Man/Boy Love Books For Sale (Revised Listing)

[Roy Radow]

Just in time for gift giving, and those long winter nights-
Here is the newly expanded Ariel's Pages Booklist including
"FOR A LOST SOLDIER" by Rudi von Dantzig, and a few rare,
long out-of-print books (such as Hakim Bey's "Crowstone")
>from Coltsfoot Press.

Enjoy!

Roy

Books relating to man boy love are now available from Ariel's Pages
(see address at the end of this posting). Here is an EXPANDED and UP-
DATED (December 9, 1996) copy of their listing.

I know the people at Ariel's Pages and they are quite legitimate.
I am not personally involved in this service however and am only
posting this list FYI.

Any comments you may have regarding this booklist should be sent
to them (I did not write these descriptions). They would also be
interested in any additional books that you could recommend.

Yours in Liberation,

Roy

--
Roy Radow * Now: ra...@netcom.com * (was: r...@panix.com)
North American Man/Boy Love Association -For membership info & brochure
write to: NAMBLA, Dept. RR, PO Box 174, Midtown Station, NYC, NY 10018.
Send $5 a for sample Bulletin. Publications list available upon request.

*ACOLYTE PRESS BOOKS*

Acolyte Press was the world's best known publisher of man/boy love
literature. With the death of Frank Torey this past year Acolyte Press
has ceased operations. When our current supply of these books are gone
there will be no replacements.

Among the books listed below are also a few very rare, long out-of
-print titles from Coltsfoot Press (predecessor to Acolyte) which we
were lucky to obtain in limited quantity.

The Acolyte Readers Series, Various Authors. (Acolyte Press.)

In the long-running Acolyte Reader series, the short story format
allows for an impressive variety in each volume. Every book includes
serious authors of short fiction and masters of erotic prose including
Kevin Esser, Luis Miguelito Fuentes, Hakim Bey and Robert Campbell.
They also comprise less realistic pieces that really deserve the name
fairy tales: everybody lives happily ever after.

Acolyte Reader Five (192 pages)

One of the last stories by the late Robert Campbell follows a teen-age
tennis star through central Africa on a wild trip filled with the threat
of danger and the promise of love, Luis Miguelito Fuentes first story for
the series introduces the astounding, unique voice of a gifted teenage
writer; he was 14 at the time of publication of this sexy romp through
New York City in the 90s. Also included is an important translation of
a novella by Dutch writer Jef Last, about a 12-year-old threatened by
the guns of World War I and the prejudices of his own community.
SOLD OUT

Acolyte Reader Six (192 pages)

Bob Henderson's warmly romantic piece demonstrates why it's so hard for
some men to stop loving boys: there are just too many of them waiting to be
loved. Hakim Bey's "Yohimbe Poems" weave dances with words, remembering two
boys loved by the poet, and Jacques de Brethmas performs a comic turn with
a boy at his most intriguingly deceitful.
Order AR6 $15.50

Acolyte Reader Seven (192 pages)

Alan Edwards updates an ancient Spanish coming of age ritual in one
story and explores the confluence of locomotion and eroticism in another,
I.L. Ingels turns up the heat in a tale of a 13-year-old who cruises the
beaches in search of a lover.
Order AR7 $15.50

Acolyte Reader Eight (192 pages)

Kevin Esser's "One Last Time" begins at the ending and traces twin
themes of pain and pleasure that are never clearly separated, showcasing
the writer's unparalleled ability to sketch deeply human characters in
wildly erotic stories. Luis Miguel Fuentes offers his trademark no-holds-
barred imaginative autobiography in "Early Times," and Edward Bangor uses
pop culture to comic effect in "For Those About to..."
Order AR8 $15.50

Acolyte Reader Nine (192 pages)

Jotham Lotring's "Night Ride" reveals the subtle erotics possible on a
cross-country bus trip, and Christopher Monteriano filters the effects of
family friendships on a delicately blossoming love affair with a 15-year-
old. In Mark Derby's "Not Again," a schoolboy stigmatized for one same-sex
attraction finds in his next relationship with a boy the strength to stand
up to an abusive teacher.
Order AR9 $15.50

Acolyte Reader Ten (192 pp)

I.L. Ingles imagines the developing relationship between a teen-age boy
an his Japanese captor in a World-War-II interment camp and B.J. Freedman
chronicles the leisurely growth of affection between a runaway teenager and
a rock-and-roll drummer. Other tales are set in New Zealand, Mexico and
Scotland in perhaps the most international collection of Acolyte stories.
Order AR10, $15.50

Acolyte Reader Eleven (192 pp)

Kevin Esser's Santo Domingo is full of incident and emotion: love and
betrayal, passion, the threat of death and the promise of renewal. B.J.
Freedman's Brian's Dick is a considerably lighter story of the young
narrator's frustrating months long campaign to get a peek at the title
object. In Rocky, a lonely retired schoolteacher loves a boy and loses
him, but receives a special gift.
Order AR11, $15.50

Attic Adolescent, by Bob Henderson

Did paederasty die with the Ancient Greeks? Not if Bob Henderson's account
of the country in the mid 70s is any indication. This book of interconnec-
ted short stories and one novella recounts the amorous adventures of an
incurably romanffc expatriate Andreas, Takis, Pavlos, Achilles, Nikos,
Stelios, Stavros and Spiros are all loved, and all different. Some are
street-wise hustlers, others bourgeois schoolboys; some of Henderson's
passions are fleeffng and others stretch for years. A sexy and sensitve
account.
Order HAA, $22.00

Crowstone, by Hakim (Coltsfoot Press)

This sword-and-sorcery tale has developed an almost legendary status with
both boy-lovers and science fiction fans because for many years it's been
almost impossible to find a copy. On Qarnar, the fairest of the 108 moons
of Algol, a monk/thief meets a wandering warrior in a fight against air-
pirates; they band together in a quest that introduces them to a score of
boys: Jethael, greatest of the Temple dancers; blond Xiri of Thurenian
blood; tattooed Dragon from the Chromatic wastes; Ravinian the voyeur; and
pig-tailed sorcerer Varonael.
Order BCR, $22.00

Explosion, by I.L. Ingles (Acolyte Press, 384 pages)

Inspired by Lord of the Flies, I.L. Ingles created this novel of a
mixed group of black and white boys surviving in an African cave after
a nuclear war has devastated the earth. The boys build their own society
with a set of rules, but contradictions grow up immediately. Clothes, they
soon realize, are more trouble than they're worth, but the casual nudity
makes challenges to the prohibition against "playing sex" inevitable. The
struggle over sex becomes an emblem of the battle between freedom and
custom, between a past that conjured the disaster that left the boys by
themselves and a future that demands they create traditions of their own.
Order IEX $21.95.

The Fire-Worshiper, by Alan Edward (Acolyte Press, 192 pp)

Imagine what it would be like today if the old pagan religions of
Europe had not just survived the on-rush of Christianity, but prevailed.
Alan Edward has created such an alternate world. England in this tale
is a happy place, a society of advanced but semi-pastoral people where
talented boys sing and dance and openly make love in elaborate religious
celebrations. But the worshippers of Jaweh have not given up; driven
underground and onto a polluted island, their faith has grown ugly and
fanatic. They have begun kidnapping youngsters and forcefully converting
them. This is the story of 12-year-old Alric and his quest, along with a
local wizard, to rescue his lover, abducted and forced into the catacombs
of the dark faith.
Order EFW $15.50

Getting It On, by Dr. Joseph Winchester (Acolyte Press, 208 pp)

It's easy to doubt the veracity of the author's claim that his
"Homosexual Histories of Six Heterosexual American Boys" is nothing more
than the unadorned report drawn from his interviews with you boys and
adolescents. And if it fails at science, it doesn't succeed as great
literature, either. But; "one-handed reading," it offers verve and variety
and a veil of respectability.
Order WGI, $15.50

Growing Old Disgracefully, by Casmir Dukahz (Acolyte Press, 224 pp)

Casmir Dukahz confuses wordplay and foreplay, using both to produce an
explosive climax. These rollicking accounts of amorous encounters with
a bevy of teenage charmers are full of puns and double entendres, filled
with situations recalling French farce and slapstick comedy. Seldom is
erotic writing so humorous. Dukahz store of naughty anecdotes is apparently
unending, and he taps it to great advantage in this pseudo-autobiographical
record of a life spent in loving pursuit of boys. Growing Old Disgrace-
fully is the fourth volume in his partly satirical autobiography; woven
throughout is the story of 'Duke' and his flaxen-haired Baltimore born
favorite, Remy. Readers familiar with his earlier books will find Dukahz
has lost none of his literacy and none of his wit as he recalls happier
days before bigotry and hysteria spread across the land.
Order DGO $15.50

It's Okay to Say Yes, by J. Darling (Acolyte Press, 192 pp)

Subtitled: "Close Encounters in the Third World: The Adventures and
Misadventures of a Well-Traveled Boy-Lover," Darling's book is an account
of a dozen years he spent traveling the world. He has visited all those
places where a well-publicized boy-love "scene" exists, and many more where
it doesn't. Darling is revealed in these pages as a basically decent man
willing to suffer persecution, and even imprisonment, to experience the
fulfillment of his desire for physical love. Read with some insight, his
book also reveals, perhaps unintentionally, the prejudice and paternalism
Westerners often bring to their relationships with boys from far-off lands.
Order DIO $15.50

Kim, My Beloved, by Jens Eisenhardt (Acolyte Press, 192 pp)

Jens Eisenhardt describes an incredibly intense love in this auto-
biographical novel about a 28-year-old teacher and a pupil half his age.
Critics hailed it as a "very important work of erotic literature" when in
first appeared in Danish. This English translation lets American readers
enjoy Eisenhardt's precise mapping of the emotional journey hazarded by a
lonely man who follows his heart to a region proscribed by polite society.
Eisenhardt faithfully recounts both the joys and pitfalls of a relationship
whose passion must be hidden from the prying eyes of outsiders.
Order EMB $15.50

Lucky Lips, by Rob Elan (Acolyte Press, 224 pp)

Ernie Willet is 11 years old, handsome, popular and athletic. He still
struggles, though, with the grief of losing his father two years before.
He looks for emotional support from 16-year-old Rick, who lives down the
street, but it takes classmate Gordie Lewis to show Ernie what it is he
really wants from Rick. Rob Elan's account of a boy's discovery of the
world outside his home is warm, funny and more than anything, sexy.
Order ELL $15.50

A Natural Lizard Activity, by B.J. Freedman (Acolyte Press: Amsterdam)

