Gay & Lesbian

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Signet Classics)

In one of the most significant slave narratives ever written, Harriet Jacobs, born a slave to mulatto parents in 1813 North Carolina, recounts her remarkable story. From her sale to an abusive master, to her bid for freedom as the lover of a white man, to her ultimate and harrowing emancipation, this work is an outstanding example of a woman's extraordinary courage--and one of the most provocative first-person accounts of slavery in American history.

Afterword by Myrlie Evers-Williams

"One of the major autobiographies of the Afro-American tradition."-- Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

A painter, Basil Hallward, paints a most exquisite portrait of his muse, the handsome young man named Dorian Gray. During the last session of painting, Dorian, who has until this point been completely innocent both of his beauty and of the world, meets Basil’s friend Lord Henry Wotton, who opens his eyes to the ephemeral nature of his own beauty and tells him that he should experience life to the fullest.

A lush, cautionary tale of a life of vileness and deception or a loving portrait of the aesthetic impulse run rampant? Why not both? After Basil Hallward paints a beautiful, young man's portrait, his subject's frivolous wish that the picture change and he remain the same comes true. Dorian Gray's picture grows aged and corrupt while he continues to appear fresh and innocent. After he kills a young woman, "as surely as if I had cut her little throat with a knife," Dorian Gray is surprised to find no difference in his vision or surroundings. "The roses are not less lovely for all that. The birds sing just as happily in my garden."

As Hallward tries to make sense of his creation, his epigram-happy friend Lord Henry Wotton encourages Dorian in his sensual quest with any number of Wildean paradoxes, including the delightful "When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy." But despite its many languorous pleasures, The Picture of Dorian Gray is an imperfect work. Compared to the two (voyeuristic) older men, Dorian is a bore, and his search for ever new sensations far less fun than the novel's drawing-room discussions. Even more oddly, the moral message of the novel contradicts many of Wilde's supposed aims, not least "no artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style." Nonetheless, the glamour boy gets his just deserts. And Wilde, defending Dorian Gray, had it both ways: "All excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment."

The Woman's Bible (Great Minds Series)

American feminist leader and suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton was also an outspoken critic of the Bible because the scriptures often portray women as inferior and have been used by men to justify unequal treatment of women in society. The 1870 revision of the Authorised English Version of the Bible prepared by an all-male committee from the Church of England so greatly dissatisfied Stanton that in response she courageously decided to compile a commentary by prominent feminists on the many Bible passages that refer to women. The result was "The Woman's Bible", a fascinating book that explores, among other things, the documentation that Jesus believed in equal rights for men and women; the ignorance, arrogance, and hypocrisy on the part of the church hierarchy; and the slaughter of women who were slaves, wives of drunkards, or were believed to be witches. The insight that Stanton and her fellow commentators provide into biblical writings and into the minds of women of her era is enlightening and serves as an inspiration to today's feminist movement.

Cirkus: A Novel

In Patti Frazee's astonishing debut novel, enchantment and illusion casually commingle with reality as the Borefsky Brothers Circus makes its way across the American Midwest in the summer of 1900.

Mariana, the fortune teller, makes herself invisible and drifts through the nighttime circus, listening in on conversations and watching over her beloved Shanghai, a fire-breathing dwarf who closely guards his secrets, even from Mariana's second sight. Conjoined twins Atasha and Anna cling to each other and weep for their home and for their mother and father who sold them to the circus. Jakub, the circus manager and husband to Mariana, fears his wife's gifts, grieves his own failures, and drinks to forget it all. The stories and closely guarded histories of the troupe of performers dance around each other until a love affair between Shanghai and Atasha destroys the delicate balance.

As secrets are revealed and old wounds are opened, the consequences are unbearable to some and liberating to others. Lyrically graceful and populated by vividly drawn characters, Cirkus is a haunting novel of devastating heartbreak and exquisite loveliness.

