New in August: Sjón, Tim Murphy, Erin Judge, Steven Gaines, and Jacqueline Woodson

Author: Edit Team

August 10, 2016

August is here, bringing with it a slew of new books to enjoy.

Icelandic author Sjón’s new novel Moonstone (FSG) provides a searing snapshot of queer identity during the early 1900s.

From the publisher:

Máni Steinn is queer in a society in which the idea of homosexuality is beyond the furthest extreme. His city, Reykjavik in 1918, is homogeneous and isolated and seems entirely defenseless against the Spanish flu, which has already torn through Europe, Asia, and North America and is now lapping up on Iceland’s shores. And if the flu doesn’t do it, there’s always the threat that war will spread all the way north. And yet the outside world has also brought Icelanders cinema! And there’s nothing like a dark, silent room with a film from Europe flickering on the screen to help you escape from the overwhelming threats–and adventures–of the night, to transport you, to make you feel like everything is going to be all right. For Máni Steinn, the question is whether, at Reykjavik’s darkest hour, he should retreat all the way into this imaginary world, or if he should engage with the society that has so soundly rejected him.

This month, Grove Press is releasing Christodora by Tim Murphy, a novel that charts the lives of an interconnected group of denizens living in Manhattan:

In this vivid and compelling novel, Tim Murphy follows a diverse set of characters whose fates intertwine in an iconic building in Manhattan’s East Village, the Christodora. The Christodora is home to Milly and Jared, a privileged young couple with artistic ambitions. Their neighbor, Hector, a Puerto Rican gay man who was once a celebrated AIDS activist but is now a lonely addict, becomes connected to Milly and Jared’s lives in ways none of them can anticipate. Meanwhile, Milly and Jared’s adopted son Mateo grows to see the opportunity for both self-realization and oblivion that New York offers. As the junkies and protestors of the 1980s give way to the hipsters of the 2000s and they, in turn, to the wealthy residents of the crowded, glass-towered city of the 2020s, enormous changes rock the personal lives of Milly and Jared and the constellation of people around them. Moving kaleidoscopically from the Tompkins Square Riots and attempts by activists to galvanize a true response to the AIDS epidemic, to the New York City of the future, Christodora recounts the heartbreak wrought by AIDS, illustrates the allure and destructive power of hard drugs, and brings to life the ever-changing city itself.

In Vow of Celibacy (Rare Bird Books), writer Erin Judge spotlights one character’s comedic navigation through the highs and lows of romantic relationships:

Natalie has made a promise: a vow of celibacy, signed and witnessed by her best friend. After a string of sexual conquests, she is determined to figure out why the intense romantic connections she’s spent her life chasing have left her emotionally high and dry. As Natalie sifts through her past and her present, she confronts her complicated feelings about her plus-sized figure, her bisexuality, and her thwarted career in fashion design.

Piecing together toxic relationship patterns from her past, Natalie finds herself strutting down fashion runways and rekindling her passion for clothing design in the present. All the while, her best friend, Anastaze, struggles with her own secret—whether or not to reveal her true identity to the thousands of fans of her popular blog and her potential first sexual partner.

Delphinium Books is releasing One of These Things First, a new memoir from author Steve Gaines, that provides a snapshot of growing up young and troubled in the 1960s:

One of These Things First is a wry and poignant reminiscence of a 15 year old gay Jewish boy in Brooklyn in the early sixties, and his unexpected trajectory from a life behind a rack of dresses in his grandmother’s bra and girdle store, to Manhattan’s fabled Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic, a fashionable Charenton for wealthy neurotics and Ivy League alcoholics, whose famous alumni include writers, poets, madmen, Marilyn Monroe, and bestselling author Steven Gaines.

With a gimlet eye and a true gift for storytelling, Gaines captures his childhood shtetl in Brooklyn like an Edward Hopper tableau, with all its dramas and secrets: his philandering grandfather with his fleet of Cadillacs and Corvettes; a trio of harpy saleswomen; a giant, empty movie theater, his portal to the outside world; a shirtless teenage boy pushing a lawnmower in front of a house on Long Island; and a pair of tormenting bullies who own the corner candy store whose taunts drive him to a suicide attempt.

