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High School: The New York Times Bestseller
by Tegan Quin Sara QuinFrom iconic musicians Tegan and Sara comes a nostalgic memoir about high school, detailing their first loves and first songs in a compelling look back at their origin story. 'Genius' Augusten Burroughs, author of Running with Scissors'A gift' Elliot Page, actor'Utterly charming' Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other PartiesBefore they became international musicians and LGBTQ+ icons, twin sisters Sara and Tegan Quin came of age in 90s Canada. They argued relentlessly, skipped school, dropped acid and fell in and out of love - sometimes with their best friends. One day they found their stepdad's guitar and their lives changed course forever.High School is a revelatory joint memoir. It captures two sisters wrestling with their sexual and artistic identities and those breathtaking years when the future seems wondrously possible.
I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities and Other Stuff
by Abbi JacobsonA NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERFrom the co-creator and co-star of the hit series Broad City, a hilarious and poignant collection about love, loss, work, comedy and figuring out who you really are when you thought you already knew.When Abbi Jacobson announced to friends and acquaintances that she planned to drive across the country alone, she was met with lots of questions and opinions: Why wasn't she going with friends? Wouldn't it be incredibly lonely? The North route is better! Was it safe for a woman? The Southern route is the way to go! You should bring mace! And a common one . . . why? But Abbi had always found comfort in solitude, and needed space to step back and hit the reset button. As she spent time in each city and town on her way to Los Angeles, she mulled over the big questions - What do I really want? What is the worst possible scenario in which I could run into my ex? How has the decision to wear my shirts tucked in been pivotal in my adulthood? In this collection of anecdotes, observations and reflections - all told in the sharp, wildly funny and relatable voice that has endeared Abbi to critics and fans alike - readers will feel like they're in the passenger seat on a fun and, ultimately, inspiring journey. With some original illustrations by the author.
Eve: the new graphic novel from the award-winning author of Becoming Unbecoming
by UnaA powerful novel of mothers and daughters, and how we imagine our future, from acclaimed author of BECOMING UNBECOMING'This is a disturbing and necessary book for our times, because it leaves us with a question. In EVE, Una describes a society in crisis, a dystopia which grows ever more familiar as we turn the pages. The characters are people we know, their conversations are words we've heard, their fears and anxieties are our own. Una has held up a chilling mirror for us, and leaves us with a choice - what kind of world will we make for ourselves? It could go either way....' JACKY FLEMINGIn the near future, in a world that seems just like our own, Eve grows up in a loving family that is increasingly threatened by a society which seems to be sleepwalking into totalitarianism. After a catastrophe that changes everything, Eve must set off on her own, over the wild Yorkshire moors, to try to find a new way to live. Eve is a book of mothers, daughters, human relationships, trust and community, human weakness, conflict, hopeful futures and painful pasts. It is speculative fiction that feels incredible timely: Una explores the rise of authoritarianism on both the political right and left and imagines where it might all lead.
Crimson
by Niviaq Korneliussen'Effortlessly cool, funny yet sad, breezy but thoughtful - this is an edgy and unputdownable work of modern literature' Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti 'Crimson is written with immense courage - there's no faking the feeling of honesty on each page. It is a brave novel reminiscent of Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting' Laline Paull, author of The BeesThe island has run out of oxygen. The island is swollen. The island is rotten. The island has taken my beloved from me. The island is a Greenlander. It's the fault of the Greenlander. In Nuuk, Greenland . . .Fia breaks up with her long-term boyfriend and falls for Sara.Sara is in love with Ivik who holds a deep secret and is about to break promises. Ivik struggles with gender dysphoria as their friends become addicted to social media, listen to American pop music and get blind drunk in downtown bars and uptown house parties. Then there is Inuk, who also has something to hide - it will take him beyond his limits to madness, and question what it means to be a Greenlander, while Arnaq, the party queen, pulls the strings of manipulation, bringing a web of relationships to a shocking crescendo. Crimson weaves through restlessness, depression, love and queer experiences to tell the story of Greenlanders through a unique and challenging form. The original text was written and published in the Greenlandic language.
