 Dean Robb: An Unlikely Radical
by Matthew Z. Robb
Dean Robb’s life seemed always to collide with the currents of history. The story of a young farmboy from southern Illinois whose life led him to become a radical lawyer in Detroit takes us from common yet solid beginnings and leads us to the crucible that changed American life—the confrontations and controversies that surrounded civil rights and the Vietnam War in the 1950s and ‘60s.
Caught between two worlds, Dean was raised to a simple life of hard work, faith, family, and community; as he grew he was driven to break boundaries, to shape the world around him by fighting for fairness, equality, and humanity.
Dean’s remarkable life can teach all of us about saying yes to the opportunities that are presented to us. With his openness, determination, and willingness to challenge comfort zones, Dean built a life that speaks to us about a great generation, and will inspire our own visions for generations to come.
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 Without Sin
by J. Tomas
Sixteen-year-old Jacob Smithson has a temper. He's picked on because he likes boys, and fighting gets him kicked out of public school. As a last resort, his parents place him in St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Boarding School for Boys.
At his first mass at St. Thomas he sees Avery Dendritch, a senior who serves as altar boy during the service. When they meet, the attraction between them is hard to deny. The two become fast friends, and as the school year progresses, their friendship deepens until Jacob feels he's found a place where he belongs.
But the other students gossip about their growing relationship. Avery can ignore them; Jacob can't. As the rumors and slurs start up again, can he curb his temper, or will his fighting get him expelled from St. Thomas, too
 Band Fags
by Frank Anthony Polito
"Ever since I first heard that Lionel Richie and Diana Ross song, `Endless Love,' all I've wanted is to find The One. Someone to love. Who will love me back."
September, 1982. John Cougar's "Jack and Diane" is on endless radio rotation, and Dallas and Dynasty rule the ratings. Jack Paterno is a straight-A student living in the Detroit suburb of Hazel Park, with his own Atari 5200, a Beta VCR, and everything a seventh-grader could ask for. The only thing he has in common with foul-mouthed Brad Dayton, who lives on the gritty south side near 8 Mile, is that both are in Varsity Band. Or maybe that's not the only thing. Because Jack is discovering that while hanging around with girls in elementary school was perfectly acceptable, having lots of girl friends (as opposed to girlfriends) now is getting him and Brad labeled as Band Fags. And Jack is no fag. Is he?
As Jack and Brad make their way through junior high and then through Hazel Park High School, their friendship grows deeper and more complicated. From stealing furtive glances at Playgirl to discussing which celebrities might be like that, from navigating school cliques to dealing with crushes on girls and guys alike, Jack is trying to figure out who and what he is. He wants to find real, endless love, but he also wants to be popular and "normal." But, as Brad points out, this is real life-not a John Hughes movie. And sooner or later, Jack will have to choose.
Filled with biting wit and pitch-perfect observations, Band Fags is an exhilarating novel about lust and love, about the friendships that define and sometimes confine us, and about coming of age and coming to terms with the end of innocence and the beginning of somethingterrifying, thrilling, and completely unpredictable.
 Twilight Gods
by Hayden Thorne
London during the Great Exhibition of 1851 is a new world of technological advances, eye-popping inventions, and glimpses of exotic treasures from the East. For fifteen-year-old Norris Woodhead it's a time of spectral figures mingling with London's daily crowds, and an old rectory in a far corner of the English countryside, a great house literally caught in time, where answers to curious little mysteries await him. Confined by his family's financial woes, Norris suffers a lonely and unsatisfying time till the day he (and only he) notices "shadow-folks" in the streets. Then a strange widow appears, rents a vacant room in the house, and takes him under her wing. She becomes his guardian, slowly revealing those shadows' secrets, Norris' connection with them, and the life-altering choices he has to face in the end. The Twilight Gods is a retelling of Native American folktale called "The Girl Who Married a Ghost." Set in Victorian England, it's an alternative perspective on a gay teen's coming-out process, with Norris' journey of self-discovery couched in magical and supernatural terms and imagery.
 Thinking Straight
by Robin Reardon
I know God doesn't make mistakes, and if I'm gay it's because that's what he wanted. What you wanted. And I think the challenge is to get everyone else to see that. This is their test, not mine.
If only Taylor Adams had kept on lying to his parents, none of this would have happened. He wouldn't have been shipped off to Straight to God, an institution devoted to "deprogramming" troubled teenagers and ridding them of their vices-whether it's drugs, violence, or in Taylor's case, other boys. Not that Taylor has a problem with being gay, or with reconciling his love for God with his love for his boyfriend Will.
At Straight to God, such thoughts-along with all other reminders of Taylor's former "sinful" life-are forbidden. Every movement is monitored, privacy is impossible, and no one-from staff to residents-is quite who they first appear to be. There's Charles, Taylor's clean-cut roommate, desperate to leave his past behind.Nate Devlin, a handsome, inscrutable older boy who's alternately arrogant and kind. gorgeous, secretive Sean, who returns to Straight to God each year to avoid doing prison time for drugs. Here, where piety can be a mask for cruelty and the greatest crimes go unpunished, Taylor will learn more than he ever dreamed about love, courage, rebellion, and betrayal-but the most surprising lessons will be the truths he uncovers about himself.
