I MAKE MY OWN FUN, a title you'll look at differently after the read

I MAKE MY OWN FUN
HANNAH BEER
House of Anansi Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$19.99 paperback, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: An unhinged romp through fame, obsession, and fandom

Everyone knows Marina, the A-list movie star. But very few know Marina, the absolute monster.

Years at the top have proved that whatever Marina wants, she gets. But when she meets bartender Anna, Marina discovers something that can't be Anna's affection. As Anna remains unmoved, Marina's advances become more desperate, and her obsession more dangerous.

The price of fame is heavy—and someone will have to pay for it …

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Mmmkay...so...see it's like this. There is not one shred of realism in this weirdness. Marina has five Oscars and she got them when not yet thirty.

Five. OSCARS.

Park them carpin' natterin' nabobs of emotional negativity in the punchbowl, y'all. Go with it. So Marina's in London for...something, I forgot what, doing her "Miss Relatable Superstar oh I'm just plain folks" shtik that sells out theaters, bored with the fact it keeps working, but nothing gonna change her runnin' the con, because a superstar girl's gotta feed the hordes of hangers-on. Marina goes out, worn out after another day of faking sincerity in search of booze and babes (the hot PR-inspired boyfriend is with his little sidequest lad—everybody's bi). (Oh, Marina? She likes girls too.)

And there SHE is: Anna the food-service worker, starstruck and ripe for the plucking. Marina plucks, well tries to anyway. Anna is...not impressed.

This cannot be allowed. You just know the whole world, from the folks Marina catfishes on various dating apps to the fellow A-lister "friends" she's secretly fed to the internet wolves for shits and giggles, has always fallen right into or back into her orbit at the merest crook of a pinky from Marina. Anna, though, declines the part she's been cast to play.

I hope you saw Tár. Marina's the Hollywood version of her, very very sure she is worth all the trouble and pain she causes all around her because she is A Star. There is more than a little of the Fatal Attraction thing goin' on with the way Anna keeps ducking out and trying to get away, which Marina's sure is just playing hard to get. Not so much Marina...Anna sees your real face and wants no part of looking into the abyss of selfishness and self-regard you represent. You're running out of time, passing the line of 30 aka career death, and Anna is failing to hide your desperation and trappedness from you...how dare she?! You *deserve* Anna's utter devotion! You're YOU!

Bitter, angry celebrity-obsessed woman caught in what she knows inside is the beginning of the end refuses to examine her actual reality to see what she wants to try next. Told in a headlong, obsessive rush, maybe even too much of one, Author Beer's debut novel is a howl of outrage that the /marinas of the world get as far as they do, that what the Marinas of the world do to others is only partial repayment and charged to the wrong account for what's done to them. The ending, honestly rushed and abrupt, works because there are unreliable narrators like Christie's Dr. Sheppard, and then there are the Marinas. This ending, abrupt as it is, makes the sheer awfulness of Marina fluoresce. It's so so sad, and so so appropriate, and just truly satisfying for what it subtextually points to.

There is not one soul in this book I felt like I wanted to rescue, teach sense to, or even get to know better. I know it's a novel but it truthfully made me look askance at everyone involved in the celebrity-influencer world again.

Summer sudsy thriller fun! I say feed your inner cynic a story to keep it from gluing you to the next season of The Traitors.

PRECIOUS FRIENDS: Murder in Sag Harbor, and one uses "friends" advisedly for most of these old queens!

PRECIOUS FRIENDS: Murder in Sag Harbor (Angelo Perrotta Mysteries #3)
FRANK SPINELLI
Level Best Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$6.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The Most Precious Friends Hide the Darkest Secrets

"In the Hamptons, interlopers are as ubiquitous as deer ticks. The only way to remove one is to apply steady, even pressure on the head and pull."

JB Pulaski, a tenured sociology professor, thought surviving cancer was his greatest battle. Now, desperate to save his crumbling marriage, he retreats to his Sag Harbor summer home with his philandering husband Mike and teenage son Emilio.

Instead, he finds humiliation.

When Mike begins a public affair with Italian pianist Gianni Cuomo, JB becomes the summer's most whispered-about scandal—the cuckolded husband everyone pities but no one respects. But when Gianni is found murdered at an exclusive costume party, pity transforms into suspicion, and JB becomes the prime suspect.

Behind the gated driveways and manicured lawns lies a world where appearances are everything and loyalty is currency. As the investigation closes in, JB must confront not only a conspiracy designed to destroy him, but the darkness he's spent a lifetime suppressing. With his son's future hanging in the balance and his own violent impulses emerging, JB discovers that in the Hamptons, the most dangerous predators wear the most beautiful masks.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Angelo, the ostensible series character, turns Poirot on us and shows up once in a while to talk his buddy JB down from a ledge, or out of a corner, as his life unravels in the course of a murder investigation.

He's the prime suspect in the drowning death of the latest paramour seduced by his cheatin' dirtbag of a husband, Mike. Angelo can't get involved, obvs, because literally no one would trust his findings. And it helps nothing that JB's a recent recipient of chemo, which kicked more than his cancer: he's emotionally disregulated enough to have chased off another boy Mike was sexin' up by claiming (falsley?) to have been involved in previous suspicious deaths occurring in Sag Harbor. As that's happening, someone ups the emotional ante by threatening Mike and JB's college-age son Emilio.

Solid, sudsy stuff!

It's less Angelo than JB, and Rakesh his bestie pouring martinis for everyone. (Even Rakesh's alcoholic husband whose name I forget because I dislike him, not a great look there Rakesh. Also, lotsa lotsa names.) It felt like a gay version of Dynasty it was so seriously glam-80s evening soap. I was hugely entertained. I was pretty sure I knew who was behind the campaign to ruin JB and Mike's marriage and family. I was wrong. Mitigating my embarrassment, I mention again the large cast of characters, all with petty-to-powerful secrets...like Dynasty, but all openly (or not) gay.

I got this DRC first, before I knew it was ostensibly part of a series; it impacted my ability or desire to invest in the tale being told not at all. The characters are all fleshed out in this story to the extent they can be; I'm not going to pretend it's flawless, but the proper people end up in the proper beds.

Oh, beds: this is not a steamy story, so do't go in expecting that. It's terrific if what you want is some fun storytelling that keeps you thinking about how easy a thing it is to lose your reputation, and how seldom it has much to do with you. I think fun like this is worth every bit of your time and treasure committed to it.

ANDREA WULF'S PAGE: THE INVENTION OF NATURE: Alexander von Humboldt's New World; and THE TRAVELER: One Man's Quest for Humanity from the South Seas to Revolutionary Paris

THE TRAVELER: One Man's Quest for Humanity from the South Seas to Revolutionary Paris
ANDREA WULF
Alfred A. Knopf (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, preorder now for delivery 9 June 2026

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Step into the life and times of George Forster, the young naturalist and revolutionary who journeyed to the far reaches of the known world and whose radical ideas about humanity and freedom made waves in eighteenth-century Europe—from the bestselling author of The Invention of Nature and Magnificent Rebels.

From an early age, it was clear that George Forster possessed a brilliant mind. A polyglot and gifted scientist, he became an invaluable asset to the ambitions of his domineering father, Reinhold. As a young boy, he travelled with his father from the plains of West Prussia to the wild shores of the Volga to St. Petersburg and London on scientific endeavors, and soon became the breadwinner by publishing translations of hugely popular exploration accounts. When Reinhold Forster was offered the position of naturalist aboard Captain James Cook’s second voyage, he accepted on the condition that his seventeen-year-old son serve as his assistant.

