Bøger af Felice Picano

Bold, funny, and shockingly honest, Ambidextrous is like no other memoir of 1950s urban childhood. Picano appears to his parents and siblings to be a happy, cheerful eleven-year-old, possessed of the remarkable talent of being able to draw beautifully and write fluently with either hand. But then he runs into the mindless bigotry of a middle school teacher who insists that left-handedness is "wrong," and his idyllic world falls apart. He uncovers the insatiable appetites of a trio of neighboring sisters, falls for another boy with a glue-sniffing habit, and discovers the hidden world of adult desire and hypocrisy. Picano exits his boyhood sooner than most, but with this sense of self intact and armed with a fuller understanding of the world he is about to enter.

Twelve O'Clock Tales is the fourth collection of short fiction by legendary novelist and memoirist, Felice Picano (The Lure, Like People in History, True Stories). A personal homage to the storytellers of his youth, Edgar Allen Poe, E.F. Benson, and H. P. Lovecraft, as well as his acquaintances, Arthur C. Clarke and Harlan Ellison. Eleven dark tales, eerie, bizarre, and dreamlike, the tales will thrill and disturb, discomfort and titillate, enthrall and leave you wondering. Picano ranges across time and space, from tribal West Africa to the American heartland, to a lab in Venezuela, and a California Highway fifteen years from now. His characters range from a teen accident survivor with a secret, to a far-future scholar forced to travel to a galactic backwater, to a retired L.A. cop who dabbles in astrology, and a peasant girl in B.C.E. Israel encountering the strangest of strangers. The eleven tales include brand new stories and acknowledged Picano masterworks collected here for the first time.

Contemporary Gay Romances is the third collection of short fiction by legendary novelist and memoirist, Felice Picano (The Lure, Like People in History, Ambidextrous). It is also his most diverse in terms of the times, places, themes, characters and situations he writes about. Filled with the unexpected, the true, and the amazing, Contemporary Gay Romances moves with ease from gas-lit, upper class London, to a future, climate-altered Bay Area; from semi-rural Florida to Southern California beaches, to an extrasolar planet where people have surprising existences. His characters range from ordinary American suburban housewives to extraordinary children, from grieving young geologists and memory-haunted middle aged men, to British Midlands soccer stars and 22nd Century war heroes. Picano subtitled this collection of stylish, unique, and moving works "Tragic, Comic, Mystic & Horrific," and they are all that and more. The ten tales include prize winners as well as stories published here for the first time, and are as different from any standard "romances" as you can get, but they will linger in the mind and memory.

Reader, I Married Him Gay romance is coming into full bloom in the wake of DOMA s fall and the spread of marriage equality across the land. New series editor Felice Picano has rounded up the luminaries of gay fiction for their takes on the promises of new love and the surprises of long-term relationships. Known for changing the landscape of gay literature, Picano reveals himself at his finest when it comes to the subject of love and sex. The stories in this volume range from the gritty to the fantastic, from the sweet and dreamy to sidewalk hard, with tales of missed connections, fantasies of vengeance and even a coolly sexy cowboy yarn. Tom Baker s Jury Duty brings new meaning to the concept of jury tampering when deliberating over a case goes from ho-hum to a thrilling undercover romance. Two cowboys find a Brokeback love for each other while in pursuit along the Rio Grande in Dale Chase s Matters of the Heart. In a meet cute for our times, Jay Mandal s To Dye For follows two former classmates who bump into each other, and discover they like exactly the same thing men! In B"est Gay Romance 2015," Felice Picano gathers a sweepingly romantic collection of short fiction that is long on love. "

One of the most telling novels about gay life after Stonewall, Late in the Season is one of the finest novels in the long career of one of the founding members of the Violet Quill Club. Set on Fire Island in late September, this is the story of an unlikely pair of friends - a gay composer in his late thirties and an eighteen-year-old schoolgirl - both of whom are trying to make sense of their complicated lives. But, much more than this, it is a compelling portrait of a magical time and place, after the Stonewall riots opened up so many possibilities and before AIDS forever changed the face of the gay world.

Felice Picano''s first collection of gay short stories spans the period 1975-1982 as published by the pioneering Gay Presses of New York. Read again forty years later, they are a delicious time-capsule of gay life mostly before AIDS and set in iconic gay meccas such as New York and Fire Island. In "Spinning", we get inside the head of a DJ busy spinning for the customers, tricking in his mind and deftly conjuring up the disco subculture which has since faded away. In "The Interrupted Recital" we eavesdrop into the classical music world where ego clashes lead to disastrous outcomes.There are marvelous character portraits as in "Teddy", about a handsome Vietnam vet back home for a quick furlough. Or the evocation of Christmas in multiple New York households in "Xmas in the Apple". Longer works such as "Hunter", set in a writer''s colony, are pure horror fiction. The longest piece, the novella "And Baby Makes Three", spreads its wings recreating Fire Island of the 1970s and features Picano''s trademark surprises and miscues which make the tale memorable long after the last page is turned.First published to acclaim in 1982, this new edition features a foreword by Eric Andrews-Katz (The Jesus Injection).