This boy-love novel is set in California of the 70s amid the obsessive
fans of the Grateful Dead who style themselves Deadheads. Thirteen-year-old
Kim and his Pop are packed off on a transcontinental bus by Mom and her new
dope-dealing lover. Once a trendy professor, Pop had burned out his wits on
an overdose of scared mushrooms; by the time he and Kim end up in Venice
Beach, the child has definitely become father to the man. When a 31-year-
old coke dealer falls for Kim, it sets the stage for a comic, erotic trek
through the state of California as the teenager seeks to balance his
responsibilities to his family, his lover and himself. Freedman's casual
racism is a bummer, almost scuttling the novel's appeal. But his eye for
the realistic detail- emotional, geographic and sociological- makes the
novel worth the trip.
Order FNL, $15.50

Operation Jock, by C.R, Labarge (Acolyte Press: Amsterdam, 1995)

Operation Jock is very much like the problem novels aimed at juvenile
readers you might remember from the Scholastic books you used to order
through your English class in junior high school. Of course, I can't recall
a scholastic book where the protagonist's problem was anything like this:
how can 14-year-old Evan, just beginning to understand the joys of boy-boy
sex, integrate his sensitive lover into the gang of rowdy jocks that are
Evan's best friends. But Evan's other concerns would fit right into one of
Scholastic's extracurricular readers: how to convince his mother to let him
try out for junior varsity football and what to do about an anti-tax
activist who wants to cancel the school sports program to save money.
Order LOJ, $15.50

The Paggers Papers, by Richard Rawson (Acolyte Press, 192 pp)

For years a little Philippine village had been famous for taking
tourists on boat trips to a scenic waterfall. Western gays soon
discovered that many of the handsome, muscular boatmen were willing
to supplement their meager earnings with prostitution. Soon, their
younger brothers were drawn into the game, and vacationing boy-lovers
arrived in increasing numbers. In the mid-seventies, Western media
labeled the situation an example of child abuse and exploitation, and
local politicians built careers promising to crack down. This book
is one man's recollection of the village when man/boy relationships
were tolerated, and even encouraged. It's partly a nostalgic paean
to a boy-lover's lost paradise, partly a social document about boys'
sexuality as it can develop in a palliative environment. While Rawson's
memoir shows that the accounts of abuse were products of narrow prejudice,
his portrait of himself as a not-particularly-sensitive Westerner proves
that sex-tourism has complexities that deserve a more nuanced analysis.
Order RPP $15.50.

Panthology 3 and Panthology 4 (Coltsfoot Press)

These short-story collections provided the model for the Acolyte Reader
series published by Coltsfoot's successor, and many of the authors will
be familiar to fans of those anthologies. In Panthology 3: a whore's son
is set up to trap a boy-lover, only to find his own heart trapped; a rich
14-year-old falls in love with a gigolo; a young camper is abducted (to his
delight) from a train; and lots more. In Panthology 4: a 13-year-old-boy
robot has human feelings; a boy at summer camp falls in love with his
counselor; a boy-lover rescues two young beggars in Calcutta; and much
more.
Order PAN3 or PAN4, $22.00 each.

Pulling It Off, by Joseph Winchester (Acolyte Press, 192 pp)

Readers will differ on the validity of "Dr." Joseph Winchester's claim
that this book is a non-fiction account of the "masturbation practices of
American boys." Certainly, its value as a scientific document or even oral
history is quite limited. It might serve as a test of one hypothesis: it's
as hard to resist reading about jerking off as it is to resist doing it.
And it doesn't take a Nobel prize winner to predict that readers will have
as much trouble keeping their idle hands from becoming the devil's play-
things as do the boys depicted in the text. Perhaps that's what makes
Pulling It Off an paradigm of the scientific method--it encourages its
audience to launch its own experiments into the matter at hand.
SOLD OUT

Shakespeare's Boy, by Casmir Dukahz (Acolyte Press, 248 pp)

The final book and the only novel written by Dukahz before his death in
1988 is removed by centuries from his whimsical accounts of 20th Century
America. He uses the Elizabethan Age and the world of Shakespeare's Globe
Theater as the backdrop for the story of Ruy, orphan and actor. The 13-
year-old thespian achieves instant and tumultuous fame in the role of
Juliet, but his romances off-stage are as passionate as anything the
Immortal Bard ever envisioned. Seduced by tramps and kings, Ruy's gender-
bending on stage lends spice to homoerotic encounters that begin once the
curtain falls.
Order DSB $15.50

Singularities, Book 1 by Robert Campbell (Acolyte Press, 192 pp)

The stories in Singularities focus on man-boy relationships in a variety
of settings, punctuated with a series of parodies of newspaper advice
columns that would make Ann Landers blush--at the very least. Campbell's
vision spans a Caribbean island, a military prep school, a junior varsity
football team and a lonely outpost in the African desert. Though much of
the value of Singularities comes from the variety of plot and settings,
recurring themes provide an underlying unity to Campbell's writing. One is
the persistence, ingenuity and resilience of pederast relationships that
thrive even in the most hostile environments; another is the contrast
between the expansive joy of those relationships and the crabbed morality
of religious bigots who condemn them.
SOLD OUT

Something Like Happiness, by Kevin Esser (Acolyte Press, 202 pp)

Andy Damon swipes a picture of Caravaggio's Victorious Amor from his
small-town Midwestern library and launches himself on a libidinous
adventure that introduces him to a world of pot smoking, kiddie porn and
anything-goes sex parties. Along the way he meets a host of boys not so
different from himself: the black Spinks twins, Snickers and Deacon, Manny
and Fernando Fuentes, track star Timmy Jenco and Matthew, the neighborhood
paper boy. Some are "gay" and some are "straight," but they're all grist
for sexy Andy's mill. Esser captures the excitement of the young male
animal with exceptionally vivid prose and reveals a touching sensitivity
when Andy's sex-hunt becomes a search for true love.
Order ESL $15.50

Strange Catharsis, by Daniel Mallery (Acolyte Press, 240 pp)

When Richard Eldred takes a job as house parent at a boarding school
for problem children located in the wild Scottish highlands, he hopes
the isolation will restore the inspiration that's has seeped away after
a series of best-selling novels and film scripts. But he finds a growing
attraction to the boys at the school that suggests a deeply buried
motivation. There's Danny, a tough boy exploding through puberty, who
battles authority with his fists. And Hansa, a gentler, reserved boy
desperately seeking love. And Steve, whose perfectly developed runner's
body hides a heartsickness. As Eldred helps them solve their problems, he
finds a solution to his own alienation--but one that challenges him to
respond to feelings he's long suppressed. Mallery's compelling novel has
needlessly Gothic plot complications, but is both warm and sexy.
Order MSC $17.50

The Trucker and the Teens, by Louis Colantuono (Coltsfoot Press)

The title of Louis Colantuono's autobiography suggests a cheap porno
paperback, and when the book's at it's best, it reads like one, too.
Colantuono offers descripffons of the countless boys he encounters, and
attempts to suggest the emoffonal depths. of his relaffonships. But he's
obviously happiest wriffng dialogue like "Quick, Louie, I want you to do
my bongo. . . Bone me good." Twice jailed for sex with boys, Colantuono
created this unabashed record of his non-stop sex life between 1969 and
1975.
Order CTT, $22.00

*BIOGRAPHY*

Anarchist of Love by Hubert Kennedy (NAMBLA, 54 pp, sc)

Anarchist philosopher John Henry Mackay was recognized as an artist as
well as a political thinker -- this contemporary Richard Strauss set some
of Mackay poetry to music. He was also a founder of modern gay liberation,
offering a radical challenge to colleague Magnus Hirschfield’s leadership.
Finally, Mackay was a lover of adolescent boys who created a body of
literature, The Books of the Nameless Love, exploring his sexual feelings.
Hubert Kennedy's appreciation of Mackay reveals how the philosopher's
love of boys influenced his political thinking a how he lived out his
politics and philosophy in his life with boys.
Order KAL $5.50

The Basketball Diaries, by Jim Carroll (Penguin, 210 pp)

The book that was the basis for the hit movie has more wit, more truth
and more sex than the screen version (though it doesn't have Leonardo
DiCaprio). Apparently Carroll was too blase about peddling his meat to
homebound businessmen in the toilets of Grand Central Station for Hollywood
to deal with. So 20 years after the publication of his memoirs, the silver
screen gets a sanitized version for public consumption. If you want the
real stuff, here it is.
Order CBD $12.50

Boys Like Us, edited by Patrick Merla

Subtitled "Gay Writers Tell Their Coming Out Stories," this collection
of autobiographical pieces is a vivid window into the sexual awakening
of boys. The accounts include Samuel Delaney's realization (at age 11)
that his lust for other boys at summer camp made him somehow different,
Michael Nava's single night of sex with his 16-year-old high school
debating partner and Matthew Stadler's fruitless attempts to seduce his
friends in eigth grade. Other writers, like Michael Carroll, Douglas
Sadownick and Rodney Christopher describe happy and successful experiences
with other boys (at age 12, 15 and 18 respectively). Edmund White remembers
a trip to Mexico at 14 where he had sex for the first time, with a grown
man who played piano in the hotel bar.
Order MBL, $25.50

Calamus Lovers: Walt Whitman's Working Class Camerados, edited by Charley
Shively (Gay Sunshine Press, 220 pp)

Calamus Lovers examines the poet's relations with common men of the
19th century. Edward Carpenter, an English lover, wrote: The unconscious,
uncultured, natural types pleased him best." Many letters from some of
these "natural types," often unpublished until now, place Whitman's Calamus
poems in context and provide a unique insight into gay life in those years.
Charley Shively identifies correspondents as Whitman's lovers and pinpoints
for the first time Fred Vaughan as the inspiration for the poems. Besides
introductions and commentaries on the letters, Shively presents a selection
of Whitman's gayest poems.
Order SCL $11.50

Drum Beats: Walt Whitman's Civil Boy Lovers, edited by Charley Shively
(Gay Sunshine Press, 256 pp)

Drum Beats offers exciting letters to poet Walt Whitman from fifty
soldiers and lovers, including the drummer boys and other youth who made
up the mostly-teenage Union army during the Civil War. Charley Shively's
introduction contains a startling re-vision of the war and of Whitman's
poetry. Published from original manuscripts, the letters provide eloquent
testimony of the common soldier's love for Whitman ("Wound Dresser and
Good Kisser"). Shively has also found remarkable new material on Abraham
Lincoln's gay love life and on the homosexual underworld of John Wilkes
Booth.
Order SDB $12.50