The HMS Resolution set sail in 1772 with orders to find the hypothetical southern continent of Antarctica. On her voyage to the Antarctic Circle and the islands of the South Pacific—including New Zealand, Vanuatu, Tonga, Tahiti, and Easter Island—the Resolution carried the ambitions of the most powerful empire in the world. But George Forster brought an understanding that was centuries ahead of the attitudes of his day—his ideas belonged to the future. A remarkable observer, linguist, artist, and writer whose intelligence surpassed that of his own father, he studied the diverse cultures of the world without prejudice and sought to uncover our common humanity. He was a traveler in body and mind—not bound by place, people or establishment.

Recognized as one of Europe’s brightest minds on his return, Forster held positions across the continent and regaled the world not only with tales from his travels but also radical ideas about human nature. He would write against empire, white supremacy, and slavery. He would become a revolutionary and be declared an outlaw. He would never seek to control others as he had been controlled by his father, and even embraced a liberal idea of marriage, accepting his wife’s affairs and independence Andrea Wulf’s The Traveler recounts an extraordinary life largely forgotten by history, the tale of a man who broke with convention and was unafraid to critique the world around him in dedication to his belief in the human right to dignity, equality, and freedom.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: A man as astonishing as Author Wulf's previous science-biography topic, Alexander von Humboldt (see below). Forster has been brought out of obscurity at a time when his delighted curiosity in the world is curdling die to the way we as a species ignored the warnings of imbalance von Humboldt was observing and reporting on. Forster is still known to us today because he wrote of his travels extensively. He was unusual for his attention to the contributions of women and his respect for the contributions of non-whites in many fields around the world. He died before he was fifty; it's a sadness to me personally that he and Alexander von Humboldt never traveled together. As Forster was two decades older than von Humboldt, I can only dream of what the synergy in these men's inclusive, broad views might have gifted us.

A man born in 1754 writing passionately about the flimsiness and dishinesty of white supremacy, and the idiocy of the idea of dominionism deserves a wide audience in the twenty-first century. If we're going to lionize dead white men, let's lionize George Forster the proponent of equality, the supporter of women's rights, the spreader of Enlightenment values. Here's a British man worthy of our respect and deserving of emulation.

Forster's travels broadened his mind and his spirit. He was a person who saw, as his private papers show, the connections among people in a time when colonialism and sexism were drawing ever thicker lines between us. I am saddened that his first-hand observations of the idiocy and evil that Othering (in today's terminology) colonized people was exacting never gained traction. I dream of a Forster who lived to lift up Mary Wollestonecraft, who worked effectively with Revolutionary Parisians to moderate the evils inherent in destroying systems to rebuild them fairly.

Author Wulf has, as is her wont, seen past History's battlefied fog to choose another target of worth and merit to remind us how long the world has been falling from Grace.

And how many before us saw it.

Honoring their legacies by taking action seems appropriate to me. I hope you'll read this dynamically written, thoroughly researched work on an unjustly underknown thinker, and feel inspired to do just that.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE INVENTION OF NATURE: Alexander von Humboldt's New World
ANDREA WULF
Vintage Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.75*of five

The Publisher Says: Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) was an intrepid explorer and the most famous scientist of his age. In North America, his name still graces four counties, thirteen towns, a river, parks, bays, lakes, and mountains. His restless life was packed with adventure and discovery, whether he was climbing the highest volcanoes in the world or racing through anthrax-infected Siberia or translating his research into bestselling publications that changed science and thinking. Among Humboldt’s most revolutionary ideas was a radical vision of nature, that it is a complex and interconnected global force that does not exist for the use of humankind alone.

Now Andrea Wulf brings the man and his achievements back into focus: his daring expeditions and investigation of wild environments around the world and his discoveries of similarities between climate and vegetation zones on different continents. She also discusses his prediction of human-induced climate change, his remarkable ability to fashion poetic narrative out of scientific observation, and his relationships with iconic figures such as Simón Bolívar and Thomas Jefferson. Wulf examines how Humboldt’s writings inspired other naturalists and poets such as Darwin, Wordsworth, and Goethe, and she makes the compelling case that it was Humboldt’s influence that led John Muir to his ideas of natural preservation and that shaped Thoreau’s Walden.

With this brilliantly researched and compellingly written book, Andrea Wulf shows the myriad fundamental ways in which Humboldt created our understanding of the natural world, and she champions a renewed interest in this vital and lost player in environmental history and science.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT FROM THE PRIME LENDING SERVICE.

My Review: Start your journey into Alexander von Humboldt's character and intellect here:

“The effects of the human species’ intervention were already ‘incalculable’, Humboldt insisted, and could become catastrophic if they continued to disturb the world so ‘brutally’. Humboldt would see again and again how humankind unsettled the balance of nature.”

This man, born the year a crucial observation of a Transit of Venus was measured, and died the year of the Carrington Event, was tied to science at both ends.

It's probably down to the fact that he was gay that he's never been lionized in US scientific education the way Lord Kelvin, Sir Humphry Davy, Leibniz, or Pasteur have. Yes, German-language output isn't hugely well-represented in general US scientific awareness to this day; if ever someone deserves an exception, it's the man who has a bay in California, a current running up our Pacific coast, and a species of giant squid found in ever-northening parts of that coast, named for him.

He was a very good writer (seriously...read Cosmos, it was as big a bestseller as On the Origin of Species by his follower Darwin and is an excellent browsing book), which led to his excellent observational science influencing multiple generations of scientists who founded new fields of study by expanding his work. His way of seeing Earth as a system is now the dominant view, expressed thusly by Author Wulf: "He saw the earth as one great living organism where everything was connected, conceiving a bold new vision of nature that still influences the way that we understand the natural world."

His writing skills were also useful in his later-life career as a diplomat, most enduringly to the Court of King Louis-Phillippe of France. I do not know of any English translations of his diplomatic correspondence, but I wager cash money they make for absorbing reading. His Prussian monarch did not compel von Humboldt to attend hid, perform diplomacy for him, because the guy was boring. He charmed his friends, he charmed the many people his scientific and diplomatic duties brought him into contact with, he charmed several younger men enough that one of them, a Peruvian aristocrat, got jealous enough when he was dumped...that's so unkind, let's say left behind when von Humboldt departed...that he leveled the accusation of our guy visiting a Quito brothel for men who like men. von Humboldt was known to be "like that" but, as always, exceptional talent...and a lack of a widely used "scientific" term for men romantically and sexually interested in other men like "homosexual"...gets judged by other rules. Author Wulf doesn't delve into this aspect of his life, though it's interstitially there; her focus is instead on the immensity, the Forrest-Gumpian breadth of his social circle, and drawing some conclusions about his influence that veer into Great Man Theory territory. I'm not all the way able to get past that discomfiting adulatory tone, despite feeling its pull very strongly. I'd give this read five or even six stars of five with some critical distance baked in; as it is four-and-three-quarters give me wiggle room fo work out my squeam.

It's a long read, it's an impactful resuscitation of a reputation very sadly in need of it among Anglophone readers, and if imperfect is still a very great pleasure to read.

CONTRAPPOSTO, Dave Eggers' long-time-coming novel of art, friendship, and artists being friends

CONTRAPPOSTO
DAVE EGGERS
Alfred A. Knopf (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, preorder now for delivery 9 June 2026

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Cricket is just a shy kid who likes drawing when he first meets Olympia. She's older, more confident; she bullies him into some light vandalism and instantly he's in love. When they're together, they talk about their futures, how they're going to travel the world, the beauty and rapture of art.

Then those futures start to arrive in unexpected ways, the years and decades pile up between them, the art world seduces and disappoints and frustrates them. And they have to figure out, again and again, what it is to be an artist, and who and what to love.