Shocking and controversial, The Lure has become a classic of gay fiction with its candid description of New York’s gay subculture.The works of Felice Picano need little introduction. As one of the founding members of The Violet Quill, the foremost post-Stonewall gay writing movement, (other members included Edmund White and Andrew Holleran), Picano has published many acclaimed works of both fiction and non-fiction.First published in 1979, The Lure rocketed Picano to commercial literary fame. The book tells the story of Noel Cummings whose life changes irrevocable after witnessing a brutal murder. Noel is recruited to assist the police by acting as the lure for a killer who has been targeting gay men. Undercover, Noel moves deeper and deeper into the dark side of Manhattan's gay life that stirs his own secret desires—until he forgets he is only playing a roleWith its nail-biting plot, and masterful suspense this gay thriller has lost none of its razor’s edge today and its depiction of the underground New York scene has never been more timely as TV series’ such as The Deuce, and Pose re-visit the 1970’s and 80’s."Explosive...Felice Picano is one hell of a writer" - Stephen King

Handsome, intelligent, street-smart, ruthlessly ambitious, and omnisexual, young Addison Grimmins has been hired by the Lord Exchequer of England to be his second and to do what Lord R. cannot do himself. After a country estate wedding, the Marchioness of R. is discovered missing. Is it a kidnapping or...a more sinister plot? Addison vows to find her and bring her back no matter what it takes. It is the 1880s and despite only letters, bribed information, and telegrams as communication; despite only horse, coach, and train service as transportation, Addison tracks Lady R. across Europe, via the strangest people and places: from Venetian palaces to opium dens. Who and what he discovers about her, and more fatefully about his own life, will lead Addison to the crisis of his life, an extraordinary decision, and a stiletto duel with his most implacable foe.

Bright, ambitious, and handsome, Ross Ohrenstedt is a high flier in the fashionable field of queer studies. He has just taken a prestigious university position in Los Angeles and has been appointed to oversee the collection of papers and works of a leading light of the gay literary salon known as the Purple Circle. Ross stumbles across a lost work by an unknown author and his quest to identify the mystery writer and achieve the glory of scholastic tenure unveils increasingly bizarre and unbalanced facts about a group of writers who in the 1970s and 1980s broke new ground in the creation of a gay literary sensibility. But the dark truth contained within The Book of Lies is even more startling.With biting wit and a lush sense of place and character, Felice Picano's daring novel is at once a stylish mystery, a comical roman-à-clef, and a wicked send-up of the new Ivory Tower.First published to acclaim in 1998, this new edition for 2020 features a foreword by David Bergman (The Violet Hour)."The Book of Lies is funny, dark, sexy, shocking, and yes, smart. Set in the near future ('decades after Stonewall'), the novel tells of a young scholar trying to make his academic bones on the literary bodies of the 'Purple Circle'. Picano skewers the pedagogically pretentious with ease and wit. A wonderful novel, with some of Picano's best writing." - Bay Area Reporter"Picano treats his nonpulpy subject matter - grieving, the book business, the teaching business - in a pulpy way, and the results are surprisingly entertaining." - The New York Times Book Review"Based on Picano's involvement with the Violet Quill Club (which included Edmund White and Andrew Holleran), this is an absorbing Henry James-style comedy of manners about how even when some writers find their way out of the closet, others still get left behind." - The Mail on Sunday"Felice Picano's new novel, his 19th book, is a story rich with history - a history that Picano himself was part of and helped shape ..." - The Washington Blade"Leave it to Felice Picano to add a walloping dose of melodrama and intrigue to a tale already redrawing genre boundaries ... What Picano does is take an academic mystery (subject matter that might have proved tedious or solipsistic in lesser hands) and morphs it into something new - a page-turning, often campy, occasionally serious critique of academia and historical truth, literary celebrity, and the imminent future of America." - Philadelphia Tribune

Victor Regina should be perfectly happy in New York. His novels are best sellers, he has a kick-ass agent, and the upcoming Black Party at the exclusive club Flamingo promises to be a cornucopia of gay desire. But New York is hard. The city is gripped by a winter that won't quit, and although he has plenty of dishy friends, there is no lover in the picture. When his agent calls with an offer from Hollywood to adapt his latest novel, Justify My Sins, for a famous director, he jumps at the chance.In ';El Lay,' the sun is warm, the food is fantastic, the men are plentiful and eager. It's all so easy. So easy, in fact, that Victor begins to suspect there's nothing quite real about itnot the quick affairs, not the luxurious cars and ostentatious architecture, and certainly not the film script or scenario or treatment or whatever the hell it is everyone wants him to write. He begins to long for NYC, hard but real.Noted names and events of the 1970s, '80s, and '90s intermingle with public triumphs and private tragedies in this hilarious roman clef with a heart. Felice Picano exposes the clash between celebrity and integrity, the rivalry between love and lust, while showcasing the grittiness of Manhattan and the voluptuousness of Hollywood. Through disastrous production meetings, steamy sex clubs, and encounters with friends who grow old, or strange, or both, Victor tries not once, not twice, but three times to find authenticity and contentment in a life that, while perhaps never fully justified, is fully lived.

'Explosive...Felice Picano is one hell of a writer' Stephen King. Shocking and controversial when first published in 1979, The Lure rocketed Felice Picano to fame with its candid description of the gay subculture of the era. Now a gay classic.

In the early 1970s, when he was still an aspiring, unpublished writer, Felice Picano had a days-old kitten slated for euthanasia who refused to perish. Rescued, named, and trained, Fred became a companion. Fred in Love is a story about how we learn and grow, and how we love.

'A hugely ambitious and engrossing saga...gloriously camp and also acts as a critique of America in general' - Guardian

*Bringing to life three decades of gay history, a campus novel of love, intrigue and betrayal from the winner of the GAY TIMES Readers' Award for Fiction 1996.