The image that probably comes to mind when you think of swans and ballet was the brainchild of Marius Petipa, the great 19th-century choreographer who brought "Swan Lake" back from oblivion.

"The Flight Portfolio" re-enacts the doings of the US-fostered Emergency Rescue Commission, sanctioned by Eleanor Roosevelt, dedicated to getting the persecuted out of the clutches of the Nazis and to safe ground, particularly in the U.S.

"Justify My Sins" is based on Felice Picano's experiences of living in mid-1970s Hollywood working for actor Cary Grant, who wanted Picano to adapt one of his own books into a screenplay vehicle for him.

Poet, novelist, playwright Kevin Killian died at his home in San Francisco on June 15, and the B.A.R. published his obituary in our June 20 edition.

"We Are Everywhere: Protest, Power, and Pride in the History of Queer Liberation" (Ten Speed Press), by Matthew Riemer and Leighton Brown, tells stories of the LGBTQ community in words and pictures, from 1868 to the present day.

Work! A Queer History of Modeling, by Elspeth H. Brown, is a unique take on the history of high fashion modeling.

Deep, moving, and intensely personal, award-winning artist and designer Chris Rush's debut memoir "The Light Years" details a life navigating his drug-saturated years in the 1970s and beyond.

In author and Ohio State University professor Clayton Howard's lucid, thought-provoking examination "The Closet and the Cul-de-Sac," privacy was once a luxury item. It's now continually stretched to its tightest limits.

"Every stage of my life feels like a story of a different man," the protagonist in Ahmal Danny Ramadan's "The Clothesline Swing" (Indigo Press) remarks, "each one a man I don't know well."

Celebrations of families with same-gender parents, "My Two Dads and Me" and "My Two Moms and Me" (both Doubleday), by Michael Joosten and Izak Zenou, feature kids having breakfast, going to the park, having lunch.

Visit your favorite independent bookseller or the love-it-or-hate-it Amazon.com to order copies of these LGBTQ books for readers of all rainbow stripes.

The buzz is on! Marc Huestis has just published his endlessly exciting and not infrequently moving autobiography, "Impresario of Castro Street" ($19.99).

Surely one of the last things Ocean Vuong thought he'd become is topical, and hotly so.

Many people regard Vivien Leigh (1913-67) as a figure from Greek tragedy: beautiful, acclaimed, plagued by mental illness, abandoned by her husband of 20 years Laurence Olivier, and living a melancholy existence after their 1960 divorce.