One has to look no further than the audiences hungry for the narratives served up by Downton Abbey or Wolf Hall to know that the lure of the past is as seductive as ever. But incorporating historical events and figures into a shapely narrative is no simple task. The acclaimed novelist Christopher Bram examines how writers as disparate as Gabriel García Márquez, David McCullough, Toni Morrison, Leo Tolstoy, and many others have employed history in their work.Unique...

Seventeen-year-old Joel can't be gay if he's straightAfter four years of living with relatives in Switzerland, seventeen-year-old Joel Scherzenlieb finds himself in the United States for the summer, working at a Boy Scout camp. There, he meets nineteen-year-old Corey Cobbett, a fellow counselor who's the only person Joel wants to be friends with. Soon, Joel's sarcastic, distant CIA father shows up and whisks him away to live with his mother, grandmother, and older s...

During World War II, a gay navy sailor works undercover to catch Nazi spies, in this "fast-moving" novel from the author of Gods and Monsters ( Publishers Weekly).During shore leave in New York, Seaman Second Class Hank Fayette, a Texas country boy in the big city, finds himself visiting a gay brothel, where he is swiftly arrested during a raid. Facing the prospect of a dishonorable discharge—or worse—he is given another option: Return to the brot...

A group of worldly New Yorkers inherit a friend's last loverA year after the AIDS-related death of filmmaker Clarence Laird, known to friends as Angel Clare, his young boyfriend, Michael, is still in deep mourning. Clarence's older, sophisticated friends—male and female, gay and straight—find themselves the custodians of Michael, a callow kid they never liked much to begin with. What follows is a dark, intimate comedy about real grief and false grief, misunderstandi...

Four novels dealing with a broad range of gay experience—from the "gifted" author of Gods and Monsters, the basis for the Academy Award–winning film ( The Advocate).Whether Christopher Bram is writing about the director of Frankenstein in Gods and Monsters or the characters in the four novels collected here—a sailor who goes undercover in a gay brothel to catch Nazis, a teen coming into his sexual awakening, a group of Manhattani...

The first collection of nonfiction from the author Tony Kushner calls "one of the best novelists writing in the world today"Over a thirty-year period, novelist Christopher Bram witnessed, and lived through, the powerful experiences of coming out, the AIDS epidemic, gay marriage, and the social changes that have occurred in lower Manhattan. From the title piece, which maps the state of gay fiction, to "A Body in Books," about the gay books that changed the author's ...

A gripping thriller about contemporary gay politicsRalph Eckhart, an unassuming bookstore manager in the East Village, meets Bill O'Connor online and they agree to get together during Ralph's weekend visit to Washington, DC. The two start a heated, long-distance sexual relationship. But Ralph discovers that Bill is a closeted Republican journalist, whose new book trashes liberal women in Washington—including Ralph's speechwriter friend, Nancy—and angrily breaks off ...

Discovered herding goats by the struggling travelling actors of Teatro Gruppo, seventeen-year-old Sicilian Gatino possesses breathtaking physical beauty, feline grace, and an almost supernatural talent for performance. His facility with languages, mime, dance, hard work and sexual appeal, rockets Gatino from humble roots to the star of European stages in Berlin and Paris. Nurtured by impresario Naum Rozenberg, his fame grows as he conquers the nascent art of silent film. But Naum is unable...

A series of discrete episodes among friends provide snapshots of one gay man's life. There are parties, concerts, dinners with everyday life – and death – interwoven in the rich story-telling. An actress, a painter, a set designer, a writer – all sweating and surviving in Manhattan, all scoring their first successes. Part autobiography and part documentary, artfully written, it details the lives of these creative people. Young and professional, they know there is more to life than money. T...

Fast paced and nightmarishly vivid, this greatest of Gothic tales propels the reader into the heart of darkness from its opening pages. Stoker increases the tension and mystery of his masterpiece by setting it in the form of different journal entries and letters by various characters. Only gradually does the full horrifying picture emerge: Dracula, far from being merely an eccentric foreigner, is a threat to all mankind. But this is not discovered until it is too late for some. Storms and ...

Dracula is a novel by Bram Stoker, published in 1897. As an epistolary novel, the narrative is related through letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles. It has no single protagonist, but opens with solicitor Jonathan Harker taking a business trip to stay at the castle of a Transylvanian noble, Count Dracula. Harker escapes the castle after discovering that Dracula is a vampire, and the Count moves to England and plagues the seaside town of Whitby. A small group, led by Abraham Van He...

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?The theme ...