of fascism in 1930s Europe, WHILE ENGLAND SLEEPS tells the story of the love affair between Brian Botsford, an upper-class young writer, and Edward Phelan, an idealistic, self-educated employee of the London Underground and a member of the Communist party. Though by far the better educated of the two Brian is also more callow, convinced that his homosexuality is something he will outgrow. Edward, on the other hand, possesses 'an unproblematic capacity to accept' both Brian and the unorthodox nature of their love for each other - until one day, at the urging of his wealthy aunt Constance, Brian agrees to be set up with a 'suitable' young woman...and soon enough Edward is pushed to the point of crisis. Fleeing, he volunteers to fight in Spain, where he ends up in prison. Brian, responsible for Edward's flight, must pursue him across Europe, into the violent chaos of war. | |||
David Leavitt | |||||
1998 | |||||
Fiction, Gay, History | |||||
Book#: HF023 | |||||
![]() | Aphrodite | Aphrodite is a 1896 French-language novel by Pierre Louÿs. Set in Alexandria, the novel tells the story of Chrysis, a courtesan, and the sculptor Démétrios. A Galilaean with long golden hair (source of her Greek nickname), Chrysis is proud of her beauty and her skill at winning the devotion and servility of men. Démétrios, for his part, is worshipped by the women of the town, but has grown tired of their devotion. He has come to prefer his statue of the goddess Aphrodite even to his lover, Queen Bérénice, who posed for it. Chrysis is the only woman who does not care for him; piqued into desire by her resistance, Démétrios is spurred to commit theft and murder for her, to win the three objects she demands in return for her charms: a rival courtesan's silver mirror, the ivory comb of an Egyptian priestess, and the pearl necklace that adorns the cult image in the temple of Aphrodite. | |||
Pierre Louys | |||||
1959 | |||||
Fiction, History, Romance | |||||
Book#: HF024 | |||||
![]() | The Sign | In AD20 a homosexual Jew attempts to create a Messiah out of a handsome young visionary for his own political ends. | |||
Robin Maugham | |||||
1974 | |||||
Fiction, Gay, History, Politics, Religion | |||||
Book#: HF025 | |||||
![]() | Better Angel | Written in 1933, this classic, touching story focuses on a young man's gay awakening in the years between the World Wars and became an instant underground classic. Kurt Gray is a shy, bookish boy growing up in small-town Michigan. Even at the age of 13, he knows that somehow he is different. Gradually he recognizes his desire for a man's companionship and love. As a talented composer, breaking into New York's musical world, he finds the love he's sought. | |||
Richard Meeker | |||||
1987 | |||||
Classic, Fiction, Gay, History | |||||
Book#: HF026 | |||||
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Outhouse East Library | 7 / 12 | ||||
Cover | Details | Summary | |||
![]() | Patience and Sarah | Set in the nineteenth century, Isabel Miller's classic lesbian novel traces the relationship between Patience White, an educated painter, and Sarah Dowling, a farmer, whose romantic bond does not sit well with the puritanical New England farming community in which they live. Ultimately, they are forced to make life-changing decisions that depend on their courage and their commitment to one another."Patience & Sarah" is a historical romance that was a touchstone for the burgeoning gay and women's activism of the late 1960s and early 1970s; it celebrates the joys of an uninhibited love between two strong women with a confident defiance that remains relevant today. | |||
Isabel Miller | |||||
1986 | |||||
Feminism, Fiction, History, Lesbian, Romance | |||||
Book#: HF027 | |||||
![]() | Star of the Sea | In the bitter winter of 1847, from an Ireland torn by famine and injustice, The Star Of The Sea sets sail for the New World. On board are hundreds of refugees. Among them are a maid with a devastating secret, the bankrupt Lord Merridith and his wife and children, and a killer who stalks the decks in search of vengeance. | |||
Joseph O'Connor | |||||
2003 | |||||
Fiction, History, Mystery, Travel | |||||
Book#: HF028 | |||||
