Collection: Adult

Tamara de Lempicka (1898-1980) lived art in the fast lane. With an appetite for glamour and fame as much as Left Bank bohemianism, she fled her native Russia after the Bolshevik revolution and set about taking Paris by storm. Her prolific, monumental oeuvre remains one of the most vivid visual documents of 1920s Art Deco. De Lempicka's style deployed cool colors and tight post-cubist forms into an at once neoclassical and voluptuous figuration. Her subjects are often nude and always sensual, aloof, and powerful. Bedecked in seductive light and textures, they command our attention but typically avert their gaze with an aspect of haughty grandeur. They include both high-society patrons and progressive portraits of emancipated and lesbian women, such as Women Bathing and Portrait of Suzy Solidor. De Lempicka's notorious Self-Portrait in the Green Bugatti, meanwhile, was commissioned for the cover of German magazine Die Dame and became an icon of speed, sophistication, and female independence. Through some of de Lempicka's finest, most compelling portraits, this introduction explores the artist's unique visual language and its privileged place not only in the annals of interwar art but also in the history of female artists and our collective consciousness of the Roaring Twenties.

Featuring deep dives into thirst traps, drag queens, Antonio Banderas, and telenovelas--all in the service of helping us reframe how we talk about (desiring) men--this insightful memoir-in-essays is as much a coming of age as a coming out book

Manuel Betancourt has long lustfully coveted masculinity--in part because he so lacked it. As a child in Bogotá, Colombia, he grew up with the social pressure to appear strong, manly, and, ultimately, straight. And yet in the films and television he avidly watched, Betancourt saw glimmers of different possibilities. From the stars of telenovelas and the princes of Disney films to pop sensation Ricky Martin and teen heartthrobs in shows like Saved By the Bell, he continually found himself asking: Do I want him or do I want to be him?

The Male Gazed grapples with the thrall of masculinity, examining its frailty and its attendant anxieties even as it focuses on its erotic potential. Masculinity, Betancourt suggests, isn't suddenly ripe for deconstruction--or even outright destruction--amid so much talk about its inherent toxicity. Looking back over decades' worth of pop culture's attempts to codify and reframe what men can be, wear, do, and desire, this book establishes that to gaze at men is still a subversive act.

Written in the spirit of Hanif Abdurraqib and Olivia Laing, The Male Gazed mingles personal anecdotes with cultural criticism to offer an exploration of intimacy, homoeroticism, and the danger of internalizing too many toxic ideas about masculinity as a gay man.

A "Best Of" Book From: Amazon * Buzzfeed * Rainbow Reading * Library Journal * CrimeReads * BookPage * Book Riot * Autostraddle

A delicious story from a new voice in suspense, Lev AC Rosen's Lavender House is Knives Out with a queer historical twist.

Lavender House, 1952: the family seat of recently deceased matriarch Irene Lamontaine, head of the famous Lamontaine soap empire. Irene's recipes for her signature scents are a well guarded secret--but it's not the only one behind these gates. This estate offers a unique freedom, where none of the residents or staff hide who they are. But to keep their secret, they've needed to keep others out. And now they're worried they're keeping a murderer in.

Irene's widow hires Evander Mills to uncover the truth behind her mysterious death. Andy, recently fired from the San Francisco police after being caught in a raid on a gay bar, is happy to accept--his calendar is wide open. And his secret is the kind of secret the Lamontaines understand.

Andy had never imagined a world like Lavender House. He's seduced by the safety and freedom found behind its gates, where a queer family lives honestly and openly. But that honesty doesn't extend to everything, and he quickly finds himself a pawn in a family game of old money, subterfuge, and jealousy--and Irene's death is only the beginning.

When your existence is a crime, everything you do is criminal, and the gates of Lavender House can't lock out the real world forever. Running a soap empire can be a dirty business.

Winner of the 2023 Prose Award in Cultural Anthropology and SociologyFinalist for the 2023 Publishing Triangle Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction

A sweeping history of Indigenous traditions of gender, sexuality, and resistance that reveals how, despite centuries of colonialism, Two-Spirit people are reclaiming their place in Native nations.