In this smart, insightful new novel, Robin Reardon presents a compelling exploration of the journey from boy to man, and a testament to the strength that comes with accepting both who we are, and who we love.
 Fugly
by KZ Snow
When a wizard is happily in love, he tends to get complacent. When he gets complacent, he tends to let magick fall by the wayside. Jackson Spey hasn't thrown around any mojo in a while. Here's his chance.
What happens to a young man's self-image, and his sex life, when he wakes up one morning to see his good looks significantly altered for the worse? In this modern fable, three gay friends find out the answer when they hit on the wrong guy in a club one night.
Todd, Fallon, and Jake think they're pretty damned hot. As a result, their standards for worthwhile hook-ups are appallingly superficial. The men aren't total jerks; they just need an adjustment in perspective. And they get it, in spades, from a mysterious stranger who's sick of seeing his beautiful partner pawed by dawgs.
As the trio of friends try to understand and cope with their new appearances, the pretty boys they normally pursue continue to shun them. But in the eyes of three ordinary, overlooked men on the sidelines of their lives, it's the heart that matters far more than the hot.
 Lethal Obsession: Caged
by Michele L. Montgomery
Christian St. James Davenport is a prisoner. He has spent his entire life imprisoned within a gilded cage; trapped by his parents’ wealth, by his own secrets, and by the fear of his abusive ex-lover, Dwight.
Lucca Renaldo is the darkly exotic, older man who will show Christian what it truly means to be free, but not before Dwight returns to reclaim what he believes is his.
After a ruthless attack leaves his father bleeding in a dark, dirty alley, Christian is kidnapped and held prisoner. Horribly abused, brutally violated, and sadistically tortured, Christian is barely hanging on to reality and to his life. Both physically and psychologically scarred, he is on the brink of self-destruction, spiraling toward a point of no return.
Will Lucca find Christian in time to save him? If he does, will his love be enough to rescue his boy from the threshold of Hell, or will Christian forever be caged by a lethal obsession? Lucca may need to take more extreme measures to prove to Christian who his true Master is. |
 The Angel of 13th Street
by Eden Winters Buy Link
The
Angel. That’s what the young hustlers call Noah Everett, the man who’ll
help them get off the streets. Once a hustler himself, Noah doesn’t
take his own good advice, which is, “Don’t let this ruin your life.”
Haunted by the past and those he couldn’t save, Noah carefully keeps
others at bay until his self-imposed loneliness is shattered by
determined, ambitious, but homeless eighteen-year-old Jeremy Kincaid.
A ruthless pimp has targeted Jeremy, but if Noah will fight to get
anonymous young men out of the life, he’ll fight harder to keep Jeremy
from getting in, even if it means a return to old stomping grounds to
make a deal with the devil. To save Jeremy, Noah risks more than just
his body. He risks his soul as well, because Willie Carnell, pimp, was
once Billy Cordell, Noah’s lover.
 A Solid Core of Alpha
by Amy Lane
In an act of heroism and self-sacrifice, Anderson Rawn's sister saved him from the destruction of their tiny mining colony, but her actions condemned the thirteen-year-old to ten years of crushing loneliness on the hyperspace journey to a new home. Using electronics and desperation, Anderson creates a family to keep him company, but family isn't always a blessing.
When Anderson finally arrives, C.J. Poulson greets him with curiosity and awe, because anyone who can survive a holocaust and reinvent holo-science is going to be a legend and right up C.J.'s alley. But the more C.J. investigates how Anderson endured the last ten years, the deeper he is drawn into a truly dangerous fantasy, one that offers the key to Anderson's salvation—and his destruction.
In spite of his best intentions, C.J. can’t resist the terribly seductive Anderson. Their attraction threatens to destroy them, because the heart of a man who can survive the destruction of his people and retain his sense of self holds a solid core of alpha male that will not be denied.
 River of Tears
by Michele L. Montgomery
A woman's struggle as she searches for her missing husband leads to shocking revelations about him, his family, and the crime of adult kidnapping.
Abby meets Caiden when she is sixteen years old and knows she has met her soul mate. At nineteen Abby marries the love of her life and together they begin a family of their own. Life gives them a gift, but this gift is short lived. After seven years of marriage it ends.
Abby is left alone with her two children and the bloody clothes that Caiden was last seen in. With the horrifying revelations from her mother in law Abby sets out to prove her husband is indeed alive and that he's been taken against his will by his mother, brothers, and sisters in a sick and twisted game of keep-away.
Knowing her husband isn't dead, Abby, with the help and support of her family, begins a search that takes her from Arizona to Arkansas and lasts for a span of eight years.
On a visit to Caiden's birthplace, Abby and her brother Chase meet with Caiden's best friend who fills them in with the secrets of her husband's childhood and of the hell he endured. He tells them of the nightmares, the deceit, and the abuse Caiden suffered at the hands of his family.