This is a wild and beautiful novel about two friends who believe they can change the world, if only they can start their own movement, dodge charlatans, remain open-eyed and open-hearted, avoid going mad, avoid dying young of rare cancers, stay true to their ideals and never tire of beauty. Not easy, but not impossible, either.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: "Contrapposto" is first used as an English art-vocabulary word loaned to us by the Italians in 1903. (I love etymonline.com!) As the MCs in this story are artistic types, it's the appropriate term to reach for:

"Contrapposto is an Italian term translating to 'counterpose.' It describes a natural, relaxed pose in which a human figure’s weight shifts onto one foot. This shift causes the shoulders and hips to tilt in opposite directions, creating a gentle, dynamic S-curve along the spine."

I myownself kept thinking in terms of the centuries-older borrowing of "counterpoise" with its weight and its mass as Pia/Olympia and Robert/"Cricket" level each other out, one on the up when the other's weighed down. Their connection begins when they're quite young with all the ridiculous grandiosity of young idealistic artsy-fartsy kids, determined to Show The World without knowing yet what the world bothers to look at.

I thought, based on the publisher's description, I was in for a revamp of Author Eggers' memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, of which I was not fond. I had a similarly not-positive response to What is the What. I then really, really liked Zeitoun, and have missed his other work; when offered this DRC it felt right to get in the swing of modern Eggers. I hoped more Zeitouny fun would be had; it was.

Stylistically, Eggers has moved himself into a groove that affords us the pithiest and most aperçu-worthy prose that is down the middle of the public's strike zone. The story of two people whose connection forms and reforms over many years as they each grown into life-shapes strongly influenced by each other, by their artsy-fartsy lives...pursued in part so as to impress and please the other...and ultimately by the certainty that, no matter what, they belong in tension, harmony, response, connection to each other. Some friendships just *are*. If they just *are* they can feel closer than family, and that's the friendship Pia and Cricket have from the get-go. The issue I take with that, even though it matches my own lived experience of some rare friendships, is that here it comes across a bit like "manic pixie dream girl" tropishness from the Aughties. Pia zooming unattainably into and out of Cricket's life, always on to something new something wild someone else not him, leading him (almost but never fully leading him on) into or out of trouble...it's heartfelt, feels real enough, but really is not free of the tinge of the trope.

As a sly comment on the male expectations of our time, as a sneering smirk at the people who make up the elite in the artworld, this is a fine little story. It's very quotable. I stopped at one because much as I liked many of them, they all, when assembled, seemes repetitious of point. I didn't notice it as I read and marked them. I call that a vote of confidence on my readerly part; especially since I wasn't consciously aware of it until writing this review.

Way to sneak one over on me! I'm very impressed. A full four stars for a story that felt until just now like three-and-a-half; decent-to-good, not great. I think this sly story will win many hearts and tap on the glass of many a mind in the Zoo of Life. It should. It deserves your time and your treasure.

On sale, though.

HAPPY PRIDE MONTH 2026!

Last year at the end of June, my friend Sarah-Hope and I decided that a good way to celebrate #PrideMonth would be by highlighting our top five queer reads of the past year. Hence, the list I offer below that covers books published in 2025 and 2026 to date. I cheated; one of Sarah-Hope's is also one of mine so I included but didn't count it.
☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂

Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature by Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian: Overall, the thing I loved about this read was not the fount of factfulness but the fountain of meditative, calm reflection that Author Patty (she refers to herself as such on her website so I'm presuming to do so too) uses to soothe away the hurts being queer in a hostile world has wrought. It delights me that this deeply queer in most senses of the word I'm familiar with has spent more than a year on The Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers: Non-Fiction! Most recently for the week ending June 2, 2026.

••••••

Stories from the Edge of the Sea by Andrew Lam: How to go on, when you honestly think your world is ending, is at the heart of any immigrant's story. Your world is ending, are you going to end with it?

Not while someone is cold and hungry, I'm not. I immigrated from my happy world to this ugly, mean-spirited one entirely against my will. But here I am. My kettle's only got words, but heads need filling...feeding...too. There are three 5* stories in here: The Tree of Life is an elegy to a mother's love; A Good Broth Takes Its Time "I insure people against tragedy, in a country built on it," says Toan, survivor and thriver on pho's magically Proustian-madeleine insubstantial waft of piercing sadness and joy at the ephemeral moments of recall; and for me, relict of a great, great love gone to AIDS, there's October Laments that follows a woman who processes her grief in real time posts on Facebook, in a foreign language, for the husband she shared twenty-five years of life with. I suppose we all conduct our love affairs in translation to a degree, but there's a gulf you cannot deny away or fully bridge between older and younger, added to culturally separated lovers.

Any one of those stories would get this collection on my favorites list. But all three? No wonder this collection's one of LitHub's 100 Notable Small Press Books for 2025!

••••••

Separate Rooms by Pier Vittorio Tondelli and translated by Simon Pleasance was the first novel about AIDS in Italian. This book came out in 1989. I assume most of y'all remember something about 1989, but probably not the sheer awfulness of the AIDS epidemic eating the gay-men's communities around the world at that time.

I was there. I loved and lost more than once in the hell of the times. It happened like Tondelli—dead a year and a half after this book appeared—said it did. Leaving a record for those not even born then feels important to me; leaving an anguished, choked sob that records the reality feels urgent.

••••••

We Were the Universe by Kimberly King Parsons is the first novel by yje author of my 2019 six-stars-of-five delight Black Light: Stories. Grief and grieving are common to us all. It is not, for some, cathartic to experience them in fiction. I'm not one of those people, but if you are, this is not the read for you. I hope all the rest of us will derive the comfort of fellow feeling from this story that was shortlisted for the 37th Lambda Literary Awards for Bisexual Fiction.

••••••

The Six Loves of James I by Gareth Russell snuck under my harbor-blocking chains set up against applying 2026 identities to 1560s-born folks. Author Russell is scrupulous in making you au fait with his sources. He specifically says, on the occasions he makes a logical leap, that this is what he's doing. Where people in the past used the lens of homophobia to "tar" a man's reputation with the stench of sodomy, much more often than not the "charge" was made absent solid evidence, and for some sort of political or ideological reason. Hence my relieved pleasure with this read's honest offering-up of details I enjoyed learning that led me to think James of Scotland (born in 1966 not 1566) would've *loved* Pride Month.

•••••• My cheat:

(So What) If I’m a Puta? Diaries of Transness, Sex Work, Desire by Amara Moira and translated from Brazilian Portuguese by Bruna Dantas Lobato and Amanda De Lisio: Self-determination, personal autonomy, individual freedom, call it what you like: It is the central fact in the competing ideologies of high-control and laissez-faire systems of social organization duking it out around the world since 2025. Spoiler alert: It's always going to fall short for one side's happiness and comfort. I myownself want it to fall shortest for the high-control (usually religious) fascist slime. This personal story is a goddamned anthem for the freedom so hard-won and so terrifyingly fragile.

There. I'm out of the closet. I want what "They" only claim to want, the PTB out of my personal business, telling me who I can fuck, marry, or vote for.

☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂

Below, with her permission, I present Sarah-Hope's list of her five extraordinary reads from 2025 and the first half of 2026.

Necessary Fiction, by Eloghosa Osunde: Necessary Fiction is one of those novel-ish short story collections (or short story collection-ish novels). It's sent in present day Nigeria, mostly Lagos, and features a wide range of gay/lesbian/queer/nonbinary characters. Most of the characters come from families wealthy enough that they're not concerned with making a living, but those who are not prove to be ingenious in figuring out services that seem to become essential as soon as they're offered/invented. If you like queer fiction, if you like books that are adventurous in terms of style and structure, you're in for a huge treat with Necessary Fiction. Five Stars

(So What) If I’m a Puta? Diaries of Transness, Sex Work, Desire by Amara Moira: This is a book about resistance and the powers that want to smash that resistance. The resistance is Moira's. She's a literary scholar, tranvestí, and sexworker. The powers are cis het men titillated by pursuing what they would imprison others for, social convention, and the politics of hate—and an infinitude of others. Moira demonstrates that sexwork is like any kind of work: occasionally satisfying, but more apt to fall somewhere along the awakward to the life-threatening (like Amazon warehouse employees, folks working in explosives factories, workers on the processing lines in the chicken business). Read So What If I'm a Puta to spend time looking through Moira's eyes with rage, solidarity, and grief—then look at our own sans blinders and distractions.