For a Lost Soldier, by Rudi von Dantzig

During the winter of 1944 in occupied Holland. 11-year-old Jeroen
is evacuated to a small fishing community on the desolate coast of
Friesland, where he meets Walt, a young Canadian soldier with the
liberating forces. Their relationship immerses the young boy in a
tumultuous world of emotional and sexual experiece, suddennly cur-
tailed when the Allies move on and Walt disappears. Back home in
Amsterdam, a city in the throes of liberation fever, Jeroen searches
for the soldier he has lost. A child's fears and confused emotions
have rarely been described with such depth of understanding, and
seen as it is from the child's viewpoint, it invites total empathy.
Order DFL, $16.50

Growing Up Gay in the South, by James T. Sears (Harrington Park Press, 560
pp, hc)

Thirteen biographies provide the starting point for examination of the
unique pressures faced by gay children in the South, including family name
and family honor, the pervasiveness of religious fundamentalism and the
intensity of adolescent culture. Jonathon Kozol called it "a wonderful
portrayal of the way all kids grow up--the cliques that form, the sense of
pecking order, the fear of being spurned..." Sears also highlights the
courage of young people who find themselves sexual rebels and make the most
of their rebellion.
Order SGU, $21.50

Memories That Smell Like Gasoline, by David Wojnarowicz (Artspace Books,
61 pp)

David Wojnarowicz was one of the most provocative artists of his
generation. In prose and pictures, he explores memory, the longing for
love and sexuality in the specter of AIDS in Memories That Smell Like
Gasoline. His extraordinary life, beginning with his days as a "kid
prostitute in New York" before his tenth birthday, is recalled in ten
cartoon/comic narratives, in paintings of Third Avenue porno movie
houses (before Heath Department closures in 1988), ten diary entries
and a series of dream-like memoirs. These episodes from artists life
create a sometimes devastating, always sublime document about coming
of age in America.
Order WMT $16.50

The Orton Diaries, edited by John Lahr

Popular playwrite Joe Orton was beaten to death with a hammer by his
lover, Kennith Halllwell, in 1967. Halllwell then committed suicide,
leaving a note that claimed Orton's diaries would explain everything.
The playwrite's account of the last eight months of his life, published
in this volume, certainly don't leave anything out.They include a record
of the -two months Orton and Halllwell spent in Tanglers, where both
indulged in unlinhibited encounters with Morrocan teenagers. Edited by
Orton biographer John Lahr, the diaries reveal both the sharp wit and the
fascination with sleazy sex that mark Orton's work for the stage.
Order LOD, $16.50

Reflections of a Rock Lobster, by Aaron Fricke (Alyson Publications, 116 pp)

Aaron Fricke was a gay teenager who came out in a big way: he went to
court to win the right to take another guy as his date for the senior prom
in Cumberland, Rhode Island. Just a year earlier, Fricke said, he would
never have dreamed about being open about his gay feelings. Reflections of
a Rock Lobster is his autobiography, a gripping story about growing up gay
and coming to terms with being different.
Order FRR $7.50

Sudden Strangers, by Aaron and Walter Fricke (St. Martin's Press, 112 pp)

The lawsuit that won Aaron Fricke the right to bring a male date to his
high school prom made him a celebrity, but it meant curiously little in his
relationship with his father. Walter's approval of his son's plan was less
an acceptance of Aaron's life that a withdrawal from it. In the six years
that followed, both embarked on journeys that moved them far apart (and,
coincidentally, brought each of them to jail) but never quite severed
the bond between them. Sudden Strangers frankly examines their loving
but always- uneasy relationship.
Order FSS $10.50

Ryan White: My Own Story, by Ryan White and Ann Marie Cunningham

Ryan White was 18 when he died on April 8, 1990; five years before the
town of Kokomo, Indiana had denied him the right to attend public school
classes because he had AIDS. As he battled against that discrimination,
White caught the attention of the world. A modest, somewhat shy boy, he
accepted the role of spokesperson for people with AIDS and used it to teach
the world a valuable lesson in compassion, courage and humanity. His book
reveals that behind the admirable poise this attractive teenager displayed
in his encounters with celebrities like Michael Jackson, Elton John and
Elizabeth Taylor, Ryan struggled with heartache in the few private moments
he could claim. The contrast between the vital, smiling Ryan in the many
photographs included in the book and the tender simplicity of his
conversation with his mother over what clothes to bury him in is typical of
the range spanned by this heartbreaking, hopeful story.
Order WOS $6.50

*FICTION*

Ambidextrous, by Felice Picano (Hard Candy Books, 336 pp)

Critics howled that Picano's novel about "The Secret Lives of Children"
was unbelievable, because real boys, 11 to 13 years old, never had sexual
adventures like those detailed here. And Picano pointed out that his book
was a "memoir in the form of a novel" and the adventures in Ambidextrous
were his own. The irony is that Picano's suburbs in the Fifties weren't
remarkable only for sexual opportunities, both hetero and homosexual, it
offered to kids in middle-class neighborhoods. His deeper revelation is
that adults imposed a version of their children's lives that had nothing
to do with the reality the youngsters lived. Critics thirty years later
are still loath to admit the truth. But Picano's account of the erotic
adventures of his playmates is an attempt to recognize children as fully
human, with needs and interests that they pursue regardless of adult
objections.
Order PAM $8.50

The Badboy Book of Erotic Poetry, edited by David Laurents
(Masquerade Books: New York, 1995)

This 400-page collection includes at least two dozen poems explicitly
about boy-love. Nine fine pieces by Antler open the book, and throughout
the volume. pederasty is easily the favorite subject in this comprehensive
anthology of gay poetry about sex. Prudish boy lovers might be embarrassed,
since the poems are often about love occasionally about romance but always
about sex- kissing, fondling, fucking, sucking and a host of interesting
variations on that theme. The variety of voices Badboy hears on the
subject of boy-love is as impressive as the number. And to find them
chiming loudly in a chorus of gay writers celebrating all sorts of sex
is refreshing.
Order BBE, $7.50

Barely Legal, edited by John Patrick (Star Books, 507 pp, sc)

What's legal in one place and time. Patrick points out in his introduc-
tion, is often forbidden in another, and some of the boys in the stories
collected here would be off-base in more conservative jurisdictions.
Generally, though, the stories are of older teens. and while the boys are
always young, they are rarely innocent. Hustlers and porn stars turn up in
a surprising number of tales, though with more than 500 pages of stories.
guys who prefer the shy, boy-next-door-type will find some pieces to please
as well.
Order PBL, $16.50

The Bavarian Chronicles I, by Julius (Avenue Services, 100 pp, sc)

"The Legacy of Slava," part one of The Bavarian Chronicles, is presented
in this steamy adult comic book. Like the pictures, the story is realistic
enough to be genuinely sexy but with an air of the exotic that makes it
very definitely a fantasy. Slava's a young refugee in World War II who
trades a blow job for a loaf of bread. His deal with a hunky German
soldier sets off a sexual daisy chain that eventually includes daddies and
their teenage sons, strapping Polish farmhands, the soldiers of four
different armies and even Granpa Otto. Julius devotes each page to a single
drawing of his lusty band of wartime lovers, depicting Aryan boys with
uncut dicks, older teens just sprouting pubic hair and full grown hirsute
hunks with massive cocks, all with beautiful bodies and a potent energy.
Order JBC, $21.50

The Bavarian Chronicles II, by Julius (Avenue Services, 100 pp, sc)

Volume II continues Julius/ sexy tale of smooth-skinned boys and big-
dicked daddies frolicking in wartime Germany. Readers might experience
guilty pleasures as German schoolboy Klaus flirts with fascism as a species
of homoeroticism -- but it's Klaus' anti-nazi father, a sturdy socialist
blacksmith, who turns out to be the hottest hunk of all. And the political
charicatures are a thin veneer to carry an unrestrained fantasy about a
world where sex between men and boys is common currency. With 100 full-page
drawings to tell the tale, The Bavarian Chronicles II offers a dizzying
collection of portraits of man-boy couples sucking, fucking, kissing and
snuggling.
Order JB2, $21.50

Bedrooms Have Windows, by Kevin Killian (Amethyst Press, 134 pp)

Some of us can remember a moment in the Seventies when it seemed important
to figure out what persona David Bowie, who'd already burned through Ziggy
Stardust and Aladdin Sane, might adopt next. Kevin Killian's novel of
teenage years in Smithtown, Long Island elevates that moment with a
glittering, shiny prose and a story line studded with dark sexual secrets.
Kevin Killian's Kevin Killian is having an affair with Carey Denham, who's
old enough to be his father and Kevin wants to meet Carey's teenage son.
The window to this bedroom showcases a fabulous, funny house of mirrors,
where everything appears more than once, and always distorted.
Order KBH $11.50

Bom-Crioulo, by Adolfo Caminha (Gay Sunshine Press, 141 pp)

One hundred years ago, an impoverished Brazilian writer published this
tale of a 15-year-old cabin boy and the brawny black sailor driven to
possess him sexually. Caminha himself had been a teenage midshipman on
a Brazilian navy ship; his novel, writes translator E.A. Lacey, "remains
a truly revolutionary work: revolutionary in its denunciation of slavery,
sadism, cruelty and man's exploitation of man, revolutionary in its
revelation of society's complicity, its conspiracy of silence regarding
all these abuses; revolutionary in its startling attitudes toward
homosexuality, towards race, towards interracial and interage contacts.
...Its message echoes beyond our time."
Order CBC $9.50

The Boy Harlequin, by Girard Kent (Gay Sunshine Press, 205 pp, sc)

An outstanding series of stories--some funny, some deeply romantic--that
returns again and again to the theme of man-boy love. The author struggles
with the same contradiction that faces many of the protagonists in these
stories he's well aware of the allure of sex with adolescents (and writes
about it vividly), but isn't quite ready to admit the strength of his
attraction to himself. Kent explores his own conflict through the lives of
his characters, delivering insight into the mind of a reluctant boy-lover
as well as compelling, sexy stories whose satisfactions can be shared by
any reader.
Order KTB, $9.50

The Boy Without a Flag, by Abraham Rodriguez, Jr. (Milkweed Editions, 115 pp)

This book of interrelated short-stories gives a voice to the Hispanic
teenagers of today's South Bronx, a voice the Puerto Rican author sharpens
in his own dialogues with the teenagers hanging out in the South Bronx
neighborhood where he grew up. "These are the kids no one likes to talk
about," Rodriguez explains. "They are seen as the enemy by most people.
I want to show them as they are, not as society wishes them to be." Here
are stories filled with hope and pathos: Angel, thirteen years old and
living on the street, learns that dealing crack is his best alternative to
burglary. Sixteen-year-old Elba goes out dancing, leaving her wailing baby
alone in her apartment.
SOLD OUT

