Pennsylvania Station offers a powerful glimpse into gay life in America before Stonewall, and a look at the complicated relationship between two very different men.

As to why she titled her book as she did, Tea explains it in several essays. In “Polishness” she concludes: “Anyone would get sick and tired of doing the same thing for seventeen years. When a memoir is what you’ve been doing. It means you’ve become horribly sick of yourself, of your narrative, and I had.”

So much happens in this beautifully rendered novel. The South comes to life in the way we have come to expect of Southern writers. Blanche Boyd does not overlook essential Southern themes—American themes, really—such as race and historical memory. Some mysteries are “cozies” in which a sweet lady detective pours lavender tea and reveals that the vicar did it. Tomb of the Unknown Racist is a not-cozy: sensibilities are not spared. The vigilant reader is thus rewarded.

Looking for Lorraine is a deeply felt biography in which Perry expresses her feelings of oneness with Hansberry through similarities in their backgrounds and reactions to political events. The book also offers critiques of many of Hansberry’s works, both published and unpublished.

Berenice Abbott remains a major influence in photography today. Her work is visually breathtaking—immediate, clear, and indelible. Van Haaften has written a book that’s a major resource for fans of urban and architectural photography.

The description of the fire, pieced together bit by bit from interviews with survivors and archival research, is so painstakingly done that it’s hard to read. AIDS, in the next decade, was a horrifying shock; but in this fire there was no time to process one’s fate or come to terms with death, much less bargain with it, or try out medicines; it all happened in an instant …