ReQueered Tales’ Summer 2020 Readers’ Catalog Indie publisher of outstanding post-Stonewall, pre-2000 LGBTQ fiction, for a new generation of readers and old friends alike. For more information about current and future releases, please contact us: E-mail: [email protected] • Web: www.ReQueeredTales.com ReQueered Tales is a California General Partnership. No 2 “Incandescent angels of love ... an electric voyage” — The Advocate Robert FERRO THE BLUE STAR A deeply moving novel of love – requited and unrequited – in Florence and New York. Two young Americans, reflective Peter and Byronic Chase, indulge their youthful appetites in Florence. Over the next 20 years their paths diverge and reconverge. Chase marries into the Italian aristocracy and Peter pursues his passion for Lorenzo, a beautiful young Florentine. The past impinges on the present as the story of Chase’s ancestor, Orvil Starkweather, is revealed including secrets behind the building of New York City’s Central Park. The threads gather together taking them finally on a fateful cruise up the Nile aboard the luxury yacht the Blue Star. This new edition features a 2020 foreword by Andrew Holleran (Dancer from the Dance). “Shimmering … elegance, even if touched here and there by a measure of decadence, prevails … superb taste and style.” — Publisher’s Weekly Robert FERRO: THE BLUE STAR Trade Paperback, 256 pages • ISBN 978-1-951092-25-2 • Retail: US $16.95 / Canada $21.95 / UK £13.95 E-book available worldwide from Amazon, Kobo, Nook and Apple Nikki BAKER THE LAVENDER HOUSE MURDER By night – the bars, the music, the sexual energy. By day – the beaches, the bay … basking in the sun and the scent of suntan lotion. And everywhere the women of Provincetown. Among these women in the sun is Virginia Kelly, a woman of color, on vacation from the mostly white world of finance. Ginny has come to P-town with friend Naomi, and without lover Emily. They stay at Lavender House, a hotel for lesbians run by Sam, a woman with whom Naomi has had some dramatic history. WWThen … murder shatters the vacation bliss. Nominated for Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Mystery, this new edition features a 2020 foreword by Ann Aptaker (Criminal Gold). Nikki BAKER: THE LAVENDER HOUSE MURDER Paperback, XXX pages • ISBN 978-1-951092-29-0 • Retail: US $16.95 / Canada $21.95 / UK £13.95 E-book available worldwide from Amazon • Read for “free” on Kindle Unlimited RELEASE DATE: August 18 DAZZLING SUMMER READS Robert FERRO THE FAMILY OF MAX DESIR As he came of age, Max Desir found love in Italy. Now, at age 40, his American family is split: Max and Nick are accepted as a stable, long-term couple by mother and siblings, but his father John does not. When a needlepoint family tree is to be hung at Christmas, acceptance of family is re-examined. In this beautiful, haunting tale, told in a clear, impassioned narrative, Robert Ferro created a classic. His highly celebrated breakthrough novel is not to be missed. This new edition features a foreword by Felice Picano (Like People in History). “An honest, eloquent and entirely original novel … at once realistic and mythological, intensely personal and public ... a triumph.” — Edmund White (A Boy’s Own Story). Robert FERRO: THE FAMILY OF MAX DESIR Trade Paperback, 220 pages • ISBN 978-1-951092-10-8 • US $16.95 / Canada $21.95 / UK £13.95 • E-book Worldwide Nikki BAKER IN THE GAME When businesswoman Virginia Kelly meets her old college chum Bev Johnson for drinks late one night, Bev confides that her lover, Kelsey, is seeing another woman. Ginny is shocked when the next morning’s papers report that Kelsey was found murdered behind the very bar where Ginny and Bev had met. Nikki Baker is the first African-American author in the lesbian mystery genre; Virginia Kelly is the first African-American lesbian detective. The narrative weaves in observations on being a woman, an African-American, and a lesbian in a “man’s” world of finance. “The auspicious debut of a black writer who brings us a sharp, funny and on-the-mark murder mystery.” — Northwest Gay & Lesbian Reader Nikki BAKER: IN THE GAME Trade Paperback, 172 pages • ISBN 978-1-951092-28-3 • US $16.95 / Canada $21.95 / UK £13.95 • E-book Worldwide Jed A. BRYAN A CRY IN THE DESERT A story of the battle against tyranny that remains as relevant now as when it was written. A group of friends living in Las Vegas are happy and successful: doctors, lawyers, journalists, and decorators. However, their lives go from utopian to dystopian when a law passes to allow the quarantine of those suspected to have AIDS. The government, in a blatant overreach, closes the Nevada border. Those tagged as homosexuals disappear in the middle of the night. A group of resisters fight back in the halls of hospitals and in the halls of justice