A Boy's Own Story, by Edmund White (Plume, 218 pp)

An intelligent, alienated youngster comes to grips with his sexuality
in a novel by an acknowledged master of modern prose. A Boy's Own Story
is set in the years that lead from childhood to maturity, full of romantic
notions and disillusionments. A bittersweet novel of adolescent sexuality,
it evokes memories of the perplexing rites of passage, the comic sexual
experiments, the first broken heart and the thrill of forbidden longing.
Order WBO $11.50

The Boys on the Rock, by John Fox (St. Martin's Press, 146 pp, sc)

Set in the Bronx in the 60s, John Fox's novel details the emotional life of
a high-school swimmer who becomes involved in Eugene McCarthy's idealistic
campaign for president and discovers a passion for more than politics. His
affair with a college student from the campaign has all the magic of first
love but also the threat of a broken heart. When his older lover realizes
that a gay lifestyle threatens his plans for a life in politics, both
struggle to make a difficult choice between the demands of the heart and
the realities of homophobia.
Order FBR, $10.50

Closer, by Dennis Cooper (Grove Press, 131 pp, sc)

The characters of Closer, California-perfect denizens of the LA-area
punk scene of the 80s, recoil from emotion and commitment as though they
were allergic to caring or compassion, but desire persists. Driven, with
increasing desperation, to find in sex something more than the collisions
of flesh and blood, they play with drugs and violence. A bleak and some-
times horrifying vision, Closer offers no pat solutions to their alienation
but somehow suggests an ineffable presence on the edge of the void.
Order CCL, $10.50

Cody, by Keith Hale (AlyCat Books, 191 pp)

Steven Trottingham Taylor, "Trotsky" to his friends, is new in Little
Rock. Washington Damon Cody has lived their all his life. Yet, when the
teens meet in a high school classroom, there's a familiarity, a sense that
they've known each other before. Their friendship grows and develops a
rare intensity, but Trotsky's afraid to act out his sexual passions with
his new best friend. It takes the 14-year-old sleep-over pal of Trotsky's
younger brother to get him over that hurdle. Rich in both romance and
tragedy, Keith Hale's adolescent love story has a special charm.
SOLD OUT

Costa Brava, by Frits Bernard (Southernwood Press, 80 pp)

Written in Dutch in the summer of 1958 and published in the same language
two years later, this novella treated with tenderness and sensibility a
theme, pedophilia, which was at the time almost never discussed in public.
By the time it was first translated into English in 1982 it was much sought
after in Dutch and had been pirated in a German edition. The story of the
love between a 12-year-old Spanish boy during that country's civil war and
a South American tourist who rescues him is reported without overt
sexuality but with warmth and feeling. Hubert Kroilus' illustrations in
this second English printing make graphic the erotic subtext that lies
unspoken in the tale itself.
SOLD OUT

Cry to Heaven, by Anne Rice ( Ballantine Books, 565 pp, sc)
Order RCH $8.50

That Day at the Quarry, by Tom Shaw

Michael Bronski writes in his introduction that That Day at the Quarry is
about what it means to become a men in America. For the narrator of this
autobiographical novel, becoming a man means becoming a queer, earning the
right to suck cock. It's a privilege not granted without struggle, as his
friends are boarding school kids with a shared interest in the tortures
inflicted by Native Americans on their captives and the interrogation
practices in Nazi prisoner-of-war camps. When the boys begin to express
their fascination on the bodies of each other, they create a rite of
passage that delivers both knowledge and pleasure both purchased at great
price. Not quite a tale of torture, it s certainly one of the most rigorous
initiation available. This is sadism not as a fantasy game played by men
with store-bought whips and expensive leather but as a very real quest
organized by teens with the odds and ends of garage and junk yard. Bob and
Jim are winners in a poker game that delivers the narrator into their hands
for 24 hours. He discovers in that night and a day the very limit of what
his body can endure and finds at that limit the beginnings of an erotic
life.
Order STD. $10.50

Entries from a Hot Pink Notebook, by Todd Brown

While coming-of-age stories have provided many of the classics of gay
literature, Todd Brown's novel of a Reagan-era teen breaks new ground.
Ben, his hero, sits watching TV with his Christian fundamentalist grandma
as Oprah tries to convince America that gay is good. Brown tells the story
of Ben's first love and difficult exit from the closet in a narrative that
reveals a particularly post-modern gay teen's life with insight sensitivity
and humor. Ben's dysfunctional family and small-town community could
easily have been rendered as stereotype, but Brown weaves enough surprises
into his tale so that his hero's experiences are representative, but never
sink to the level of cliche.
Order BEF, $11.50

Fenny Skaller, by John Henry Mackay (Southernwood Press, 166 pp)

John Henry Mackay's poetry had already won him the description of an
"anarchist lyricist" when he began writing The Books of the Nameless Love
in 1905. Fenny Skaller is one of those books, a novel in which the Scotch-
German philosopher traces the lives and loves of a man in his forties as
he reminisces over a collection of photographs of boys he has known. His
night-time reflections reveal pathos and heartbreak, but also a growing
self-awareness and acceptance of himself as a boy-lover. With the dawn,
Fenny Skaller finds hope and happiness. The volume also includes short
prose pieces from The Books of the Nameless Love.
SOLD OUT

The God in Flight, by Laura Argiri

Precoclous Simion Satterwhite is just 16 when he arrives at Yale University
in 1878, fleeing an abusive fundamentalist father. He meets 31-year-old art
professor Doriskos Klionarios and embarks on an emotionally reckless court-
ship. Argiri's style recalls the great Victonan novels and the works of
Chades Dickens, creating a world-where love is pure and passion triumphs
(after 478 compelling pages!) over pain.
Order AGI, $14.50

Huck and Billy, by James Medley (Masquerade Books, 316 pp, sc)

The current anti-sex hysteria has had a curious effect on gay erotica, and
the evidence is here in Huck and Billy. Obviously, guys want to read about
sexy boys. but publishers are nervous about age-of-consent laws. even as
they apply to fictional characters! So Huck and Billy is full of 18-year-
olds who look 15, 20-year-old high school students and various other
literary dodges. Medley gets to write about boys without really admitting
it. Rest assured, though, however many candles Medley's character's are
burning on their birthday cakes, this is a book about adolescent sex. The
long title story is a murder mystery about teenage hustlers. But it's in
the dozen shorter pieces that round out the book that Medley's most
effective: a brief introduction to sketch an appealing character and
set up a situation, then straight to the sexy climax.
MHB. $6.50

In Youth Is Pleasure, by Denton Welch (Exact Change, 254 pp)

William Burroughs names Denton Welch as the writer who "has most directly
influenced my own work." It's a measure of Welch's power that an author
whose style is, on the surface, so completely different, names him as a
mentor. But what is shared by the Burroughs brutal novels of sex, drugs
and death and Welch's narrative of life in the British countryside is the
boy-hero who sees a different world beneath the reality shared by others.
And they key to that world is in to the homoerotic gaze of the youth in
question. The volume also contains a fragment from Welch's journal left
unfinished at his death at the age of 33.
Order WYP $15.50

The Liar, by Stephen Fry (Soho Press, 277 pp, sc)

A comic novel about a likable young British student who simply can't tell
the truth, The Liar is both a series of hilarious setpieces and a tightly
plotted parody of espionage thrillers with more genuine surprises than many
authentic examples of the genre. From boarding school tart to duplicitous
coach of a boy's cricket team to college campus forger (passing of a play
about pedophile incest as a genuine undiscovered manuscript by Charles
Dickens!), Adrian's just getting started. Critics cite Oscar Wilde, Evelyn
Waugh and even Monty Python as Fry’s predecessors, and this first novel
demonstrates he's worthy of such praise.
Order FTL $12.50

The Lusty Gods of Bramapur, by Julius (Avenue Services, 100 pp, sc)

Another erotic comic by Julius, this tale starts in a boarding school
called Masxonhurst, where Andrew meets with his teacher for special
tutoring sessions. After some hands-on lessons in the sexual customs of
exotic lands, Andrew gets to make his own investigations. An incredible
journey introduces him to the secret traditions of an ancient culture and
to the horny modern men and boys who keep the sexual rites alive. Every
page is a picture, with just enough text to thread together these images of
guys throbbing, thrusting, hugging and cumming in every imaginable position
(and a few positions that defy the imagination!).
Order JLG, $21.50

The Man Without a Face, by Isabelle Holland (Harper Keypoint, 157 pp)

Originally published in 1972, the novel that was the basis for the hit
movie differs from the screen version in several interesting ways. Instead
of exposing a town's intolerance about a relationship it can't understand,
Holland focuses on the boy's own conflicts. And where the film suppressed
the physical element of this love between a teacher and pupil, it's a key
facet in the novel.
Order HMW $5.50

Mike and Me, by Anonymous

Mike joined his junior-college gymnastics squad to bulk up on muscle.
But between his buffed teammates and his sexy younger cousin, he ends up
burning more calories in the bedroom that on the gym floor. The locker
room becomes his cruising ground, and since cousin Kevin's a star on the
wrestling team, every young jock in town gets a spot on Mike's sexual wish
list. By the time the gymnastics squad heads for the regional finals, the
cream of Minnesota's athletic community is lining up for a minute with
Mike. Non-stop sex action and not much else, Mike and Me will keep you
turning the pages- with one hand, at best.
Order AMM, $6.50

My Three Boys, edited by John Patrick

With more than 500 pages to fill with stories about boys having sex in
threesomes {and foursomes and moresomes), editor John Patrick has room
to explore several satisfying themes hot young athletes finding out what
male bonding really means, sexy teens from various countries and cultures
(Italian, Hispanic. Asian and more), romantic encounters and sleazy ones as
well and the importance of the automobile as a sex toy. The complete novel
My Three Boys is included, an impressive work that features erotic writing
good enough to maintain interest over 20 chapters of steamy tropical sex.
Boasting both quality and quantity, My Three Boys is a collection of
erotica that promises maximum satisfaction.
Order PMT, $16.50

My Worst Date, by David Leddick

Hugo looks like a typical Miami teenager; the 16-year-old hangs out
at the beach, works a part-time job to save money for college and dates
someone his single mother wouldn't approve of. But Hugo is anything but
typical. His job isn't at the local pizza place, like he told his mother,
but at a gay bar, where he dances as a go-go boy. And the person he's
seeing on the sly is a much older man--who's also dating Hugo's mother.
David Leddick's comic first novel uses the glamorous ambiance of South
Beach Miami to good advantage and offers a cast of amusing characters.
According to Quentin Crisp, "the descriptions of sex make D.H. Lawrence
seem like Barbara Cartland, but it's about more than sex."
Order LMW, $24.50

