Here are some books of LGBT interest, just in time for Pride month!
Reeling and rocking: Hal Leonards' Music on Film series presents books about two movies close to queer readers' hearts. The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Limelight Editions) by Dave Thompson examines what is, to this day, still one of the gayest movie music musicals of all time, cult or non-cult. Purple Rain (Limelight Editions) by John Kenneth Muir looks at Prince's groundbreaking 1984 movie debut.
In Dear Cary: My Life With Cary Grant (itbooks), now out in paperback, ageless, Oscar-nominated movie star Dyan Cannon writes about her tumultuous marriage to Silver Screen legend Cary Grant.
Actor Steve Guttenberg, who played queer onscreen in P.S. Your Cat Is Dead! and starred alongside the Village People in Can't Stop the Music, tells his story in his own words in The Guttenberg Bible (Thomas Dunne/St. Martin's).
"Mobile dilettante" Johan Kugelberg writes about music and pop culture in the essay collection Brad Pitt's Dog (Zero Books), which includes pieces dating from 2003-11.
Punk cabaret diva and first-rate belter Storm Large recounts her life with a bipolar mother, as well as her own sexual awakening and exploration, in the memoir Crazy Enough (Free Press).
Arriving just in time for the DVD/Blu-ray release of My Week with Marilyn, the colorfully illustrated Dressing Marilyn: How a Hollywood Icon was Styled by William Travilla (Applause), by Andrew Hansford with Karen Homer, is a perfect fit.
Film Noir: The Directors (Limelight Editions), edited by Alain Silver and James Ursini, features queer filmmaker Nicholas Ray and the iconic Ida Lupino among its many subjects.
Trans-formative texts: Featuring a new epilogue, the paperback edition of Transition: Becoming Who I Was Always Meant to Be (Plume), by Chaz Bono, is the triumphant story of the most famous trans man of our time.
Transitions of the Heart: Stories of Love, Struggle and Acceptance by Mothers of Transgender and Gender Variant Children (Cleis), edited by Rachel Pepper, consists of 32 essays written by mothers from all walks of life.
Poetry of pride: He Will Laugh (Lethe Press), Doug Ray's powerful debut poetry collection, relates the story of how two young men met, fell in love, and the profound impact of the suicide of one of them.
Something to look forward to in September by a prolific lesbian writer (and author of Heather Has Two Mommies ), October Mourning (Candlewick Press) is Leslea Newman's latest, a cycle of poems about Matthew Shepard.
Telling the truth: Edited by Sarah Moon, with contributing editor James Lecesne, the Y/A anthology The Letter Q (Arthur A Levine Books/Scholastic) features more than 60 writers (including Doug Wright, Jacqueline Woodson, Richard McCann, Eileen Myles, Michael Cunningham, Jewelle Gomez, Christopher Rice, Amy Bloom and Paul Rudnick) and illustrators (such as Jennifer Camper and Eric Orner) corresponding with "their younger selves."
Chicago Whispers: A History of LGBT Chicago before Stonewall (University of Wisconsin Press), by St. Sukie de la Croix, includes a foreword by John D'Emilio, and covers a period of almost 300 years.
Written and illustrated (with watercolors) by the late gay writer Clyde Phillip Wachsberger, Into the Garden with Charles (Farrar Straus Giroux) is a memoir about "growing old and falling in love."
Examining the camaraderie between straight women and gay men, Odd Couples (Duke University Press) is Anna Muraco's study of "friendships at the intersection of gender and sexual orientation."
Picking up where Clint Eastwood's Hoover biopic J. Edgar left off, Darwin Porter's J. Edgar Hoover & Clyde Tolson (Blood Moon) promises to be an investigation into "the sexual secrets of America's most famous men and women."
The entrancingly titled Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That? and Other Reflections on Being Human (Scientific American/FSG) by Jesse Bering answers a variety of fascinating questions.
Told in brief, insightful essays, Red Nails, Black Skates: Gender, Cash, and Pleasure On and Off the Ice (Duke University Press) tells of queer critic Erica Rand's experiences in the slippery world of ice skating.
Fictionally speaking: What queer person doesn't love shoes? Adriana Trigiani's New York Times bestselling novel The Shoemaker's Wife (Harper) has something to fit almost every reader.
Earning her comparisons to Mary Renault, Madeline Miller's acclaimed novel The Song of Achilles (Ecco) retells The Iliad with a queer twist.
Denver-based writer Jerry L. Wheeler's Strawberries and Other Erotic Fruits (Lethe Press), an erotic collection consisting of 14 stories, proves that oranges really aren't the only fruit.
Due out in the fall, the Y/A book One in Every Crowd (Arsenal Pulp) is comprised of more than 40 short stories, new and drawn from other collections, by Ivan E. Coyote.
With more than a subtle nod to Bette Midler, Songs for the New Depression (Circumspect Press) is the debut novel by filmmaker and writer Kergan Edwards-Stout.
Patrick Flannery's first novel Absolution (Riverhead) is set in modern-day South Africa, and features acclaimed but isolated South African writer Clare and her obsessive biographer Sam.
A Sea of White Impatiens (Robertson Publishing) by Chris Murphy introduces us to Gallagher family, including all nine children, in Book 1 of the Impatiens series.
Celebrity and fashion journalist Rupert James enters the romance/mystery novel fray with Silk (Cleis), which utilizes the catch-phrase "revenge is always in fashion."
"Architect, friend, lover, mystery" Edward is the main character in Lewis DeSimone's anticipated new novel The Heart's History (Lethe Press).
The debut novel by BoiParty.com co-director and head promoter Justin Like Zirilli, Gulliver Takes Manhattan (Amazon Encore) tells the story of Gulliver, who escapes to New York to make a new beginning, leaving everything behind in L.A.
Described as "a work of dream logic," Lambda Literary and Ferro-Grumley Award finalist Daniel Allen Cox's new novel Basement of Wolves (Arsenal Pulp) is set in Hollywood, and centers on actor Michael-David and his rapidly deteriorating world.
Chris Kenry's fourth novel, The Survival Methods and Mating Rituals of Men and Marine Mammals (Kensington) finds children's book author Davis living through desperate times.
In the historical romance Purgatory (Bear Bones Books), poet and writer Jeff Mann writes about two young Civil War soldiers, fighting on opposite sides, but falling in love.