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2022., Ecco Call No: Fic So Edition: First Ecco paperback edition. Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "A vibrant story collection about Cambodian-American life--immersive and comic, yet unsparing--that offers profound insight into the intimacy of queer and immigrant communities. Seamlessly transitioning between the absurd and the tenderhearted, balancing acerbic humor with sharp emotional depth, Afterparties offers an expansive portrait of the lives of Cambodian-Americans. As the children of refugees carve out radical new paths for themselves in California, they shoulder the inherited weight of the Khmer Rouge genocide and grapple with the complexities of race, sexuality, friendship, and family."
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2023., 08:00:15, HighBridge Audio Edition: Unabridged. Click to access digital title. Summary Note: On the night of her high school graduation, a young woman follows her older sister Debbie to Salvation, a Los Angeles bar patronized by energy healers, aspiring actors, and all-around misfits. After the two share a bag of unidentified pills, the evening turns into a haze of sensual and risky interactions-nothing unusual for two sisters bound in an incredibly toxic relationship. Our unnamed narrator has always been under the spell of the alluring and rebellious Debbie and, despite her own hesitations, she has always said yes to nights like these. That is, until Debbie disappears. Falling deeper into the life she cultivated with her sister, our narrator gets a job as an emergency room secretary where she steals pills to sell on the side. Cue Sasha, a Jewish refugee from the former Soviet Union who arrives at the hospital claiming to be a psychic tasked with acting as the narrator's spiritual guide. The nature of this relationship evolves and blurs, a kaleidoscope of friendship, sex, mysticism, and ambiguous power dynamics. With prose pulsing like a neon sign, All-Night Pharmacy is an intoxicating portrait of a young woman consumed with unease over how a person should be. As she attempts sobriety and sexual embodiment, she must decide whether to search for her estranged sister, or allow her to remain a relic of the past.
![All-night pharmacy [eAudiobook] : A novel](/Library/images/~imageCT103468.JPG "All-night pharmacy [eAudiobook] : A novel")
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2024., House of Anansi Press Click to access digital title. Sample Summary Note: Akúa is returning home to Jamaica for the first time in ten years. Her younger brother has died suddenly, and Akúa hopes to reconnect with her estranged older sister, Tamika. Over three fateful weeks, the sisters visit significant places from their childhood where Akúa spreads her brother's ashes. But time spent with Tamika only seems to make apparent how different they are and how alone Akúa feels. Then Akúa meets Jayda, a brash stripper who reveals a different side of Kingston. As the two women grow closer, Akúa is forced to confront the difficult reality of being gay in a deeply religious family, and what it means to be a gay woman in Jamaica. Her trip comes to a frenzied and dangerous end, but not without a glimmer of hope of how to be at peace with her sister—and herself. By turns diasporic family saga, bildungsroman, and terse sexual awakening, Broughtupsy asks: What are we willing to do for family, and what are we willing to do to feel at home?
![Broughtupsy [eBook] : A novel](/Library/images/~imageCT103610.JPG "Broughtupsy [eBook] : A novel")
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By Gigl, Robyn2021. Click to access digital title. Sample Series Title: An Erin McCabe Legal Thriller.Summary Note: "An emotionally resonant debut . . . welcome—and quietly groundbreaking." —The New York Times Book Review In a fresh and riveting thriller debut, Robyn Gigl introduces Erin McCabe, a New Jersey criminal defense attorney doing her best to live a quiet life in the wake of profound personal change—until a newsworthy case puts both her career and safety in jeopardy . . . Erin McCabe has been referred the biggest case of her career. Four months ago, William E. Townsend, Jr., son of a New Jersey State Senator, was found fatally stabbed in a rundown motel near Atlantic City. Sharise Barnes, a nineteen-year-old transgender prostitute, is in custody, and given the evidence, there seems little doubt of a guilty verdict. As a trans woman herself, Erin knows that defending Sharise will blow her own private life wide open, and doubtless deepen her estrangement from her family. Yet she feels uniquely qualified to help Sharise, and duty-bound to protect her from the possibility of a death sentence. Because Sharise admits she killed the senator's son—in self-defense. As Erin works with her partner, former FBI agent Duane Swisher, circumstances hint at ties to other brutal murders. Senator Townsend is using the full force of his prestige and connections to publicly discredit everyone involved in defending Sharise. And behind the scenes, his tactics are even more dangerous. For his son had secrets that could destroy the senator's political aspirations—secrets worth killing for . . . "An intelligent and resourceful protagonist with an unusual backstory. . . . Erin's ability to navigate the intricacies of the law is just as fascinating as the subsequent perils she encounters." — Publishers Weekly "Gigl, a transgender lawyer herself, provides provocative insights into the legal system and the challenges of gender identity." — Booklist.
