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.

In their heyday (1982-2000), the sophisticated, independent gay personal-professional partnership of Ivory & Merchant was the most successful team in adapting literary classics to film, especially E.M. Forster and Henry James.

Out There has access to review copies and early galleys of published works, so we're often found with our nose in a book. Which ones? The following.

It's hard to imagine the reader of Damian Barr's debut novel "You Will Be Safe Here" (Bloomsbury Publishing) who doesn't sense that the title portends the opposite.

Tall, dark, handsome, buffed, manly yet sensitive: Rock Hudson (1925-85) was the embodiment of the classic Hollywood hunk in the 1950s and 60s.

"Lie with Me" (Scribner) is as immediately involving and heart-breaking a tale of gay first love as I can recall.

In his latest collection of essays and performance pieces, Tim Miller demonstrates a well-honed sense of humor, a passion for queer history, and the kind of melodrama only a true performance artist can exude.

I've wearied of the too-oft-repeated Joan Didion quote, "We tell ourselves stories in order to live." In a warmer voice all his own, Dustin Lance Black has given it a new lease on life with his memoir, "Mama's Boy: A Story from Our Americas."

In the part of his life that begins after the events chronicled in his new book "The Light Years" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Chris Rush has become known as a painter.

Christopher Castellani's deeply felt new "Leading Men" (Viking) exhibits another compelling aurora.

In his new memoir, gay actor Andrew Rannells tells the contemporary Candide-like adventure of a Midwestern boy relocating to New York City to fulfill his dream of being on a Broadway stage.

I read my way sequentially through Michael Carroll's new short story collection, "Stella Maris and Other Key West Stories" (Turtle Point Press).

"The Editor," a new novel by Steven Rowley (Putnam), takes off from the most promising of premises. What if a first-time novelist discovers that the book editor at Doubleday who signs on to shepherd his book through publication turns out to be Jackie?

The astute literary examination of the enduring trauma of wartime military service "Men Touching" is set in the mid-1980s and follows Robb Jorgenson, a Seattle biology professor in his 40s.