Scenes of a Graphic Nature: 'A perfect page-turner' (Dolly Alderton) from the bestselling author of The Rachel Incident
by Caroline O'DonoghueTHE RACHEL INCIDENT - Caroline O'Donoghue's bestselling new novel* - is out nowCharlie's life isn't going forward - so she's decided to go back After a tough few years floundering around the British film industry and experimenting with amateur pornography, Charlie and her best friend Laura take a trip to her familial home on an island off the west coast of Ireland. Her father's health is rapidly declining and this could be the last chance to connect with her roots. But events on the island cause Charlie to doubt her father's childhood stories - and then there's her complicated relationship with Laura. Pursuing the truth will shatter everything she thought knew - but is that what it takes to grow up?'A gorgeous exploration of the messy and fragile nature of friendship and all the many forms of love' IRISH TIMES'A darkly humorous, keenly observed blend of millennial drift and murder mystery from a razor-sharp writer' RED'Witty, tender and insightful' GUARDIAN'A perfect page-turner. I loved it' DOLLY ALDERTON'Wonderful. Had me gripped' MARIAN KEYES*The Rachel Incident was a #2 bestseller in Ireland in June 2023
Liza's England: A Novel
by Pat BarkerDauntless Liza Jarrett, born at the dawn of the twentieth century, is now in her eighties, frail and facing eviction with her cantankerous parrot Nelson, when she is visited by Stephen, a young gay social worker. As she learns to trust him, she recalls her life - her embittered, exhausted mother, her shell-shocked spiritualist husband, her beloved son and chaotic daugter. Their friendship, deepening with the unfolding of their stories, comes to sustain Liza through her last battle and brings new courage to Stephen.
Liza's England: A Novel (Virago Modern Classics #42)
by Pat BarkerDauntless Liza Jarrett, born at the dawn of the twentieth century, is now in her eighties, frail and facing eviction with her cantankerous parrot Nelson, when she is visited by Stephen, a young gay social worker. As she learns to trust him, she recalls her life - her embittered, exhausted mother, her shell-shocked spiritualist husband, her beloved son and chaotic daugter. Their friendship, deepening with the unfolding of their stories, comes to sustain Liza through her last battle and brings new courage to Stephen.
Trans Like Me: 'An essential voice at the razor edge of gender politics' Laurie Penny
by CN Lester'CN Lester breaks down the myths and misconceptions about trans people and politics with clarity and calm. An important, timely book' JULIET JACQUESIn this eye-opening book, CN Lester, academic and activist, takes us on a journey through some of the most pressing issues concerning the trans debate: from pronouns to Caitlyn Jenner; from feminist and LGBTQ activists, to the rise in referrals for gender variant children - all by way of insightful and moving passages about the author's own experience. Trans Like Me shows us how to strive for authenticity in a world which often seeks to limit us by way of labels.'Lester makes the most complex of subjects easy to digest. I finished with more insight and knowledge than I ever expected' STYLIST'CN Lester is a writer for our times - a moving, learned and essential voice at the razor edge of gender politics' LAURIE PENNY'One of the year's most important books on transgender identity' GAY TIMES
The Passion Of New Eve (Virago Modern Classics #78)
by Angela CarterI know nothing. I am a tabula rasa, a blank sheet of paper, an unhatched egg. I have not yet become a woman, although I possess a woman's shape. Not a woman, no: both more and less than a real woman. Now I am a being as mythic and monstrous as Mother herself . . . 'New York has become the City of Dreadful Night where dissolute Leilah performs a dance of chaos for Evelyn. But this young Englishman's fate lies in the arid desert, where a many-breasted fertility goddess will wield her scalpel to transform him into the new Eve.