The Mysterious Skin, by Scott Heim

When a Little Leaguer wakes up with a bloody nose in the crawl space of
his small-town Kansas house with no memory of how he got there or what
happened to him in the past several hours, it triggers an obsession that
focuses on abduction by a UFO. But his search for an answer leads him
to a former Little League teammate, now a teenage hustler with a definite
penchant for older men he traces back to the coach of that team. Heim's
vivid prose is as open as the grain fields of the Kansas farm belt where
his story takes place. If this were the Kansas Dorothy knew, nothing in
Oz would have surprised her. Heim's first novel is an impressive literary
debut and an absorbing tale, by turns sexy, funny and troubling.
Order HMS, $14.00

Persecuted Minority, by Frits Bernard (Southernwood Press, 98 pp)

A fifteen year old school boy falls in love with his teacher. His father
discovers a love letter. The teacher and the boy spend a day by the sea,
and the consequences are disastrous. Persecuted Minority asks if a love
condemned and outlawed can survive. In the Netherlands, at least, the book
helped to overturn the laws criminalizing homosexual relationships for boys
between 16 and 21 years old. The Southernwood Press edition of this
historic novel is beautifully designed and printed.
Order BPM $11.50

The Persian Boy, by Mary Renault (Vintage Books, 419 pp, sc)

History tells us much about the conquests of Alexander the Great,
whose military campaigns brought virtually all the world he knew under
his domination. And history even hints of his relationship with Bagoas.
a Persian slave who became the emperor's lover. But it takes a work of
imagination to breath life and passion into this age-old tale. Mary
Renault has provided that imagination in a moving and convincing novel
that follows Bagoas from the home of his honored father to a life of
degradation and whoredom and finally to the bed of the most powerful
man of the ancient era.
Order RPB, $14.50

Playing Soldiers in the Dark, by Mark Dueweke (Bagman Press, 294 pp)

"Mad" Donnelly is a physics teacher with a fiancee who's getting tired
of waiting for him to make it to the altar. Jim Brandeker is the teen
-age son of the leading family in the small town where he's grown up.
Everybody, gay and straight, is trying to get Jim in bed, but it takes
his eccentric instructor to help him sort out his own emerging sexuality.
And that just compounds the confusion of all the other players in this
comic drama. Dueweke makes poetry from Fruit of the Loom briefs and the
rasp of zippers unfurling. His lyrical prose serves as foreplay while
the novel builds to a steamy climax.
SOLD OUT

Ragged Dick, by Horatio Alger (Signet Classic, 186 pp, sc)

The first successful book by the writer who became the most renowned author
of boy's fiction in history. As the introduction to this new edition notes.
Alger's books relied on a formula: poor but honest boy makes good, thanks
to hard work and the help of a older male friend. But that formula meant
some-thing real to Alger (who was dismissed from the ministry over charges
of "unnatural" relationships with boys--charges he never denied). Today
Alger is remembered as the apostle of unfettered capitalist competition
rereading his books, one is struck that, more than the world of commerce
where his boys labored to succeed, Alger champions the warm bond between
a generous man and an attractive boy that provided both of them with a
respite from the cut-throat world of the market and the street.
Order ARD, $6.50

Rolling the R's, by R. Zambora Linmark

Still two years shy of puberty, the hero of R. Zamora Linmark's first novel
is ready and eager to come of age. Edgar's too busy to do his fifth grade
homework because he's building a queer identity for himself, taking "No-
Doz, Folger's and Coca Cola" to fuel endless hours of watching skin flicks
and Charlie's Angels. Lip synching to Donna Summer along with his own gang
of bad girls, he dreams of kissing Scott Baio from Happy Days while getting
real-life sex education from the grade-school janitor while the other kids
play football at recess. Rolling the R's rushes like a roller coaster,
mixing all-American pop culture with the unique polyglot heritage of the
Hawaiian Islands. But anchoring this wild ride is a poignant feeling for
what it's like to be a boy who knows he's queer- and knows what he's up
against- years before anyone else is ready to acknowledge his feelings.
Order LRT $23.00

Runaways/Kid Stuff, by John Patrick, editor (Star Books, 635 pp, sc)

The respective titles pretty much define the specific themes of this
two-books-in-one collection of a seeming endless supply of teen sex.
Runaways mixes fiction with true-life accounts of homeless boys whose
experience range from romantic encounters with older dream lovers to
humiliating bouts of S&M action as boy sex-slaves. Kid Stuff contains
more carefree pleasures, adolescence recalled in stories like "Game
Night, My First Lesson" and "Matty Makes the Team."
Order PRD, $16.50

Seduced by John Patrick, editor (Star Books, 639 pp, sc)

Seduced has all the hot sex familiar to fans of Patrick's other books
but adds a bit more romance than usual. Lots of stories of teen-age boys
sampling sex for the first time, exploring the eroticism of innocence.
Far less innocent is a long account- presented as true- of a 6-story boy
brothel that functioned in the U.S. through the 1950s and early 1960s.
Finally, a complete novel subtitled "The Erotic Confessions of a Teen
Idol."
Order PSD. $16.50

The Sex Offender, by Matthew Stadler

In this scary tale from the not-to-distant future, a teacher who has sex
with one of his students is sent for mental-reconditioning and given a new
identity. As Mr. Uh-uh, the offender uncovers a secret world that mocks
the puritanism of his society and finds that true passion draws him
inevitably away from the "normalcy" of a world where love can be a crime.
Both a darkly comic story and a sophisticated analysis of identity and
sexuality, Stadler's ambitious novel is an important and enduring work.
Order SSO $13.50

The Singalong Tribe, by Kent Ashford (Gay Men's Press, 182 pp)

The callboys of the Singalong Pension work with one aim in view: to
escape the poverty and hardship of Manila. Amid that squalor that
tourists consider exotic, the boys have only their bodies and their
cunning to keep themselves alive. Vividly set in the Philippines,
this is a story of money, sex and the quest for social justice. Kent
Ashford spent many years as a journalist in Southeast Asia, and he
uses his first-hand knowledge of the region to provide realism to
his tale. The Singalong Tribe also shows genuine concern for the
people of the Philippines and provides a fascinating vision of
their culture.
Order AST $9.00

Superfag, by Daniel Curzon (Igna Press, 218 pp, sc)

Daniel Curzon's satirical novel opens with God sending his son to earth on
a mission to rid the world of homophobia. Dubbed Superfag instead of Jesus
Christ, this younger Son of God nearly faces of crucifixion of his own when
he’s caught giving a pubescent boy a blow job in a tree house. He escapes,
barely, and is launched on a series of adventures that hilariously high-
light bigotry and hypocrisy in politics, religion, the media and "just
plain folks." Curzon, one of the pioneers of gay fiction, takes on an
entire herd of sacred cows in a funny novel that honors the original
radical spirit of gay liberation.
Order CSF, $11.50

The Swimming Pool Library, by Alan Hollinghurst
(Vintage International, 336 pp)

This stunning literary debut was a sensation and a bestseller in both
England and America, enthralling and darkly erotic. William Beckwith,
a young gay aristocrat leads a life of pleasure and promiscuity. His
pursuit of pleasure began with boyhood adventures with schoolmates and
continues with his cruising London, an eye open for the young and willing
working-class partners he prefers. When he meets elderly Lord Nantwich,
an old African hand seeking a biographer, Beckwith learns of another era
of boy-loving when the consequences were often disastrous. Bristling with
wit and spunk, Hollinghurst's novel is absorbing and delightful.
Order HSP $13.50

Talking to Strange Men, by Ruth Rendell (Pantheon Books, 280 pp, hc)

Ruth Rendell is the best mystery writer working today. In Talking to
Strange Men, she weaves with a sure hand the lives of an enthusiastic
schoolboy, an embittered shop clerk and boy-lover trying desperately
to avoid temptation and further problems with the law. When the clerk
stumbles across a coded message, he thinks he's discovered an actual
espionage ring, rather than an elaborate game of spy-vs.-spy between boys
at rival British boarding schools. He decides to hook his ex-wife's new
lover into the affair. That sets boy and boy-lover on a collision course
with terrifying consequences, in a plot with enough surprises to keep it
compelling through its conclusion. Along the way, savor Rendell's brisk
prose and here eye for telling detail. A special purchase makes it possible
for Ariel's pages to offer this hardcover book at a paperback price.
Order RTT, $9.50

Terre Haute, by Will Aitken (Delta, 274 pp)

"I'm going home and I'm going to tell my father exactly what you did to
me." Author Will Aitken imagined these words in the mouth of a 15-year-old
boy, then built this novel around them. Sex, for a young boy, is a great
discovery. But when a young boy is betrayed by love, sex can become a
powerful weapon-especially when used against a married man. Terre Haute
is the story of one very memorable year in the life of Jared McCaverty,
who has just discovered sex, but has not yet discovered what it means.
Exploring his feelings with the tough new kid in school and the urbane
director of his small town's art museum, Jared comes to realize the power
and the peril offered by his sexuality.
SOLD OUT

That Day at the Quarry, by Tom Shaw (Outbound Press, 156 pp, sc)

According to Michael Bronski's introduction, That Day at the Quarry is
about what it means to become a man in America. For the narrator of this
autobiography novel, becoming a man means becoming a queer, earning the
right to suck cock. It's a privilege not granted without struggle, because
his friends are kids with a shared interest in the tortures inflicted by
Native Americans on their captives and the interrogation practices in Nazi
prisoner-of-war camps. When the boys begin to express their fascination
on the bodies of each other, they create a rite of passage that delivers
knowledge and pleasure, both purchased at great price. Not quite a tale of
torture, it does describe the most rigorous initiation imaginable.This is
sadism not as a fantasy game played by men with store-bought whips and
expensive leather but as a very real quest organized by teens with the odds
and ends of garage and junkyard. Bob and Jim are winners in a poker game
that delivers the narrator into their hands for 24 hours. He discovers in
that day the very limit of what his body can endure and finds at that limit
the beginnings of an erotic life.
Order STD $10.50

Touched, by Scott Campbell (Bantam Books, 313 pp, hc)

When 12-year-old Robbie Young comes home from the mall and tells his
mother, "Jerry Houseman's been touching me," he's not prepared for the
power of his announcement. The revelation does far more than end the
year-long relationship between a small town mailman and a boy beginning
to feel the restless independence of adolescence. Scott Campbell's novel,
narrated in turn by Robbie's mother, by Jerry himself, by Jerry's wife and
by Robbie (fifteen years after the fact) chronicles the harrowing results
of a collision between love and law. Like each of the characters, readers
too will be touched by the cruelty of a system that offers to solace to
neither man nor boy and serves only those hungry for revenge.
Order CTD $24.00

