Books for the Beach & Beyond

Depending on where you live, you may still have a few weeks or months of beach weather left where you can lounge on a big towel and read to your heart's content. Wherever you are, consider these books as suitable for the beach or any place you choose to read them.

Poetic paths: Assembled with respect and loving kindness, "In the Empire of the Air: The Poems of Donald Britton" (Nightboat), edited by Reginald Shepherd and Philip Clark, is the culmination of a collaboration that began 10 years ago between two gay poets, Clark and the late Shepherd, to bring deserved attention to the work of Britton, who died in 1994.

If you only know 2016 Lambda Literary Emerging Writer Award-winning gay poet Bryan Borland as the founder and publisher of Sibling Rivalry Press and founding editor of gay poetry journal Assaracus, you now have a chance to become better acquainted with him via his remarkable new poetry collection "Dig" (Stillhouse).

Short story revival: When "Watched: Stories" (Penguin), the dazzling short story collection by Leopoldine Core, is populated with struggling writers, a gay man and his husband, a lesbian couple of considerably different ages, successful writers, sex workers, teenagers, straight people, George Harrison and more writers.

"The Dream Life of Astronauts" (The Dial Press) by gay writer Patrick Ryan, author of "Send Me" and three Y/A novels, is a collection of nine short stories "set against landmark moments," some of which previously appeared in the literary journals Crazyhorse, Faultline and Denver Quarterly .

Laurie Stone, editor of the memoir anthology "Close to the Bone," returns with "My Life as an Animal: Stories" (Northwestern), a collection of linked stories set against the backdrop of the downtown NYC scene of the 1970s through the 90s.

The metaphorical and real jungles in lesbian writer Anne Raeff's short story collection "The Jungle Around Us" (U. of Georgia Press) take readers on journeys from war-torn Vienna to "the edge of the Amazon" in Bolivia, from suburban New Jersey to Vietnam, as well as to Russia, Paraguay and other lands.

Novel ideas: Carolyn Parkhurst, who created memorable queer characters in her 2006 novel "Lost and Found," returns with "Harmony" (Pamela Dorman Books/Viking), a novel about raising a child on the autism spectrum told from the alternating perspectives of a mother and her two daughters. It's certain to have strong appeal to parents gay and straight.

"The Angel of History" (Atlantic Monthly Press), by gay National Book Award finalist Rabih Alameddine, covers a lot of territory in telling the story of gay poet Jacob, from Cairo to Beirut to Sana'a to Stockholm to San Francisco, all in "the course of one night in the waiting room of a psych clinic."

The long-lost novel "Women Lovers or The Third Woman" (U. of Wisconsin Press) by American ex-pat avant-garde writer and Paris salon hostess Natalie Clifford Barney, edited and translated by Chelsea Ray, tells of a passionate love triangle involving three "daring women of Belle Epoque Paris."

Set during the summer of 1850, "The Whale: A Love Story" (Viking) by Mark Beauregard "chronicles the affair of mind and heart" that developed between writers Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Mani Steinn, queer in 1918 Reykjav'k, where "homosexuality is beyond the furthest extreme," is the main character in "Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was" (FSG), the latest book by Icelandic writer Sjon, with English translation by Victoria Cribb.

For Y/A readers of all ages: Prolific gay Y/A novelist Brent Hartinger ("Geography Club") returns with the sexy suspense thriller "Three Truths and a Lie" (Simon Pulse), about friends on a weekend retreat in the woods where "an innocent party game goes horribly wrong."

In her debut Y/A novel "The Baby" (ChickenHouse-Scholastic), Lisa Drakeford invites readers to a party where, to everyone's surprise, one of the teen party guests goes into labor in a bathtub, adding to heartbreak and hijinks that include Ben's struggle with his sexual identity.

Thanks for the memoirs: Now available in paperback, intoxicating memoir "Dangerous When Wet" (St. Martin's Griffin), the first book by gay writer Jamie Brickhouse, details his complex relationship with his one-of-a-kind mother Mama Jean, as well as his struggles with alcohol and coming out.

Winner of the National Book Critic Circle Award and a National Book Award finalist, the paperback edition of "Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?" (Bloomsbury), the brilliant graphic memoir by cartoonist Roz Chast (The New Yorker), is a book about aging parents and their children that should be read cover to cover by people of all ages.

San Francisco-based gay writer Kevin Bentley's memoirs, "Wild Animals I Have Known: Polk Street Diaries and After" and "Let's Shut Out the World" (both Chelsea Station Editions), are being given the reissue treatment, allowing readers to get a taste of gay life in the late 1970s through the mid-90s.

Award-winning public radio producer Charles Monroe-Kane, who also served as a producer on a Chicago LGBT radio show, is a "natural-born raconteur," and the personal story he tells in "Lithium Jesus: A Memoir of Mania" (U. of Wisconsin Press), about marriage, fatherhood and the stunning events that came before, is one you will not soon forget.

Any queer person worth their weight in pink sea salt knows there's more to Charlotte Rae than Mrs. Garrett on "The Facts of Life." She played Molly the Mail Lady on "Sesame Street" and performed in Broadway musicals "Li'l Abner" and "Pickwick." In her memoir "The Facts of My Life" (BearManor Media), co-written with son Larry Strauss, the 90-year-old Rae delivers on the facts, including her divorce from bi husband John Strauss, and her friendships with Paul Lynde, Cloris Leachman and others.

Artistic temperament: For years, Patricia Bosworth's biography of Diane Arbus, "known by reputation as a photographer of sideshow freaks, transvestites and other marginal characters," was the go-to book about the artist. Gay writer Arthur Lubow's thorough "Diane Arbus: Portrait of a Photographer" (Ecco), including Diane and ex-husband Allen's same-sex dalliances, is going to change all that.

Poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine, "crusader for equality" Magnus Hirschfeld, filmmaker Richard Oswald ("Different from the Others") and writers Paul Bowles, Oscar Wilde and Andre Gide are among the queer subjects covered in "The Glamour of Strangeness: Artists and the Last Age of the Exotic" (FSG) by gay writer Jamie James.

With "more than 100 of the funniest Jewish jokes of all time," Michael Krasny's "Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means" (William Morrow) includes mentions of lesbian and gay rabbis as well as same-sex nuptials.