A whirlwind tour of San Francisco’s fabled queer bohemia in the waning days of the 20th century, as the city’s budget bon vivants work to save their eccentric lifestyles in the face of tech gentrification by LAMBDA award finalist Alvin Orloff. Harris, San Francisco’s most annoying gay barfly, doesn’t mean to be bitchy, passive aggressive, or insulting. But he’s so bedazzled by his own critical brilliance he feels morally obliged to share his scathing opinions with the world at any and every opportunity. This irritates no one more than his roommate, Maxine, an avant-garde transsexual cabaret singer. When she overhears him badmouthing her on the phone she flies into a rage and expels him from their apartment. This crisis couldn’t come at a worse time. The year is 1999 and the “dot com� boom has rendered cheap housing nonexistent, and Harris, who works as a part-time telemarketer, is—as usual—low on funds. Will he be able to convince one of his eccentric, semi-dysfunctional friends with a rent-controlled apartment to let him move in? Vulgarian Rhapsody immerses readers in a fading bohemia of queer dive bars, drag clubs, and countercultural cafes. The book’s narrator (a longtime frenemy of Harris who’s every bit as snarky and annoying as he is) tells the story with sadistic relish and an ironist’s eye for the absurd. Anyone feeling sickly from too many uplifting stories of personal empowerment, precious coming-of-age tales, or sugarcoated romances will find the perfect antidote in this hilariously acidic comedy of manners. A must-read for fans of Brontez Purnell, Phillippe Besson, and Ryan O’Connell.  

Gutterboys is a twisted tale of steamy gay sex and unrequited love in Lower Manhattan in the early 1980s. Filled with scenes of debauchery and explicitly depicted gay sex, this wanton outing portrays a carnal world of orgiastic delights that may never exist again. Jeremy, a shy 19-year-old, falls madly in love with Colin, a disturbed yet brilliant older hustler. Though Colin rejects Jeremy as a lover, he takes him on as a proté gé, introducing him to the hilariously depraved world of new-wave nightclubs and gay bars in the days before AIDS and the war on drugs. Innocent Jeremy, protected by the spirits of his beloved dead grandmothers - one a fiery Jewish socialist, the other a proper British matron - becomes increasingly unstable under the strain of his unreturned love. When Jeremy finally snaps, he reaches an understanding with Colin that he never anticipated.

In this rollicking send-up of traditional science fiction, an Earth Studies professor from the planet Zeeron decides to increase his university status by visiting Earth accompanied by Veeba 22, a chic hairdresser of the highest social order. What happens when they are mistaken for evil villains instead of fabulous celebrities? How do they escape to San Francisco, where they blend in surprisingly well? All hell breaks loose when they cross paths with the adolescent agony of Chester Julian, a gay Goth Holden Caulfield with acne. Part Jacqueline Susann romantasy, part cheesy Lost in Space episode, this gay comedy will delight any fan of pop culture literature.

***2020 LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FINALIST*** DISASTERAMA: Adventures in the Queer Underground 1977 to 1997, is the true story of Alvin Orloff who, as a shy kid from the suburbs of San Francisco, stumbled into the wild, eclectic crowd of Crazy Club Kids, Punk Rock Nutters, Goofy Goofballs, Fashion Victims, Disco Dollies, Happy Hustlers, and Dizzy Twinks of post-Stonewall American queer culture of the late 1970s, only to see the "subterranean lavender twilit shadow world of the gay ghetto" ravished by AIDS in the 1980s. Includes an introduction by Alexander Chee (How to Write an Autobiographical Novel. In Disasterama, Orloff recalls the delirious adventures of his youth-from San Francisco to Los Angeles to New York-where insane nights, deep friendships with the creatives of the underground, and thrilling bi-coastal living led to a free-spirited life of art, manic performance, high camp antics, and exotic sexual encounters, until AIDS threatened to destroy everything he lived for. In his introduction, award-winning essayist and novelist Alexander Chee notes, "There's a strange love I have for these times that can be hard to explain. How can I love what I lived through from a time that was as 'bad' as that? But as I read this, and those days came into view again, what I think of that love now is that there was a beauty to the beauty you found then that was made the more fierce by the horror of what was happening. If you could still find the worth of your life, still find sex, love, friendship, your own self-worth amid these attempts by the state at erasure and the ravages of the AIDS epidemic, then it had the strength of something forged in fire." Orloff looks past the politics of AIDS to the people on the ground, friends of his who did not survive AIDS' wrath-the boys in black leather jackets and cackling queens in tacky frocks-remembering them not as victims, but as people who loved life, loved fun, and who were a part of the insane jigsaw of Orloff's friends. Disasterama showcases Orloff's wit and poignancy as he relays the true tale of how a bunch of pathologically flippant kids floundered through a deadly disaster, and, struggled to keep the spirit of camp and radicalism alive, even as their friends lost their lives to the plague.

When 14-year-old Leonard decides to quit being a dweeb and instead joins the Burnouts, his 'good boy' persona is abandoned as he embarks on a comically painful journey of self-discovery through his unconventional friendship with Rick, an older Jesus-freak barefoot hippie.