Try, by Dennis Cooper (Grove Press, 199 pp, softcover)

Simultaneously deadpan and queasily raw, Try is the story of Ziggy,
the adopted teenage son of two sexually abusive fathers whose failed
experiment at nuclear-family domesticity has left him stranded with
one and increasingly present in the fantasies of the other. He turns from
both of these men to his uncle, who sells kiddie-porn videos on the black
market, and to his best friend, a junkie whose own vulnerability inspires
in Ziggy a fierce and awkward devotion. In Try, Cooper illuminates with
utter clarity the need to possess wholly something that will fill the
profound emptiness of the human soul.
Order CTR, $12.50

User, by Bruce Benderson (Plume/Penguin Books: New York, 1995)

Bruce Benderson's User presents a society just as scary- and it's our own!
Benderson's portrayal of a street hustler and dope addict named Apollo is
both hilarious and unsparing: it only hurts when you laugh. Apollo's
violent encounter with the bouncer in a porno theater puts him at the
center of a circle of sharply observed characters: Detective Pargero, who
investigates the assault on his Times Square turf with an interest that's a
little more than professional, Baby Pop, the 13-year-old son of the victim,
a math genius junior-high dropout who's already turning tricks on his own,
and one of Apollo's ex-tricks who's dying of AIDS and loneliness.
Order BUS $11.50

When Jonathan Died, by Tony Duvert (Gay Men's Press, 174 pp)

Like many novels, this book is the story of a love affair. What is less
usual is that Jonathan, an artist, is almost thirty when the story starts,
while Serge is a boy of eight. Duvert delivers a cool and matter-of-fact
portrayal of a sensitive theme, a welcome alternative to the hysteria
surrounding the age taboo in the English-speaking countries. Like all
lovers, Jonathan and Serge create their own microcosm of domestic and
erotic ritual, but theirs is a world that shatters on contact with the
surrounding society. Duvert's novel is extraordinary because he makes
the psychology of his characters more compelling rather than sensational,
forcing readers to accept their relationship on its own terms. Nor does
the author flinch from a heartrending conclusion that even Jonathan,
deeply in love, sees all along is inevitable.
Order DWJ $14.50

Yes Is Such a Long Word, by Richard George Murray
(Entimos Press: Amsterdam, 1995).

Another extreme is explored in Yes Is Such a Long Word, a tiny,
elegant book of very short poems by Richard George Murray. Where the
Badboy collection scores with variety, George Murray's work explores one
theme in depth. Even the few poems not explicitly about loving boys (which
are mostly about loving cats!) seem to share the emotional ambiance of
those that are. George Murray also sticks resolutely to the short form,
often fitting more than one poem on a single page. Yet he's able to imbue
impressive wit and warmth into a few short lines. The work opens up
his world, so the brief poems invite readers to explore in their
imagination the pictures quickly sketched in the poet's scenarios.
This is the kind of poetry book to bring a smiles to people who don't
like poetry.
Order GYI, $15.50

Young Tom, by Forrest Reid (Gay Men's Press, 169 pp)

The works of Forrest Reid powerfully conveys the essence of childhood.
This first book of his trilogy about the life of English lad Tom Barber
is published by Gay Men's Press, although the story contains no overtly
gay content. But the gay ambiance is nonetheless palpable. Reid evokes
rather than explains, and this classic 1944 novel captures him at the
height of his powers.
Order RYT $9.50

Youthful Days, by Anonymous (Masquerade Books, 170 pp)

This Victorian tale of sex among public-school boys was considered
shocking in its day and heavily censored. It's now available in its
uncut form. Amusing as a period piece, with the typical British
preoccupation for spanking bare bottoms, it's also pretty sexy.
Four men from the upper classes make romp on Devonshire beaches,
in the halls of family castles and in the back streets of Paris.
SOLD OUT

*PERIODICALS*

Dirty, edited by Chris Leslie

Before we had pornography, we had dirty books. Those under-the-counter
creations had a grit and vitality editor Chris Leslie finds missing in
the "buffed boys" and "California gym queens" whose perfect (or airbrushed-
to-perfection) looks dominate gay porn today. In many ways, his Dirty
magazine is a throwback to that earlier era of smut. With its loving focus
on banjee boy culture, though, its thoroughly modern, and its reviews of
cruising sites, public sex scenes and hustler hangouts is positively up-
to-the-minute. The magazine also features the photography of David
Millspaugh, dirty personal ads and true-sex letters from readers.
Order DY + Issue Number (1-7 available), $3.50 each.

Dirty #7, edited by Chris Leslie

The latest issue of the post-mod porn magazine devoted to the delights of
the "spunky, horny, funky banjee" includes photos by David Milspaugh and
Rick Castro, a delicious Dirty adventure and all the Dirty fun you've come
to expect from the first six issues. But like each of the first half-dozen,
issue seven has a flavor (or izzat flava?) all its own. (Back issues still
available; be as Dirty as you wanna be.)
Order DY + Issue #, $3.50

The Everard Review, edited by C. Bard Cole (J&H Publications)

This iconoclastic periodical isn't afraid to challenge the popular
wisdom of current "progressive" gay thinkers by examining, with some
sympathy, stereotypes of fags and dykes trashed by an earlier generation
of activists. That’s one of a variety of provocative strategies that
guarantees that the Everard Review will contain pieces that delight and
others that disturb. Issue one: Gay Identity and Gay Dissent, Alan
Gurganus interview, poetry, fiction and reviews. Issue two: Teenage Sex
(A Retrospective), The Joy of Butch Sex, A Brief History of the Gay
Pornographic Cinema.
Order EV1 or EV2, $5.00 each.

GAYME, edited by Bill Andriette

The newest national gay periodical is fast becoming the most popular
and is already, undoubtedly, the hottest. Gorgeous graphics complement
incisive political commentary, fiction by important new writers and
intelligent coverage of the arts.

Gayme 1.1: Already a collector's item, a limited number of copies of
the magazine that launched this publishing phenomenon are still on hand.
Fiction from Kevin Esser, a report from a Berber oasis in Egypt and an
interview with the director of For a Lost Soldier.
SOLD OUT

Gayme 1.2: Tony Duvert's ABCs of Desire, Boyd McDonald's last words,
Will McBride photos and fiction by Stephen Dueweke. Limited supply only.
SOLD OUT

Gayme 2.1: Harry Hay offers a new vision for the 90s; Mark Pascal on the
politics of cocks, dick and penises; photography by William von Gloeden and
contemporary studies of the male nude; 20 pages of short fiction; and more.
Order G2.1 $6.50

Gayme 2.2: E. Carlotta tours a Mexican bathhouse; Mark Pascal writes
on Disgust/Desire; recent photos by Bernard Faucon and Larry Clarke
reviewed; fiction by Stephen Dueweke and Rod Downey; Hakim Bey recalls
pirate utopias; Mitzel ponders youth and aging; Tom Reeves surveys the
state of gay liberation.
Order G2.2 $10.00

Handjobs Magazine, November 1996

Billed as "Ball Gripping Daddy Boy Stories," this monthly magazine focuses
on sexual experiences between boys and older lovers--not just daddies, but
uncles, big brothers, friendly neighbors, coaches, ministers, etc. Name
your boy-love fantasy, and you'll likely find it here, along with letters
>from readers, sexy comic strips and line art, personal ads and more. The
current issues includes "Draining Dad's Log," "Taking the Title" (boy
bodybuilder scores) and the illustrated story "Overall Boy."
Order H1196, $5.00

I Am, edited by Chuck Dodson

This 'zine by self-proclaimed "pedosmile activist" Chuck Dodson is
over-stuffed with a seemingly random assemblage of cartoons, diatribes,
collages, ravings, drawings, letters, odd thoughts, naval gazing, cut-outs
and all manner of what-not. The chaotic layout style forces you to search
to find the gems, and some of the hand-scrawled postings are near-
illegible. In the end it's the obsessive, excessive nature of I Am that
lends it an identity. The best way to read I Am is to submit to the raging
cataracts that mark this stream-of-consciousness bricolage.
Order AM + Volume Number (5-9 available), $14.00 each

Three illustrated booklets, by C. Bard Cole

C. Bard Cole is a writer, editor and artist whose work exploits an
interesting contradiction: faithful attention to the details of a personal
experience creates work that has a general relevance. The rough drawings
make Cole's self-published chapbooks fresh and immediately appealing; the
prose brings you back for a second look.

Fag Sex in High School: Cole's deft combination of spare narrative and
evocative drawings has an emotional power that comes as a delightful and
moving surprise. This pocket-sized comic book begins with wry observations
of high school life likely to ring true for lots of gay guys, but becomes
more complex as the narrative takes a deeper tone.

Cum & Roses: This book of "rock-&-roll homoerotica" is almost all
pictures. Words serve as ironic titles and prickly barbs, delivering
great fun at the expense of rock icons like Axl Rose and Elvis Presley.

Tattoed Love Boys: Working in a larger format, Cole expands his prose,
with stories taking center stage and drawings of skaters, punks and college
guys serving as an intriguing counterpoint.
Order CBP, $5.00

Koinos

A bilingual (German/English) review of pederasty, Koinos covers the
history and culture of boy-love, examines response to the phenomenon
in various countries and showcases the work of the finest contemporary
photographers of adolescents.

Koinos 1: French moral history; the island of Sumatra.
SOLD OUT

Koinos 3: "Barefoot in France"; in memoriam, River Phoenix; Caravaggio.
SOLD OUT

Koinos 4: Portugal; boy sopranos; the Berlin Film Festival.
SOLD OUT

Koinos 5: South Vietnam; North Africa.
Order KO5 $11.50

Koinos 6: Now Available
SOLD OUT

Koinos 7: Now Available
Order KO7 $11.50

Koinos 8: Now Available
Order KO8 $11.50

Koinos 9: Now Available
Order KO9 $11.50

Koinos 10: Now Available
Order KO10 $11.50

Koinos 11: Now Available
Order KO11 $11.50

Made in the USA, edited by Renato Corazza

An all-photo magazine that celebrates youth with a series of photo
collages of boys old and young at work and play. Editor/publisher Renato
Corazza displays a keen eye and a warm heart.

