WHO AMONG US has not wanted to see inside the lives of the most glamorous or intriguing stars of a bygone generation? In Amanda Lee Koe’s debut novel, Delayed Rays of a Star, we get to know three such stars: Marlene Dietrich, Leni Riefenstahl, and Anna May Wong. The novel’s first three chapters alternate between their stories, which are denoted by the symbols Koe uses to mark shifts between characters throughout the book.

What makes Carter Sickles’ new novel The Prettiest Star different is that it tells the story not only of Brian, a young man dying from AIDS, but also of his family and the suffering, discrimination, and harassment they went through.

            In Toil & Trouble Burroughs writes that he has been a witch since birth and that he inherited his magical talents from his mentally ill mother, someone who has figured prominently in his other books. He doesn’t practice in a coven with other witches but works his magic solo, incanting and occasionally lighting candles to make things happen.

Paul Baker, a linguistics professor at Lancaster University, has made it the focus of two decades of study and promotion. Fabulosa! presents an engaging version of his dissertation (published as Polari: The Lost Language of Gay Men in 2002). He easily shifts between the complex linguistic genealogy of Polari and its gay cultural history, focusing particularly on the vicissitudes of its usage in the past half century and tracking this usage with gay politics.