Five Stars

Dark Renaissance The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival by Stephen Greenblatt: Kit Marlowe was not just a brilliant playwright and contemporary of Shakespeare, but also involved in the intelligencing (we would call it espionage) that became a significant force in England during the reign of Elizabeth I. We can safely call Marlowe a loose cannon. Greenblatt identifies some of Marlowe's most salient characteristics—button pushing, shocking, espousing the outré—and then examines Marlowe’s plays to see the ways those characteristics are evidenced in his work. If you have any interest in Elizabethan politics and/or queer politics and/or faith and/or drama this is a book you should be pick up posthaste.

Five Stars

These Heathens by Mia McKenzie These Heathens has two settings: small-town Georgia in 1960, where Doris, the central character, lives and Atlanta, where she travels to end a pregnancy accompanied by one of her former teachers. The "former" here is important. Doris left school a year or two ago because she was needed at home. She comes from a church-going family and is a firm believer. Much of her day is shaped by the "rules" her faith has given her to live by. When Doris realizes she's pregnant, she's certain that Jesus doesn't want her to become a mother, so she turns to the most trusted adult in her life who is not affiliated with her family's church: her former teacher Mrs. Lucas. Mrs. Lucas promises she will help and arranges through a childhood friend to bring Doris to Atlanta for an abortion. It's at this point that things begin to get complicated. Doris is meeting people unlike any she's known. These are city people with incomes well beyond those earned by the Black folk living in her hometown. There's Mrs. Lucas' childhood friend, who appears to prefer women over men. Doris has been warned about the dangers of inversion, but she is every bit as fascinated as she is perturbed. And she also meets several young men who introduce her to SNCC, sit-ins, and even a bit of the Nation of Islam. She's also meeting people she's only read about in Jet or Ebony: the Kings, Bayard Rustin, and Black entertainers. Watching Doris enter these new worlds, explain them to herself, and make her own way through them is a delight.

Five Stars

My Roommate from Hell by Cale Dietrich: As a general rule, I can’t stand romances, but sometimes a romance comes along that stretches the genre in so many directions that it becomes a delight to read, regardless of preconceived biases. The novel riffs on the enemies-to-lovers trope. Owen and Zarmenus are first-year students at college and roommates. Owen wants to study software engineering then land a high-paying job—he’s devoted to his goals. He’s also gay. Hoping for a studious study partner, he’s instead paired with Zarmenus—that’s Prince Zarmenus, the son of the rulers of Hell, which scientists have just discovered exists. His parents want to him to be a sterling example of a well-behaved demon as a first attempt at an Earth-Hell exchange program. Zarmenus meanwhile wants to party and sleep with as many hot guys as he can. Yep, he too is gay. Their relationship is a disaster from the get-go, things get worse, then they get worser, then they get exceptionally complicated while becoming (maybe?) slightly less worser, then…. My Roommate from Hell is a flat-out comic romp with a cast of characters that may drive you nuts at times, but who you’ll also come to feel deeply fond of.

Five Stars

☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂☀☁☂ ...AND THERE YOU HAVE IT! Two retirees, veterans of the culture wars of the 1960s and 1970s who came out in our different homes to different results, and developed a shared love of reading...reading Queer stories especially. We shared one title on our favorite reads, and generally show consistent love for our siblings in queerness in their global diversity.

#ExistenceIsResistance

REARS & VICES is E.M. CARO's involving, exciting Pirate Throuple luuuv tale

REARS & VICES
E.M. CARO
Tides & Troth Books LLC (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$17.99 paperback, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Black Sails and Hamilton meet in this queer, poly, spicy Historical Romance set during the 19th century Age of Revolution, when pirates briefly reclaimed the Gulf and Caribbean seas and provided crucial support toward anti-colonial nation-states. Perfect for fans of K.J. Charles, Cat Sebastian, and Courtney Milan!

HE THOUGHT HE’D BE A HERO BY NOW—AND THAT IT WOULD MEAN SOMETHING.

It’s 1816. The wars with France and America are over. Royal Navy career man Everard Anderson de Anglada sails the peacetime Great Lakes, demoted to captain of a tiny ten-gun schooner. When Preston D’Arcy, Everard’s former lieutenant and too-handsome ex-flame, forewarns him about a court-martial they must judge, Everard is begrudgingly grateful.

HE’S RADICAL, RESPECTED, UNFORGETTABLE—AND A PIRATE.

On the docket, however, is Vitaliy “Vitya” Gray, infamous pirate captain and anti-colonial weapons smuggler. Everard has crossed paths with him before—not strictly as enemies.

TOGETHER, THEY COULD BE LEGENDARY…

After a hasty jailbreak, philosophical debates, and proposals—pirate marriage, no strings—Everard finds himself, his heart, and even D’Arcy commandeered: to the Gulf of México. There, piracy is nothing like he imagined, and Vitya is everything Everard ever truly wished to be.

…SO LONG AS LEGEND DOESN’T GET IN THE WAY OF LOVE.

The Spanish crown looms. Dangerous secrets and betrayals come to light. Then Everard is offered a position with the revolutionary Galveston navy. Everard must decide: fulfill his desire for legacy… or stay beside the men with whom he’s fallen in love and make a legacy of their own.

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My Review: Well-researched historical romance with twenty-first century guys parachuted in to do the romancin'. Consent would not remotely matter to guys born in the eighteenth century, nor would equality of the sexes be so unquestioned even among the pirates. Still, I'd prefer to have this quibble (and it's only a quibble) that to squeam out over dubcon or worse scenes, or grunt in disgust at period-appropriate sexism.

The essence of the story was the geopolitical complexity of the Napoleonic Wars, arguably the real Second World War after the Seven Years' War, which counts in my mind as the real First, acted out in the slowly decolonizing New World. There are many moving parts to the mens' relationship development. The idea of throuples is now public, and gaining acceptance under several nammes including polyamory. It's interesting to see it begin to root into historical fiction. It's exceedingly unlikely to be a modern invention but of course the evidence...written words, court documents, that kind of thing...is scant and mostly subject to interpretation.

Digression: this is how progress gets lost, y'all. The evil fucks who want to stop the massive numbers of people in the world from enjoying true liberty and happiness reset the social clock with destruction of records, of books, of art that depict the things they want to deny us. If histories vanish, History is what "They" say it is, and our actual lived lives, our hoped-for, dreamed-of, briefly attained progress has to be reinvented slowly and painfully. And it can always be fought against, denied, diminished by "it's not in the records" arguments. Look up Magnus Hirscchfeld, the Edict of Torda, matelotage. We live in a Golden Age of information availability. Notice how carefully that availability is being sabotaged with fake "privacy protections" and very real power/ownership consolidations.

Matelotage is most relevant to our story, though, because most of y'all ain't heard of this gay marriage from the seventeenth century, yet two of the throuple we're following in this story are matelots. Vitya and Everard are bound in this union and are pretty good at using its spousal-equivalent privilege. Sex, when they get around to TALKING TO EACH OTHER about it, is very much part of the matelotage as we can feel sure it was for others in this and earlier eras.

My main reason for offering only four stars for this very creative and quite interesting story is that not-talking thing was done with such ridiculous and flimsy excuses...honor, the one person not allowing the other to finish a sentence, etc...that I slammed my Kindle shut so many times I worried I'd cracked the screen. Once or maybe twice...okay, especially in the early stages of figuring each other out, or just discovering them. But every time? Every topic? No one, not once, saying "listen to me, please." If that's y'all's experience of being in love, stick to novels, it's just too bleak to be borne in your life.