"For everyone who has ever dreamed about juggling fire, spinning in space, or falling in love with the girl on the flying trapeze."-Judith Katz, author of The Escape Artist and Running Fiercely Toward a High Thin Sound

"The 'freaks' of Cirkus are fully realized, poignantly drawn fictional characters. Conjoined twins Atasha and Anna, in particular, are so intimately portrayed that Frazee herself strikes me as a conjurer, a channeler of separate human experience."-Alison McGhee, Author of Rainlight, Shadow Baby, and Was it Beautiful?

"A feast of words and dreams.Frazee's women are passionate spirits as vivid as those in the best fairytales, and still are real-their experiences a raw truth."-Susan Power, author of Roofwalker and The Grass Dancer

Patti Frazee teaches creative writing at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. A native of Nebraska, she received her BFA in theater from the University of Nebraska/Kearney and her MFA in writing from Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. She received an honorable mention for the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice 2005 Emerging Lesbian Writer's Fund. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Sex With A Lingering Kiss - (Erotica)

"Alexis Shore can truly write a smoking hot sex scene." The Romance Reviews

Dear Reader,

Something a little different for you this time.

I’ve recently moved in to a new house, one that was previously occupied by a charming couple. Since moving in, I keep finding handwritten love letters that have been tucked into nooks and crannies about the place, and they’re delicious.

Each one looks like it has been read dozens, if not hundreds of times, then folded back up, carefully returned to the envelope and then the hiding place.

I do the same whenever I find one, but only after reading it alone and luxuriating in the voyeuristic pleasure of the glimpse in to an incredibly beautiful love life.

Here are the first six that I’ve found.

So settle down somewhere comfortable, wear something loose, and savour the tiny morsels for as long as you can.

Enjoy
Alexis
x

PS: They contain graphic sexual content.


REVIEWS

SEX WITH A LINGERING KISS is an up close look into a couple's erotic fantasy and reality world, and was sizzling from start to finish.

This erotic short is done in an amazingly unique way. The author writes blurbs to the reader, setting up erotic letters that a husband is writing to his wife. The author moves into a new house and finds these letters that detail a couple's erotic jaunts. It starts, as you may have guessed, with a kiss. Then the letters get more erotically intense as the story progresses and it's like you are watching these scenarios unfold. The letters are written from the male point of view and are very sensual and steamy as well as romantic.

Reading this book was like fulfilling all your voyeuristic and hedonistic fantasies in the comfort of your living room! I really enjoyed it because it was a very unique story. The way that the author wrote the letters was so realistic, I could really picture everything so vividly in my mind. This was a very short read (only about 40 pages), but it was filled to the brim with eroticism. The letters consisted of fantasies and memories, and had mostly M/F intercourse, but there was also an F/F scene in there that was really hot as well. It ended on a romantic note that made me wish my hubby was a little more into love letters.

SEX WITH A LINGERING KISS is an immensely erotic short that is sure to titillate your sensual side that featured a unique premise and steamy love scenes from an author who knows how to turn on the hot!

(The Romance Reviews)

"Alexis Shore can truly write a smoking hot sex scene." The Romance Reviews

Dear Reader,

Something a little different for you this time.

I’ve recently moved in to a new house, one that was previously occupied by a charming couple. Since moving in, I keep finding handwritten love letters that have been tucked into nooks and crannies about the place, and they’re delicious.

Each one looks like it has been read dozens, if not hundreds of times, then folded back up, carefully returned to the envelope and then the hiding place.

I do the same whenever I find one, but only after reading it alone and luxuriating in the voyeuristic pleasure of the glimpse in to an incredibly beautiful love life.

Here are the first six that I’ve found.

So settle down somewhere comfortable, wear something loose, and savour the tiny morsels for as long as you can.

Enjoy
Alexis
x

PS: They contain graphic sexual content.


REVIEWS

SEX WITH A LINGERING KISS is an up close look into a couple's erotic fantasy and reality world, and was sizzling from start to finish.