![]() | At Swim, Two Boys | 'Weren't you never out for an easy dip?' he asked ...'I don't mean the baths, I mean with a pal. For a lark like.' Out at the Forty Foot, that great jut of Dublin rock where gentlemen bathe in the scandalous nude, two boys meet day after day. There they make a pact: that Doyler will teach Jim to swim, and in a year, they will swim the bay to the distant beacon of the Muglins rock, to raise the Green and claim it for themselves. As a turbulent year drives inexorably towards the Easter Rising of 1916 and Ireland sets forth on a path to uncertain glory, a tender, secret love story unfolds. Written with verve and mastery in a modern Irish tradition descended from James Joyce and Flann O'Brien, At Swim, Two Boys is a shimmering novel of unforgettable ambition, intensity and humanity. | |||
Jaime O'Neill | |||||
2002 | |||||
Fiction, Gay, History | |||||
Book#: HF029 | |||||
![]() | Child of the Sun | This brilliant and brutally intimate novel accurately captures the depravity and intrigue of Ancient Rome. It tells the story of the youth Varius Avitus Bassianus, destined to become Emperor of the Roman empire. Varius spurned women. His erotic longings searched out a very different kind of love. Whatever or whomever he fancied was quickly offered to him. And no man, be he soldier or citizen, dared refuse him. As his perverted passions grew more and more bizarre, even the voluptuaries of Rome recoiled in horror. | |||
Lance Horner, Kyle Onstott | |||||
1966 | |||||
Fiction, Gay, History | |||||
Book#: HF030 | |||||
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Outhouse East Library | 8 / 12 | ||||
Cover | Details | Summary | |||
![]() | Caravaggio | Peachment's imagined Caravaggio, while still a child, overhears his parents discussing one of his sketches, and realises he has a talent which sets him apart from the world. He leaves family and home forever to map out a solitary traveller's life. Caravaggio became a revolutionary of his time, a rebellious and dangerous man to know, a man governed by his genius, his indiscriminate sexual appetite and his murderous rage. His name was sought far and wide in the late-Renaissance world for his art. And there was a price on his head for at least one murder. This is Caravaggio's confession, told in humorous, blasphemous, often brutal prose, which cleverly beguiles the reader into understanding the art that was so celebrated and the life that caused so much outrage. Peachment's imagined CARAVAGGIO is a gripping story of one man's determination to grapple with the truth as he journeys through Rome, Naples, Malta and Sicily, encounters lovers and enemies, endures madness, exile and imprisonment... | |||
Christopher Peachment | |||||
2002 | |||||
Art/Photography, Fiction, History, Humour/Comedy, Travel | |||||
Book#: HF031 | |||||
![]() | The Exile of Capri: An Elegant Study in Decadence | A handsome Frenchman in his early 30s meets a beautiful [male] 17-year-old compatriot on the crest of Vesuvius in 1897. Some kind of mutual understanding is achieved, more or less, at first sight - 'They suspected each other of having something more in common than a taste for climbing mountains; something betrayed in the fact that each had obviously selected his guide for his looks'. | |||
Roger Peyrefitte | |||||
1961 | |||||
Fiction, Gay, History | |||||
Book#: HF032 | |||||
![]() | Like People in History | Flamboyant, mercurial Alistair Dodge and steadfast, cautious Roger Sansarc are second cousins who are both gay and whose lifelong friendship begins when they first meet as nine-year-old boys in 1954. At crucial moments in their personal histories their lives intersect, and each discovers his own unique - and uniquely gay- identity. Through the lends of their complex, tumultuous, yet enduring relationship - and their involvement with the handsome model, poet and decorated Vietnam vet Matt Loguidice, whom they both love - Felice Picano chronicles and celebrates gay life and subculture over the last half of the twentieth century. From Malibu Beach in its palmist surfer days to the legendary parties at Fire Island Pines in the 1970s, from San Francisco during its gayest era to AIDS activism in Greenwich Village in the 1990s, Like People in History presents 'the heroic and funny saga of the last three decades by someone who saw everything and forgot nothing' (Edmund White). | |||
