New in October: Jeanette Winterson, Carrie Brownstein, Paul Russell, Tyler Oakley and David Rakoff

Author: William Johnson
October 8, 2015
Fall is here, bringing with it a slew of new books to enjoy.
This month, Hogarth is releasing The Gap of Time, a “remix” of one of William Shakespeare’s plays, from celebrated author Jeanette Winterson.
From the publisher:
The Winter’s Tale is one of Shakespeare’s “late plays.” It tells the story of a king whose jealousy results in the banishment of his baby daughter and the death of his beautiful wife. His daughter is found and brought up by a shepherd on the Bohemian coast, but through a series of extraordinary events, father and daughter, and eventually mother too, are reunited.
In The Gap of Time, Jeanette Winterson’s cover version of The Winter’s Tale, we move from London, a city reeling after the 2008 financial crisis, to a storm-ravaged American city called New Bohemia. Her story is one of childhood friendship, money, status, technology and the elliptical nature of time. Written with energy and wit, this is a story of the consuming power of jealousy on the one hand, and redemption and the enduring love of a lost child on the other.
Riverhead is releasing Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl, a memoir from iconic punk-rocker Carrie Brownstein:
Before Carrie Brownstein became a music icon, she was a young girl growing up in the Pacific Northwest just as it was becoming the setting for one the most important movements in rock history. Seeking a sense of home and identity, she would discover both while moving from spectator to creator in experiencing the power and mystery of a live performance. With Sleater-Kinney, Brownstein and her bandmates rose to prominence in the burgeoning underground feminist punk-rock movement that would define music and pop culture in the 1990s. They would be cited as “America’s best rock band” by legendary music critic Greil Marcus for their defiant, exuberant brand of punk that resisted labels and limitations, and redefined notions of gender in rock.
Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl is an intimate and revealing narrative of her escape from a turbulent family life into a world where music was the means toward self-invention, community, and rescue. Along the way, Brownstein chronicles the excitement and contradictions within the era’s flourishing and fiercely independent music subculture, including experiences that sowed the seeds for the observational satire of the popular television series Portlandia years later.
With deft, lucid prose Brownstein proves herself as formidable on the page as on the stage. Accessibly raw, honest and heartfelt, this book captures the experience of being a young woman, a born performer and an outsider, and ultimately finding one’s true calling through hard work, courage and the intoxicating power of rock and roll.
Pop culture phenom Tyler Oakley humorously details his various personal pratfalls and pitfalls in his new collection Binge (Gallery Books):
Pop-culture phenomenon, social rights advocate, and the most prominent LGBTQ+ voice on YouTube, Tyler Oakley brings you his first collection of witty, personal, and hilarious essays.
For someone who made a career out of over-sharing on the Internet, Tyler has a shocking number of personal mishaps and shenanigans to reveal in his first book: experiencing a legitimate rage blackout in a Cheesecake Factory; negotiating a tense standoff with a White House official; crashing a car in front of his entire high school, in an Arby’s uniform; projectile vomiting while bartering with a grandmother; and so much more. In Binge, Tyler delivers his best untold, hilariously side-splitting moments with the trademark flair that made him a star.
Cleis Press Press is releasing Immaculate Blue, the long-awaited new novel from author Paul Russell:
From the award-winning author of The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov comes the brilliantly conceived and precisely rendered novel Immaculate Blue, which explores the lives of four people–Anatole, Leigh, Chris, and Lydia–and their intermingled and unwinding desires. Set in upstate New York, the novel follows these characters as they achieve their aims in lives redolent with loss and hope, humor and sadness, union and alienation. Russell picks up the thread of his critically acclaimed novel The Salt Point 20 years later and tracks the lives of these friends, some of whom not only lost touch with each other but have also lost their way. Moving, at times shocking, and always memorable, Immaculate Blue points to where the personal and the political come together and shape our lives in unexpected ways. With this newest novel, Paul Russell reminds us of why he is one of the most important voices on the literary scene.
Anchor Books is releasing The Uncollected David Rakoff, an anthology of never-before-collected pieces by humorist David Rakoff:
David Rakoff’s singular personality spills from every page of this witty and entertaining volume, which includes travel features, early fiction works, pop culture criticism, and transcripts of his most memorable appearances on public radio’s Fresh Air and This American Life.