Made in the USA #1 (Summer/Fall '94)

The historic first issue; only a few copies remaining.
Order US1 $22.00

Made in the USA #2 (Winter/Spring '95)

Made in the USA #2- it's new, friendlier format sets it apart from, it's
bigger brother, with plenty of room for its collages of beautiful boys,
Plus theme pages celebrating the Seven Deadly Sins like you've ever seen
them before. And "Soccer Madness" captures the excitement of the world's
most popular sport pursued by spirited young athletes.
Order US2 $22.00

Made in the USA #3

If a picture is really worth 1,000 words, Made in the USA is a veritable
encyclopedia devoted to the delights of boys. Issue number three features
color covers. A section on pets shows boys with donkeys, rabbits, tigers
and a really big pig, in addition to the expected dogs and cats. Photo-
collages mix elements in unexpected ways, with proof that verbal vocabulary
can manage some pretty sly political commentary.
Order MUSA3 $22.00

Issue #4 Now Available
Order MUSA4 $22.00

Issue #5 Just Printed
Order MUSA5 $22.00

Ophelia Editions Catalog

It is not generally the policy of Ariel's Pages to include the works of
visual artists, either painters or photographers. Ophelia Editions offers
the work of many recognized masters, including Jock Sturges, Sally Mann,
and Wilhelm von Gloeden. The catalog also includes books of literatures
and belles lettres, sociology and the politics of censorship, and naturism.
Order COE $3.00

Paidika: The Journal of Paedophilia

This scholarly journal of pedophilia has earned mainstream respect with
its attention to research and wide-ranging curiosity. Paidika devotes
serious attention to issues that simply would not be discussed if the
magazine did not exist.
Order PA + Volume Number (5-12 available), $16.50 each

Paidika 5: Boy-love in the Urdu; sculptor Jerome Duquesnoy.

Paidika 6: Pederasty in Pre-Roman Gaul; Boy love in Central Asia.

Paidika 7: Interview with John Money; the CRIES affair.

Paidika 8: Special Women's Issue-"A Crush on My Girl Scout Leader; Pat
Califia; review of King Fu Master.

Paidika 9: Theo Sandfort on children's sexuality; Dutch age-of-consent
laws.

Paidika 10: Guest editorial, poems and drawing by Graham Ovendon,
interview with Gilbert Herdt

Paidika 11: Hubert Kennedy on Karol Szymankowski's boy-love novel; Gode
Davis on the satanic ritual abuse phenomenon.

Paidika 12: Now Available

*NON-FICTION*

The Age Taboo, edited by Daniel Tsang (Alyson Publications, 178 pp)

Tsang centers this collection of essays on man/boy love around the
issues of gay may sexuality, power and consent. He has labored to include
disparate voices in the discussion, with pieces from feminists Kate Millet
and Pat Califia as well as the editors of Lesbians Rising. Gay and lesbian
teenagers, some themselves in cross-generation relationships, are also
represented, and the subjects of childhood, racism and ideology are
explored. The work both captures a historical moment at the end of the
70s, when most of the pieces were written, and continuing questions that
divide the gay and lesbian community to this day.
Order TAT $9.50

The Boston Sex Scandal, by Mitzel (Glad Day Books, 148 pp)

When singer Anita Bryant launched a campaign in the mid 1970s to portray
all gay men as "child molesters" and "kiddie pornographers," police round-
ups were launched in Los Angeles, New Orleans, Boston and other cities,
with sensational press charges of rape and child abuse. In Boston, gays
fought back in an unprecedented manner: gay men weren't child molesters,
they insisted, because consensual relationships between men and teens
aren't as sexual abuse. Mitzel, in a sassy tone that matches the radical
resolve of the activists whose campaign he documents, captures the police
misconduct, political grandstanding, courtroom drama and courageous
resistance that marked the Boston Sex Scandal.
SOLD OUT

Boys on their Contacts with Men, by Theo Sandfort (Global Academic
Publishers 176 pp)

A book written for the general reader about Dr. Sandfort's study of 25
Dutch boys between the ages of ten and 16 who were currently involved in
sexually expressed friendships with adult men. None of the relationships
had been disturbed by intervention by the authorities, and all of the boys
viewed their older friends and the sex they shared in a positive manner. An
appendix presents complete interviews with three of the boys.
Order SBM $17.50

Boys Speak Out, by various authors (NAMBLA, 1996 edition)

More than a dozen teenagers tell the world just what their sexual
relations with adults mean to them. Also included are a report from
a gay British teen and reprints of interviews from Theo Sandfort's
study of Dutch boys involved in sexual friendships with men. David
Thorstad's introduction explains the genesis and importance of this
affecting publication.
Order BSO $5.50

Chicken Hawk (Video, Stranger than Fiction Film)

Your chance to view the film that sparked controversy in every city it
was shown. Why did Newsday's reviewer call Chicken Hawk frightening?
Simply because, given the chance to present a point of view clearly,
NAMBLA's spokesperson make too much sense. This film is certainly no
endorsement of boy-lovers; filmmaker Adi Sideman gives NAMBLA's opponents
ample time to state their views and even takes a few cheap shots in his
editing and presentation. But the chance to hear the words of boy-lovers
unmediated by indignant talk-show hosts, hyped-up studio audiences, know-
it-all "experts" and hysteric parents is enough of a toehold for the truth.
Nothing hides the obvious pride, sincerity and decency of the men who risk
harassment, prison and even death because they refuse to hide their love of
boys. Chicken Hawk gives some notion of the price these men have paid, in
especially poignant scenes. This film caused a sensation, in the end, not
because what NAMBLA said was so shocking, but because it was sensible.
Order VCH $40.00

Children's Sexual Encounters with Adults, by C.K. Li et al (Prometheus
Books, 343 pp, hc)

This detailed report of a study conducted at Cambridge University
presents findings that conflict with much popular wisdom. "Sexual
encounters between boys and adults are surprisingly common... with no
particular consequences." Li and his co-authors include a statistical
analysis of a survey on the sex histories of male students at the college
and draw some provocative conclusions from the data. They also include
extensive excerpts from students about their sexual encounters during
childhood and adolescence. The book also contains a skillful demolition
of sexologist David Finkelhor's pseudo-scientific position that adult-
child (and even adult-adolescent) sexual encounters are always unethical.
SOLD OUT

Crime Without Victims, by the "Trobrians" Collective (Global Academic
Publishers, 150 pp)

Danish sexologist Dr. Praben Hertoff provides the introduction for this
series of three essays and 16 interviews. The format allows for an
impressive variety of opinions on pedophilia. There are interviews with
an attorney specializing in the defense of pedophiles, adults involved
sexually with children, youngsters who have experienced relationships even
the mother of one such boy. Most of the youngsters reported that sexual
friendships with adults were a positive force in their lives, but the book
doesn't ignore the problems posed by man/boy encounters.
Order BCV $16.50

Loving Boys: Volume One, by Edward Brongersma (Global Academic Publishers,
336 pp)

This is the first volume of a two-volume treatise on boy-love in history,
in other cultures and in our own. Dr. Brongersma reads all the European
languages and quotes extensively from an amazing variety of sources. He
discusses current prejudices against boy-love, exposes posturing and
dishonest reasoning in the modern "mind industry," shows how boy-love has
persisted in all lands, all cultures and in all times of recorded history.
An immense, scholarly work, with nearly 50 pages of bibliography alone, it
also features an almost inexhaustible supply of anecdotes and case
histories of real boys and men. Brongersma's book deserves a place on the
shelf of every thoughtful man who finds himself, sometimes at least, drawn
to adolescent or pre-adolescent boys.
Order BLB1 $26.50

Loving Boys: Volume Two, by Edward Brongersma (Global Academic Publishers,
512 pp)

This is the second (and final) volume of Dr. Brongersma's immense and
enormously readable study. Half again as big as the first book, Dr.
Brongersma covers in great detail the negative aspects of man/boy love
(real and imaginary), sexual oppression versus sexual liberation, and
finally sex and erotic contacts with boys-what really happens during
intimacy between men and boys. This is a supplementary bibliography, a
subject index and a register of names and sources for both volumes. This
represents without a doubt the most thorough examination of the subject
ever made.
Order BLB2 $31.50

Male Intergenerational Intimacy, edited by Theo Sandfort, el al
(Harrington Park Press, 325 pp)

This is a groundbreaking look at new historical, legal, sociological and
cross-disciplinary research on sexual intimacy between men of different
generations. The book isn't limited to the usual political and
psychological arguments about whether such relationships should be
permitted or persecuted. Instead, the authors reveal a broad range of
interests, including a look at the relationship between a turn-of-the-
century artists and the boy who was his favorite model, a study of 2500-
year-old Greek inscriptions some claim are the ancient equivalent of men's
room graffiti and a sophisticated look at the social construction of
childhood sexuality.
Order SMI $21.50

Male Prostitution, by Donald West and Buz de Viliers (Harrington Park Press,
358 pp, sc)

The work by leading sex-researchers is based on interviews with hundreds
of London "rent boys." Though the work is a scholarly study conducted under
the auspices of Cambridge University, the authors use the plain language
of the prostitutes themselves to reveal the details of their lives. The
interviews include information on prices, as well as transactions that go
sour; unusual, rare and interesting client requests, threats of blackmail
and violence (on both sides!) and prostitutes as lovers. Male Prostitution
combines rigorous research with a relaxed style and lack of prudish
restraint.
Order WMP $19.50

Two Teenagers in Twenty, edited by Ann Heron
(Alyson Publications, 186 pp, hc)

This new edition of Heron's original book reprints 24 of the stories from
One Teenager in Ten and adds 20 more pieces reflecting the lives of gay
and lesbian teenagers in the 12 years since the first book was published.
Sadly, the young people represented report many of the same problems with
homophobia, rejection by family and friends and legal sanctions on their
sexuality. But the strength and hope that marked the original volume also
persists.
Order HTT $17.95

Male Prostitution, by Donald West and Buz de Viliers
(Harrington ParkPress, 358 pp)

This work by leading sex researchers is based on interviews with hundreds
of London "rent boys. Though the work is a scholarly study conducted under
the auspices of Cambridge University, the authors use the plain-language
of the prostitutes themselves to reveal the details of their lives. The
interviews include information on prices, as well as transactions that go
sour; unusual, rare and interesting client requests, threats of blackmail
and violence (on both sides!) and prostitutes as lover. Male Prostitution
combines rigorous research with a relaxed style and lack of prudish
restraint.
Order WMP, $19.50

Paedophilia: A Factual Report, by Frits Bernard (Enclave, 101 pp, hc)

This slim volume reports on scientific research conducted among pedophiles
regarding several different questions. Dr. Bernard includes analysis of
long-term effects on children in relationships, the age preferences of
pedophiles, and their mental health and sociability. The book, translated
>from the Dutch, also includes a lengthy bibliography of Bernard's writing.
Order BPF $18.50