This erotic short is done in an amazingly unique way. The author writes blurbs to the reader, setting up erotic letters that a husband is writing to his wife. The author moves into a new house and finds these letters that detail a couple's erotic jaunts. It starts, as you may have guessed, with a kiss. Then the letters get more erotically intense as the story progresses and it's like you are watching these scenarios unfold. The letters are written from the male point of view and are very sensual and steamy as well as romantic.

Reading this book was like fulfilling all your voyeuristic and hedonistic fantasies in the comfort of your living room! I really enjoyed it because it was a very unique story. The way that the author wrote the letters was so realistic, I could really picture everything so vividly in my mind. This was a very short read (only about 40 pages), but it was filled to the brim with eroticism. The letters consisted of fantasies and memories, and had mostly M/F intercourse, but there was also an F/F scene in there that was really hot as well. It ended on a romantic note that made me wish my hubby was a little more into love letters.

SEX WITH A LINGERING KISS is an immensely erotic short that is sure to titillate your sensual side that featured a unique premise and steamy love scenes from an author who knows how to turn on the hot!

(The Romance Reviews)

Sing You Home (Center Point Platinum Fiction)

Zoe Baxter has spent ten years trying to get pregnant, and just when she's about to get her heart's desire, tragedy destroys her world. In the aftermath of loss and divorce, she throws herself into her career as a music therapist. Working with Vanessa, she finds their relationship moving from business, to friendship, and then - to Zoe's surprise - blossoming into love. When Zoe allows herself to start thinking of children again, she remembers that there are still frozen embryos that she and her husband never used. But Max, having sought peace at the bottom of a bottle, has found redemption in an evangelical church, and Zoe needs his permission to take his unborn child ...SING YOU HOME is accompanied by a soundtrack of original songs created for the novel by Jodi Picoult and Ellen Wilber.

Tune In Tokyo: The Gaijin Diaries

Everyone wants to escape their boring, stagnant lives full of inertia and regret. But so few people actually have the bravery to run -- run away from everything and selflessly seek out personal fulfillment on the other side of the world where they don't understand anything and won't be expected to. The world is full of cowards. Tim Anderson was pushing thirty and working a string of dead-end jobs when he made the spontaneous decision to pack his bags and move to Japan, “where my status as a U.S. passport holder and card-carrying ‘American English’ speaker was an asset rather than a liability.” It was a gutsy move, especially for a tall, white, gay Southerner who didn’t speak a lick of Japanese. But his life desperately needed a shot of adrenaline, and what better way to get one than to leave behind everything he had ever known to move to “a tiny, overcrowded island heaving with clever, sensibly proportioned people that make him look fat?” In Tokyo, Tim became a “gaijin,” an outsider whose stumbling progression through Japanese culture is minutely chronicled in these sixteen howlingly funny stories. Yet despite the steep learning curve and the seemingly constant humiliation, the gaijin from North Carolina gradually begins to find his way. Whether playing drums on the fly in an otherwise all-Japanese noise band or attempting to keep his English classroom clean when it’s invaded by an older female student with a dirty mind, Tim comes to realize that living a meaningful life is about expecting the unexpected…right when he least expects it.

The Age of Innocence (Broadview Literary Texts)

The Age of Innocence marks the pinnacle of Edith Wharton’s career as one of the finest American novelists of her era. The narrative follows Newland Archer, of upper-crust 1870s New York, whose passion for the mysterious Countess Ellen Olenska leads him to question the very foundations of his way of life. Written in the aftermath of World War I, the novel explores the psychological and cultural paradoxes of desire in a world undergoing unprecedented transformations. This edition includes a critical introduction and a range of appendices that contextualize the novel in terms of its modernist themes and tensions.

Somewhere in this book, Wharton observes that clever liars always come up with good stories to back up their fabrications, but that really clever liars don't bother to explain anything at all. This is the kind of insight that makes The Age of Innocence so indispensable. Wharton's story of the upper classes of Old New York, and Newland Archer's impossible love for the disgraced Countess Olenska, is a perfectly wrought book about an era when upper-class culture in this country was still a mixture of American and European extracts, and when "society" had rules as rigid as any in history.