More determined than ever to locate her husband, before his family kills him, Abby hires a private investigator who opens the doors to Caiden's private world of hell and exposes his family for what they are, but will he be on time? Will Abby be on time to save her soul mate? Can she make him want to fight one last time?
River of Tears is a tale of personal triumph over heartbreak, of unconditional love and bravery. It is a compelling modern-day story depicting how the power of love can overcome even the darkest facets of human nature. The story demonstrates how self-determination and loyalty can lead to unimaginable accomplishment, regardless of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. It is a story of faith in the face of tremendous loss, where fear and discouragement threaten to steal the last glimmer of hope. Will this shred of hope be enough to sustain, or will it ultimately crush Abby's dreams of lasting happiness?
River of Tears will take you on a journey you will never forget, it will make you want to gather all you love close and keep them there, because we never know what's around the next corner of our lives.
 Maladaptation
by LA Field
Sixteen-year-old Marley Kurtz is an incurable bookworm who is sent to a program for "maladapted" youth in Loweville, Colorado after his parents discover he has been having an affair with a man forty-three years his senior. Once there, Marley befriends the wry yet optimistic Missy, who is fifteen and pregnant in the lowest town on earth, and falls in love with Jesse, an ice-eyed sociopath with an outlaw for a father and a corpse for a mother. As the stress of the summer causes Marley's physical and mental health to decline, it is unclear which of his new friends has the worst influence on him, or whether the instruction of a small town's Baptist-run therapy group will do more harm than good to everyone involved.
 Hidden
by Tomas Mournian
When Ahmed's parents send him to a residential treatment center known as Serenity Ridge, it's with one goal: to "fix" their son, at any cost. But eleven months of abuse and overmedication leave him desperate to escape. And when the opportunity comes, Ahmed runs away to San Francisco.
There, he moves into a secret safe house shared by a group of teens. Until they become independent at eighteen, the housemates hide away from authorities, bound by rules that both protect and frustrate. Ahmed, now known as Ben, tries to adjust to a life lived in impossibly close quarters with people he barely knows, all of whom guard secrets of their own. But even if they succeed in keeping the world at bay, there's no hiding from each other or from themselves. And there's no avoiding the conflicts, crushes, loneliness, and desire that could shatter their fragile, complicated sanctuary at any moment. . .
 Pinky Swear
by Lynn Lorenz
Lane and Matt have been best friends since they were ten years old. They’ve been through everything together—childhood adventures in their New Orleans uptown neighborhood, Lane’s stuttering, Matt’s alcoholic father, high school angst, and "coming out" in college. All through the years, they’d shared secrets and, using the powerful pinky swear, vowed to keep every one of them. But neither Lane nor Matt ever told each other his biggest secret—that they were in love with each other.
For Lane, Matt was everything he wasn’t—gorgeous, sexy and outgoing. He had a different boyfriend every week, and Lane couldn’t get a date, let alone the man of his dreams. For Matt, he could never measure up to Lane, never be good enough for the man who set his heart on fire. Neither wanted to risk the deep friendship they shared to find out if the other felt more. Yet after one night of incredible drunken passion, Lane woke up to find Matt gone and a note saying he was sorry and not much more.
Four years later and half a country separated, one fateful storm, Hurricane Katrina, brings the old friends together again. But four years is a long time, and Lane’s grown up, matured, more sure of himself than ever. When Matt rushes home from the West Coast to find the friend he loved and fled, he discovers not just the man he left behind, but a man who knows what he wants—a best friend and a lover who won’t run, who’ll stay forever.
Now, it’s up to Matt to make the pinky swear...
 Counterpoint:
Dylan's Story
by Ruth Sims
At eighteen Dylan Rutledge has one obsession: music. He believes his destiny is to be the greatest composer of the rapidly approaching twentieth century. Only Laurence Northcliff, a young history master at The Venerable Bede School for Young Gentlemen, believes in Dylan's talent and encourages his dream, not realizing Dylan is in love with him.
But Dylan's passion and belief in his future come at a high price. They will alienate him from his family and lead him on a rocky path fraught with disappointment, rejection, and devastating loss that kills his dream. A forbidden love could bring the dream back to life and rescue Dylan from despair and bitterness, but does he have the courage to reach out and take it? Will he deny the music that rules his soul?
 Bait
by Alex Sanchez
When a guy in his class looks at him funny, Diego punches him in the face, and ends up on probation. At first he wants nothing to do with his probation officer. But as Diego starts to open up, he begins to realize that Mr. Vidas is the first person in his life who ever really wanted to listen to him. With Vidas's help, Diego begins to make real progress in controlling his anger. He even opens up enough to tell Vidas about the shark tooth that his stepfather gave him that he uses to cut himself. But only if Diego can find the courage to trust Vidas with the darkest secrets from his past will he be able to heal completely.
In this bold story of a boy trying to grow beyond a painful past, award-winning author Alex Sanchez calls upon his personal experience as a probation officer to reveal the complexities of one of his most genuinely realized characters to date.
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