but are constantly outmaneuvered by others in high places that are loyal to Dr Alfred Botts, the “czar” government leader, or being blackmailed into supporting him “An unforgettable and harrowing account” — Stan Leventhal Jed A. BRYAN: A CRY IN THE DESERT US $5.95 / Can $7.95 / UK £4.95 / EU €5.95 E-book available worldwide from Amazon, Kobo, Nook and Apple: search “cry desert” + requeered For more information about current and future releases, please contact us: E-mail: [email protected] • Web: www.ReQueeredTales.com AUTHOR PROFILE: STAN LEVENTHAL 25th Anniversary Edition Stan LEVENTHAL MOUNTAIN CLIMBING IN SHERIDAN SQUARE A series of discrete episodes among friends provide snapshots of one gay man’s life. There are parties, concerts, dinners with everyday life – and death – interwoven in the rich story-telling. An actress, a painter, a set designer, a writer – all sweating and surviving in Manhattan, all scoring their first successes. Part autobiography and part documentary, artfully written, it details the lives of these creative people. Young and professional, they know there is more to life than money. There is trust and the sort of love that trades in deeds of kindness. “Stan was a literary activist who always gave to, built and endorsed literature and writers. I can see still see Stan in his apartment window on Christopher Street, next door to the Stonewall Inn, overlooking Sheridan Square as he typed away.” — Michele Karlsberg, LGBTQ publicist and friend Leventhal’s debut novel was a Lambda Literary Awards Finalist in 1988. This new edition features a foreword by Christopher Bram (Gods and Monsters). Stan LEVENTHAL: MOUNTAIN CLIMBING IN SHERIDAN SQUARE Trade Paperback, 196 pages • ISBN 978-1-951092-21-4 • Retail: US $16.95 / Canada $21.95 / UK £13.95 • E-book Worldwide Author, editor, and publisher, Stan Leventhal lived in New York City in the 1980s through 1995. He is fondly remembered as a generous, genuine and passionate advocate for social causes and other writers. He was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award three times: for he debut novel Mountain Climbing in Sheridan Square, Faultlines and The Black Marble Pool. He published a final nov- el, Skydiving on Christopher Street (ReQueered Tales, January 2021) and three collections of short stories. In addition, his work appeared in the anthologies: Gay Life, Shadows of Love, The Stiffest of the Corpse, and Sword of the Rainbow. The author was actively involved in the fight for literacy. Stan’s message to his readers: “Literature is crucial to our lives; reading is fun.” Stan LEVENTHAL THE BLACK MARBLE POOL When you first notice it, something seems a bit unusual. Then it occurs to you that most, if not all, of the pools you’ve ever seen before were painted blue or white. The Captain’s House pool is black. Not painted black. But constructed of black marble and black tile. The marble has streaks of white that look like lightning bolts in a black sky. There is a sexiness to this pool; a personality. It looks and feels like a warm, wet blanket, sur- rounding and protecting you like a dark, quiet womb. There’s a dead body at the bottom of a pool in the backyard of a guest house in Key West. Who is he? And what caused his untimely demise? Maybe it’s suicide. Or an accident. But more likely – murder! And who’s responsible? One of the guests, the people who run the guest house or one of those mysterious women in town? Stan LEVENTHAL: THE BLACK MARBLE POOL US $5.95 / Can $7.95 / UK £4.95 / EU €5.95 E-book available worldwide from Amazon, Kobo, Nook and Apple: search “stan leventhal” For more information about current and future releases, please contact us: E-mail: [email protected] • Web: www.ReQueeredTales.com AUTHOR PROFILE: FELICE PICANO 25th Anniversary Edition Felice PICANO LIKE PEOPLE IN HISTORY Solid, cautious Roger Sansarc and flamboyant, mercurial Alistair Dodge are second cousins who become lifelong friends when they first meet as nine- year-old boys in 1954. Their lives constantly intersect at crucial moments in their personal histories as each discovers his own unique – and uniquely gay – identity. Through the lens of their complex, tumultuous, madcap, yet enduring relationship – and their involvement with the handsome model, poet, and decorated Vietnam vet Matt Loguidice, whom they both love – Picano chronicles and celebrates gay life and subculture over the last half of the twentieth century. In a book that could have been written only by one who lived it and survived to tell, Picano weaves a powerful saga of four decades in the lives of two men and their lovers, relatives, friends, and enemies. Tragic, comic, sexy, and romantic, filled with varied and colorful characters, Like People in History is both extraordinarily moving and supremely entertaining.