Showing results by publisher "Lethe Press" in All Categories

Ancient folklore and modern myth come together in these stories by author Craig Laurance Gidney. Here are found the struggles of a medieval Japanese monk seduced by a mischievous fairy, and a young slave who finds mystery deep within the briar patch of an antebellum plantation. Gidney offers a gay teen obsessed with his patron saint, Lena Horne, and, in the title story, an ailing tourist seeks escape at a distant shore but never reckons on encountering an African sea god. Rich, poetic, dark and disturbing, these are distinctive tales not soon forgotten.

A much-lauded essayist and poet, Jeff Mann writes of the passion and pain of being a Southern gentleman who happens to be invested in many worlds: the hungers of gay bear culture, the propensities of leather and bondage, the frustrations of academia, and the perspectives of an Appalachian who has traveled the world. In Binding the God, his second collection of essays, Mann offers listeners another tour of his consciousness and experiences.

Josh Moore lives with his family on the "wrong side" of Hamilton, a gritty industrial city in Southwestern Ontario. As a young boy, Josh plots an escape for a better life far from the steel mills that lined the bay. But fate has other plans and Josh discovers his adult life in Toronto is just as fraught with as many insecurities and missteps as his youth, and he soon learns that no matter how far away he might run, he will never be able to leave his hometown behind.

An American teenager meets Adonis on a sailing cruise off the coast of Turkey. A merchant of the Silk Road encounters a dog - and a brother - from another world. An old lady on a distant planet attempts to help her great-grandson grow up in a world that will soon forget women ever existed. A Massachusetts boy refuses to visit fairyland. Another American teenager on vacation encounters three fallen angels and is transformed. Alex Jeffers’s first collection of fantastical stories is a treacherous box of delights.

In acclaimed author Steve Berman's second collection of 13 stories and essays, he again guides listeners through the darker pathways of his imagination. These are stories of regret: the scent of loneliness enticing odd children to eat away a fussy caretaker's historic house; a depressed accountant turns to monster hunting; and a young lover's temptation by handsome nursery rhyme. After each tale Berman provides a tangential author note that offers insight into his past trysts as well as his fears and dreams.

This is an audiobook of men and monsters who find themselves captivated by one another in the night. With the taste of skin and sweat and, yes, blood, on their lips, kisses that are pained and painful, and bodies left to cool on the sheets like spent seed. Twelve stories that feature vampires and their victims indulging in libidos and mortidos. In New Orleans, an old flame becomes a vampire's new meal. A new student at a boarding school discovers that the local urban legend is hovering outside his window and eager to come inside.

In Jewish Gentle and Other Stories of Gay-Jewish Living, Daniel M. Jaffe explores various aspects of gay-Jewish life: coming out to self and family; (re)defining one's relationship to tradition and faith; surviving child abuse and teenage sexual identity angst; experiencing the adult joys and heartbreaks of dating, of forming relationships, and of losing them; coping with HIV/AIDS; considering parenting; and dealing with old age.

Eat Your Heart Out opens on what promises to be another tediously annoying day at Ashbee's Furniture Outlet. Then the strip-mall calm of Nowhere, Ohio, is shattered by the sudden, simultaneous appearance of Renni Ramirez-hyper-competent star of the beloved Rising Evil B-movie franchise-and actual zombies, leaving Ashbee's hapless staff and Renni trapped behind an automatic door they can't lock. Can failed creative-writing student/apprentice store manager/eagle-eyed markswoman Devin escape the besieged furniture store to rescue her girlfriend?

''Ladies and Gentlemen: I give you the Kissing Booth Girl! Lips that beguile. Oh, I promise, the nearest thing to nuzzling an angel can be yours - today - for a shiny round seated liberty I know you carry in your very pockets as I speak.'' But to mechanically-inclined Beni, is the ethereal girl who fell from the sky a wish come true, or false hope for life beyond the confines of the odd carnival called home. Her story - as well as tales of an order of deep-sea diving nuns caring for a sunken chapel, and a high school boy asked to prom, by the only dead kid he's ever met.

