Fall
entertainment previews: Books

September

Stephen Beachy, Some Phantom/No Time Flat (Suspect Thoughts Press). Bay Area novelist Stephen Beachy is best known for his New York magazine story last October that exposed the true identity of the young HIV-positive gay hustler and cult hero "JT LeRoy" as a 40-year-old woman named Laura Albert. Beachy's two novellas are understated and creepy and amply demonstrate how he could see through the smoke and mirrors of a great literary hoax.

Sulayman X, Adventures of a Bird-Shit Foreigner (Alyson). A young Thai-American man negotiates his passage to gay adulthood on the unforgiving Thai streets. The author (whose first novel was Bilal's Bread, also from Alyson) has lived in Bangkok for 10 years.

Joan Didion, We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live (Everyman's Library). Before The Year of Magical Thinking, Didion made her mark as the preeminent chronicler of Los Angeles at its dirtiest and dreamiest. Relive the Manson years with this collection of Didion's nonfiction.

Kim Powers, The History of Swimming(Carroll & Graf). A poignant, suspenseful memoir about the author's search for his suicidal twin brother, who in his late 20s mysteriously disappeared from Manhattan.

Lucy Jane Bledsoe, The Ice Cave (University of Wisconsin Press). After a harrowing solo journey to the High Sierras, Bledsoe reconnects with nature on a series of incredible true adventures from the Mojave Desert to Antarctica.

Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation (Knopf). The author of the best seller The End of Faith provides the perfect hostess gift for families who don't invite your partner over for Thanksgiving. Harris describes his book as "my best effort to arm progressives and secularists against the religious certainties of Christian fundamentalists--in about a hundred pages."

October

Gillian Kendall, Mr. Ding's Chicken Feet: On a Slow Boat From Shanghai to Texas (University of Wisconsin Press). Some people go out for cigarettes and never come back. Kendall shook off a boyfriend in Australia and signed on as English teacher and the only female crew member on a Chinese ship. Close quarters, strange foods, and seething pheromones--some of them quite possibly lesbian.

William J. Mann, Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn (Henry Holt). Described as "the first major Hepburn biography outside of her control," this book contains new material made available only since Hepburn's death, Mann puts forward some provocative theories about how Hepburn promoted her "dual sexuality" to spark interest on the screen and off.

November

Michelle Tea, Baby Remember My Name: An Anthology of New Queer Girl Writing(Carroll & Graf). Twenty-two emerging voices brought together by the dyke author (Valencia, Rent Girl) and cofounder of the road show Sister Spit.

Brian Whitaker, Unspeakable Love: Gay and Lesbian Life in the Middle East (University of California Press). Wear your pride shirt in Cairo and you will never complain about being stared at in Home Depot again. --Regina Marler