Chalk is also a sensitive and thought-provoking look into the mind of an extremely important figure and even confronts the question of whether an artist’s sexuality is important to his or her work.

Who Killed My Father is a small book, but it packs a big punch. Early on, Louis declares that what he is writing “does not answer to the standards of literature, but to those of necessity and desperation, to standards of fire.”

In The Mourning After, John Ibson shows how the ghosts of these buddies haunted the postwar year  and even today influence the ways in which American men relate to one another.

In the White House, [Robert] Cutler brought order to national security decision-making with a “passion for anonymity.” Time magazine noted that “He probably carries more top secrets in his head than any other man in Washington.” His biggest secret was his homosexuality, which …

The Man in the Glass House, Mark Lamster’s fine new biography of Philip Johnson, attempts to sort it all out. Heir to a portion of the Alcoa fortune, Johnson squeaked out a degree at Harvard while setting himself up at New York’s new Museum of Modern Art under director Alfred H. Barr. Johnson joined a powerful gay circle at MoMA

“ALL WE DID was take the BR–116.” So begins Carol Bensimon’s We All Loved Cowboys, a beguiling road trip novel that lures readers in with promises of adventures in Brazil, then keeps them turning the pages with its sharp observations about gender, sex, and desire.

My Butch Career joins a distinguished list of lesbian herstories that includes Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues and Lillian Faderman’s Naked in the Promised Land. It is for readers interested in the psychological and cultural challenges for an individual who identifies as a butch lesbian, as well as readers who are interested in lesbian herstory within the greater context of the gay rights movement.

JODIE McCARTY had been given a life sentence behind bars. But there she was, ready to leave after only eighteen years inside Jaxton Prison, a ticket in her hand, along with $400 borrowed from her twin brothers. Jodi McCarty was going home to West Virginia. So begins Mesha Maren’s novel, Sugar Run.