Canadian author James K. Moran's debut collection of dark fiction offers fantasy, sci-fi, and horror shot through with hope and friendship.

Retired Denver Police homicide detective Jack Dolan discovers the bodies of two brutally beaten young men while riding on the trails near his mountain home. To solve these murders, he calls upon his former lover, Colorado Bureau of Investigation agent Michael Day, the reclusive Native American woman who sold him his horse, and his unusual power of speaking with the dead - a talent he learned as a rookie detective from a cop nicknamed Old Grim.

Best known for being the editor of edgy gay fiction of the Velvet Mafia website, Sean Meriwether has quietly been writing short fiction and building up a body of his own work. The Silent Hustler collects his short fiction published over the last decade. Meriwether's fiction spans in range from the literary (''Things I Can't Tell My Father'') to the revolutionary (''Burn the Rich'') to the downright raunchy (''Sneaker Queen''). Slip into bed with The Silent Hustler. You won't feel guilty in the morning.

Charlie Heggensford, the Idaho farm boy turned L.A. fluffer for hire, is back, and this time, Charlie and the rest of the gang from Fluffers, Inc., are hitting the high seas. Hired to provide fluffing service on a cruise ship filled with gay porn stars, Charlie soon discovers he is no less clumsy on sea than dry land as he continues to overstimulate his clients.

The year is 1935, but this is an America where cross-dressing goes almost unremarked, often unnoticed, and gay relationships are mundane; gay marriage, a quotidian fact of life. Famed chef and female impersonator Pancetta Brulee of New Orleans has been hired to cater a gay engagement party for two prominent grooms at the infamous Faux Pas Island and the Robicheaux estate. Both the family and island have a terrible past, and most Cajuns and Creoles avoid the place like the plague.

Escaping into the fantasy of his books when he's not working in the general store, Ethan Keller has lived a sheltered life in his mother's boarding house. One day, an enigmatic cowboy passing through the small Texas town takes an immediate liking to the shy 17-year-old. Ethan is intrigued by the attention, and the cowboy eventually charms him into signing on to a 900-mile cattle drive. Ethan soon finds that his feelings for this cowboy run deeper than just friendship.

Acres of Perhaps collects acclaimed and thrilling fiction writer Will Ludwigsen's recent and most heartfelt stories; these are tales that delve into what crime means, alternative history, whether a person could live a different life than the one of the moment, what humanity can do about the big and small evils of the world...as well as inspired serial killers, haunted presidents, cursed lead figurines, and a weird late-night '60s television show that meant much more to the fabric of reality than it let on. These stories are the collision of imaginative and brutal realism.

Angela Dunnewald's sense of self, of direction, is fraying. She finds herself lost and alone despite a calendar full of society events, charity meetings, shopping dates, and dinners her aloof husband expects her to attend. Her best friend is a vivacious flirt, but Angela only strays when she discovers a young drifter haunting the grounds of her house. Desire to be intimate unlocks the need for achievement; Angela becomes unrecognizable to her peers and to herself.

During Prohibition a shamed wrestler named Butch "The Butcher" Cardinal is framed for murder and subsequently hunted by the cops, the mob, and a mysterious cabal who are eager to acquire a stolen trinket that might very well be as magical as the men claim. During the frame-up Butch came into possession of the piece and the cabal will do whatever they can - including murder - to get their hands on the object.

Carter Calhoun was once a Hollywood legend, an agent both loved and loathed by stars and studio executives alike. But then the suicide of his lover and star client, matinee idol Sam Madison, sent Carter to the bottom of the bottle. Carter became a housebound recluse. Now, years later, new evidence reveals Sam may have been murdered and Carter emerges from seclusion to find his killer.

On a scorching summer's day in 1903, the sheriff of Creek County, Eugene Grey, unexpectedly finds himself partnered with feisty young federal marshal Forest O'Rourke. The marshal is hell-bent on capturing a wanted man - a man Eugene knows as nothing but an amiable old geezer living quietly in the hills. But, of course, all is not as it seems.