Felice Picano | |||||
1996 | |||||
AIDS/HIV, Fiction, Gay, History | |||||
Book#: HF033 | |||||
![]() | The Grass Beneath the Wire | Michael Richmond, called away to serve his King in the middle of the last war, does not find the scruffy regiment to which he has been taken congenial. He absents himself without leave at the first opportunity and rejoins the 'circuit' and his lover, John, a tart of all kinds. | |||
John POLLOCK | |||||
1966 | |||||
Fiction, Gay, History | |||||
Book#: HF034 | |||||
Created by Booknizer - www.booknizer.com |
Outhouse East Library | 9 / 12 | ||||
Cover | Details | Summary | |||
![]() | Eustace Chisholm and The Works | No Purdy work has dazzled contemporary writers more than this haunting tale of unrequited love in an indifferent world. A seedy Depression-era boardinghouse in Chicago plays host to a game of emotional chairs in a novel initially condemned for its frank depiction of abortion, homosexuality, and life on the margins of American society. | |||
James Purdy | |||||
1984 | |||||
Fiction, Gay, History | |||||
Book#: HF035 | |||||
![]() | The Feathers of Death | The Feathers of Death is a powerful story of moral corruption in a British regiment serving overseas. It is not a comfortable tale but Simon Raven handles the controversial theme brilliantly. | |||
Simon Raven | |||||
1959 | |||||
Fiction, Gay, History | |||||
Book#: HF036 | |||||
![]() | The Hunger | Ireland in the 1840s, where the beleaguered population fell victim to massive famine following the spread of an uncontrollable potato blight. Against this harsh background of turmoil, starvation and disease, an English landowner and an Irish peasant struggle to keep alive not only themselves and those around them, but the love they feel for one another in a society and era that violently condemn it. | |||
David Rees | |||||
1986 | |||||
Fiction, Gay, History, Romance | |||||
Book#: HF037 | |||||
![]() | The Persian Boy | The Persian Boy traces the last years of Alexander the Great’s life through the eyes of his lover, Bagoas. Abducted and gelded as a boy, Bagoas was sold as a courtesan to King Darius of Persia, but found freedom with Alexander after the Macedon army conquered his homeland. Their relationship sustains Alexander as he weathers assassination plots, the demands of two foreign wives, a sometimes-mutinous army, and his own ferocious temper. After Alexander’s mysterious death, we are left wondering if this Persian boy understood the great warrior and his ambitions better than anyone. | |||
Mary Renault | |||||
1973 | |||||
Fiction, Gay, History | |||||
Book#: HF038 | |||||
![]() | Funeral Games | Alexander the Great died at the age of thirty-three, leaving behind an empire that stretched from Greece and Egypt to India. After Alexander's death in 323 B.C. his only direct heirs were two unborn sons and a simpleton half-brother. Every long-simmering faction exploded into the vacuum of power. Wives, distant relatives, and generals all vied for the loyalty of the increasingly undisciplined Macedonian army. Most failed and were killed in the attempt. For no one possessed the leadership to keep the great empire from crumbling. But Alexander's legend endured to spread into worlds he had seen only in dreams. | |||
Mary Renault | |||||
1981 | |||||
Fiction, History | |||||
Book#: HF039 | |||||
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Outhouse East Library | 10 / 12 | ||||
Cover | Details | Summary | |||
![]() | Fire from Heaven | Alexander¬s beauty, strength, and defiance were apparent from birth, but his boyhood honed those gifts into the makings of a king. His mother, Olympias, and his father, King Philip of Macedon, fought each other for their son¬s loyalty, teaching Alexander politics and vengeance from the cradle. His love for the youth Hephaistion taught him trust, while Aristotle¬s tutoring provoked his mind and Homer¬s Iliad fueled his aspirations. Killing his first man in battle at the age of twelve, he became regent at sixteen and commander of Macedon¬s cavalry at eighteen, so that by the time his father was murdered, Alexander¬s skills had grown to match his fiery ambition. | |||
Mary Renault | |||||
1969 | |||||
Fiction, Gay, History | |||||
Book#: HF040 | |||||
