#post stonewall

[the-moon-is-a-harsh-mistress]

Navy Sailors, Manhattan's West Side piers, 1969--72 - photo by Alvin Baltrop, from the 2012 Huffington Post article "30 LGBT Artists You Should Know (SLIDESHOW)"

At the age of 26, Alvin Baltrop began photographing Manhattan's West Side piers, an area of refuge for queer teenage runaways as well as a stage for the city's underground gay scene. The stark reality conveyed in Baltrop's photographs was not well received by the mainstream art world, and so his work was largely ignored until after his death. But the thousands of images captured by Baltrop between 1975 and 1986 stand as remnants of a New York City community rarely captured before or after.

(***Click image or title link to view in high resolution***)

[queerbookrecs]

Her Name in the Sky by Kelly Quindlen (2014). Seventeen-year-old Hannah wants to spend her senior year of high school going to football games and Mardi Gras parties. She wants to drive along the oak-lined streets of Louisiana's Garden District and lie on the hot sand of Florida's beaches. She wants to spend every night making memories with her tight-knit group of friends. The last thing she wants is to fall in love with a girl--especially when that girl is her best friend, Baker. In this poignant coming-of-age novel, Hannah must find a compromise between the truth of her heart and the expectations of her community. She must break through her shame and learn to trust in the goodness of her friends. And above all, she and Baker must open their hearts to the saving power of love. Raw, moving, and teeming with unforgettable characters, Her Name in the Sky is a modern love story about the teenage quest for identity and the redeeming power of the human heart.

[queerbookrecs]

Dramarama (2007) E. Lockhart

Two theater-mad, self-invented fabulositon Ohio teenagers. One boy, one girl. One gay, one straight. One black, one white. And SUMMER DRAMA CAMP. It's a season of hormones, gold lame, hissy fits, jazz hands, song and dance, true love, and unitards that will determine their future --and test their friendship.

[queerbookrecs]

The Swimming Pool Library (1988) Alan Hollinghurst

In 1983 London, the privileged, gay, and apparently sexually irresistible 25 year-old protagonist Will saves the life of an elderly aristocrat having a heart-attack in a public lavatory. This chance meeting sets in process a chain of events that will ultimately require the highly intelligent but essentially carefree Will to substantially re-evaluate his sense of the past and of his family's history.

[queerbookrecs]

Ask the Passengers (2012) A.S. King

Astrid Jones desperately wants to confide in someone, but her mother's pushiness and her father's lack of interest tell her they're the last people she can trust. Instead, Astrid spends hours lying on the backyard picnic table watching airplanes fly overhead. She doesn't know the passengers inside, but they're the only people who won't judge her when she asks them her most personal questions . . . like what it means that she's falling in love with a girl. As her secret relationship becomes more intense and her friends demand answers, Astrid has nowhere left to turn. She can't share the truth with anyone except the people at thirty thousand feet, and they don't even know she's there. But little does Astrid know just how much even the tiniest connection will affect these strangers' lives--and her own--for the better.

[queerbookrecs]

Zero at the Bone (2009) Jane Seville

After witnessing a mob hit, surgeon Jack Francisco is put into protective custody to keep him safe until he can testify. A hitman known only as D is blackmailed into killing Jack, but when he tracks him down, his weary conscience won't allow him to murder an innocent man. Finding in each other an unlikely ally, Jack and D are soon on the run from shadowy enemies.

Forced to work together to survive, the two men forge a bond that ripens into unexpected passion. Jack sees the wounded soul beneath D's cold, detached exterior, and D finds in Jack the person who can help him reclaim the man he once was. As the day of Jack's testimony approaches, he and D find themselves not only fighting for their lives... but also fighting for their future. A future together.

[queerbookrecs]

A Pirate's Heart (2008) Catherine Friend

When rare book librarian Emma Boyd searches for a pirate's long-lost treasure map, she learns the hard way that pirates still exist in today's world--and some modern pirates steal maps, others steal hearts.  The treasure map she seeks belonged to the Caribbean pirate Thomasina Farris, who disappeared in 1715 without a trace. Did Captain Tommy steal an entire treasure from a Spanish galleon and escape? Did she die by another pirate's sword? Or did she die of a broken heart when the woman she loved disappeared? Emma's and Tommy's stories collide when Emma, after uncovering the truth about Captain Tommy's fate, must decide her own...and the choice is between romance or revenge.

[queerbookrecs]

The Blood Spilt (2007) Asa Larsson

It’s midsummer in Sweden—when the light lingers through dawn and a long, isolating winter finally comes to an end. In this magical time, a brutal killer has chosen to strike. A female priest—who made enemies and acolytes in equal number—has been found hanging in her church. And a big-city lawyer quite acquainted with death enters the scene as police and parishioners try to pick up the pieces.... Not long ago, attorney Rebecka Martinsson had to kill three men in order to stop an eerily similar murder spree—one that also involved a priest. Now she is back in Kiruna, the region of her birth, while a determined policewoman gnaws on the case and people who loved or loathed the victim mourn or revel in her demise. The further Rebecka is drawn into the mystery—a mystery that will soon take another victim—the more the dead woman’s world clutches her: a world of hurt and healing, sin and sexuality, and, above all, of sacrifice.