And not novels like this one that smash the same pathological communication style *after* the love's been established.

As endings go, this one's a humdinger. The last 20% of this story would not let me out of my chair. I got so excited as the throuple withstood the stress test of the awful betrayals!

A good, not quite excellent, love story that offers real rewards for yearning romantics.

PURE MEN, Prix Goncourt-winning Senegalese author MOHAMED MBOUGAR SARR's récit of homophobia's viciousness

PURE MEN
MOHAMED MBOUGAR SARR (tr. Lara Vergnaud)
Other Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$10.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A young professor grapples with homophobia in Muslim Senegal in this searching, heart-wrenching novel from the National Book Award–longlisted author of The Most Secret Memory of Men.

A viral video makes the rounds in Dakar, showing an incensed crowd that gathers to dig up a grave and drag the corpse from holy ground. When Ndéné, a French literature teacher, watches it, he’s surprisingly affected. Who was this man, and what could he have done to deserve such a fate? The answer soon becomes clear: he was a “góor-jigéen,” one of the so-called “men-women,” the shameful label given to homosexuals, cross-dressers, or any man who lives outside the accepted norm.

Haunted by the video, Ndéné sets out to learn more. With the help of a friend who works in night life, he explores a hidden side of Dakar, away from the rigid Islam of his family and university. Although he feels a certain disgust for homosexuality, he’s moved by the suffering and resilience of the people he meets. But the further he goes, the more he doubts his own identity, threatening to become an object of suspicion and scorn himself.

A powerful, nuanced portrait of queerness in a conservative society, Pure Men asks the fundamental question of how to find the courage to be true to yourself, whatever the cost.

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My Review: A récit from a Francophone Senegalese author, winner of multiple impressive prizes including 2021's Prix Goncourt for The Most Secret Memory of Men (published by Other Press in 2023), the first sub-Saharan native speaker of French to be so honored.

This powerful story of one academically expert yet culturally naïve man Ndéné coming to terms with the raw potency of religious belief to inspire behaviors its own tenets specifically condemn...murder, desecration of human remains...in a Muslim-majority country by no means anywhere close to a Stonewall moment. In all of his professorial duties and in his life with his lover Rama, Ndéné has not thought much about queerness and Senegalese Islamic homophobia. His hather is a major figure in the Islamic world of Dakar, and Senegal as a whole.

Then Ndéné encounters a viral video of the desecration of a grave because its occupant is rumored...not known bur rumored...to have been a góor-jigéen or man-woman (equivalent to US English faggot) that rocks his entire world. This is done by homophobes screaming at a corpse things that any adult queer has heard many times whether loudly or quietly directed at them. It's a jolt to professorial Ndéné, accustomed to explicating poetry and French culture to his students. He elects to pursue more information about the video, about queerness, and about Senegalese Islam's homophobia. An academic's natural role is to perform research, after all.

Rama and her friend who works for Human Rights Watch in Dakar bring innocent Ndéné into a buried lifeway lived at risk of torture and murder by Dakar's homosexual population. It is fateful. It cannot possibly go unnoticed because of who his father is in the Muslim world; and because the viral video is not condemned by his father, Ndéné investigating the acts depicted and the topic they're embedded in attaches suspicion to himself and damages his father among the devout. Rama, herself bisexual, is added to the trail of calumny.
In exploring the intense, hypocritcal taboos and burning hatred experienced by Senegal's queers, Ndéné begins to ask himself questions about Authority, conformity, prejudice in a country known to be repressive overall. He does himself no favors wher he decides to introduce his students to the work of Verlaine, that monadnock of queer letters the world around. Why would he do this, seeming to me to make the decision on a whim?

The lack of my fifth star above can now be explained. Is Ndéné having a bi awakening? Is he simply so repulsed by his father's religion's hypocrisy and the cultural cruelty, viciousness really, on display in that viral video that he simply wants to lash out at the cultural fog?

Dunno. Does Author Sarr know? It was not obvious to me if he did, and made this choice of direction steered by that knowledge. It's a vague and unsatisfying thing as a result. I can see from Translator Vergnaud's high-quality work that the vagueness was intentional. No author who can create this much investment in a story narrated by a man entirely in his own head, from his own PoV, and in under 200pp reach a truly life-altering conclusion that's internally consistent and resolves the story's plot is going to simply forget to mention if the main character's suddenly gone queer.

But then why do this? What the hell, back down and live to fight another battle (metaphorically speaking, not literally)? It's simply not in the text, or I am too obtuse to see it.

Astonishingly forceful and stylistically assured, the read os one I'll recommend to anyone willing to live in a high degree of narrative uncertainty.

Good practice for our modern life.

MAD EDEN: A Novel, long may Morgan Thomas create characters to enrich our imaginations

MAD EDEN: A Novel
MORGAN THOMAS
MCD x FSG (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: From a pathbreaking writer, a thrilling, form-bending novel about a trans healthcare worker whose carefully built life is suddenly imperiled.

Ro and Liam live in a ramshackle cabin in a secluded stretch of Florida. Neither their home nor their sometimes-tumultuous relationship is what the world would call perfect, but to Ro—newly diagnosed with autism and working as a patient navigator for people seeking gender-affirming care—their life, despite the deeply inhospitable political climate, is a kind of paradise.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly what shatters their peace. There’s Quentin, the unpredictable teenager for whom Liam and Ro are quasi-parents, who visits on his way to college, where he plans to finally start T. There’s the appearance of “Mad Eden,” an online fantasy serial about heroic dragon riders that increasingly becomes Ro’s obsession. And then there’s a seemingly innocuous patient video call that results in consequences both unexpected and grave. This triad of circumstances sends Liam's and Ro’s world spinning toward disaster—unless Ro can become the real-life hero their situation demands without betraying who they are and who they love.

With colossal heart and preternatural skill, Morgan Thomas crafts a deliciously destabilizing debut novel that challenges us to confront and reinvent questions of language, sex, prejudice, identity, and the shifting scales of morality. Playing with the possible relationship between autism and time to forge an ingenious new kind of storytelling, Mad Eden imagines, with exhilarating courage, how we might yet joyfully live in a precarious world.

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My Review: "Intersectionality" is a buzzword, it's true; the idea behind a person having intersecting identities has always seemed self-evident to me, so I'm been a bit eye-rolly in my response to its polysyllabifactive neologization.

Whatever, old man, what's your point?

The intersectionality of Ro's adult-diagnosed autism and Ro's trans identity would never have been used in a mainstream, high-budget novel in my youth. It would have lurked in the bottom-of-the-midlist pity-porn area of publishing throughout the entirety of the twentieth century. (Leave aside autism's hideous, abusive history for now, it's not relevant in this context. Let's just be delighted that it is not the case anymore.)

And Author Thomas would have been deprived of their métier. To all our great loss. (Singular "they" is neither error nor solecism.) To make this exploration of human...grunginess, messiness, animal-function reality...there had to be a generation of writers pushing pushing pushing against the polite prudery of nice people who act like they've never smelled, let alone touched, an asshole. If you've changed a diaper, cleaned yourself after a shit, cleaned up after your pet, yes you have. Many a nose is wrinkling now. Maybe this read is not for you, because it's very forthright in its body-ness. I think all y'all ought to unpucker and stop with the fakeness of pretending you're shocked, shocked! to find there's animal reality to beings living their life.

I suspect it will cause some people to re-evaluate their transphobia, however minld it may be, to realize that it's rooted in a concept of body-ness that belongs to a bygone era. Much like "eww-ick" homophobia, the reality of the twenty-first century is we can fix/clean/care for many, many things that killed people in older times. Keep up! Plug in! Grow some empathy for others' needs and wants, if you expect to go unchallenged in your perception of yourself as a good person.