![]() | The Charioteer | After enduring an injury at Dunkirk during World War II, Laurie Odell is sent to a rural veterans’ hospital in England to convalesce. There he befriends the young, bright Andrew, a conscientious objector serving as an orderly. As they find solace and companionship together in the idyllic surroundings of the hospital, their friendship blooms into a discreet, chaste romance. Then one day, Ralph Lanyon, a mentor from Laurie’s schoolboy days, suddenly reappears in Laurie’s life, and draws him into a tight-knit social circle of world-weary gay men. Laurie is forced to choose between the sweet ideals of innocence and the distinct pleasures of experience. Originally published in the United States in 1959, The Charioteer is a bold, unapologetic portrayal of male homosexuality during World War II that stands with Gore Vidal’s The City and the Pillar and Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories as a monumental work in gay literature. | |||
Mary Renault | |||||
1968 | |||||
Fiction, Gay, History, Romance | |||||
Book#: HF041 | |||||
![]() | The Bull from the Sea | A brilliant reconstruction of the legend of Theseus, the valiant youth who slew the Minotaur, became king, and brought prosperity to Attica. This brilliant recreation of the story of the legendary hero Theseus begins with his triumphant return from Crete after slaying the Minotaur. Having freed the city of Athens from the onerous tribute demanded by the ruler of Knossos--the sacrifice of noble youths and maidens to the Labytinth's monster--Theseus has returned home to find his father dead and himself the new king. But his adventures have only just begun: he still must confront the Amazons, capture their queen, Hippolyta, and face the tragic results of Phaedra's jealous rage. | |||
Mary Renault | |||||
1964 | |||||
Fiction, History | |||||
Book#: HF042 | |||||
![]() | Full Circle | An RAF bomb-aimer in World War Two, shot down over the Atlantic, Brian Hales has already had to overcome a crisis of conscience when his lover Ronnie ended their relationship and went to prison as a pacifist. The risks of attempted escape are his next hurdle, bringing him into conflict with his superior officers in the prisoner-of-war camp where he eventually finds himself. But his most disturbing experience is still to come, when he finds himself falling in love with a young German guard. Praised by London’s Gay Times for his “psychologically spot-on narratives”, Mike Seabrook has brought his keen insight for personal relations in an all-male world to bear on the complexities of friendship with the enemy. | |||
Mike Seabrook | |||||
1997 | |||||
Fiction, Gay, History, Romance | |||||
Book#: HF043 | |||||
Created by Booknizer - www.booknizer.com |
Outhouse East Library | 11 / 12 | ||||
Cover | Details | Summary | |||
![]() | Wild Girls | Natalie and Romaine met in London during World War I and their partnership lasted until Natalie died 52 years later. They were both American expatriates; unconventional, energetic, flamboyant and rich. With other women: Renee Vivien who nailed shut the windows of her apartment, wrote about the loveliness of death, drank eau de cologne and died of anorexia aged 30; and Dolly Wilde niece of Oscar, who ran up terrible phone bills and died of a drugs overdose. Her Friday afternoon salons in the cobbled garden of her Parisian house were for 'introductions and culture' and were frequented by Gertrude Stein, Colette, Radclyffe Hall and Edith Sitwell. Her lovers including Gabriele d'Annunzio with whom she had a terrible and tortured relationship, and the ballerina Ida Rubinstein. However her relationship with Natalie was constant and in their eventful years together they threw up a liberating spirit of culture, style and candour. | |||
Diana Souhami | |||||
2005 | |||||
Fiction, History, Lesbian | |||||
Book#: HF044 | |||||
![]() | Hearts and Minds | Into a far from peaceful English village comes the charismatic actor Mr Brown and his touring company. Lucy, a young black washerwoman, soon finds that Brown is not quite what he seems. But their snatched moments together will not keep her happy for long. As the atmosphere in the poverty-stricken village intensifies, charges of witchcraft and child murder lead to a series of tragedies and close escapes. A gripping eighteenth-century drama from a practised hand at historical fiction Hearts and Minds takes up where Jay Taverner's popular first novel Rebellion left off, but is complete in itself. | |||