Reclaiming Two-Spirits decolonizes the history of gender and sexuality in Native North America. It honors the generations of Indigenous people who had the foresight to take essential aspects of their cultural life and spiritual beliefs underground in order to save them.

Before 1492, hundreds of Indigenous communities across North America included people who identified as neither male nor female, but both. They went by aakíí'skassi, miati, okitcitakwe or one of hundreds of other tribally specific identities. After European colonizers invaded Indian Country, centuries of violence and systematic persecution followed, imperiling the existence of people who today call themselves Two-Spirits, an umbrella term denoting feminine and masculine qualities in one person.

Drawing on written sources, archaeological evidence, art, and oral storytelling, Reclaiming Two-Spirits spans the centuries from Spanish invasion to the present, tracing massacres and inquisitions and revealing how the authors of colonialism's written archives used language to both denigrate and erase Two-Spirit people from history. But as Gregory Smithers shows, the colonizers failed--and Indigenous resistance is core to this story. Reclaiming Two-Spirits amplifies their voices, reconnecting their history to Native nations in the 21st century.

Wild meets The Wife Between Us in this page-turning thriller, set in Maine's Hundred Mile Wilderness--the treacherous final stretch of the storied Appalachian Trail--an addictive tale of passion, betrayal, control, and what it means to survive.

Raised by a doomsday prepper and hardened by the startup world, Emma Sharp has learned how to endure--especially in her marriage to Logan Grant, a charismatic tyrant who keeps her under tight control. To Emma, her marriage is a cage: it keeps you in, but it also keeps you safe. Until it doesn't.

When Emma forms an unexpected bond with Logan's former girlfriend, the two women form a plan to help Emma take her life back. Destination: the punishing final stretch of the Appalachian Trail known as the Hundred Mile Wilderness.

After all, bad things happen in the woods all the time.

As the three venture deeper into Maine's backcountry, desire and dread curdle into something unpredictable, dark, and deadly. Someone is lying. Someone is watching. And in the remote heart of the forest, someone is about to be lost . . . or found.

How to Survive in the Woods is a heart-stopping knockout of a novel, by turns smart, psychologically rich, and deliciously dark. In her masterful hands, Kat Rosenfield asks us to consider what it means to be a survivor--and what, or who, you would sacrifice to stay alive.

New York Times Bestseller
A TODAY Show #ReadWithJenna Book Club Pick

A Big Chill for our times, celebrating decades-long friendships and promises--especially to ourselves--by the bestselling and beloved author of The Guncle.

It's been a minute--or five years--since Jordan Vargas last saw his college friends, and twenty-eight years since their graduation from Berkeley when their adult lives officially began. Now Jordan, Jordy, Naomi, Craig, and Marielle find themselves at the brink of a new decade, with all the responsibilities of adulthood, yet no closer to having their lives figured out. Though not for a lack of trying. Over the years they've reunited in Big Sur to honor a decades-old pact to throw each other living "funerals," celebrations to remind themselves that life is worth living--that their lives mean something, to one another if not to themselves.

But this reunion is different. They're not gathered as they were to bolster Marielle as her marriage crumbled, to lift Naomi after her parents died, or to intervene when Craig pleaded guilty to art fraud. This time, Jordan is sitting on a secret that will upend their pact.

A deeply honest tribute to the growing pains of selfhood and the people who keep us going, coupled with Steven Rowley's signature humor and heart, The Celebrants is a moving tale about the false invincibility of youth and the beautiful ways in which friendship helps us celebrate our lives, even amid the deepest challenges of living.

"This funny and fresh take on a classic tale manages to comment on gender roles, racial disparities, and white privilege all while creeping me all the way out. So good."--Zakiya Dalila Harris, author of The Other Black Girl

Now in paperback, Steel Magnolias meets Dracula in this New York Times best-selling horror novel about a women's book club that must do battle with a mysterious newcomer to their small Southern town.

