Catalogue Search Results
Author
Publisher
Atlantic Books
Description
This is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blooms between 17-year-old Elio and his father's house guest, Oliver, during a restless summer on the Italian Riviera. What grows from the depths of their souls is a romance of scarcely six weeks' duration, and an experience that marks them for a lifetime.
2) Less
Author
Publisher
Abacus
Pub. Date
2018
Appears on list
Description
'Less' is the story of a 49-year-old writer, Arthur Less, who learns that his former boyfriend is about to get married. To avoid the wedding and heartbreak, he decides to embark on a trip around the world, accepting invitations to a series of half-baked lectures and literary events. From almost falling in love in Paris, almost falling to death in Berlin, to booking himself as the (only) writer on a residency in India, and an encounter in a desert...
Author
Publisher
Picador
Appears on list
Description
In October 1940, the handsome young David Sparsholt arrives in Oxford. A keen athlete and oarsman, he at first seems unaware of the effect he has on others - particularly on the lonely and romantic Evert Dax, son of a celebrated novelist and destined to become a writer himself. While the Blitz rages in London, Oxford exists at a strange remove: an ephemeral, uncertain place, in which nightly blackouts conceal secret liaisons. Over the course of one...
Author
Appears on these lists
Description
This is the story of Jeanette, adopted and brought up by her mother as one of God's elect. Zealous and passionate, she seems destined for life as a missionary, but then she falls for one of her converts. At 16, Jeanette decides to leave the church, her home and her family for the young woman she loves.
5) Find me
Author
Publisher
Faber & Faber
Pub. Date
2019.
Appears on list
Description
In this exploration of the varieties of love, the author of 'Call Me by Your Name' lets us back into his characters' lives years after their first meeting. In 'Find Me', Aciman shows us Elio's father, Samuel, on a trip from Florence to Rome to visit Elio, now a gifted classical pianist. A chance encounter on the train upends Sami's visit and changes his life forever. Elio soon moves to Paris, where he, too, has a consequential affair, while Oliver,...
6) The inverts
Author
Publisher
The Borough Press
Pub. Date
2021
Appears on list
Description
1921: a boy, a girl, a moonlit midnight kiss. A terrible, repulsive kiss. Bettina and Bart have grown up as best friends, so surely they will end up together? After all, Bettina is young, rich, headstrong - and gay. Bart is young, rich, charismatic - and also, definitely, gay. Any doubts are dispelled by, in short order: that ghastly kiss; a torrid encounter for Bettina in the school boiler-rooms; and an eye-opening Parisian visit for Bart. Society...
Author
Publisher
Serpent's Tail
Pub. Date
2019.
Appears on list
Description
The extraordinary life story of Anne Lister, as told in the BBC drama 'Gentleman Jack'. Anne Lister was a Yorkshire heiress, an intrepid world traveller and a proud lesbian during a time when it was difficult simply to be female. She chose to remain unmarried, dressed all in black and spoke openly of her lack of interest in men. The first woman to climb Vignemale in the treacherous Pyrenees, she journeyed as far as Azerbaijan and slept with a pistol...
8) Lie with me
Author
Publisher
Penguin Books
Pub. Date
2019
Appears on list
Description
Just outside a hotel in Bordeaux, Philippe, a famous writer, chances upon a young man who bears a striking resemblance to his first love. What follows is a look back to Philippe's teenage years, to a winter morning in 1984, a small French high school, and a carefully timed encounter between two seventeen-year-olds. It's the start of a secret, intensely passionate, world-altering love affair between Philippe and his classmate, Thomas. Dazzlingly rendered...
Author
Publisher
Bloomsbury
Pub. Date
2020.
Appears on list
Description
You were right when you said that people can't always give us what we want from them. Poland, 1980. Anxious, disillusioned Ludwik Glowacki, soon to graduate university, has been sent along with the rest of his class to an agricultural camp. Here he meets Janusz - and together, they spend a dreamlike summer swimming in secluded lakes, reading forbidden books - and falling in love. But with summer over, the two are sent back to Warsaw, and to the harsh...
