Mike Weiss was a reporter at the trial of Dan White, the city supervisor who killed Harvey Milk along with Mayor George Moscone. After being interviewed by Randy Shilts, he decided to turn his notes into a book. Double Play was first published in 1984 with the subtitle “The San Francisco City Hall Killings.” This choice of words was deliberate. Dan White confessed to the shootings, but as a result of a successful “diminished capacity” defense, he was convicted of voluntary manslaughter, not murder. White was given an amazingly light sentence and served only five years in prison. Less than two years after his release, he committed suicide.

“YOU PROBABLY like to imagine your death the way it should be: You are old. By old, you mean ready to die. Resolved. You are in bed, with your mind intact and loved ones encircling you. Your regrets are few; your pain minimal. Your last words: golden.” So opens a novel that is both timeless and contemporary, set in Toronto. If you suspect that this beginning does not foreshadow a serenely predictable death, you’d be right. This is a novel in which there’s always the possibility of violence and sudden endings.

In From the Closet to the Courtroom, Carlos Ball personalizes the history of the GLBT legal rights movement of the last thirty years by providing a lively narrative account of five extraordinary court cases and the ordinary people behind them.

JANELL MOON’S latest novel is one of those books about which it’s easier to say what it isn’t than what it is. Salt and Paper: 65 Candles is presented as a journal, and it does have ascending dates as the year passes, offering a day-by-day record of Janell Moon’s 65th year.

HERE IS A BOOK that interweaves fiction, social commentary, history, and satire. Eileen Myles’ Inferno offers different attractions to different readers: …

Katherine Bucknell, certainly has a commanding knowledge of [Christopher Isherwood’s diaries] and the details; she provides helpful footnotes and a comprehensive glossary of who’s who.

EVEN those who consider themselves well informed about 20th-century art have probably never heard of Bruce Sargeant (1898-1938). A sculptor, draftsman, and painter (not to mention a sometime poet), Sar-geant’s beaux arts training comes through in works that are focused almost exclusively on beautiful young men. While Sargeant’s art has long been prized by elite collectors in Europe and the U.S., it has never been featured in any major exhibition or survey. Mark Beard, an artist and distant relative of Sargeant, has devoted twenty years to collecting and studying the neglected artist’s work. The result of this effort, Bruce Sargeant and His Circle goes a long way toward rectifying this state of neglect.

The noted New Yorker editor and writer Robert Gottlieb takes a daring plunge into the complexities of [Sarah] Bernhardt’s life.