Steven Gaines also takes the reader behind the walls of Payne Whitney, the “Harvard of psychiatric clinics,” as Time magazine called it, populated by a captivating group of neurasthenics who subtly begin to change him in unexpected ways.

This month sees the release of Another Brooklyn (Amistad), author Jacqueline Woodson’s first adult novel in twenty years:

Running into a long-ago friend sets memory from the 1970s in motion for August, transporting her to a time and a place where friendship was everything—until it wasn’t. For August and her girls, sharing confidences as they ambled through neighborhood streets, Brooklyn was a place where they believed that they were beautiful, talented, brilliant—a part of a future that belonged to them.

But beneath the hopeful veneer, there was another Brooklyn, a dangerous place where grown men reached for innocent girls in dark hallways, where ghosts haunted the night, where mothers disappeared. A world where madness was just a sunset away and fathers found hope in religion.

As always, if we missed an author or book, or if you have a book coming out next month, please email us.

Fiction

Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson, Amistad
Christodora by Tim Murphy, Grove Press
Burning Tracks by Lilah Suzanne, Interlude Press
Diary of Fire by Elías Miguel Muñoz, Tincture
Moonstone by Christopher Kelly, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Tales from the Levee by Martha Miller, Bold Strokes Liberty Editions
Vow of Celibacy by Erin Judge, Rare Bird Books

Nonfiction

Best Laid Plans: Cultural Entropy and the Unraveling of AIDS Media Campaigns by Terence E. McDonnell, University of Chicago Press
Beyond Monogamy: Polyamory and the Future of Polyqueer Sexualities by Mimi Schippers, NYU Press
Hidden Hitchcock by D.A. Miller, University of Chicago Press
Killing the Rainbow: Violence Against LGBT by RJ Parker, RJ Parker Publishing
LGBT Milwaukee by Michail Takach, Arcadia Publishing
Pink Ink by Bill Calder, Cambridge Scholars Publishing
The Bigger Bang: Everything You Need to Know About Anal Sex by Axel Neustaedter, Bruno Gmuender

LGBT Studies

Affirmative Counseling and Psychological Practice with Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Clients edited by Anneliese A. Singh and lore m. dickey, American Phycological Association
Assessing the Implications of Allowing Transgender Personel to Serve Openly by Agnes Gereben Schaefer, Radha Iyengar, Srikanth Kadiyala, Jennifer Kavanagh, Charles C. Engel, Kayla M. Williams, and Amii M. Kress, RAND Corporation
Intersectionality and LGBT Activist Politics: Multiple Others in Croatia and Serbia edited by Bojan Bilić and Sanja Kajinić, Palgrave Macmillan
Intersex Narratives: Shifts in the Representation of Intersex Lives in North American Literature and Popular Culture by Viola Amato, Transcript-Verlag
Living Proud! Understanding Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity by Robert Rodi, Mason Crest
Queer Aging: The Gayby Boomers and a New Frontier for Gerontology by Jesus Rameriez-Valles, Oxford University Press
Safe is Not Enough: Better Schools for LGBTQ Students by Michael Sadowski, Harvard Education Press
The Courts, the Ballot Box, and Gay Rights: How Our Governing Institutions Shape the Same Sex Marriage Debate by Joseph Mello, University Press of Kansas

Young Adult

A Fine Bromance by Christopher Hawthorne Moss, Harmony Ink Press
Been Here All Along by Sandy Hall, Swoon Reads
Emily by Novala Takemoto, Shueisha/Shueisha English Editions
Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit by Jaye Robin Brown, HarperTeen
Just Kill Me by Adam Seltzer, Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers
Miss U.S. of Heya by Menorah Horwitz, Floating World Comics
Sideshow by Amy Stilgenbauer, Interlude Press
Superior by Jessica Lack, Book Smugglers Publishing
Three Truths and a Lie by Brent Hartinger, Simon Pulse
Whatever: or how junior year became totally f$@cked by S. J. Goslee, Roaring Brook Press