Jay Taverner | |||||
2001 | |||||
BEM, Fiction, History | |||||
Book#: HF045 | |||||
![]() | Rebellion | Historical Romance, a lesbian love story. In a feudal world of aristocrats and peasants, The Lady Isabella and her gamekeeper's daughter, Hope, are girls of sixteen. From high society through highway robbery and alongside the perils of war, Hope and Isabella share a passionate coming-of-age. | |||
Jay Taverner | |||||
1997 | |||||
Fiction, History, Lesbian, Romance | |||||
Book#: HF046 | |||||
![]() | Gaywyck | Gaywyck, the first gay gothic romance, treads firmly in beloved territory, both honoring it and reinventing it. Classic in style, Vincent Virga creates a world as authentic as anything penned by DuMaurier, retaining the creaking ancestral mansion and mysterious and brooding master of the manor, while replacing the traditional damsel in distress with the young and handsome Robert Whyte. | |||
Vincent Virga | |||||
1987 | |||||
Fiction, Gay, History, Romance | |||||
Book#: HF047 | |||||
![]() | Alf | One of the first European novels to deal openly with gay love, this tells the story of two German schoolboys who are tragically and inevitably destroyed by World War I. | |||
Bruno Vogel | |||||
1992 | |||||
Fiction, Gay, History | |||||
Book#: HF048 | |||||
Created by Booknizer - www.booknizer.com |
Outhouse East Library | 12 / 12 | ||||
Cover | Details | Summary | |||
![]() | Affinity | An upper-class woman recovering from a suicide attempt, Margaret Prior has begun visiting the women’s ward of Millbank prison, Victorian London’s grimmest jail, as part of her rehabilitative charity work. Amongst Millbank’s murderers and common thieves, Margaret finds herself increasingly fascinated by on apparently innocent inmate, the enigmatic spiritualist Selina Dawes. Selina was imprisoned after a séance she was conducting went horribly awry, leaving an elderly matron dead and a young woman deeply disturbed. Although initially skeptical of Selina’s gifts, Margaret is soon drawn into a twilight world of ghosts and shadows, unruly spirits and unseemly passions, until she is at last driven to concoct a desperate plot to secure Selina’s freedom, and her own. | |||
Sarah Waters | |||||
2003 | |||||
Fiction, History, Lesbian, Supernatural | |||||
Book#: HF049 | |||||
![]() | Fingersmith | Sue Trinder is an orphan, left as an infant in the care of Mrs. Sucksby, a "baby farmer," who raised her with unusual tenderness, as if Sue were her own. Mrs. Sucksby¬s household, with its fussy babies calmed with doses of gin, also hosts a transient family of petty thieves - fingersmiths - for whom this house in the heart of a mean London slum is home. One day, the most beloved thief of all arrives - Gentleman, an elegant con man, who carries with him an enticing proposition for Sue: If she wins a position as the maid to Maud Lilly, a naïve gentlewoman, and aids Gentleman in her seduction, then they will all share in Maud¬s vast inheritance. Once the inheritance is secured, Maud will be disposed of - passed off as mad, and made to live out the rest of her days in a lunatic asylum. With dreams of paying back the kindness of her adopted family, Sue agrees to the plan. Once in, however, Sue begins to pity her helpless mark and care for Maud Lilly in unexpected ways... But no one and not... | |||
Sarah Waters | |||||
2011 | |||||
Fiction, History | |||||
Book#: HF050 | |||||
![]() | Fellow Travellers | When Harry Watson, an attractive and personable ex-Guardsman, becomes involved with the young novelist Martin Murray, he is quick to assimilate Martin's left-wing views. He fits readily into Martin's circle, along with the earl's daughter and communist Lady Nellie Griffiths, her playboy nephew Pugh, and the unconfident Oxford undergraduate Gavin Blair Summers. But then Harry's enthusiasm leads him to join the International Brigade, and all five are suddenly faced witht he stark realities of the Spanish Civil War. | |||
T. C. Worsley | |||||
1984 | |||||
Fiction, Gay, History | |||||
Book#: HF051 | |||||
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