Bonus features:
- Reading group guide for book clubs
- Hand-drawn map of Mt. Pleasant
- Annotated true-crime reading list by Grady Hendrix
- And more!

Patricia Campbell's life has never felt smaller. Her husband is a workaholic, her teenage kids have their own lives, her senile mother-in-law needs constant care, and she's always a step behind on her endless to-do list. The only thing keeping her sane is her book club, a close-knit group of Charleston women united by their love of true crime. At these meetings they're as likely to talk about the Manson family as they are about their own families.

One evening after book club, Patricia is viciously attacked by an elderly neighbor, bringing the neighbor's handsome nephew, James Harris, into her life. James is well traveled and well read, and he makes Patricia feel things she hasn't felt in years. But when children on the other side of town go missing, their deaths written off by local police, Patricia has reason to believe James Harris is more of a Bundy than a Brad Pitt. The real problem? James is a monster of a different kind--and Patricia has already invited him in.

Little by little, James will insinuate himself into Patricia's life and try to take everything she took for granted--including the book club--but she won't surrender without a fight in this blood-soaked tale of neighborly kindness gone wrong.

The #1 New York Times bestseller.

"A gorgeous and inspiring work of art on creation, creativity, the work of the artist. It will gladden the hearts of writers and artists everywhere, and get them working again with a new sense of meaning and direction. A stunning accomplishment." --Anne Lamott

From the legendary music producer, a master at helping people connect with the wellsprings of their creativity, comes a beautifully crafted book many years in the making that offers that same deep wisdom to all of us.

"I set out to write a book about what to do to make a great work of art. Instead, it revealed itself to be a book on how to be." --Rick Rubin

Many famed music producers are known for a particular sound that has its day. Rick Rubin is known for something else: creating a space where artists of all different genres and traditions can home in on who they really are and what they really offer. He has made a practice of helping people transcend their self-imposed expectations in order to reconnect with a state of innocence from which the surprising becomes inevitable. Over the years, as he has thought deeply about where creativity comes from and where it doesn't, he has learned that being an artist isn't about your specific output, it's about your relationship to the world. Creativity has a place in everyone's life, and everyone can make that place larger. In fact, there are few more important responsibilities.

The Creative Act is a beautiful and generous course of study that illuminates the path of the artist as a road we all can follow. It distills the wisdom gleaned from a lifetime's work into a luminous reading experience that puts the power to create moments--and lifetimes--of exhilaration and transcendence within closer reach for all of us.

In her breathtaking debut--part space odyssey, part sapphic rom-com--Emily Hamilton weaves a suspenseful, charming, and irresistibly joyous tale of fierce friendship, improbable love, and wonder as vast as the universe itself.

So, here's the thing: Cleo and her friends really, truly didn't mean to steal this spaceship.

They just wanted to know why, twenty years ago, the entire Providence crew vanished without a trace. But then the stupid dark matter engine started all on its own, and now these four twenty-somethings are en route to Proxima Centauri, unable to turn around, and being harangued by a snarky hologram that has the face and attitude of the ship's missing captain, Billie.

Cleo has dreamt of being an astronaut all her life, and Earth is kind of a lost cause at this point, so this should be one of those blessings in disguise that people talk about. But as the ship gets deeper into space, the laws of physics start twisting, old mysteries come crawling back to life, and Cleo's initially combative relationship with Billie turns into something deeper and more desperate than either woman was prepared for.

Lying somewhere in the subspace between science fantasy and sapphic rom-com, The Stars Too Fondly is a soaring near-future adventure about dark matter and alternate dimensions, leaving home and finding family, and the galaxy-saving power of letting yourself love and be loved.

"Sexy, scathing, delightful, and intimately devastating."--Gretchen Felker-Martin, author of Manhunt and Cuckoo

Packed with action, humor, sex, and big gay feelings, The Z Word is the queer zombie romp you didn't know you needed.

