Books: 741

Night of the Living Queers
Ed. Shelly Pag and Alex Brown
Wednesday Books
$12

YA Horror anthology with 13 tales spanning a rainbow of frissons; goose-bump raising to slapstick candy corn. Some end happily, others…don’t. Ryan Douglas’s “Knicknack” concerns a revenant party clown, killed by a boy’s cruel prank, who now kidnaps and kills local kids. Tonight, he’s got the narrator’s nerdy brother. Kosoko Jackson’s “Rocky Road With Caramel Drizzle” is a tale of entitlement and bullying with dizzying changes of points of view. Kalyn Bayron (Cinderella Is Dead), Tara Sim (The City of Dusk) are among the contributors, well-known or making their debut here in this innovative collection, each set on a blue-moon-Halloween night, a period, when queer complexity shines most brightly, their stories highlighting their “long-denied humanity” aimed for young QPOC–and all who savor eerie tales.

300,000 Kisses: Tales of Queer Love from the Ancient World
Sean Hewett & Luke Edward Hall
Clarkson Potter
$22

A celebration of queer love through 40 tales and poems freshly translated by poet Seán Hewett and illustrated by photographer-artist Luke Edward Hall. Titled from Catullus: “Steeped in honey, Juventius, / your golden eyes, and as sweet, too / when I press my lips to them –– Three hundred thousand kisses is not close to enough” Cicero, Juvenal, Socrates, Ovid; known names, in language seldom offered in school. They represent many ways of looking at love; some less pleasing to modern heterodoxies, some more freeing to queer sensibilities, some not agreeable to any era, notably Nero, via Seutonius’s Lives of the Twelve Caesars, who twisted “love” into pain and humiliation, drawing pleasure through corrupt power. Hall’s vibrant illustrations for each create a colorful, kinetic accompaniment.

Restless
Joseph Kai
Street Noise Books
$19.99

Samar, narrator of Kai’s debut graphic novel, is a 30-year-old gay man living in Beirut where he and his cohorts grew up in the Lebanese post-civil war period. Still in turmoil in 2020, the narrative takes place during the weeks leading up to the 4 August ammonium nitrate explosion in the Port (218 deaths, 7000 injured). Shamar relates his recurring nightmares–an older man (menacing yet sexy) who wants to harm him. Awake, there’s “TonyX” following on a dating app, and flesh-and-blood Alia, best friend and fellow comics artist, with whom Shamar attends queer art happenings in abandoned neighborhoods, often raided by police. Kai punctuates their waves of rage and despair with flashes of hope, washing the narrative in hues of lavender, blue, and gold.

A Château Under Siege
Martin Walker
Knopf
$28

Martin Walker continues top-notch through this 16th Bruno, Chief of Police novel. Bruno, who earlier chose Sarlat over Paris for home and career, is with friends viewing a reenactment of the 1370 Battle of Sarlat that won liberation from the English. Though his moves were scrupulously choreographed, the French hero, played by intelligence agent Brice Kerquelin, is stabbed, whisked out of the square and disappeared. From everyone’s radar. Walker’s skill is to blend this stark event with quotidian Sarlat life that flows on. Kerquelin’s bigwig visitors to guard, the château’s, groundskeeper’s little girl’s “secret friend.” Capital or country, both require calm, eyes for detail, considering a six-year-old’s words as seriously as a general’s. And, in Sarlat Bruno enjoys his horse, truffle-sniffing dog, and great cheeses.