THE BARE BONES of Katharine Hepburn’s life are well known: born in Connecticut into a well-connected family, brilliant career in the movies, had a long-term affair with Spencer Tracy, reclusive dotage before dying in 2003 at the age of 96. What we don’t know much about, except as rumor and speculation, are the details of her putatively lesbian lifestyle.

IN HIS SOLID ANALYSIS of the contradictory status of “the gay person” in the United States at this moment, and the strategies that might advance the cause of social and legal equality, Shannon Gilreath shows himself to be well-armed with both knowledge and political passion, and with a gift for finding the right word.

Max, the first-person narrator, is a likable character. Readers might find themselves comparing him to the “stone butch” character they met thirteen years ago in Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues. But Drag King Dreams is not a sequel-not exactly.

Her [Mary Wollstonecraft] great book-A Vindication of the Rights of Women-was published in 1792 when she was 33. Three years later she began her great experiment: a relationship with William Godwin, …

THE UNNAMED NARRATOR of this remarkable novel arrives in Washington, D.C., on Martin Luther King Day to try to reboot his life after a long period of paralytic mourning for his mother, for friends lost to AIDS, and for his own lost youth, as well. He is somewhere in his fifties and single. His mother has been dead for more than five years, his father far longer than that. If he has had any history of romantic fulfillment, he does not cherish it. This man feels terribly alone.

PAUL SWAN, the oldest of ten children, was born in 1883 in rural Illinois. His life was one of legend, but he did not attain lasting star status in the pantheon of gay arts.