![By way of sorrow [eBook]](/Library/images/~imageCT102151.JPG "By way of sorrow [eBook]")
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2020., Inanna Publication and Education Inc. Call No: QWF Fic For Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: Winner, 2020 International Book Award for LGBTQ Fiction, Carousel is the debut novel of April Ford and the story of a middle-aged woman caught between the buried emotional impact of her devastating childhood and life on the precipice of retirement with her beautiful true love, Estelle.
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2022., Guernica Editions Call No: QWF Fic Cus Edition: 1st ed.. Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Series Title: Essential prose; Volume: 198Summary Note: "In Catch and Release, twenty-one-year-old Lucca looks back on her childhood and adolescence as she comes to terms with both her sexual orientation and her mental illness. When she falls in love with the brilliant and beautiful Adèle, Lucca is forced to acknowledge not only that she is not and never has been straight, but also that her relationship with a teacher in high school was not as harmless as she might have thought"--
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2020., Riverhead Books Call No: BLK Fic Eme Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "A tender, potent, and compulsively readable novel of a Nigerian-Indian family and the deeply held secret that tests their traditions and bonds"--
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2021., Adult, One More Chapter Call No: MYS Fic Wal Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: Four people walked into the dining room that night. One would never leave. Matthew: the perfect husband. Titus: the perfect son. Charlie: the perfect illusion. Rachel: the perfect stranger. Charlie didn't want her at the book club. Matthew wouldn't listen. And that's how Charlie finds himself slumped beside his husband's body, their son sitting silently at the dinner table, while Rachel calls 999, the bloody knife still gripped in her hand.
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2011., McClelland & Stewart Call No: Fic Toi Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: Tóibín returns to his native shores from Brooklyn for the bulk of these nine pristine stories, all--save one--contemporary tales of lives haunted by loss, whether it's the legacy of a sexually abusive priest in an already complicated love triangle in "The Pearl Fishers," the long-absent gay son who returns to Dublin from New York to attend to his mother's last moments in "One Minus One," or the aching void that greets an academic's return to a family home on the Irish coast in the wistful title story. Affairs, airports, and deathbeds populate a mature prose that's as tender with descriptions of sexual, often gay, love as it is with the heart's more inexpressible reaches, never more so than in the complex "The Street," where two Pakistanis find love in the repressive backdrop of blue-collar Barcelona only to be met with violence and a curious captivity. These stories go a long way toward establishing Tóibín as heir to William Trevor, with reverberations that show how life encompasses more than the living.
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2023., Algonquin Books Call No: Fic Kel Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: In 2003 New York, a genderqueer book conservator who feels trapped by her gender presentation, ill-fitting relationship, and artistic block discovers a decades-old hidden queer love letter and becomes obsessed with tracking down its author.
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2024., Adult, Harper Call No: NEW Fic McK Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: Summer in London stops for no-one. Not the half-naked boozers, stoners, and cruisers, the hen parties glugging from bejeweled bottles, the drag queens puffing on hurried fags. It's June 2019, and everyone has converged on the city's parks, beer gardens and street corners to revel in the collective joys of being alive. Everyone but Maggie. She's 30, pregnant and broke. Faced with moving back to the town she fought to escape, she's wondering if having a baby with boyfriend Ed will be the last spontaneous act of her life. Ed, meanwhile, is trying to run from his past with Maggie's best friend Phil and harbouring secret dreams of his own. Phil hates his office job and is living for the weekend, while falling for his housemate, Keith. But there's a problem: Keith has a boyfriend and there might not be room for three people in the relationship. Then there's Rosaleen, Phil's mother, who's tired of feeling like a side character in her own life. She's just been diagnosed with cancer and is traveling to London to tell Phil, if she can ever get hold of him. As Saturday night approaches, all their lives are set to change forever. It's the hottest summer on record and the weekend is about to begin...
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2021., Adult, Atria Paperback Call No: Fic Aus Edition: Atria Paperback Canadian export edition. Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: Gilda, a twenty-something, atheist, animal-loving lesbian, cannot stop ruminating about death. Desperate for relief from her panicky mind and alienated from her repressive family, she responds to a flyer for free therapy at a local Catholic church, and finds herself being greeted by Father Jeff, who assumes she's there for a job interview. Too embarrassed to correct him, Gilda is abruptly hired to replace the recently deceased receptionist Grace. In between trying to memorize the lines to Catholic mass, hiding the fact that she has a new girlfriend, and erecting a dirty dish tower in her crumbling apartment, Gilda strikes up an email correspondence with Grace's old friend. She can't bear to ignore the kindly old woman, who has been trying to reach her friend through the church inbox, but she also can't bring herself to break the bad news. Desperate, she begins impersonating Grace via email. But when the police discover suspicious circumstances surrounding Grace's death, Gilda may have to finally reveal the truth of her mortifying existence.