The Hidden Room
by Stella Duffy'Nobody turns the screw of tension tighter than Stella Duffy' VAL MCDERMID'Fast and bold and thrilling' CHRISTOBEL KENT'A stunner' THE TIMESLife is good for Laurie and Martha. They have three great kids, a much-loved home in the countryside, and after years of struggle, Laurie's career as an architect is taking off at last. Everything's perfect.But someone is about to walk into their happy family and tear it apart. Laurie has been hiding from him for years. The question is, now that he's found her, can she keep her family safe? And just how far will she go to protect them?'A haunting tale that lingers in the memory' SUNDAY TIMES'Utterly gripping' SUNDAY MIRROR
The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister – Vol.2: The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister, the Inspiration for Gentleman Jack
by Anne Lister'The Lister diaries are the Dead Sea Scrolls of lesbian history; they changed everything. By resurrecting them and editing them with such loving attention and intelligence, Helena Whitbread has earned the gratitude of a whole generation' EMMA DONOGHUE'Engaging, revealing, at times simply astonishing: Anne Lister's diaries are an indispensable read' SARAH WATERSAnne Lister (1791-1840) was one of the most remarkable women of her time. Fearless and uncompromising, she wasdetermined to live life on her own terms, both financially and sexually. She wrote extensive diaries in 'crypthand', which allowed her to record her life in intimate, and sometimes explicit, detail. When they were decoded by Helena Whitbread, lesbian history was changed for ever. This is the second volume of her diaries.No Priest But Love begins in 1824. After an ill-fated love affair with a married woman, Anne Lister embarks on a journey alone to post-revolutionary Paris, a city alive with political intrigue. Here, she becomes romantically involved with a young widow, a relationship at odds with her social ambitions. Anne's efforts, firstly to extricate herself from this new 'scrape' and then to make a choice between the two women in her life, provides an absorbing sexual and social drama.'[Anne Lister's] sense of self, and self-awareness, is what makes her modern to us. She was a woman exercising conscious choice. She controlled her cash and her body. At a time when women had to marry, or be looked after by a male relative, and when all their property on marriage passed to their husband, Anne Lister not only dodged the traps of being female, she set up a liaison with another woman that enhanced her own wealth and left both of them free to live as they wished . . . The diaries gave me courage' JEANETTE WINTERSON
The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister – Vol.2: The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister, the Inspiration for Gentleman Jack (Virago Modern Classics #777)
by Anne Lister'The Lister diaries are the Dead Sea Scrolls of lesbian history; they changed everything. By resurrecting them and editing them with such loving attention and intelligence, Helena Whitbread has earned the gratitude of a whole generation' EMMA DONOGHUE'Engaging, revealing, at times simply astonishing: Anne Lister's diaries are an indispensable read' SARAH WATERSAnne Lister (1791-1840) was one of the most remarkable women of her time. Fearless and uncompromising, she wasdetermined to live life on her own terms, both financially and sexually. She wrote extensive diaries in 'crypthand', which allowed her to record her life in intimate, and sometimes explicit, detail. When they were decoded by Helena Whitbread, lesbian history was changed for ever. This is the second volume of her diaries.No Priest But Love begins in 1824. After an ill-fated love affair with a married woman, Anne Lister embarks on a journey alone to post-revolutionary Paris, a city alive with political intrigue. Here, she becomes romantically involved with a young widow, a relationship at odds with her social ambitions. Anne's efforts, firstly to extricate herself from this new 'scrape' and then to make a choice between the two women in her life, provides an absorbing sexual and social drama.'[Anne Lister's] sense of self, and self-awareness, is what makes her modern to us. She was a woman exercising conscious choice. She controlled her cash and her body. At a time when women had to marry, or be looked after by a male relative, and when all their property on marriage passed to their husband, Anne Lister not only dodged the traps of being female, she set up a liaison with another woman that enhanced her own wealth and left both of them free to live as they wished . . . The diaries gave me courage' JEANETTE WINTERSON
Between the Stops: The View of My Life from the Top of the Number 12 Bus: the long-awaited memoir from the star of QI and The Great British Bake Off
by Sandi Toksvig'Part confession, part call to arms and wholly entertaining' OBSERVER'Her writing style is as kooky and digestible as Bill Bryson's . . . A fun-filled, fact-packed, memorable ride' SUNDAY TIMES'Full of wit and wisdom' RADIO TIMESBetween the Stops is a sort of a memoir, my sort. It's about a bus trip really, because it's my view from the Number 12 bus. From a brief history of lady gangsters at Elephant and Castle to anecdotes about boarding school, this is the long-awaited memoir from one of Britain's best-loved characters. Presenter of QI, former host of The Great British Bake Off, writer, broadcaster, activist and comic on stage, screen and radio for nearly forty years: this is an autobiography with a difference - as only Sandi Toksvig can tell it. A funny and moving trip through memories, musings and the many delights on the number 12 route, Between the Stops is also an inspiration to us all to get off our phones, look up and talk to each other because as Sandi says: 'some of the greatest trips lie on our own doorstep'.
Between the Stops: The View of My Life from the Top of the Number 12 Bus: the long-awaited memoir from the star of QI and The Great British Bake Off
by Sandi Toksvig'Part confession, part call to arms and wholly entertaining' OBSERVER'Her writing style is as kooky and digestible as Bill Bryson's . . . A fun-filled, fact-packed, memorable ride' SUNDAY TIMES 'Full of wit and wisdom' RADIO TIMESBetween the Stops is a sort of a memoir, my sort. It's about a bus trip really, because it's my view from the Number 12 bus. From a brief history of lady gangsters at Elephant and Castle to anecdotes about boarding school, this is the long-awaited memoir from one of Britain's best-loved characters. Presenter of QI, former host of The Great British Bake Off, writer, broadcaster, activist and comic on stage, screen and radio for nearly forty years: this is an autobiography with a difference - as only Sandi Toksvig can tell it. A funny and moving trip through memories, musings and the many delights on the number 12 route, Between the Stops is also an inspiration to us all to get off our phones, look up and talk to each other because as Sandi says: 'some of the greatest trips lie on our own doorstep'.