Chaotic bisexual Wendy is trying to find her place in the queer community of San Lazaro, Arizona, after a bad breakup--which is particularly difficult because her ex is hooking up with some of her friends. And when the people around them start turning into violent, terrifying mindless husks, well, that makes things harder. Especially since the infection seems to be spreading.

Now, Wendy and her friends and frenemies--drag queen Logan, silver fox Beau, sword lesbian Aurelia and her wife Sam, mysterious pizza delivery stoner Sunshine, and, oh yeah, Wendy's ex-girlfriend Leah--have to team up to stay alive, save Pride, and track the zombie outbreak to its shocking source. Hopefully without killing each other first.

The Z Word is a propulsive, funny, emotional horror debut about a found family coming together to fight corporate greed, political corruption, gay drama, and zombies.

More Than a Bathhouse

When Chuck Renslow opened Man's Country in 1973, he wanted it to be someplace special-and he succeeded. The bathhouse was a part of Chicago gay life for 45 years-serving a number of changing roles, supporting the larger community, and spawning countless memories.

Rudolph Nureyev ran naked down the halls shouting, "Who wants to swing on a star?" Puppeteer Wayland Flowers held court in the TV lounge in nothing but a towel with his puppet, Madame, on his hand. Generations of gay men explored their sexuality in this "oasis of pleasure" with amenities that included a snack bar, a retail store, a wet area and whirlpool, an orgy room, a gym, specialty rooms, a rooftop deck and garden, and the largest steam room in the Midwest.

The Music Hall stage at Man's Country was a venue for such talents as Divine, the Village People, Judy Tenuta, Charles Pierce, and Rusty Warren. When there wasn't a show, there was dancing. Some men checked in to Man's Country for six hours, and others came for the weekend. Man's Country was a place to let your freak flag fly.

When the iconic bathhouse fell to the wrecking ball in 2018, the Man's Country story came to an end, but not the legend. The stories and the memories will endure. Chuck Renslow always said he wanted Man's Country to be more than a bathhouse, and it was much more.

With chapters on the techno-dance club BISTRO TOO & the leather bar, the CHICAGO EAGLE.

From the acclaimed author of BOYFRIEND MATERIAL comes a deeply moving romance about losing the life you always thought would be yours...and finding something beautiful in the wreckage of the past.

Quietly heartbroken, Edwin Tully lives alone in the house he used to share with the man he once loved. He tends to damaged books and faded memories, trying to build a future from the fragments of the past. Then the weather turns, and the river spills into Edwin's quiet world, bringing with it Adam Dacre from the Environment Agency. An unlikely knight, this stranger with roughened hands and worn wellingtons offers Edwin the hope of something he thought he would never have again.

As the two men are drawn together in their struggle against the rising waters, Edwin slowly lets down his guard as he comes to accept he can't shield his heart from everything--and perhaps he doesn't even need to try. Because love doesn't only leave scars...sometimes, it heals them, too.

This lyrical, moving LGBTQIA+ romance contains never-before-seen content and exclusive bonus material--including a NEW novella, Chasing the Light, following Marius as he rediscovers love and the complicated joy of being truly alive.

The World of SPIRES:

Glitterland, book 1

Waiting for the Flood, book 2

Two enemies, one goal: steal each other's hearts.

Scarlett Grey, disgraced assassin, is determined to get revenge.

Quinn Adams, medic turned-poisoner for hire, is her deadliest rival.

For years, they've stolen each other's clients, sabotaged each other's business, and occasionally... slept together.

When the Magician Queen offers an irresistible deal, Scarlett and Quinn are forced to work together. But this is not a simple job.

With an impossible heist ahead, they're going to have to trust each other...

And that's not easy when they both have secrets to hide.

Harder still when those secrets will betray the ones they love.

Now neither woman is sure if it's a heist they want to win or a heart.

Two women, two deadly professions, and a romance that could be their downfall.

This is a steamy lesbian fantasy romance with enemies to lovers, a heist, found family, a secret royal, and only one bed.

