Until now. That is the mission of ReQueered Tales: to bring back to circulation this treasure trove of fantastic fiction which, for one reason or another, has fallen by the wayside. In an era of ebooks, everything of value ought to be accessible. For a new generation of readers, these mystery tales are full of insights into the gay world of the 1960s, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. And for those of us who lived through the period, they are a delightful reminder of our youth and reflect some of our own struggles in growing up gay in those heady times.
We are honored, here at ReQueered Tales, to be custodians shepherding back into circulation some of the best gay and lesbian fiction writing and hope to bring many volumes to the public, in modestly priced, accessible editions, worldwide, over the coming months and years.
So please join us on this adventure of discovery and rediscovery of the rich talents of writers of recent years as the PIs, cops and amateur sleuths battle forces of evil with fierceness, humor and sometimes a pinch of love.
The ReQueered Tales Team
Justene Adamec • Alexander Inglis • Matt Lubbers-Moore
More from ReQueered Tales
ReQueered Tales books are available on a variety of platforms. All of our books are available as Amazon e-books (select titles on Kindle Unlimited subscription) throughout the English-speaking world. Most non-series books are also available as Kobo, Nook and Apple e-books. Ask your public library: many of these are available to them through Overdrive.
We are particularly proud of our expansion into trade paperbacks. These may be found from many independent bookstores at wholesale terms favorable to them. Please support your local shops. Most large chains and online stores also carry our books. Try searching for "requeered". Thank you for your support and happy reading!
Literary / General Fiction
FELICE PICANO
Like People in History by Felice Picano
Paperback: 512 pgs • 978-1-951092-13-9
Solid, cautious Roger Sansarc and flamboyant, mercurial Alistair Dodge are second cousins who become lifelong friends when they first meet as nine-year-old boys in 1954. Their lives constantly intersect at crucial moments in their personal histories as each discovers his own unique – and uniquely gay – identity. Their complex, tumultuous, and madcap relationship endures against 40 years of history and their involvement with the handsome model, poet, and decorated Vietnam vet Matt Loguidice, whom they both love. Picano chronicles and celebrates gay life and subculture over the last half of the twentieth century: from the legendary 1969 gathering at Woodstock to the legendary parties at Fire Island Pines in the 1970s, from Malibu Beach in its palmiest surfer days to San Francisco during its gayest era, from the cities and jungles of South Vietnam during the war to Manhattan’s Greenwich Village and Upper East Side during the 1990s AIDS war.
In a book that could have been written only by one who lived it and survived to tell, Picano weaves a powerful saga of four decades in the lives of two men and their lovers, relatives, friends, and enemies. Tragic, comic, sexy, and romantic, filled with varied and colorful characters, Like People in History is both extraordinarily moving and supremely entertaining.
Winner of the Ferro-Grumley Award for Best Novel, Gay Times Best Novel of the Year and a Lambda Literary Award Finalist, this 25th Anniversary edition features a foreword by Richard “Bugs” Burnett and an afterword by the author.
The Book of Lies by Felice Picano
Paperback: 440 pgs • 978-1-951092-32-0
Bright, ambitious, and handsome, Ross Ohrenstedt is a high flier in the fashionable field of queer studies. He has just taken a prestigious university position in Los Angeles and has been appointed to oversee the collection of papers and works of a leading light of the gay literary salon known as the Purple Circle. Ross stumbles across a lost work by an unknown author and his quest to identify the mystery writer and achieve the glory of scholastic tenure unveils increasingly bizarre and unbalanced facts about a group of writers who in the 1970s and 1980s broke new ground in the creation of a gay literary sensibility. But the dark truth contained within The Book of Lies is even more startling.
With biting wit and a lush sense of place and character, Felice Picano’s daring novel is at once a stylish mystery, a comical roman-à-clef, and a wicked send-up of the new Ivory Tower.
The Bay Area Reporter enthused “Funny, dark, sexy, shocking, and, yes, smart” on the original publication. This new edition features a foreword by David Bergman (The Violet Hour) and an afterword by the author.