Darling Days: A New York City Childhood
by iO Tillett WrightI WAS BORN, SEPTEMBER 1985, IN THE VORTEX OF THE LOWER EAST SIDE OF NEW YORK: THERE WERE FEW RULES OF LIFE AND ZERO CONTRAINTS ON BEHAVIOUR. IF YOU WERE NOT ECCENTRIC, YOU WERE WEIRD.It was a tenement building at the centre of the drug-addled, punk-edged, permanent riot that was iO's corner of the Lower East Side of New York City in the '80s and 90's. There iO grew up - or rather scrabbled up - under the broken wing of a fiercely protective, yet wildly negligent mother.Rhonna was a showgirl, actress, dancer, poet. A widow by police murder, she was also an addict. She doted and obsessed over iO, yet lacked an understanding that a child needs food and sleep and safety.Unfolding in animated, crystalline prose, an emotionally raw, devastatingly powerful memoir of one young person's extraordinary coming of age - a tale of gender and identity, freedom and addiction, rebellion and survival in the 1980s and 1990s, when punk poverty, heroin and art collided in the urban bohemia of New York's Lower East Side.Darling Days is also a provocative examination of culture and identity, of the instincts that shape us and the norms that deform us, and of the courage and resilience of a child listening closely to their deepest self. When a group of boys refuse to let the six-year-old play ball, iO instantly adopts a new persona, becoming a boy named Ricky, a choice the parents support and celebrate. It is the start of a profound exploration of gender and identity through the tenderest years, and the beginning of a life invented and reinvented at every step.Alternating between the harrowing and the hilarious, Darling Days is the candid, tough, and stirring memoir of a young person in search of an authentic self as family and home life devolve into chaos until iO escapes to Germany and then England to become an amazingly talented, exciting, edgy artist and wonderful writer.
Small g: A Virago Modern Classic (Virago Modern Classics #191)
by Patricia HighsmithBy the bestselling author of The Talented Mr Ripley, Carol and Strangers on a TrainCompleted just months before Patricia Highsmith's death in 1995, Small g explores the labyrinthine intricacies of passion, sexuality, and jealousy in a charming tale of love misdirected.'What is most remarkable in this novel is the empathy . . . with which Highsmith writes about gay men . . . one can imagine the small g existing, a piquant mixture of bohemianism and respectability, exactly as Highsmith describes it' Francis King, SpectatorAt the 'small g', a Zurich bar known for its not exclusively gay clientele, the lives of a small community are played out one summer.Rickie Markwalder is a designer whose lover Petey was brutally murdered. Rickie and his performing dog Lulu are regulars at the bar, as are vindictive Renate, a seamstress, and her teenage apprentice Luisa. Into their lives comes Teddie, impressionable and beautiful, and a catalyst for the series of events that will change everything.Patricia Highsmith's final novel is an intricate exploration of love and sexuality, the depths of spite and the triumph of human kindness. It is a work that, in the tradition of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, shows us how bizarre and unpredictable love can be. Small g, in the words of her biographer Andrew Wilson, is an 'extended fairy tale suggesting that...happiness is precarious and...romance should be embraced.'
Carol: A Virago Modern Classic (Virago Modern Classics #181)
by Patricia HighsmithSome books change lives. This is one of them . . . It has the drive of a thriller but the imagery of a romance . . . This is a book that is hard to set aside; it demands to be read late into the night with eyes burning and heart racing - Val McDermid Now a hugely acclaimed, six-times Oscar-nominated film by Todd Haynes, starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara.Therese is just an ordinary sales assistant working in a New York department store when an alluring woman in her thirties walks up to her counter. Standing there, Therese is wholly unprepared for the first shock of love. She is an awkward nineteen-year-old with a job she hates and a boyfriend she doesn't love; Carol is a sophisticated, bored suburban housewife in the throes of a divorce and a custody battle for her only daughter. As Therese becomes irresistibly drawn into Carol's world, she soon realises how much they both stand to lose . . .First published pseudonymously in 1952 as The Price of Salt, Carol is a hauntingly atmospheric love story set against the backdrop of fifties New York.
