There’s more to Australian drag superstar Courtney Act than meets the eye, and I’m not talking about the obvious tricks of plucking and tucking. Courtney Act, aka Shane Jenek, has forged a multimedia career based on talent and hard graft. If your only knowledge of Jenek is from RuPaul’s Drag Race then his memoir, Caught... Continue Reading →
Jack Martin’s life isn’t great right now. He’s being bullied at school by homophobes, lives with a parent who is at the end of her tether and hardly supportive, he’s full of talent but struggling to get by. Things change when Jack’s mum sends him away to San Francisco to live with his older brother.... Continue Reading →
Arthur Less is back. The titular star of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Less, is being put through the emotional ringer once more by his author Andrew Sean Greer and the results are the same. But the same isn’t a bad thing when you’re talking about a bestselling, universally praised, gay comedy drama with a slew... Continue Reading →
Matt Cain’s The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle is a heartbreakingly sweet story about how times of crisis can trigger moments of rewarding growth. Melancholic and romantic, it charts one man’s realisation that it is never too late to live life to its fullest. Albert Entwistle is a postman in an English country village. A... Continue Reading →
TJ Klune wraps up his YA superhero trilogy, The Extraordinaries, with Heat Wave which sees teenager Nick launching into his superhero career, as well as launching into his fully-fledged relationship with Seth. Quick note: being the last part of a trilogy, there’s no way to avoid spoilers for the previous books in this review. Nick... Continue Reading →
If you’re looking for a cute, contemporary gay romance to snuggle up with then Kris Ripper’s Book Boyfriend is a good place to start. Behind it’s rom-com trappings, it has hidden depths and a beautifully flawed lead character in PK. Preston ‘PK’ Harrington is an editorial assistant (and wannabe author) working at a book publisher... Continue Reading →
Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City has had many lives. From serialized chapters in The San Francisco Chronicle, to a series of novels, TV and radio adaptations, and a stage musical by Jake Shears. Now it has been turned into a charming graphic novel by Isabelle Bauthian and Sandrine Revel, potentially the first of a... Continue Reading →
Chris McCrudden is slowly carving out his own niche in sci-fi with his space comedy Battlestar Suburbia series, and the third entry Sashay to the Centre of the Earth, brings the action down to Earth; way, way down into the Earth. In McCrudden’s universe the “war with the machines” was less Terminator-style and more about... Continue Reading →
Jon Ransom’s debut novel, The Whale Tattoo, is filled with prose that picks you up in its wake and takes you on a journey. Complex, fraught and violent, The Whale Tattoo reads like an early Tracy Lett’s play - a steaming mix of blue-collar rage and menace. Joe Gunner is working in a chip shop... Continue Reading →
For some people, life starts at 40. For miserable, corporate manager Wallace Price, life started when he died. Better late than never. TJ Klune’s new novel, Under the Whispering Door, takes his breezy fantasy stylings and tackles a love story beyond the grave. When Wallace attends his own sparsely attended funeral, he meets Mei—a reaper... Continue Reading →