Onyx by Felice Picano
Paperback: 358 pgs • 978-1-951092-05-4
Ray Henriques has success, love, friendship … but lately it’s not enough. Yet it’s not just Ray who is on a quest for deeper meaning. For Jesse, Ray’s lover of ten years, it is a quest accelerated by his imminent death from AIDS. And for young married father of two Mike Tedesco, it is a search for the heart of masculinity. The sexual exploration which begins when Ray and Mike meet awakens a restlessness in both men, which resoundingly alters their future paths. As Ray’s life begins to draw him increasingly into the future, a future without Jesse, he attempts to tether himself to the here and now with frequent visits to a past where life’s answers seemed simpler and more meaningful. But when Jesse’s fundamentalist Christian mother rolls into town to take charge of her son’s final weeks, he is yanked from his reverie to face an opponent unlike any he has ever known.
Marked by shifting points of view, humor, descriptive brilliance and unexpected revelation, Onyx is a multifaceted exploration of inner lives, motivation, love, and the sometimes hollow center beneath a polished surface.
Library Journal said: “An incredibly rich and densely textured world”. This new edition features a foreword by the author.
BRIAN BOULDREY
The Genius of Desire by Brian Bouldrey
Hopelessly drawn to the romantic notion of a double life, young Michael Bellman spends summers in Monsalvat, Michigan, coming of age in a loving tangle of highly eccentric relatives: Great Uncle Jimmy speaks to his dead wife during meals; Cousin Anne torments Michael beyond endurance; reckless Cousin Tommy secretly smokes cigars and can’t wait to “kick butt in ’Nam” – and Michael watches every magical move he makes.
A few years and one driver’s license later, as family alliances change and long-silent desires surface, Michael begins to understand his attraction to the double life because he’s living one – at roadside rest stops, in library washrooms, and public parks. Coming out is the first step, coming to terms is the next….
A highly praised debut novel, this new edition includes a foreword by the author.
ROBERT FERRO
The Family of Max Desir by Robert Ferro
Paperback: 220 pgs • 978-1-951092-10-8
It was a family dealing with old values, acceptance and death. Max Desir loved his Italian roots and hearing his mother, Marie, recount tales of the old country. And he loved his American family, his father John a successful self-made businessman in New Jersey. As he came of age, Max discovered something else he loved – men – and met the love of his life in Italy. Now, at age 40, the family is split: Marie and his siblings accept Max and Nick as a stable, long-term couple but his father John does not. When a needlepoint family tree is to be hung at Christmas, it’s too much for John. Then the spectre of death enters as Marie rapidly declines with brain cancer. Loyalties divided, acceptance of family is re-examined.
In this beautiful, haunting tale, told in Robert Ferro’s clear, impassioned narrative, he created a classic. “An honest, eloquent and entirely original novel … at once realistic and mythological, intensely personal and public … a triumph,” praised Edmund White.
His breakout novel, this new edition includes a foreword by friend and fellow author Felice Picano (The Lure).
The Blue Star by Robert Ferro
Paperback: 260 pgs • 978-1-951092-25-2
Two heroes, reflective Peter and Byronic Chase, indulge their youthful appetites in F
lorence. Over the next 20 years their paths diverge and reconverge. Chase marries into the Italian aristocracy and Peter pursues his passion for Lorenzo, a beautiful young Florentine. The past impinges on the present as the story of Chase’s ancestor, Orvil Starkweather, is revealed -- the secrets of his life sounding a counterpoint to Chase’s. New York City’s Central Park and the imposing figure of designer Frederick Law Olmsted provide a mysterious connection to Chase’s life. The story of the two men unfolds in Florence and New York exposing the unimagined and startling connection with the past, and taking them finally on a fateful cruise up the Nile aboard the luxury yacht.
Publishers Weekly hailed it as “Shimmering ... superb taste and style”. This new edition includes a foreword by Andrew Holleran (Dancer from the Dance).