When Women Were Warriors Book I

Winner, 2010 EPIC Ebook Award for fiction in the Mainstream category. "Breathtakingly gorgeous writing … a multi-layered tale of such depth, breadth and insight that it was very nearly a spiritual experience…" --from a review by T. T. Thomas on Amazon.com "…reminds me of Le Guin, of Cecelia Holland, and something of Rosemary Sutcliff… It made me feel as I did when I was a child reading authors like those… Once again I was in a magical place…" --from a review by Charles Ferguson on Amazon.com "…there’s no ring of power or glowing sword of specialness; the magic, like the tone of the book, is quiet. It feels real." --from a blog review on livejournal When she was a child, the author of When Women Were Warriors happily identified with all the male heroes she read about in stories that began, "Once upon a time, a young man went out to seek his fortune." But she would have been delighted to discover even one story like that with a female protagonist. Since she never did find the story she was looking for all those years ago, she decided to write it. In Book I of the trilogy, Tamras arrives in Merin’s house to begin her apprenticeship as a warrior, but her small stature causes many, including Tamras herself, to doubt that she will ever become a competent swordswoman. To make matters worse, the Lady Merin assigns her the position of companion, little more than a personal servant, to a woman who came to Merin’s house, seemingly out of nowhere, the previous winter, and this stranger wants nothing to do with Tamras. "…Both men and women of all persuasions seem to love these books... Very rare. Bravo, Bravo, Bravo!" --from a review by T. T. Thomas on Amazon.com "Think Beowulf--only comprehensible and with girls." --from a review on the blog, The Rainbow Reader, by Baxter Clare Trautman, author of The River Within

Jungle Fever (Don't Tell: Gay Military Erotica)

Do you like your sex hard and dirty? Author Sara Pierce gives you another Don't Tell story about two military men who like it ROUGH!

The remote jungles of Central America are a tough and unrelenting landscape - the perfect place to train elite Navy SEALs. When two commandos decide that they need to blow off steam in an unexpected training lull, theirs will be a struggle for dominance that will blow your mind! Warning: tough men going at it, each trying to dominate the other and giving no quarter to weakness!

At 3,400 words, JUNGLE FEVER is a quick and dirty gay short story like only Sara Pierce can give it to you! This story is also available in the DON'T TELL anthology!

EXCERPT:

Keeping one hand holding the back of Jones's neck close to the mirror and the other locked around the dark arm pressed high up Jones's back, Carson began tracing the lines of the other man's muscles with his tongue. Jones quickly stilled but his body remained taut to take advantage of any opening, and Carson knew he didn't have much time. The black man tasted like sweat and jungle, his body still wet from the shower. Maneuvering himself behind Jones, Carson pushed his straining cock between firm thighs, the leftover moisture allowing him access, until the tip nudged against the back of the other man's balls. Head falling forward against the mirror above the sink, some of the stiffness went out of Jones's body as Carson repeated the action, sliding along inside the narrow gap. Not believing for a moment he had won, Carson kept a tight hold on the other man's arm as he began thrusting his hips, regular strokes at first then harder as time went on. The intensifying sensation of his cock rubbing inside the warm, moist channel between Jones's legs threatened Carson's concentration; his grip on the back of Jones's neck loosened somewhat so the bigger man could look up. Their eyes met in the mirror, and Carson should have seen what was coming next.

Jones exploded from his bent position, driving Carson backwards a step; by the time he recovered, Jones already had him captured. Carson was pushed roughly against the wall next to the sink, held in position by a dark hand around his throat. They glared at one another for a couple seconds before Jones pushed the blond man down to his knees; Carson gave token resistance but complied. He had barely reached the floor when he took Jones's cock into his mouth, hands moving up to cup the balls behind. Above him Jones gasp and Carson's lips stretched into a smile as he bobbed his head, using his tongue to rub along the entire length. A grunt from above told Carson he was doing well; it was an unspoken rule that they never allowed themselves to speak or made a sound during their times together. Carson pulled the larger man as deep in his throat as he could, digging his nails into the other man's butt and thighs. He allowed his teeth to run down the shaft very lightly, knowing this drove Jones nuts, before pulling him deep again and letting his throat work around the sensitive head.