"Lush, engrossing, and full of mystery and dark magic," The Mask of Mirrors is the unmissable start to the Rook & Rose trilogy, a dazzling fantasy adventure by Marie Brennan and Alyc Helms, writing together as M. A. Carrick. (BookPage)

FORTUNE FAVORS THE BOLD. MAGIC FAVORS THE LIARS.

Ren is a liar and a thief, a pattern-reader and a daughter of no clan. Raised in the slums of Nadezra, she fled that world to save her sister. Now, she has returned with one goal: to trick her way into a noble house, securing her fortune and her sister's future.

But in the city of dreams, her masquerade is just one of many. Enigmatic crime lord Derossi Vargo, stony captain of the guard Grey Serrado, dashing heir Leato Traementis, and the legendary vigilante known as the Rook all have secrets that could unravel her own.

And as corrupt nightmare magic begins to weave its way through the city of dreams, the poisonous feuds of its aristocrats and the shadowy dangers of its impoverished underbelly become tangled--with Ren at their heart.

Praise for the Rook & Rose trilogy:

"Immersive...a feast to savor slowly." --BuzzFeed

"For those who like their revenge plots served with the intrigue of The Goblin Emperor, the colonial conflict of The City of Brass, the panache of Swordspoint, and the richly detailed settings of Guy Gavriel Kay."--Booklist (starred review)

"Utterly captivating." --Shannon Chakraborty, author of The City of Brass

"This novel will catch hold of your dreams and keep you from sleeping." --Mary Robinette Kowal, author of The Calculating Stars

"Wonderfully immersive--I was unable to put it down." --Andrea Stewart, author of The Bone Shard Daughter

"Exactly the fantasy adventure novel you're craving." --Tasha Suri, author of The Jasmine Throne

"By far the best book I've read this year." --Roxane Gay

#1 Best Book of 2022 (Vulture) - A Best Horror Novel of All Time (Cosmopolitan) - One of the Best Horror Novels of 2022 (Esquire, Library Journal, Paste, and CrimeReads) - A Top 10 Horror Debuts of 2022 (Booklist) - A Goodreads Choice Award nominee for Best Horror - A Best Book of 2022 (Tor.com) - A Best SFF Book of 2022 (Gizmodo) - A Top 25 Most Influential Works of Postwar Queer Literature (The New York Times Style Magazine).

Manhunt is an explosive post-apocalyptic novel that follows trans women and trans men on a grotesque journey of survival.

"A modern horror masterpiece." --Carmen Maria Machado

Beth and Fran spend their days traveling the ravaged New England coast, hunting feral men and harvesting their organs in a gruesome effort to ensure they'll never face the same fate.

Robbie lives by his gun and one hard-learned motto: other people aren't safe.

After a brutal accident entwines the three of them, this found family of survivors must navigate murderous TERFs, a sociopathic billionaire bunker brat, and awkward relationship dynamics--all while outrunning packs of feral men, and their own demons.

"A filthy, furious delight."--The New Yorker

Heartsong is the third book in the Green Creek Series, the beloved fantasy romance sensation by New York Times bestselling author TJ Klune, about love, loyalty, betrayal, and family.

"Complex and startling... Green Creek is the perfect setting." --Charlaine Harris

The Bennett family has a secret: They're not just a family, they're a pack. Heartsong is Robbie Fontaine's story.

All Robbie Fontaine ever wanted was a place to belong. After the death of his mother, he bounces around from pack to pack, forming temporary bonds to keep from turning feral. It's enough--until he receives a summons from the wolf stronghold in Caswell, Maine. Life as the trusted second to Michelle Hughes--the Alpha of all--and the cherished friend of a gentle old witch teaches Robbie what it means to be pack, to have a home. But when a mission from Michelle sends Robbie into the field, he finds himself questioning where he belongs and everything he's been told.

Whispers of traitorous wolves and wild magic abound--but who are the traitors and who the betrayed? More than anything, Robbie hungers for answers, because one of those alleged traitors is Kelly Bennett--the wolf who may be his mate.

The truth has a way of coming out. And when it does, everything will shatter.

The Green Creek Series is for adult readers.
Now available from Tor Books.