Croteau’s courageous disclosure of his arduous journey toward self-acceptance is especially relevant for many gay men who have been disenfranchised from their families of origin. The book also illuminates the realities of male eating disorders, adding considerably to the literature on anorexia, still wrongly perceived as solely a female disease.

Rebecca Rotert’s novel, Last Night at the Blue Angel, takes place in what feels like a much different Chicago. Like most mature American cities in the mid-1960s, Chicago was literally tearing itself apart.

Frida Kahlo acknowledges that the artist’s death, officially described as the logical result of a long decline, might have been an assisted suicide. Like Sylvia Plath, a contemporary writer who also acquired cult status after her early death by suicide, Kahlo emerged as a martyr to heterosexual love as well as to art.

THE STORIES in Foolish Hearts remind us that the short story was once a mainstream art form for ordinary folks to read and enjoy. Most of these stories are gay romances that end either happily or poignantly and, for the most part, don’t spend much time in the bedroom.

Palmerino is a beautifully written and well-structured work, and after reading Vineta Colby’s 2003 biography titled Vernon Lee, I can say that Palmerino is based very closely on the life of Violet Paget (1856–1935)

The Animals:  Love Letters Between Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy Edited by Katherine Bucknell Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 481 pages, $30. THIS EXTENSIVE COLLECTION of the letters between Christopher…More

Radio is the story of a middle-aged gay filmmaker returning to his homeland after living for over a decade in Paris. The book begins with the unnamed narrator musing to himself about the differences between euros and Estonian currency …