Gay's the Word, Staff Picks page.

Jim chooses	I like to read good books! Here are some I really liked.	10-07-2004 It's been some time since I've written anything for staff picks which is a disgrace as I read an enormous number of books and am forever recommending titles to customers. Rather than choosing one title, I've decided to pick a number of different books that I've enjoyed and particularly recommend. A gay couple unexpectedly becomes guardians of an 11-year-old boy in Breakfast with Scot by Michael Downing (£9.99). This is a very funny novel and captures beautifully the joys and tribulations of parenting and relationships. Quite different is The Carnivorous Lamb by Augustin Gomez-Arcos (£5.95) which was published by GMP in 1986 and won the Prix Hermes. Set in a shuttered house in post-Civil War Spain where ghosts of past rebellion and present defeat taint the air, Ignacio is born. His father stays locked in his study, his mother refuses to acknowledge his existence. Only his brother Antonio is there for him -as a teacher, protector and eventual lover. This is a gutsy tender novel crying out to be filmed by Almodovar. Bitter Eden by Tatamkhulu Afrika (£11.99) is an autobiographical novel set in a prisoner-of-war camp during WWII. This frank and beautifully written novel deals with three men who see themselves as straight but who must negotiate the emotions that are brought to the surface by the physical closeness of survival in the male-only camps. The complex rituals of camp life and the strange loyalties and deep bonds between the men are compellingly depicted. One of the most passionate books that I've read in some time. A customer recommended The Boy in the Lake by Eric Swanson (£9.99) to me. Going home to Ohio to bury his grandmother, a man remembers back to his childhood and to the arrival of a youth that changed his life forever. Growing up, coming of age, first love and betrayal are all explored in precise understated prose. Brian Molloy's first novel The Year of Ice (£8.99) garnered rave reviews in the States and with good reason. Set in Minneapolis in 1978, the narrator is the happy go lucky school jock surrounded by admiring friends, who is hiding a guilty secret as he slowly begins to come to terms with his sexuality. Laugh out loud funny, it deftly captures a whole process that all lesbians and gay men have to deal with. Comfort and Joy by Jim Grimsley (£8.99) is a poetic and finely wrought novel that explores the difficult journey two men make toward love. Ford McKinney is a handsome, successful doctor raised in a well-to-do Savannah family. His longtime boyfriend, Dan Krell, is a shy hospital administrator with a painful childhood past. When the holidays arrive, they decide it's time to go home together. But the depth of their commitment is tested when Ford's parents cannot reconcile themselves to their son's choices and long-kept family secrets are revealed by a visit to Dan's mother. Grimsley is one of my favourite authors.
Ingo chooses	The Way the Crow Flies by Ann-Marie MacDonald £ 7.99	Ann-Marie MacDonald's first book *'Fall on your knees'* is one of our all time best sellers here at Gay's the Word. Her second novel *'The Way the Crow Flies'* has also everything that is needed to follow up such a success, it is well written with an interesting plot and with pages filled with drama who reads as a true page turner and a high-class suspense crime-novel. This is a story told over thirty years, from early 60s at a Canadian air force base to contemporary modern Toronto. We follow Madeleine, a headstrong girl that grows up to be a successful male impersonator and comedienne. She is her daddy's girl and they are the best of buddies, but they both have secrets for each other, she about the 'after three o'clock exercises' she and her friends has to do with the teacher Mr March, and her father about his secret phone-calls to Uncle Simon. When a local murder strikes near their home, their lives are changed forever in ways that will become clear only when the quest for the truth, and the killer, is renewed twenty years later. GTW verdict; If you feel like reading a brilliantly good and well-told story, this is the book for you.