Meet Colby, a struggling artist who works at his aunt's bookstore. His favorite distraction is Josh-especially the way Josh's T-shirt sleeves gird the curves of his biceps. But Josh tells Colby not to get any wrong ideas, so they're just friends-at least that's what Josh thinks. Josh has enough problems without getting involved in a serious relationship. For one thing, his parents don't know he's gay and want him to date the daughter of a business associate. Being handsome, rich, and popular in bed isn't all it's cut out to be. Now meet Crewe, an affluent accounting executive who lives with his wife in a big house overlooking the river. He's middle aged but still dreams about Farley, the locker room hunk at college. What Crewe did to him was shameful. Is it too late to make amends? Would it mean admitting he's not as straight as he thinks? Now imagine it's 1977, and you're at the disco, out on the dance floor, and the one you love slips his hands around your waist and buries them deep in the rear pockets of your jeans . . . Breezy and romantic, sexy but not graphic, Ten Good Things is a dialog-driven novella about trust, growth, forgiveness, breaking self-imposed limits, and reaching for the moon.

Kansas City is often seen as a mild-mannered metropolis in the heart of flyover country. But a closer look tells a different story, one with roots in the city- complicated and colorful past. The decades between World Wars I and II were a time of intense political, social, and economic change-for Kansas City, as for the nation as a whole. In exploring this city at the literal and cultural crossroads of America, Wide-Open Town maps the myriad ways in which Kansas City reflected and helped shape the narrative of a nation undergoing an epochal transformation. During the interwar period, political boss Tom Pendergast reigned, and Kansas City was said to be "wide open." Prohibition was rarely enforced, the mob was ascendant, and urban vice was rampant. But in a community divided by the hard lines of race and class, this "openness" also allowed many of the city's residents to challenge conventional social boundaries-and it is this intersection and disruption of cultural norms that interests the authors of Wide-Open Town. Writing from a variety of disciplines and viewpoints, the contributors take up topics ranging from the 1928 Republican National Convention to organizing the garment industry, from the stockyards to health care, drag shows, Thomas Hart Benton, and, of course, jazz. Their essays bring to light the diverse histories of the city-among, for instance, Mexican immigrants, African Americans, the working class, and the LGBT community before the advent of "LGBT." Wide-Open Town captures the defining moments of a society rocked by World War I, the mass migration of people of color into cities, the entrance of women into the labor force and politics, Prohibition, economic collapse, and a revolution in social mores. Revealing how these changes influenced Kansas City-and how the city responded-this volume helps us understand nothing less than how citizens of the age adapted to the rise of modern America.

Kansas City is often seen as a mild-mannered metropolis in the heart of flyover country. But a closer look tells a different story, one with roots in the city- complicated and colorful past. The decades between World Wars I and II were a time of intense political, social, and economic change-for Kansas City, as for the nation as a whole. In exploring this city at the literal and cultural crossroads of America, Wide-Open Town maps the myriad ways in which Kansas City reflected and helped shape the narrative of a nation undergoing an epochal transformation. During the interwar period, political boss Tom Pendergast reigned, and Kansas City was said to be "wide open." Prohibition was rarely enforced, the mob was ascendant, and urban vice was rampant. But in a community divided by the hard lines of race and class, this "openness" also allowed many of the city's residents to challenge conventional social boundaries-and it is this intersection and disruption of cultural norms that interests the authors of Wide-Open Town. Writing from a variety of disciplines and viewpoints, the contributors take up topics ranging from the 1928 Republican National Convention to organizing the garment industry, from the stockyards to health care, drag shows, Thomas Hart Benton, and, of course, jazz. Their essays bring to light the diverse histories of the city-among, for instance, Mexican immigrants, African Americans, the working class, and the LGBT community before the advent of "LGBT." Wide-Open Town captures the defining moments of a society rocked by World War I, the mass migration of people of color into cities, the entrance of women into the labor force and politics, Prohibition, economic collapse, and a revolution in social mores. Revealing how these changes influenced Kansas City-and how the city responded-this volume helps us understand nothing less than how citizens of the age adapted to the rise of modern America.