L. A. Fields

Sixteen-year-old Marley Kurtz is an incurable bookworm who is sent to a program for maladapted youth in Loweville, Colorado after his parents discover he has been having an affair with a man forty-three years his senior. Once there, Marley befriends the wry yet optimistic Missy, who is fifteen and pregnant in the lowest town on earth, and falls in love with Jesse, an ice-eyed sociopath with an outlaw for a father and a corpse for a mother. As the stress of the summer causes Marley s physical and mental health to decline, it is unclear which of his new friends has the worst influence on him, or whether the instruction of a small town s Baptist-run therapy group will do more harm than good to everyone involved.

Bayad Taylor wrote the first American gay novel, but the nineteenth century book--Joseph and His Friend--is often unknown to contemporary readers of queer fiction. Author and researcher L.A. Fields seeks to remedy this with her newest release. The notes accompanying each chapter of this book move from the private life of the man who inspired the story (Halleck), through the secrets of its author (Taylor), noting especially his private love for and public rivalry with Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass). The notes then expand on Whitman's unique position in gay and American history: the nascent coming-out letters Whitman called ''avowals'' from the likes of Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde; Whitman's witnessing of the Civil War, the Lincoln presidency, and his lover's chance attendance at Ford's Theater the night of Lincoln's assassination; as well as Whitman's own understanding and defense for writing honestly about the love of men. The structure of the project combines Taylor's original 1870 novel with brief strings of American history, contemporary anecdote, and curiosities from a more secret history. A new topic is positioned behind every chapter, providing the background that reveals just how important this novel was at the time, how rare it is now, and how daring it's always been to tell the truth.

Verdant virgins and lush lotharios await readers in this anthology of strange yet sensual stories about men and vegetation. Fantastical fronds cannot resist caressing warm flesh. Sylvan creatures of myth protecting the forest; botanical laboratory experiments run amok; a veteran of the Mexican-American war finds himself entranced by an aesthete's poisonous garden; and an alien paying our planet a visit to sample the greenery.... These fourteen stories promise readers a most tantalizing bedding in this Lambda Literary Award-winning erotica collection!

One of the most famous partnerships in literature yields, over time, to a peculiar romantic triangle. Sherlock Holmes. Dr. John Watson. And the good doctor's second wife, whom Doyle never named. In L.A. Fields's novel, Mrs. Watson is a clever woman who realizes, through examining all the prior cases her husband shared with the world's greatest consulting detective, that the two men shared more than adventures: they were lovers, as well. In 1919, after the pair has retired, Mrs. Watson invites Holmes to her home to meet him face to face. Thus begins a recounting of a peculiar affair between extraordinary men. "You are such a unique person," Holmes says poisonously. "What a shame that history will most likely never remember your name." The question Mrs. Watson faces: Did Holmes simply take advantage of her husband's loyalty and love, or did the detective return those feelings? And what to do now that the pair are no longer living together at Baker Street and Watson has other claims on his affections? A finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, My Dear Watson offers readers a romance that requires as much reasoning to puzzle out as it does passion. Mrs. Watson proves a worthy opponent-in intellect, in guile, in conviction-for the great detective.