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2021., Adult, Esplanade Books, the fiction imprint at Véhicule Press Call No: QWF Fic Dir Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "The year Paul turns forty, his friends Wendy and Eve ask him to help them get pregnant. Nothing about the process feels natural to him. But for a gay man of a certain age, making a family still means finding your own way through a world with few ready answers. The eighteen-month journey reveals many insights about Paul's past and present, from his strained relationship to his father, his overprotective relationship with his partner Michael, and the many friends around him whom he considers his family."--
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2022., Stonehouse Originals Click to access digital title. Sample Summary Note: International chef Jake Hardy has it all. Celebrity, thriving career, plenty of friends, a happy family and faithful dog. Until one day when a tragic accident tears it all apart. Struggling to recover, Hardy finds himself in a strange new world—a snow-swept prairie town that time forgot—a place where nothing makes sense. Cold is beautiful. Simple is complex. And doubts begin to surface about whether Jake's tragedy was truly an accident after all. As the sun sets in the Land of Living Skies, Hardy and his glamourous, seventy-eight-year-old transgender neighbour find themselves ensnared in multiple murders separated by decades. In Bidulka's "love letter to life on the prairies" he delivers a story of grief and loss that manages to burst with joy, tenderness and hope. Redolent of his earlier works, Going to Beautiful brings us unexpected, under-represented characters in settings that immediately feel familiar and beloved. Beautiful—a place where what you need may not be what you were looking for.
![Going to beautiful [eBook]](/Library/images/~imageCT103005.JPG "Going to beautiful [eBook]")
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2022., Metatron Press Call No: QWF BLK Fic Del Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: The half-drowned takes place in a world after the end of our time. The people who remain from those that fled into orbit planet earth live in a comfortable dystopia. Everything in this world is fluid--time and connections wax and wane. LaVon is obsessed with swimming in the polluted Atlantic where he finds beauty and escapes from grief and connection to ancestral knowledge. Harbour wants the chain she gave to her crush back. Kaya doesn't know her past and can't see a future for herself in this town but there might not be anything outside of it. A mysterious shape-shifting alien being resides beneath the surface of the water.
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2022., Adult, Atria Books Call No: Fic Oco Edition: First atria books hardcover edition. Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: Elliott appears to be living the dream as a successful TV writer with a doting boyfriend. But behind his Instagram filter of a life, he’s grappling with an intensifying alcohol addiction, he can’t seem to stop cheating on his boyfriend with various sex workers, and his cerebral palsy is making him feel like gay Shrek. After falling down a rabbit hole of sex, drinking, and Hollywood backstabbing, Elliott decides to limp his way towards redemption. But facing your demons is easier said than done.
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2022., Forge Call No: MYS Fic Ros Edition: First edition. Availability:0 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: Lavender House, 1952: the family seat of recently deceased matriarch Irene Lamontaine, head of the famous Lamontaine soap empire. Irene's recipes for her signature scents are a well guarded secret-but it's not the only one behind these gates. This estate offers a unique freedom, where none of the residents or staff hide who they are. But to keep their secret, they've needed to keep others out. And now they're worried they're keeping a murderer in. Irene's widow hires Evander Mills to uncover the truth behind her mysterious death. Andy, recently fired from the San Francisco police after being caught in a raid on a gay bar, is happy to accept-his calendar is wide open. And his secret is the kind of secret the Lamontaines understand. Andy had never imagined a world like Lavender House. He's seduced by the safety and freedom found behind its gates, where a queer family lives honestly and openly. But that honesty doesn't extend to everything, and he quickly finds himself a pawn in a family game of old money, subterfuge, and jealousy-and Irene's death is only the beginning.
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2017., Adult, Fantagraphics books Call No: GN Fic Par Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: Parrish's emotionally loaded, painted graphic novel is a visual tour de force, always in the service of the author's themes: navigating queer desire, masculinity, fear, and the ever-in-flux state of friendships. -- Amazon.com summary.
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2015., Doubleday Call No: Fic Yan Edition: First edition. Availability:0 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: Moving to New York to pursue creative ambitions, four former classmates share decades marked by love, loss, addiction, and haunting elements from a brutal childhood.
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2021., 10:00:37, Tantor Audio Edition: Unabridged. Click to access digital title. Sample Summary Note: There are few things as universal as a parent's love for their child-and the heartache that can accompany it. In My Good Son, award-winning author Yang Huang explores both the deep power and the profound burdens of parental love through the story of Mr. Cai, a tailor in post-Tiananmen China, and his only son Feng. Like many of his generation, Mr. Cai's most fervent desire is for his son to succeed. He manages to get Feng to pass his entrance exams, and turns to an American customer, Jude, to sponsor his studies in the States. This scheme, hatched between the older Chinese man and a handsome gay American ex-pat, exposes listeners to the parallels and differences of American and Chinese cultures-father-son relationships, familial expectations, sexuality, social mobility, and privilege. Huang's writing abounds with sharp insights and a quiet humor, revealing the complexity of family relationships amidst two rapidly changing cultures.
![My good son [eAudiobook] : A novel](/Library/images/~imageCT102259.JPG "My good son [eAudiobook] : A novel")