These writings chart his transformation from fish out of water, meekly arriving for college in 1982, to a proud New Yorker bluntly opining on how to walk properly in the city. They show his unparalleled ability to capture the pleasures of solitary pursuits like cooking and crafting, especially in times of trouble; as well as the ups and downs in the life-span of a friendship, whether it is a real relationship or an imaginary correspondence between Gregor Samsa and Dr. Seuss (co-authored with Jonathan Goldstein). Also included is his novel-in-verse Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish.
If you are looking for more post-beach fiction reads, make sure you check out new books from Michael Graves, Libby Ware, and Garth Risk Hallberg.
As always, if we missed an author or book, or if you have a book coming out next month, please email us.
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Fiction
- City on Fire by Garth Risk Hallberg, Knopf
- The Gap of Time by Jeanette Winterson, Hogarth
- Immaculate Blue by Paul Russell, Cleis Press
- Lum by Libby Ware, Tightrope Books Inc.
- Parade by Michael Graves, Chelsea Station Editions
- A Poet of the Invisible World by Michael Golding, Picador
- The Rise and Fall of the Yellow House by John Whittier Treat, Big Table Publishing
- What We Left Behind by Robin Talley, Harlequin Teen
- Woof by Dylan Thomas Good, Bear Bones Books
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Nonfiction
- Across Three Continents: Reflections on Immigration, Education, and Personal Survival by Katerina Bodovski, Peter Lang Publishing Inc.
- I Will Say This Exactly One Time by D. Gilson, Sibling Rivalry Press
- In the Vale of Cashmere by Thomas Roma, PowerHouse Books
- It’s Not Mean If It’s True: More Trials From My Queer Life by Michael Thomas Ford, Lethe Press
- Larry Johnson: Commie Pinko Guy by Morgan Fisher, Anthony Hudek, Bruce Hainley, and Larry Johnson, Koenig Books
- The Male Nude by David Leddick, Tacshen
- Razzle Dazzle: The Battle for Broadway by Michael Riedel, Simon & Schuster
- Then Comes Marriage: United States V. Windsor and the Defeat of DOMA by Roberta Kaplan and Lisa Dickey, WW Norton
- The Uncollected David Rakoff by David Rakoff, Anchor
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Young Adult
- I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson Scelsa, Speak
- Parrotfish by , Simon and Schuster
- Signs Point to Yes by Sandy Hall, Swoon Reads
- What We Left Behind by Robin Talley, Harlequin Teen
- Weird Girl and What’s Her Name by Meagan Brothers, Three Room Press
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LGBT Studies
- A Taste for Brown Bodies: Gay Modernity and Cosmopolitan Desire by Hiram Pérez, NYU Press
- Death beyond Disavowal: The Impossible Politics of Difference by Grace Kyungwon Hong, University of Minnesota Press
- Don’t Tell Me to Wait: How the Fight for Gay Rights Changed America and Transformed Obama’s Presidency by Kerry Eleveld, Basic Books
- The Feminist Utopia Project: Fifty-Seven Visions of a Wildly Better Future by Alexandra Brodsky and Rachel Kauder Nalebuff, The Feminist Press of CUNY
- Foucault Against Himself by François Caillat, Leo Bersani, Georges Didi-Huberman, Arlette Farge, and Geoffroy de Lagasnerie, Arsenal Pulp Press
- Gay Men Pursuing Parenthood Through Surrogacy: Reconfiguring Kingship by Dean A. Murphy, UNSW Books
- Institutionalizing Gender Equality: Historical and Global Perspectives by Yulia Gradskova and Sara Sanders, Lexington Books
- Marc-André Raffalovich’s Uranism and Unisexuality: A Study of Different Manifestations of the Sexual Instinct by Nancy Erber, William A. Peniston, Philip Healy, and Frederick S. Roden, Palgrave Macmillan
- Marching against Gender Practice: Political Imaginings in the Basqueland by J. P. Linstroth, Lexington Books
- Queer Marxism in Two Chinas by Petrus Liu, Duke University Press
- Reframing Decadence: C. P. Cavafy’s Imaginary Portraits by Peter Jefferys, Cornell University Press