Ro, the autistic trans guide through the deliberately desgined to be complex medical system that enriches many corporations and immiserates and impoverishes millions who live in the US, uses their autism to guide those in need through a labyrinth. Think, in this case, of the original Labyrinth and its intended function: a prison to hold a monstrous being created out of mismatched partners' uncontrollable, animal (!) passion. Is this making sense now? Ro is less Theseus, more Ariadne. A humane person, one caring for the welfare of others, helping them finr ways through the unforgiving maze, not always a "monster"-slaying self-righteous prick.

I don't offer a perfect five stars because I was less convinced by the "Mad Eden" text that Ro becomes obsessed with being all that worthy of their obsession. I was also more interested in leaning more about Ro, their partner Liam, and the couple's found-family child Quentin in relationship than I was in "Mad Eden." So, purely on personal-enjoyment grounds, I've got to go with a solid four-and-a-half stars for this rich, enriching, selfness-nourishing tale of one person's choice to use their lifee to help others find their own true selves.

PUCK...yuck.

PUCK
SAMANTHA ALLEN
Zando (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

The Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers: Fiction For the week ending June 2, 2026


Rating: 2.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In this A Midsummer Night's Dream-inspired romcom, Puck is a reality show producer and agent of chaos with a talent for bringing people together . . . and tearing them apart.

Meet Puck: the nonbinary, thirty-year-old mastermind behind "Homewreckers", a dating show that puts troubled couples through hell—with a little help from their exes. Used to being the one pulling the strings, it shocks Puck when their life undergoes a plot twist of its own and their college roommate Mia announces her engagement to her ex’s best friend, Damon. Having only recently broken up with longtime-boyfriend Zander, and never having had much in common with Damon (who lovesick Lena has always pined after), Mia’s news leaves her friend group reeling—and Puck’s mind whirling.

When they arrive for a week of wedding festivities at an upscale resort in the Appalachian forest, Puck immediately sees that Mia’s marriage will lead to misery, and takes it upon themself to save their friends by rearranging the couples—without anyone finding out. But as Puck comes up against a type-A maid of honor hell-bent on making this wedding happen, it becomes clear that they will have to deliver the greatest stunt of their career. If only they can take their eyes off the bridesmaid. After all, the course of true love never did run smooth…

Written with Samantha Allen’s signature charm, wit, and an irresistible dose of Shakespearian mischief, Puck is the ultimate romcom for our chaotic era, and a celebration of the friendships that carry us through it all.

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My Review: I've read reality-TV plots before, and liked them fine. I dislike Puck as much as it is possible to dislike a fictional character.

Controlling and manipulative are the core qualities a producer/director must have. The Creative Types series got uniformly good reviews from me, and controlling manipulative producer/director types abounded. LOVE, HATE & CLICKBAIT had the same. I liked it, too. All these stories were chock-a-block with cynical, manipulative controlling people.

Puck is the first one of the producers to feel sociopathic, actually uncaring in their actions...as in not really interested or invested in a positive outcome of some sort. Their impulse to derail the train heading for a genuine disaster was, it felt to me as I read along, much the same "I will because I can and y'all sort out the pieces once I've had my laugh" as in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

I'm glad I read the whole story. I'm supposed to see the easy, wealth-lubricated hum of a stage play wedding as hollow and shallow and doomed to failure. So Puck blowing all those things up? Well, why not they were going to blow up anyway.

I found the idea of Puck's in-universe TV show, Homewreckers, to be as repugnant as The Traitors all y'all seem to lap up. I'm not going off on a rant about how vicious all these craptastic shows feel to me...entertain y'all's selves how you see fit...but absent some tinge of positive motivation, some twinge of conscience or at least awareness that the playing cards being shuffled by Puck are people with feelings, I'm not recommending the read.

The prose is charmingly descriptive, the surfaces ae glossy, the dialogue had a brittle wit to it.

And I disliked every page.

WITHOUT PREJUDICE: My Life as a Gay Judge, a memoir of living the curse "May you live an interesting life in interesting times"

WITHOUT PREJUDICE: My Life as a Gay Judge
HARVEY BROWNSTONE
ECW Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$21.95 paperback, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Harvey Brownstone’s story is a tumultuous, sometimes hilarious, and uplifting journey from bullied child to outcast after coming out to his parents, to trailblazing lawyer, to distinguished judge.

Brownstone colorfully details his momentous and inventive judicial career marked by his numerous innovations of the justice system, particularly revolutionizing Ontario’s child support enforcement program.

In retirement, he is no longer shackled by the restraints traditionally imposed on the judiciary, and thus Brownstone provides a frank, unfiltered, and refreshing glimpse into the inner workings of the justice system, boldly delineating the strengths and weaknesses of criminal and family courts, both of which he claims are sorely in need of comprehensive reform. His remarkable story, reinventing himself from high-profile judge to highly acclaimed talk show host, is a testament to the resilience and triumph of the human spirit.

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My Review: An unusual man's memoir of being unabashedly unusual and unapologetically opinionated.

Judges are not often public figures while still sitting on the bench. Harvey Brownstone got that memo, looked it over for legal penalties, saw there were specific things he was never to speak of so he didnt, and then quietly spoke up for the powerless his entire career. A fluently bilingual judge in an Anglophone province, he was in demand to hear cases involving Francophone participants; he was always active in criminal and family law; he was always, as a good judge ought to be, aware of how his decisions were going to impact all the parties' futures.

A lot of Justice Brownstone's empathy for people enduring trouble, as by definition all those in the legal system are, comes from his parents' surprising rejection of him when he came out to them as gay. It was the 1970s! They were sophisticated people, not from some lunatic religious-nut group...just quite homophobic. This disappointed me, as well as made me empathetically upset on his behalf. Fiive years of no contact made me cringe for him.

As he transitions his narrative to the legal career he self-financed (imagine trying *that* in 2026!) the tenor shifts from personal suffering to compassion for the suffering of other as they wend their way through a system he knows is stacked against them. Defendant or plaintiff, the Canadian legal system is as labyrinthine and intentionally complicated as that anywhere in the world. Justice Brownstone does not hold back in this memoir from expressing his anger at the cruelty baked into the system as it is...most especially the capricious, arbitrary "family" courts.

Justice Brownstone wrote of that system in a 2009 book entitled Tug of War: A Judge's Verdict on Separation, Custody Battles and the Bitter Realities of Family Court in 2009, published by the same house this book comes from. I don't think my blood pressure would remain safely controlled were I to read that book. This one, with its wider focus, challenged me, so I'll be avoiding his earlier book. No more hospital visits for TIAs if I can help it!

I suspect Canadian readers will be more involved in the nuts-and-boltsness of Justice Brownstone's policy agenda for legal-system reform. I'm totally with him in the spirit of his reforms; I can't see anyone in the US who holds a comparable position writing so openly and passionately in favor of redressing the balance of the system. It makes me a bit jealous, like having Mark Carney as their head of government does. Still leaves me with an overall positive impression of Justice Brownstone, and a hearty supportive push for any and all Canadians reading these words to go get themselves involved in his crusades.

I'm hoping the US readers will see what an honest, person-centered, effective and responsible progressive looks like and will start looking for more of them here.

STEVEN ROWLEY'S PAGE: a novel about testing your experience of love and a novella about being tested by love's lies

TAKE ME WITH YOU
STEVEN ROWLEY
G.P. Putnam's Sons (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A poignant, hilarious, and wholly original love story, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Celebrants and winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor.

College professor Jesse del Ruth has been abandoned. Thirty years into their relationship, Jesse witnesses his husband Norman get out of bed late one night, walk into their Joshua Tree backyard, step into a strange beam of light and . . . disappear. How could Norman desert him after a lifetime together? Where did he go? And, most confoundingly . . . will he ever return? Jesse knew they were longing for something, both feeling stuck. But had Norman been so stuck that his only option was to leave Jesse behind?

