Saturday, July 9, 2016

Ivan & Misha, 40 Wild Crushes, and The Root: Books at July 2016 Perfectly Queer

  


In Ivan and Misha, a novel in linked stories by Michael Alenyikov, events swirl around fraternal twins and their father, Louie, as they make their way from Soviet-era Kiev to New York City in the late nineties and early aughts. Socially adrift, father and sons search for meaning in their divergent romantic relationships. Louie embarks on a traditional heterosexual dating relationship late in life, Ivan is sexually opportunistic and omnivorous, and Misha is torn between his family and the prospect of a committed gay relationship. The brothers’ search for connection leads them through a multitude of subcultures, all depicted in vivid detail.

40 Wild Crushes: Stories by Lambda Literary Award Winner Jim Provenzano is comprised of new and previously stories, as well as excerpts from Provenzano’s forthcoming novels. He presents teenage lust in summer theatre, cheating boyfriends on “The Tonight Show,” a transgender performer on the rise, and an escapee from a pumpkin farm—among other vivid characters and stories. Varying from terse accounts of an anti-gay assault to a post-9/11 moment of resolution, Provenzano shares a diverse array of contemporary experiences in rural Ohio and New York City, at funerals and wrestling matches, inside Manhattan cathedrals and Paris museums.  


The Root by Na’amen Gobert Tilahun is a dark, gritty urban fantasy debut set in modern-day San Francisco, filled with gods, sinister government agencies, and worlds of dark magic hidden just below the surface. When a secret government agency trying to enslave you isn’t the biggest problem you’re facing, you’re in trouble. A darkness is coming, something no one has faced in living memory. It eats. It hunts. In The Root, a dark and surging urban fantasy, two worlds must come together if even a remnant of one is to survive.

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