- The Revolting Child in Horror Cinema: Youth Rebellion and Queer Spectatorship by Andrew Scahill, Palgrave Macmillan
- Sexology and Translation: Cultural and Scientific Encounters across the Modern World by Heike Bauer, Temple University Press
- Sexual Minorities and Politics: An Introduction by Jason Pierceson, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
- Tongzhi Living: Men Attracted to Men in Postsocialist China by Tiantian Zheng, University of Minnesota Press
- Trans/Portraits: Voices from Transgender Communities by Jackson Wright Shultz, Dartmouth
- The U.S. Supreme Court Decision on Marriage Equality: The complete decision, including dissenting opinions by The U.S. Supreme Court, Melville House
- Violence against Queer People: Race, Class, Gender, and the Persistence of Anti-LGBT Discrimination by Doug Meyer, Rutgers University Press
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Romance
- Break Point by Yolanda Wallace, Bold Stroke Books
- The Courage to Try by C.A. Popovich, Bold Strokes Books
- Dead Ringer by Heidi Belleau and Sam Schooler, Riptide Press
- A Grand Plan by Ann Roberts, Bella Books
- Heart of the Liliko’i by Dena Hankins, Bold Stroke Books
- Hurricane Day by Renée J. Lukas, Bella Books
- My Best Friend’s Girl by Blythe H Warren, Belle Books
- Keep Hold by Michelle Grubb, Bold Strokes Books
- Such Happiness as This by Laina Villeneuve, Bella Books
- Waiting for a Love Song by Jamie Clevenger, Belle Books
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Erotica
- Steam : Lesbian Erotic Romance by Women for Women: Short Stories of Love, Lust and Erotica by Alex B. Porter, CreateSpace
- Thunder of War, Lightning of Desire: Lesbian Military Historical Erotica by Pascal Scott and Victoria Janssen, Lethe Press
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Speculative Fiction/Horror
- Banished Sons of Poseidon by Andrew J. Peters, Bold Strokes Books
- Countdown by Julie Cannon, Bold Strokes Books
- Lord Byron’s Prophecy, Lethe Press
- Minotaur by J.A Rock, Riptide Press
- The Prophecy by Jerry Rabushka, Bold Strokes Books
- The Time Before Now by Missouri Vaun, Bold Strokes Books
- Twisted Whispers by Sheri Lewis Wohl, Bold Strokes Books
- True Religion by J.L Wienberg, Chelsea Station Editions
- The Ultra Fabulous Glitter Squadron Saves The World Again by A. C. Wise, Lethe Press
- Willful Machines by Tim Floreen, Simon Pulse
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Mystery/Thriller
- Deadline: A Sam Perry Mystery by K.A. Tracy, Diversion Publishing
- Deadly Medicine by Jamie Maddox, Bold Strokes Books
- The Grave Soul by Ellen Hart, Minotaur Books
- Officer Down by Erin Dutton, Bold Strokes Books
- Reasonable Doubt by Carsen Taite, Bold Strokes Books
- Tarnished Gold by Ann Aptaker, Bold Strokes Books
- White Horse in Winter by Franci McMahon, Bold Strokes Books
Bio/Memoir
- All Out: A Father and Son Confront the Hard Truths That Made Them Better Men by
- And Then I Danced: Traveling the Road to LGBT Equality by Mark Segal,OpenLens
- Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family by Amy Ellis Nutt, Random House
- Binge by Tyler Oakley, Gallery Books
- Empire of Self by Jay Parini, Doubleday
- Frankly Kellie: Becoming a Woman in a Man’s World by Kellie Maloney, Blink Publishing
- Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein, Riverhead Books
- No Hope: Why I Left the GOP (and You Should Too) by Jimmy LaSalvia, Skyhorse Publishing
- Romaine Brooks: A Life by Cassandra Langer, University of Wisconsin Press
- Rupert Brooke: The Bisexual Brooke by Keith Hale, Watersgreen House
- Times Two: Two Women in Love and the Happy Family They Made by Kristen Henderson and Sarah Ellis, Simon & Schuster
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Poetry
- The Opposite Of People by Patrick Ryan Frank, Four Way Books
- Supplication: Selected Poems of John Wieners by , Wave Books