As Jesse struggles to understand Norman’s disappearance, he tries to piece together his new reality. Is he expected to wait patiently for a partner who may never come back? Or is this an opportunity for reinvention? He is, after all, alone for the first time in his adult life. Should he return to the classroom? Put in a pool? Get a dog? Call his estranged mother? What does it mean to be alone when you’ve always been one half of a whole?

When Norman’s sister Lally lands on Jesse’s doorstep with an urgent request, Norman’s absence becomes even more profound. Add to Jesse’s grief and confusion a conspiracy-theorist neighbor, a strange man following him, and suspicions that he may have had a hand in Norman’s disappearance, and Jesse starts to crack under the pressure. With his husband missing and the world closing in, all eyes are on Jesse. Before he can understand how Norman could leave it all behind, Jesse must confront what it means to stay.

In Take Me With You, Steven Rowley brings his resonant wit and emotional insight to an epic love story—an exploration of the forces that draw two people into the same orbit and the gravity that threatens to pull them apart.

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My Review: Being left as a subject for comedy makes more sense to me now that I've left and been left often enough to really *get* why people leave. Jesse and Norman, after a lifetime together, are...ordinary. They don't have the most exciting life but they're...contented. A perfect meet-cute sets them off on a long voyage of comfortable ordinariness. The voyage ends when Norman debarks their cruise ship in a spectacular way.

What follows is Jesse's journey through grief. Where'd he go...why'd he go...is he coming back....

Reckoning up a lifetime's happy domesticity in the ruins of abandonment shouldn't be funny. Often enough it's not. Often enough it is...this is Steven Rowley, after all...but it's muted, it's in the brightly lit pastels of these men's Joshua Tree homeplace. I got to the ending and thought, "if anyone says 'don't panic' I will riot" but no, no indeed, just a very endearing flashback and some rollerblades.

It's not the same as Author Rowley has given us in tje past, it's maybe not his tippy-top form, at least for my taste; but I am happier, I am more at one with my contentment than I was before I read it.

I call that an excellent return on time invested.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE DOGS OF VENICE
STEVEN ROWLEY
G.P. Putnam's Sons (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebok, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: From the New York Times bestselling author of The Celebrants and The Guncle, a heartwarming story about finding oneself in one of the most romantic cities on Earth.

After months of planning a romantic holiday getaway in Venice, Paul is blindsided when his five-year marriage suddenly unravels. Fueled by heartbreak, Paul endeavors to take the trip alone.

Soon after arriving in Italy, he notices a small, scruffy, self-assured dog trotting alongside a canal with the confidence he so desperately wants for himself. When their paths cross again, Paul feels compelled to learn how his new four-legged friend thrives on his own. Amid the food, sights, and welcoming people of Venice, Paul’s journey culminates in a magical encounter that leads him to feel real connection—to a dog, to a foreign city and, most importantly, to himself.

Capturing Steven Rowley's signature wit, insight, and indelible characters, The Dogs of Venice offers another timeless story of love lost, and independence found—a holiday tonic for the soul.

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My Review: What an awful December Paul is having: the collapse of his love; the need to hide from his lovely supportive friends while the wounds that Christastime-dealt betrayal gave flensed him to the bone start to heal; because let's be so real here...he has to go on the not-romantic-anymore trip to Venice that he planned to take with Darren, the now-ex, at a some expense so he's not around as Darren moves out, which...acceptable. He's rented a cool apartment though it turns out his landlady's got zero English and this presents some amusing miscommunications.

Also, as ways to re-enter singlehood go, a trip to Venice is fire. Most romantic sinking ruin since Atlantis, plus hot Italian guys? Sign me up for the broken-heart tour. Paul even succumbs to the sensualty of Venice by having a fling. I was glad it was just that, a fling, and at the end of the story Paul takes home some lonely introspective walks with one of Venice's stray dogs, some fairly basic grief-processing that gave me very mild hope for his post-Darren future, and a real sadness that there's such a homeless-hound problem in Venice.

I don't think this is peak Rowley, but I do think it was 93 minutes very well spent. It took me away from my deeply grouchy mood that's hung over since yesterday. For that alone, I'd give it four stars; it deserves them more for the way a slightly co-dependent man starts facing up to the cost of couplehood über alles and starting out on the path of learning how much alone gives and how little loneliness is actually in it.

THE TUXEDO SOCIETY: A Novel, excellent fifteen years ago, moderately fun now

THE TUXEDO SOCIETY: A Novel
PAUL RUDNICK
Atria Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: If Guy Ritchie directed an episode of Queer Eye, it might look something like this hilarious and action-packed spy thriller by Paul Rudnick, acclaimed screenwriter and author of Farrell Covington and the Limits of Style, that blends espionage and social commentary, with an elite, gay secret society.

They are fierce patriots. They are licensed to kill. And they are really, really gay. Welcome to democracy’s secret weapon, the Tuxedo Society.

When Andrew Birnbaum, a struggling actor making ends meet by working in a candle shop, gets invited to have dinner with the exclusive Tuxedo Society by his best friend, Brock, his life takes an unexpected turn. What seems like a group of wealthy socialites gathering for gossip and cocktails quickly spirals into a world of espionage, danger, and hilarity.

Andrew soon meets Reggie O’Malley, a Navy SEAL with a penchant for black tie, who recruits Andrew to join the society’s covert mission to protect national security. Armed with gadgets like an inflatable life raft backpack, a yoga mat that doubles as an assault rifle, and, of course, an AMEX Black Card, Andrew quickly finds himself tackling spies, thwarting assassinations, and facing a host of unexpected threats in settings from the White House to the Vatican to the Summer Olympic Games.

The stakes escalate when Andrew and his comrades are sent on a jet-setting mission to uncover the truth about an ancient artifact. Along the way, they clash with oligarchs, crooked senators, and a smarmy televangelist with sinister plans for world domination.

Packed with Paul Rudnick’s signature wit, The Tuxedo Society is a wild ride through decadence, danger, and unexpected heroism, as Andrew discovers that saving the world might just be the role he’s been waiting for.

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My Review: Take all the silliness of a Bond flick and sprinkle fairy-dust on it, detomate a glitter bomb in a 1979 bath house, pipe in Bette Midler and Streisand and Cher interspersed with Romanovsky and Phillips, and...for the five of you still reading...and here's you a read. The trappings of the twenty-first century feel like they're set dressing. Like, this cisqueer white man cabal of queens sounds like Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle. Pastiche of the ways and words of the Good Old Days, fun for a while but...wears thin.

I'm the target audience for this book. I liked it. I really laughed, in pleasure, at the jokes. It gave me the happy nostalgia of knowing someone out there still remembers my heyday.

But it's twenty-fuckin'-twenty-six, y'all. Plug your hearing aid into the charger. Suicide bombers are fiendishly hard to track down using modern data analysis...gaydar shit-sure got no chance. I think we're past this kind of spying being used for humor because we're past this kind of spying being usable in real-world settings, which is always the fun of an espionage novel. It's not realistic or the CIA/NSA/MI{numeral} folk would be on the publisher, the writer, and the writer's mama with every resource they possess; but we-the-reader need to feel it *could* be and that it *could* happen like this.

But there are some lines that truly glitter like well-cut diamonds. Can't quote them because no really good examples don't also spoil stuff, annd if you don't live in fear of the Spoiler Stasi, you haven't been nastygrammed by any of 'em yet. Spoiled things.

Still a fun read, but one I'll send you to the library to check out, not your Bookshop.org cart.

CALLUM McSORLEY'S PAGE: DCI Alison McCoist, honest to a fault, leads two exciting stories

SQUEAKY CLEAN (DCI Alison McCoist #1)
CALLUM McSORLEY
Pushkin Vertigo (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$12.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Half the Glasgow polis think DI Alison McCoist is bent. The other half just think she's a fuck-up.