Regarding Proposed Changes to Article 240B of the Dutch Penal Code, by
Lawrence A. Stanley (Lawrence A. Stanley, Esq. 160 pp)

They're all here: the celebrated photographer, the unsuspecting parent
with a roll of family snapshots, the cops banging at the door, the
fomenting prosecutor, the overzealous social worker, the FBI the judges
and jury and the children caught in the middle. Read this and shudder.
Attorney Lawrence Stanley has written a fascinating and informative
analysis of the social misconceptions fueling child pornography hysteria.
Citing a number of recent cases of government censorship and police
harassment, Stanley untangles the facts from the myths behind the continued
assault on contemporary photography and personal liberties. As an attorney
who has worked at the heart of the child obscenity issue, Stanley exposes
the tortured logic of prosecutors and warns of the tragic consequences of
legal policies that purport to protect, but in reality hurt, children. He
reports cases of police pressure imposed on "victims" to force confessions
of harm where, in fact, there was no harm. It is a tale of lives
disrupted, reputations shattered, and artistic freedoms trampled under the
heels of runaway moral zeal. Stanley's book includes a bibliography of
more than 175 books containing images that might suffer the censor's ax, as
well as 25 b&w plates by photographers of serious merit who work includes
full frontal nudity of both male and female children.
Order SWP $20.00

Talk Back!, by Lesbian and Gay Media Advocates (Alyson Publications, 120 pp)

A training manual for would be activists-and armchair activists-Talk Back!
will teach you how to fight sloppy reporting and outright lies in the media
as well as generate stories that present a more realistic picture of our
community. With sample letters to use as guides, this book's suggestions
for do-it-yourself protest can be put into action immediately.
Order LTB $5.50

Threatened Children, by Joel Best (University of Chicago Press, 232 pp, hc)

American media-including TV news shows, Hollywood movies and slick
periodicals seems to delight in the continually rediscovered "fact" that
children are in danger from assorted sadists, perverts and pedophiles, more
today than ever before. Sociologist Joel Best takes a close look at this
claim and finds it falls far short of the truth. (One is example is his
analysis of the media's treatment of Halloween, which the media now treats
not as the night for youngsters to play trick-or-treat but a time to report
largely imaginary incidences of psychopaths hiding razor blades in candy
apples.) Best looks at the reasons for this pervasive misreporting. His
conclusions point to a troubling irony: a society mobilized by endless
scare stories about children does little to protect them from real dangers
like ignorance, poverty and ill health.
Order BTC $16.50

Varieties of Man/Boy Love, edited by Mark Pascal (Wallace Hamilton Press,
124 pp)

Pederasty has been an important part of gay sexuality and a phenomenon
that's taken many forms. This collections suggests some of the many
different things man-boy relationships have meant to the people in them,
and what political and social sense they have made out of them. Personal
accounts flavor Tom Reeves' anecdotal portrait and David Thorstad
"Conversation with a Boy Lover" in 1978. Hubert Kennedy and Steven Adrian
Smith contribute historical accounts from Germany and England.
Order NJ8 $9.50

A Witchhunt Foiled, by David Thorstad (Wallace Hamilton Press, 91 pp)

This history of a hiccup on the part of the police state recounts one of
the most heartening David-and-Goliath battles of modern times. On one side
was the North American Man/Boy Love Association, a group founded in 1978 to
support consensual sexual relationships between boys and men. On the other
side was the Federal Bureau of Investigation, using their police power to
harass and destroy legitimate political organizations. Near the end of
1982, the Bureau claimed that it had discovered photographs that NAMBLA had
been involved in the kidnapping of a boy who had disappeared several years
earlier. NAMBLA activists were not only able to prove that the FBI was
willing to manufacture evidence and lie to the media to press its absurd
case against the group; spokespersons from the organization had the guts to
take the spotlight of the national media and turn the tables on the cops.
Order NWF $7.50

Young Gay and Proud, edited by Sasha Alyson (Alyson Publications, 119 pp)

A resource book for high-school students exploring their sexuality and
preparing for coming out, Young, Gay and Proud mixes practical advice
with chapters calculated to boost self-esteem in the face of homophobia.
Included is a chapter of famous gays and lesbians in history. It's
interesting, in this book for teenager, how many of the gay men included
on that historic list loved boys, though this isn't acknowledged in the
thumbnail biographies of their lives presented in the volume.
Order GYG $5.50

*TALES FROM AROUND THE WORLD*

The Delight of Hearts, translated by E.A. Lacey (Gay Sunshine Press, 234 pp)

Subtitled "what you will not find in any book," this anthology from the
Arab Middle Ages was compiled by Ahmad al-Tifashi almost a thousand years
ago. But with its focus on "strange facts, anecdotes and jokes," al-
Tifashi's collection proves that camp was alive and well even then. Chapter
headings (like "the wittiest and most refined poems about hustlers") make
it immediately apparent this is no dry-as-dust history. In fact, the book
is alive with smart-talking queens, wily hustlers, lecherous johns, love-
sick poets, passionate boy-lovers and cowering closet cases.
Order LDH $11.50

Gay Tales and Verses from the Arabian Nights, edited by Henry M. Christman
(Banned Books, 100 pp)

The Arabian Nights gave us the stories of Sinbad the sailor and Ali Baba
and the 40 thieves. Thanks to modern scholars willing to research and
translates long-hidden examples of "Islamic indecency" contained in the
original manuscripts, the Arabian Nights can give us much more. Henry
Christman has chosen tales of seduction, of infatuation and of ecstatic
love and sex. He also includes poems by the love-sick and the love sated.
SOLD OUT

Gay Tales of the Samurai, by Ihara Saikaku (Alamo Square Press Books, 110
pp, sc)

The samurai warriors of feudal Japan are legendary in the West for their
courage, loyalty and strict devotion to the code of honor known as bushido.
Less familiar to those who learned of bushido through movies chronicling
the swordplay and intrigue of samurai life is the tradition of gay love
between these fierce fighters and their adolescent pages or wakashu. The
Japanese record of this courtly love, the way of shudo, extends back 300
years to Ihara Saikaku's Glorious Tales of Homosexuality. Gay Tales of the
Samurai features selections from Saikaku's books translated by E. Powys
Mathers. Based on true stories handed down over generations, these accounts
reveal both the yearning for ideal love and the dark samurai preoccupation
with death, including the custom of seppuki, or ritual suicide by
disembowelment.
Order SGT, $11.00

Homosexuality and Male Bonding in Nazi Germany, by Harry Oosterhuis, Ph.D.
and Hubert Kennedy, Ph.D. (Harrington Park Press, 271 pp, sc.)

Before Hitler's rise to power, Germany was the home of an impressive
youth movement and perhaps Europe's most advanced gay movement--and
quite often the two overlapped considerably. These radical roots of gay
liberation might be forgotten had they not been recorded in Der Eigene,
an early German gay journal. Even so, the writings were largely ignored
after Nazism crushed the movement, and many have never before been
translated into English. This book rescues those landmark documents and
presents a timely challenge to modern gay politics unwilling to include
youth sexuality,
Order GHM, $16.50

The Kindness of Strangers, by John Boswell (Vintage, 488 pp)

Historian John Boswell noticed a dirty secret of Western civilization:
throughout classical antiquity and the Middle Ages, the abandonment of
unwanted children by their parents was a widespread practice. In this
solidly researched but compelling and readable study, he examines why
so many parents of every class gave up their children, "exposing" them
in public places, donating them to the Church or, in later centuries,
delivering them to foundling hospitals. He shows what might happen to
these children, who might be reclaimed by their biological parents or
condemned to lives of slavery or prostitution. And he illuminates
the moral codes, both pagan and Christian, that condoned abandonment.
SOLD OUT

The Love of the Samurai, by Tsuneo Watanabe and Jun-ichi Iwata
(Gay Men's Press, 158 pp, hc)

This intriguing and lively study depicts homosexuality as central to the
traditional culture of Japan. Its flowering took several forms, beginning
with the way of chigo, or the Buddhist monks and their love for servant
boys from nine to 17 years old. Later traditions include the role of
homosexuality in no and kabuki theater and shudo, a means of spiritual
awakening practiced by the saumari. According to this ethic, a future
samurai must first be loved by an adult man, then himself love a young man
before eventually marrying a woman. The text includes many illustrations,
including color plates reproducing an entire erotic silk-roll painting
illustrating ten scenes of gay love.
SOLD OUT

O Tribe That Loves Boys by Abu Nuwas, translated by Hakim Bey
(Entimos Press: Amsterdam)

Hakim Bey's extraordinary volume of works by Arab boy-love poet Abu
Nuwas is "a pseudo-translation made by a poet who doesn't know the original
language." Instead of dry scholarship, Bey relies on the passion he shares
with a writer who lived half a world away 1200 years ago. The result is a
collection of verse that boy-lovers will find at once wildly exotic and
strangely familiar. Presented with a biographical essay recalling Nuwas'
outlandish antics in the service of both boys and poetry, the book is
elegantly bound and printed in a limited edition and illustrated with
photographs that share the spirit of the text.
Order NOT, $15.50

Passions of the Cut Sleeve, by Bret Hinsch (University of California
Press, 232 pp)

Bret Hinsch's investigation of the male homosexual tradition in China
mixes solid scholarship with material from ancient literature, poetry
and even bawdy humor. He reveals that though gays were sometimes per-
secuted in China, most dynasties (from 1100 B.C. through 1912) tolerated
the practice and some encouraged and honored it. In many eras, the most
common model for relationships was the older man/younger boy familiar
>from so many gay cultures around the world and through history, but
Hinsch focuses usefully on the ways Chinese homosexuality was different
>from Western experience as well as ways in which it was similar.
SOLD OUT

Sexuality and Eroticism Among Males in Moslem Societies, by Arno Schmitt
and Jehoda Sofer (Harrington Park Press, 201 pp, sc)

The Moslem world remains, for many Westerners, a very hidden, very foreign
culture. Differences in notions about homosexual acts and gender roles cap
make relations among males difficult for outsiders to understand. This
volume collects the impressions of both insiders and outsiders, relying on
personal narratives and first-hand description as well as analytic essays
and academic treatises. Together they provide a vivid and fascinating
portrait of the erotic life of men in Islamic societies.
Order SSE, $16.50

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Prices include postage by first class in the United States and surface mail
to other countries. Pay in US dollars or checks/money orders drawn on U.S.
banks. Make checks and money orders payable to Ariel's Pages and send to:
Ariel's Pages, PO Box 2487, New York, NY 10185-2487