"Bazhe has a vivid talent for powerhouse storytelling and Damages is a remarkable, compelling read."—White Crane Journal, NY "Bazhe’s life story is uniquely his own, but at the same time it is a story that we can all relate to. That alone makes Damages a good book worth reading."—The Weekly News,, FL "Bazhe knew a world that turned to violent ethnic strife after years of civil unrest, echoed by his own inner turmoil. Damages is the story of his inner and outer wars."—Recorder Newspapers, NJ "An emotionally lacerating childhood preceeds an unquenchable search to discover and freely express his identity, in Bazhe's agile memoir. In a tone that can be haughtily defensive, but more often deliberate, staccato, observant and harshly critical, Bazhe explores the full spec­trum of his emotions: the rage he feels toward the cancer; an incredulity that he survived a fair number of his sexual encounters; the distaste he harbors for his neighbors and their narrow worlds; and the anger over his childhood. A revelatory, pained, unyielding ride. Hold on tight." -Kirkus Discoveries The story begins with the death of his abusive father, a Communist official. His mother is diagnosed with cancer, and Bazhe immediately returns to Macedonia to take care of her. Meanwhile, his more than thirty-year search for his biological mother ends, and Bazhe tells her his life story, starting with his lonely childhood and adolescence. After finding his “new mother” to be very understanding, Bazhe reveals to her his first gay experience in the army, his desire for self-realization that caused scandals in the College of National Security, his escape to Turkey where he transformed into a stunning transvestite after meeting a handsome wealthy man, and his return to Yugoslavia where he wandered in the underground world of a country that was falling apart. As Yugoslav nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism rose, Bazhe almost lost his life before he succeeded in immigrating to America. Although he finds his biological mother, Bazhe ultimately discovers that it is his adoptive mother’s devotion that is irreplaceable.

A number one bestseller in Britain, Stephen Fry's astonishingly frank, funny, wise memoir is the book that his fans everywhere have been waiting for. Since his PBS television debut in the Blackadder series, the American profile of this multitalented writer, actor and comedian has grown steadily, especially in the wake of his title role in the film Wilde, which earned him a Golden Globe nomination, and his supporting role in A Civil Action.        Fry has already given readers a taste of his tumultuous adolescence in his autobiographical first novel, The Liar, and now he reveals the equally tumultuous life that inspired it. Sent to boarding school at the age of seven, he survived beatings, misery, love affairs, carnal violation, expulsion, attempted suicide, criminal conviction and imprisonment to emerge, at the age of eighteen, ready to start over in a world in which he had always felt a stranger. One of very few Cambridge University graduates to have been imprisoned prior to his freshman year, Fry is a brilliantly idiosyncratic character who continues to attract controversy, empathy and real devotion.

The true story of a marriage (not really), a lovable and relentless mother, a six-year old who says his parents cannot get married (but wants to go to the reception), a partner who doesn’t want to act like a straight person, and the author, who has written a hilarious and poignant memoir about making “The Commitment.” There is no hotter issue than gay marriage in the culture-war debate, and Dan Savage, one of America’s most outspoken and beloved columnists, takes it on and makes it personal in this rollicking memoir of coming to terms with the very public act of marriage. What he discovers will make readers—gay or straight, right or left, single or married—howl with laughter as well as rethink their notions of marriage and all that it entails. Praise for Dan Savage’s Skipping Towards Gomorrah: ”Takes readers on a journey that’s as insightful as it is hilarious.” —Entertainment Weekly ”Laugh-out-loud funny.” —The Seattle Times -Savage’s “Savage Love” column runs in more than seventy newspapers in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia. -Like the best political comedians, Dan Savage is a frank and honest storyteller whose comedy is funny but always insightful and necessary. -Dan has appeared on The Al Franken Show on Air America, Paula Zahn Now on CNN, 20/20, MSNBC, and VH1.

I Am Not Myself These Days follows a glittering journey through Manhattan's dark underbelly -- a shocking and surreal world where alter egos reign and subsist (barely) on dark wit and chemicals...a tragic romantic comedy where one begins by rooting for the survival of the relationship and ends by hoping someone simply survives. Kilmer-Purcell is a terrifically gifted new literary voice who straddles the divide between absurdity and normalcy, and stitches them together with surprising humor and lonely poignancy. As Booklist raved "as tart and funny as a Noel Coward play, for Kilmer-Purcell is especially good at dialogue, and, as in Coward's best plays, under the comedy lies the sad truth that even at our best, we are all weak, fallible fools. Again and again in this rich, adventure-filled book, Kilmer-Purcell illustrates the truth of Blake's proverb, 'The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.'"

Dan Savage's nationally syndicated sex advice column, "Savage Love," enrages and excites more than four million people each week. In The Kid, Savage tells a no-holds-barred, high-energy story of an ordinary American couple who wants to have a baby. Except that in this case the couple happens to be Dan and his boyfriend. That fact, in the face of a society enormously uneasy with gay adoption, makes for an edgy, entertaining, and illuminating read. When Dan and his boyfriend are finally presented with an infant badly in need of parenting, they find themselves caught up in a drama that extends well beyond the confines of their immediate world. A story about confronting homophobia, falling in love, getting older, and getting a little bit smarter, The Kid is a book about the very human desire to have a family.

A wickedly funny memoir with echoes of David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs, Beautiful People (originally published in hardcover as Nasty) is now a BBC comedy hit series from the producer of Ab Fab and The Office. Proclaimed "the most brilliant, brash thing in type" by Liz Smith, Simon Doonan's saucy prose has established him as an emerging star among literary humorists. In this break-through memoir, reminiscent of both Sedaris and Burroughs, he revisits the landscape of his youth, and displays the irresistible charm that earned him his dedicated audience. Long before he became a celebrity in his own right--as the author of best-selling books, as the style arbiter of VH1 and America's Top Model, and the marketing genius behind Barney's New York--Simon Doonan was a "scabby knee'd troll" in Reading, England. In Beautiful People, Doonan returns to the working-class neighborhood of his youth, and chronicles the misadventures of the Doonan clan in all their wacky glory. Readers meet his mother Betty, whose gravity-defying, peroxide hairdo signified her natural glamour; his father Terry, an amateur vintner who turned parsnips into the legendary Chateau Doonan; his grandfather D.C., a hard-drinking betting man who plotted to win his fortune by turning Simon into a jockey; and his demented grandma Narg and schizophrenic Uncle Ken, both of whom lived upstairs. Fearing he would fall victim to the insanity that runs in his family, or, worse, the banality of suburban life, Doonan decamps with his flamboyant best-friend Biddie to London, where they hope to find the Beautiful People, that elusive clan who luxuriate on floor pillows and amuse each other with bon mots. Throughout the memoir--in essays about family holidays, the tart who lived next door, his first job--Doonan continues his bumbling pursuit of the fabulous life, only to learn, in the end, that perhaps the Beautiful People were the ones he left behind.

Peter Freestone was Freddie Mercury's personal assistant for the last 12 years of his life. He lived with Mercury in London, Munich, and New York, and was with him when he died. This is the most intimate account of Mercury's life ever written.

From the author of the award-winning novels Crossing The River and Scissors, Paper, Rock comes a powerful book about the transformative power of love. Fenton Johnson recounts the history of "how I feel in love how I came to be with someone else, how he came to death and how I helped." Johnson interweaves two stories: his own upbringing as the youngest of a Kentucky whiskey maker's nine children, and that of his lover LarD Rose, the only child of German Jews. survivors of the Holocaust.