The Paying Guests: shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction
by Sarah WatersSHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZEThis novel from the internationally bestselling author of The Little Stranger, is a brilliant 'page-turning melodrama and a fascinating portrait of London of the verge of great change' (Guardian)It is 1922, and London is tense. Ex-servicemen are disillusioned, the out-of-work and the hungry are demanding change. And in South London, in a genteel Camberwell villa, a large silent house now bereft of brothers, husband and even servants, life is about to be transformed, as impoverished widow Mrs Wray and her spinster daughter, Frances, are obliged to take in lodgers.For with the arrival of Lilian and Leonard Barber, a modern young couple of the 'clerk class', the routines of the house will be shaken up in unexpected ways. And as passions mount and frustration gathers, no one can foresee just how far-reaching, and how devastating, the disturbances will be.This is vintage Sarah Waters: beautifully described with excruciating tension, real tenderness, believable characters, and surprises. It is above all a wonderful, compelling story.'You will be hooked within a page . . . At her greatest, Waters transcends genre: the delusions in Affinity (1999), the vulnerability in Fingersmith (2002), the undercurrents of social injustice and the unexplained that underlie all her work, take her, in my view, well beyond the capabilities of her more seriously regarded Booker-winning peers. But The Paying Guests is the apotheosis of her talent; at least for now. I have tried and failed to find a single negative thing to say about it. Her next will probably be even better. Until then, read it, Flaubert, Zola, and weep' -Charlotte Mendelson, Financial Times
Ascension: Book 2 (Demon Hunters #2)
by Olivia ChaseFor fans of Cassandra Clare and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the second book in this kick-ass new series will keep you on the edge of your seat ...Diana, Minerva and Vesta are Demon Hunters, gifted with amazing powers. They can see truth with the touch of the hand, break down solid walls and shoot lightning from their fingertips ... basically all the things you could want in the battle against supernatural evil. When an eerie fog cloaks Edinburgh and the girls find a boy, bloodied and confused, they suspect a demon is up to no good. Before they can even grab their weapons, they're plunged into a fight agianst an ancient foe. Will the united strength of their Trinity be enough to keep them alive?With new faces, an old flame and one seriously blood-thirsty demon, things are about to get interesting ...
Demon Hunters: Book 2
by Olivia ChaseFor fans of Cassandra Clare and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the second book in this kick-ass new series will keep you on the edge of your seat ...Diana, Minerva and Vesta are Demon Hunters, gifted with amazing powers. They can see truth with the touch of the hand, break down solid walls and shoot lightning from their fingertips ... basically all the things you could want in the battle against supernatural evil. When an eerie fog cloaks Edinburgh and the girls find a boy, bloodied and confused, they suspect a demon is up to no good. Before they can even grab their weapons, they're plunged into a fight agianst an ancient foe. Will the united strength of their Trinity be enough to keep them alive?With new faces, an old flame and one seriously blood-thirsty demon, things are about to get interesting ...
Unspeakable
by Abbie ToddMegan doesn't speak. She hasn't spoken in months.Pushing away the people she cares about is just a small price to pay. Because there are things locked inside Megan's head - things that are screaming to be heard - that she cannot, must not, let out.Then Jasmine starts at school: bubbly, beautiful, talkative Jasmine. And for reasons Megan can't quite understand, life starts to look a bit brighter.Megan would love to speak again, and it seems like Jasmine might be the answer. But if she finds her voice, will she lose everything else?
Unspeakable
by Abbie RushtonMegan doesn't speak. She hasn't spoken in months. Pushing away the people she cares about is just a small price to pay. Because there are things locked inside Megan's head - things that are screaming to be heard - that she cannot, must not, let out. Then Jasmine starts at school: bubbly, beautiful, talkative Jasmine. And for reasons Megan can't quite understand, life starts to look a bit brighter. Megan would love to speak again, and it seems like Jasmine might be the answer. But if she finds her voice, will she lose everything else?