STAN LEVENTHAL
Mountain Climbing in Sheridan Square by Stan Leventhal
Paperback: 196 pgs • 978-1-951092-21-4
A series of discrete episodes among friends provide snapshots of one gay man’s life. There are parties, concerts, dinners with everyday life – and death – interwoven in the rich story-telling. An actress, a painter, a set designer, a writer – all sweating and surviving in Manhattan, all scoring their first successes. Part autobiography and part documentary, artfully written, it details the lives of these creative people. Young and professional, they know there is more to life than money. There is trust and the sort of love that trades in deeds of kindness.
Leventhal’s debut novel was a Lambda Literary Awards Finalist. This new edition features a foreword by Christopher Bram (Gods and Monsters).
The Black Marble Pool by Stan Leventhal
When you first notice it, something seems a bit unusual. Then it occurs to you that most, if not all, of the pools you’ve ever seen before were painted blue or white. The Captain’s House pool is black. Not painted black. But constructed of black marble and black tile. The marble has streaks of white that look like lightning bolts in a black sky. There is a sexiness to this pool; a personality. It looks and feels like a warm, wet blanket, surrounding and protecting you like a dark, quiet womb.
There’s a dead body at the bottom of a pool in the backyard of a guest house in Key West. Who is he? And what caused his untimely demise? Maybe it’s suicide. Or an accident. But more likely – murder! And who’s responsible? One of the guests, the people who run the guest house or one of those mysterious women in town?
A Lambda Literary Awards Finalist, this new edition includes a foreword by renowned LGBTQ publicist and friend of Stan Leventhal, Michele Karlsberg.
Series Mystery and Misadventure
NIKKI BAKER - Virginia Kelly in Chicago
In The Game by Nikki Baker
Paperback: 184 pgs • 978-1-951092-28-3
A Virginia Kelly Mystery, Book 1 – When businesswoman Virginia Kelly meets her old college chum Bev Johnson for drinks late one night, Bev confides that her lover, Kelsey, is seeing another woman. Ginny had picked up that gossip months ago, but she is shocked when the next morning’s papers report that Kelsey was found murdered behind the very bar where Ginny and Bev had met. Worried that her friend could be implicated, Ginny decides to track down Kelsey’s killer and contacts a lawyer, Susan Coogan. Susan takes an immediate, intense liking to Ginny, complicating Ginny’s relationship with her live-in lover. Meanwhile Ginny’s inquiries heat up when she learns the Feds suspected Kelsey of embezzling from her employer.
Nikki Baker is the first African-American author in the lesbian mystery genre and her protagonist, Virginia Kelly is the first African-American lesbian detective in the genre. Interwoven into the narrative are observations on the intersectionality of being a woman, an African-American, and a lesbian in a “man’s” world of finance and life in general.
On first publication, critics hailed this an “auspicious debut”. This new edition features a foreword by the author.
The Lavender House Murder by Nikki Baker
Paperback: 232 pgs • 978-1-951092-29-0
A Virginia Kelly Mystery, Book 2 – By night – the bars, the music, the sexual energy. By day – the beaches, the bay … basking in the sun and the scent of suntan lotion. And everywhere the women of Provincetown. Among these women in the sun is Virginia Kelly, a woman of color, on vacation from the mostly white world of finance. Ginny has come to P-town with friend Naomi, and without lover Emily. They stay at Lavender House, a hotel for lesbians run by Sam, a woman with whom Naomi has had some dramatic history. Other inhabitants include Anya, who works for the inn; Joan, a writer and sometime guest; loud Barb and her quiet partner. And in P-town, Ginny is drawn to another woman. Then … murder shatters the vacation bliss. For among the people brushing up against Ginny and Naomi for these few sensual days is a ruthless killer. And a victim whose death will change the lives of Ginny and Naomi.
A Lambda Literary Winner for Best Lesbian Mystery, this new edition features a foreword by Ann Aptaker (Cantor Gold series).
JACK DICKSON - Jas Anderson in Glasgow
FreeForm by Jack Dickson
A Jas Anderson Thriller, Book 1 – A tough gay thriller set in the criminal underworld of Glasgow, Scotland. In the derelict inner-city of Glasgow’s Dennistoun, FreeForm introduces a tough gay cop, Detective-Sergeant Jas Anderson. A violent anti-hero, suspended from duty for assault, Jas is the natural suspect when his lover is found brutally murdered. Now on the run and struggling to clear his name, Jas uncovers Leigh’s involvement in a blackmail ring, and even his lover’s identity becomes confused. Film-noir in inspiration, vividly characterized, and authentically exposing the raw nerves of Thatcherite Britain, FreeForm is pure suspense to it’s final pulse-pounding closing pages.