Author
Publisher
Little, Brown
Pub. Date
2015
Appears on list
Description
In this volume, biographer Michael Bloch turns his attention to the men of British politics who were forced to lead double lives. Outwardly conforming to the requirements of heterosexual middle class society, many twentieth-century British politicians had illicit, clandestine and often thrilling queer sex lives. Some sought relationships with men of their own class, others with 'rough trade' and some confined themselves to fleeting, anonymous encounters...
12) The in-between
Author
Publisher
Atlantic Books
Pub. Date
2024
Description
No life is simple, and no life is without sorrow. No life is perfect. Two middle-aged men meet on an internet date. Each has been scarred by a previous relationship; each has his own compelling reasons for giving up on the idea of finding love. But still they both turn up for the dinner, feel the spark and the possibility of something more. Feel the fear of failing again, of being hurt and humiliated and further annihilated by love. How can they take...
Author
Publisher
John Blake
Pub. Date
2015.
Appears on list
Description
With the song 'Rise Like a Phoenix', Thomas Neuwirth - better known to the world as Conchita Wurst - stormed to victory in 2014's Eurovision Song Contest. The bearded queen's winning words, 'We are unity and we are unstoppable', were a pointed riposte to overt Russian hostility and Eastern European homophobia, and a watershed moment for LGBT campaigners. Her victory stirred massive support right across the continent in the gay community and beyond,...
14) When we rise
Author
Publisher
Constable
Pub. Date
2017
Appears on list
Description
Born in 1954, Cleve Jones was part of the last generation of gay people who grew up not knowing if there was anyone else on the entire planet who felt the same way he did. It wasn't until he was 14, flipping through the pages of Life magazine, when he saw the headline 'Homosexuals in Revolt!' followed by several pages of text and photographs of the new gay rights movement, including photos of men marching with fists in the air through the streets...
15) Proud
Author
Publisher
Ebury Press
Pub. Date
2014
Description
The autobiography of former Welsh rugby player Gareth Thomas, who represented Wales in both rugby union and rugby league. Thomas announced publicly he was gay in 2009, making him the first openly gay professional rugby union player.
16) To be a gay man
Author
Pub. Date
2020
Appears on list
Description
Young gay people growing up in a climate of shame are clearly more at risk of developing low self-worth, and even self-disgust, leading to destructive behaviours in adult life. With therapy, Will has provided himself with the tools, self-knowledge and perspective to identify destructive compulsions for what they are. In 'How to be a Gay Man', he reveals the darkest extremes he has been to, sharing his vulnerabilities, tracing his own navigation through...
Author
Series
Publisher
Penguin Classics
Pub. Date
2018
Description
A little black girl opens her eyes in 1930s Harlem. Around her, a heady swirl of passers-by, car horns, kerosene lamps, the stock market falling, fried bananas, tales of her parents' native Grenada. She trudges to public school along snowy sidewalks, and finds she is tongue-tied, legally blind, left behind by her older sisters. On she stumbles through teenage hardships - suicide, abortion, hunger, a Christmas spent alone - until she emerges into happiness:...
Author
Publisher
William Collins
Pub. Date
[2019]
Appears on list
Description
The son of a Baptist pastor and deeply embedded in church life in small town Arkansas, as a young man Garrard Conley was terrified and conflicted about his sexuality. When Garrard was a 19-year-old college student, he was outed to his parents and was forced to make a life-changing decision: either agree to attend a church-supported conversion therapy programme that promised to 'cure' him of homosexuality; or risk losing family, friends and the God...
19) The mismade girl
Author
Publisher
Accent Press Ltd
Pub. Date
[2017]
Description
When Julia Seagrove is found dead, a name carved into her body, old memories are stirred up for DI Hal Luchewski. The name is that of a murdered sex offender - and the man who killed him, convicted in Hal's first ever murder case, has just been released from prison. As he digs deeper, Hal discovers multiple links between Dr Seagrove, the recently released killer Nino Gaudiano, and Nino's long-missing daughter Louisa. Hal must tread a fine line as...
Author
Series
Publisher
Virago
Pub. Date
1999
Appears on these lists
Description
'Tipping the Velvet' is a wonderfully lush, sensous and bawdy novel set in the music halls of the late 19th century. Nan gets to meet her heroine, Kitty, a male impersonator. The two begin a double act, and their affection for each other deepens.