He thought he'd won this round when the hands on his shoulders went slack, but as he moved to bring down the larger man Jones crouched suddenly and grabbed Carson around the torso. Surprised by the move, he grappled with Jones but the larger man took him easily to the ground, pinning him against the cool tile floor. The two men were evenly matched in combat training so Jones, with his extra forty pounds of muscle, definitely had the upper hand. That didn't stop Carson from trying to free himself but it only served to amuse the man atop him. After a few moments and several failed attempts to roll them over or break Jones's hold, Carson relented, glaring back up at his smug comrade.

Do you like your sex hard and dirty? Author Sara Pierce gives you another Don't Tell story about two military men who like it ROUGH!

The remote jungles of Central America are a tough and unrelenting landscape - the perfect place to train elite Navy SEALs. When two commandos decide that they need to blow off steam in an unexpected training lull, theirs will be a struggle for dominance that will blow your mind! Warning: tough men going at it, each trying to dominate the other and giving no quarter to weakness!

At 3,400 words, JUNGLE FEVER is a quick and dirty gay short story like only Sara Pierce can give it to you! This story is also available in the DON'T TELL anthology!

EXCERPT:

Keeping one hand holding the back of Jones's neck close to the mirror and the other locked around the dark arm pressed high up Jones's back, Carson began tracing the lines of the other man's muscles with his tongue. Jones quickly stilled but his body remained taut to take advantage of any opening, and Carson knew he didn't have much time. The black man tasted like sweat and jungle, his body still wet from the shower. Maneuvering himself behind Jones, Carson pushed his straining cock between firm thighs, the leftover moisture allowing him access, until the tip nudged against the back of the other man's balls. Head falling forward against the mirror above the sink, some of the stiffness went out of Jones's body as Carson repeated the action, sliding along inside the narrow gap. Not believing for a moment he had won, Carson kept a tight hold on the other man's arm as he began thrusting his hips, regular strokes at first then harder as time went on. The intensifying sensation of his cock rubbing inside the warm, moist channel between Jones's legs threatened Carson's concentration; his grip on the back of Jones's neck loosened somewhat so the bigger man could look up. Their eyes met in the mirror, and Carson should have seen what was coming next.

Jones exploded from his bent position, driving Carson backwards a step; by the time he recovered, Jones already had him captured. Carson was pushed roughly against the wall next to the sink, held in position by a dark hand around his throat. They glared at one another for a couple seconds before Jones pushed the blond man down to his knees; Carson gave token resistance but complied. He had barely reached the floor when he took Jones's cock into his mouth, hands moving up to cup the balls behind. Above him Jones gasp and Carson's lips stretched into a smile as he bobbed his head, using his tongue to rub along the entire length. A grunt from above told Carson he was doing well; it was an unspoken rule that they never allowed themselves to speak or made a sound during their times together. Carson pulled the larger man as deep in his throat as he could, digging his nails into the other man's butt and thighs. He allowed his teeth to run down the shaft very lightly, knowing this drove Jones nuts, before pulling him deep again and letting his throat work around the sensitive head.

He thought he'd won this round when the hands on his shoulders went slack, but as he moved to bring down the larger man Jones crouched suddenly and grabbed Carson around the torso. Surprised by the move, he grappled with Jones but the larger man took him easily to the ground, pinning him against the cool tile floor. The two men were evenly matched in combat training so Jones, with his extra forty pounds of muscle, definitely had the upper hand. That didn't stop Carson from trying to free himself but it only served to amuse the man atop him. After a few moments and several failed attempts to roll them over or break Jones's hold, Carson relented, glaring back up at his smug comrade.