While Lynch is a master storyteller and Sweet Creek’s good-versus-evil plot makes it a page turner, the characters are so vividly drawn as to overshadow the action of the book. So interesting are their inner lives that one suspects Lynch’s storylines are merely an excuse to delve into the human soul.

Susan Ackerman, a respected biblical scholar who currently chairs the religious studies department at Dartmouth College, brings to her study of the David and Gilgamesh narratives two important qualities: a knowledge of ancient languages that allows her to explore the emotional coloring and sexual associations of key words, and a thorough grounding in contemporary gender theory, which allows her to negotiate the essentialist-constructionist debate concerning the evolution of gay identity.

LEV RAPHAEL was one of the first writers to contemplate the intersection of being openly gay and being openly Jewish, and has now published two new books on the topic. For those not familiar with his short story collection of 1990, Dancing on Tisha b’Av (whose title was a play on the concept of fasting on holy day), Secret Anniversaries of the Heart is a wonderful introduction to this writer’s world. About ten of the 25 stories are reprinted from Dancing on Tisha b’Av.

… Let’s Shut Out the World, a collection of essays, stories, and other short works arranged more-or-less chronologically to come together as a kind of memoir and autobiography. Most of the pieces have appeared in other publications and in anthologies such as the popular His and Flesh and the Word series.

… this is a remarkably dry-eyed journal, which jumps between entries written in 1992, when Katan was diagnosed with Stage III breast cancer in her right breast, and those written ten years later, when she was diagnosed with cancer in her other …