No one thinks very much at all about car wash employee Davey Burnet, until one day he takes the wrong customer's motor for a ride. One kidnapping later, he and the carwash are officially part of Glasgow's criminal underworld, working for a psychopath who enjoys playing games like 'Keep Yer Kneecaps' with any poor bastard who crosses him.

Can Davey escape from the gang's clutches with his kneecaps and life intact? Perhaps this polis Ally McCoist who keeps nosing around the car wash could help. That's if she doesn't get herself killed first.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Did Trainspotting or Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, those dialect stories, defeat you? Are you a bit on the squeamish side? Did The Wolf and the Watchman series' borderline body horror keep you grossed out and/or sleepless? Horseman, pass by.

Ready for inappropriate Scottish-inflected law-enforcement humor that you can't quote publicly to lodge in the folds of your brain, then, so let's us go.

DI Ally McCoist is in limbo, or maybe better to say purgatory. She really, really screwed up. She waited to unleash this screw-up until the stakes could not have been higher. Her colleagues are...not inclined to forgive, and unable to forget...so she's not allowed to forget and thoroughly ostracized. It's not like they can fire her (in the UK people have actual rights to employment security, amazing thought) so she's still a Detective Inspector, she's still a pair of hands, there are thinngs her bosses can assign her to do that no one else wants to do.

Or everyone else is scared to do.

Paulo McGuigan is the diametric opposite of DI McCoist. A criminal overlord with stunning amounts of influence over Glasgow's workings, he's been reputationally wronged by Davey, a nobody, a hapless loser; so he must save face by revenging himself on the perpetrator of the lèse majesté. a bloody beating; followed by indentured servitude in McGuigan's bloody underworld follows for dumb, hapless Davey. Who, logically enough, gets sick of it because he's sickened by it. How this loser intersects with McCoist, his equal in loserhood, is the point of the read.

What debut Author McSorley achieves in this pretty bog-standard mystery plot's confines is to bring cringe comedy into violent police procedural by way of social commentary. It's couched in thick dialect (why it gets less than four full stars) as its dialogue so it feels hyperlocal. That's most likely why it won the McIlvanney Prize for Best Scottish Crime Book of the Year in 2023. It's not like these voices would be heard outside Glasgow. Structurally everyone in the story wants something, always a very simple device but one that when missing is really missed. Readers may not *like* Ally, or Davey, or of course the Big Bad Paulo McGuigan (it'd be a little weird if you liked Paulo!) but they all want something and the others in the story either want it too or want to keep it themselves. It's easy to invest in characters whose wants one can readily grasp.

What happens when these separate wants collide is the reason to read the story. Author McSorley makes sure these collisions are quite...decorative, as in they're easy (if squirmy) to envision. I repeat: gore is your kryptonite, then go elsewhere. Adrian McGinty writes Enid Blyton pastiches compared to Author McSorley.

Ally and Davey and Paulo arrive at the plot's culmination with great finality. What is the set-up for another story, as this is a series? The concept of "failing upward" and of the adhesiveness of failure are great drivers of human activity. Ally is a character who's failed in multiple ways. She needs to figure out how to shed her failures, which we-the-reader all know is impossible but is lots of fun to watch.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

PAPERBOY (DCI Alison McCoist #2)
CALLUM McSORLEY
Pushkin Vertigo (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A dark, raw, and comic Glaswegian detective thriller: the follow-up to Squeaky Clean, winner of the McIlvanney Prize for best Scottish crime book of the year.

DCI Alison McCoist is back in action, and her promotion hasn’t earned her any friends. In fact, it’s made her even more unpopular. Struggling to balance her new responsibilities with the growing pressure to prove herself, McCoist finds herself tangled in a web of crime and corruption.

Chuck Gardner owns a confidential paper-shredding business, but his addiction to gambling has left him deeply in debt. When he stumbles across some incriminating documents, Chuck becomes unwittingly caught in a deadly game of power and deceit.

Meanwhile, McCoist is called to the scene of a gruesome discovery—a rat-nibbled corpse under a flyover. As she investigates, both Chuck and McCoist are sucked into a deadly stramash of gangland wars and police corruption.

Can Chuck solve his gambling and gangster problems before some heed-banger feeds him into his own shredder? And can McCoist claw herself out of this latest shitemire without her own shady dealings coming to light? It might depend on how far she’s prepared to go…

Paperboy is the darkly comic follow-up to the McIlvanney Prize winner, Squeaky Clean. The author, Callum McSorley, has been hailed as one of the most exciting new voices in crime writing, and has been praised by authors like Chris Brookmyre and Kevin Bridges.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Praise from Chris Brookmyre is a gift to be treasured in a writer's career. Callum McSorley earned it with DCI McCoist's (mis)adventures. Author McSorley's creation is a person who screws up without bumbling. She fails upwards by seeing the problem that needs solving and unerringly choosing the less effective means of dealing with it; yet it's always, in the story-logic Author McSorley's set up, not instantly obviously a bad choice. Doing this multiple times in a series of stories is impressive. Doing it better the second time, well...that's mastery.

The cringe-comedy body-horror ("rat-nibbled corpse" anyone?) procedural mystery told in Glaswegian niche is now established and further developed by Author McSorley. In this follow-up story, the lineaments of the first story (Squeaky Clean, above) are reused. It's more like the stagecraft tradition of reuse of scenery and props than it is making a control-C copy and using control-F to find and replace the names, though.

I'm sure many will still find the Glaswegian voices impenetrable, adding to the increased use of very local humor in making the read a hillclimbing experience. It's going to keep these dark and funny stories abou the screw-ups of relatably clueless, naïve people out of many readers' hands. I'm sad about that because learning, by way of reading, just what it is that makes other people laugh, what worries them enough to need to tell stories that work it through, and what words can do in their clutches is a fast track to cultural amity. Or its opposite of course, some people don't get on with each other. But at least you know from experience, not simply rumor and report.

Newly-minted DCI McCoist got her promotion...was kicked upstairs...but she's no more respected in this story than she was when we met her. Still, she achieved something, she fixed a problem for her higher-ups that needed fixing and that means a promotion within that work culture. And it means another opportunity to fail as nearly everyone around her is just *waiting* to occur.

Most especially the corrupt cops Ally now has reason to know the identities of.

Fuck-up that she is, her luck *has* to run out sooner or later, and these dirty cops/bastards are fully prepared to give her the rope she meeds to hang herself and hope she trips over it before she ties the noose. Either way, they win, she fails, and status quo ante.

Not today, Satan(s).

With the necessary narrative pressure to act on the results that define the end of book one applied by Paulo McGuigan's widow, the PTB can't really say no to Ally poking the embers of that fire despite their...and her own...reluctance to expose the embers to more oxygen. Because middle-school science class taught you what happens next: it's hot, destructive, and really dangerous for everybody around.

And that's the fun of reading about it. I was really invested in Ally before I started this read. I met Lottie, the widow, and formed a fondness for her scary-tough self. Chuck, well, really can anyone care about Chuck the cuck? Like Davey from . he's an extra in the movie of his own life, lacking rizz or main-character energy or whatever you want to call it. See? I can't even muster the investment to choose a single word for the smear that is Chuck.

I get that most of my readers, based in the US, won't want to do the work of reading in a dialect of English they don't hear on the regular. I wish y'all would try harder. Honestly though I kiinda like being a lone weirdo in my immediate peer group because I liked feeling I inhabited a place I don't think I'll ever see IRL. It's the power of intentional storytelling informed by a real passion for the way he's telling it in Author McSorley's capable hands.

Start with Squeaky Clean for sure, nothing will make sense if you don't, but please start.