All Out
by Kevin Newman Alex NewmanCan a man with a demanding job really be a good father? All Out is a bracingly honest answer from Emmy and Gemini Award-winning anchorman Kevin Newman and his grown son, Alex. Confessional and provocative, their memoir is also a touching meditation on ambition, absence and family that will resonate with every parent and child who've ever struggled to connect and understand each other. Kevin Newman wanted to be a family man in an era when fathers are expected to be more engaged than ever before; he also wanted to reach the top of a profession that demands 24/7 commitment. The higher he climbed, the more irreconcilable those aspirations seemed. Meanwhile, his artistic, solitary son, Alex, was wrestling with his own competing ambitions: to be the sporty, popular son his dad wanted, and to be true to himself. Paradoxically, their attempts to live up to expectations--their own, and each other's--were driving them apart. Then, two parallel identity crises forced a reckoning. Kevin reached the summit of American network television, becoming co-host of Good Morning America--where he was instructed to develop a "quarterback" persona and change his accent, mannerisms, personality, hairstyle and everything else that made him Kevin. At the same time, Alex was realizing he was gay, but frantically trying to mask and change that fact. Both felt like failures and hungered for one another's approval, but didn't know how to bridge their differences. Today, a decade later, they retrace their steps (and missteps) to reinventing their relationship and becoming one another's role models for what it means to be a man in our culture. All Out is a moving chronicle of all the ways that fathers and sons misunderstand and disappoint one another--and a powerful reminder that they can become closer not despite their differences, but because of them.From the Hardcover edition.
The Sparsholt Affair
by Alan HollinghurstDavid Sparsholt is a man who commands attention. As a student at Oxford during the early days of World War II, he's handsome, powerful and alluring to all who meet him--both women and men. His two closest friends, Evert and Freddie, are aspiring artists who are quickly drawn into Sparsholt's magnetic field even as the mores of the day complicate their ambitions--aesthetic, romantic and otherwise. <p><p> Twenty years later, all three men find themselves in unexpected positions--sometimes rewarded, but sometimes thwarted--vis-à-vis love and career; money and stature. David Sparsholt is now married with a wife and son, having claimed fame as a fighter pilot in the war, but also infamy after a scandalous affair rocked his entire family--especially his teenage son, Johnny. It's the 1960s, and upheavals of all sorts are rampant in England and around the world, including as we follow Johnny's struggles to untangle his own private web of identity, art and sexuality. Together, these men's trials and triumphs present a complicated portrait of masculinity and artistic worth in England's upper echelons, where one's name carries the legacy, but also the telling scars, of the generations before him. <p> Engaging, atmospheric, told in lush and gorgeous prose, The Sparsholt Affair is a brilliant novel about sensuality and scruples set against a backdrop of radical social change, from a writer whose work is as provocative as it is precisely rendered.
Confessions of a Fairy's Daughter: Growing Up with a Gay Dad
by Alison WearingA moving memoir about growing up with a gay father in the 1980s, and a tribute to the power of truth, humour, acceptance and familial love. <P> Alison Wearing led a largely carefree childhood until she learned, at the age of 12, that her family was a little more complex than she had realized. Sure her father had always been unusual compared to the other dads in the neighbourhood: he loved to bake croissants, wear silk pyjamas around the house, and skip down the street singing songs from Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. But when he came out of the closet in the 1970s, when homosexuality was still a cardinal taboo, it was a shock to everyone in the quiet community of Peterborough, Ontario--especially to his wife and three children.<P> Alison's father was a professor of political science and amateur choral conductor, her mother was an accomplished pianist and marathon runner, and together they had fed the family a steady diet of arts, adventures, mishaps, normal frustrations and inexhaustible laughter. Yet despite these agreeable circumstances, Joe's internal life was haunted by conflicting desires. As he began to explore and understand the truth about himself, he became determined to find a way to live both as a gay man and also a devoted father, something almost unheard of at the time. Through extraordinary excerpts from his own letters and journals from the years of his coming out, we read of Joe's private struggle to make sense and beauty of his life, to take inspiration from an evolving society and become part of the vanguard of the gay revolution in Canada. <P> Confessions of a Fairy's Daughter is also the story of "coming out" as the daughter of a gay father. Already wrestling with an adolescent's search for identity when her father came out of the closet, Alison promptly "went in," concealing his sexual orientation from her friends and spinning extravagant stories about all of the "great straight things" they did together. Over time, Alison came to see that life with her father was surprisingly interesting and entertaining, even oddly inspiring, and in fact, there was nothing to hide. <P> Balancing intimacy, history and downright hilarity, Confessions of a Fairy's Daughter is a captivating tale of family life: deliciously imperfect, riotously challenging, and full of life's great lessons in love. Alison brings her story to life with a skillfully light touch in this warm, heartfelt and revelatory memoir.