An early example of gritty Tartan Noir, this new edition includes a foreword by Clive King.
Banged Up by Jack Dickson
A Jas Anderson Thriller, Book 2 – Detective Sergeant Jas Anderson is imprisoned and fighting for his life. Anderson was the violent anti-hero of FreeForm, and ended up in that story, being expelled from the Glasgow police force. Banged Up starts with Jas being framed by his ex-colleagues. He is remanded to Barlinnie prison, and is forced to share a cell with Steve McStay, sentenced for aggravated assault on two gay men. In this all-male environment, inmates don’t divide into gay and straight, but rather into who dominates … and who doesn’t. Resilient as ever, Jas forms an unlikely partnership with Steve in his fight for survival.
Marking the novel's 20th anniversary, this new edition includes a foreword by Matt Lubbers-Moore (Murder and Mayhem).
Some Kind of Love by Jack Dickson
A Jas Anderson Thriller, Book 3 – Jas Anderson, now working as a private investigator, is hired by a victim’s mother to get answers from a police force that seems unable to help. He finds a clue that the police may have missed then washes his hands of the case. At home, he shares his apartment with “Stevie” McStay, Anderson’s former cellmate and new boyfriend, as well as Stevie’s often-visiting two young children. Out of the blue, a voice from Jas’ past asks for help with a personal matter and a police investigation. He soon finds himself stirring an explosive cocktail of police corruption, football fanaticism, sectarianism, and murder, while … house hunting. Then the gay bashings begin again and suspicion falls close to home.
The conclusion to this celebrated trilogy, this new edition includes a foreword by the author.
GRANT MICHAELS - Stan Kraychik in Boston
A Body to Dye For by Grant Michaels
A Stan Kraychik Mystery, Book 1 – Stan “Vannos” Kraychik isn’t your everyday Boston hairdresser. Manager of Snips Salon, which is owned by best bud (and occasional nemesis) Nicole, Stan thought this day was an ordinary one. A delivery van backed into the salon’s rear driveway and accidentally spilled gallons of conditioner, leaving Stan and hunky Roger) embracing in a gooey mess trying to staunch the flow, with little success as they slid and slipped with Nicole watching on with rolling eyes. Later Roger is found murdered.
Stan’s client, Calvin Re
dding, who owns the apartment where Roger’s body was found, can’t explain why the body is dressed in little more than bowties. Enter Lieutenant Branco, dark, muscular, Italian, (straight) of Boston PD Homicide who immediately suspects everyone, especially Stan. In an attempt to clear his name, Stan travels to California, takes up mountain climbing, eavesdropping, spying, schmoozing, and a little bit of schtupping, all in an attempt to find the truth.
Grant Michaels’ zany series of adventures starring Stan Kraychik was a multiple Lambda Literary Awards Finalist for Best Gay Men’s Mystery. For this 2019 edition, Carl Mesrobian reminisces about his brother Grant in an exclusive foreword, and Neil S. Plakcy (Mahu Investigations) provides an introduction of appreciation.
Love You To Death by Grant Michaels
A Stan Kraychik Mystery, Book 2 – Valentine’s Day is fast approaching and everyone has a sweetheart, except Stan Kraychik, Boston’s sassiest hairdresser. Ever hopeful of meeting Mr. Right, Stan attends a gala reception that culminates in a death by poisoning, and romantic problems take a back seat to murder. Then Boston police arrest Stan’s friend Laurett Cole, who leaves her four-year-old son in Stan’s care. In his quest to free Laurett from suspicion and himself from his ill-mannered ward, Stan finds himself exploring the secrets of a revered Boston institution, the Gladys Gardner Chocolate Company. There, along with the sweet edibles, he finds an assortment of not-so-delectable murder.
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