The fall list from the German publisher Bruno Gmunder has shipped. Their premiere title for the season is BEL AMI: AROUND THE GLOBE, photographs by BENNO THOMA.

Thoma takes some of the men from the Bel Ami studio and photographs them in Brazil, South Africa, Spain and Greece. The young men are posed in swimming pools, historical locations, beaches, hotels and stark Aegean white and blue backgrounds. Thoma's previous photographic titles were: SOMOS CUBANOS, ABSOLUTE SWEDEN and YOUNG COMPANIONS.

AROUND THE GLOBE is a coffee-table-sized hardcover; the photos are color, $99.00

THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE DISAPPEARING PANTS: A FIELD GUIDE TO CONSERVATIVE SEX SCANDALS is by JOSEPH MINTON AMANN and TOM BREUER.

This is the perfect book to leave on the top of the commode. Each chapter is three of four pages long (a few slightly longer), and that's satisfactory. The familiar names--Mark Foley, Newt Gingrich--are included. But Amann and Breuer have done their homework and share the scandals of some of the lesser lights--Galen Fox (airline groper); Beverly Russell (molesting his stepdaughter); Ken Calvert (patronizing working ladies)--even Helen Chenoweth (her indiscretion was an affair). So many of these behaviors seem so minor in the scale of things. It's just that so many of these good volk bray about their high moral standards, and when it came time to pile on Bill Clinton, they were the first to jump. Apparently, they should have waited before throwing that first (well, probably not their first!) stone.

DISAPPEARING PANTS is a trade paperback from Nation Books, $14.95

KIM POWERS wrote a memoir, published in 2006, THE HISTORY OF SWIMMING. His new book is a work of fiction, CAPOTE IN KANSAS: A GHOST STORY.

We begin with Truman Capote and Harper Lee, both from the same small town in the Deep South, both to land in New York and become Literary Lions. Lee famously accompanied Tru to Kansas for his research into what would become IN COLD BLOOD. Was Lee really the sole author of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD? And why did they stop talking to each other? Or did they?

Powers creates a sort-of deathbed confession for Capote, where he dials up Harper Lee one last time. What final, all-important message does he send in a series of mysterious packages to Lee? And what of the ghosts of the Clutter family? They show up one by one, addressing the rights they think they lost the minute Capote read about their murders in the newspaper. Powers has created a fantasia of the dead and dying--Capote in the last year of his life, stuffed with pills and liquor, no Dorothy, no Toto, no Auntie Em, no Wizard, just the ghosts of his strange childhood and the ghosts of the murdered and the murderers--especially Perry.

CAPOTE IN KANSAS is a hardcover from Carroll & Graf, $25.00

JOHN CARLYLE got his big break in 1954 when, at the age of twenty-three, he got the job as assistant director for the movie-within-the-movie in George Cukor's A STAR IS BORN. The scene he shot was not used in the released version and he never bloomed into a major studio figure. But he got to know Judy Garland and was her friend and occasional lover for the next fifteen years, until her death.

Carlyle is the author of  UNDER THE RAINBOW: AN INTIMATE MEMOIR OF JUDY GARLAND, ROCK HUDSON & MY LIFE IN OLD HOLLYWOOD. Garland, in the 1960s, was not the headliner she had been; she was often desperate, living hand-to-mouth. There were the pills and the liquor. She often turned to Carlyle for support, even talking about marriage. He declined marriage  but remained devoted to Garland.

Carlyle also tells tales of gay Hollywood. He recounts his sexual encounters with Marlon Brando and James Dean, double-dates with Rock Hudson and watches Monty Clift get destroyed by alcohol abuse. Other encounters: Miss Mae West, Lana Turner, Joan Fontaine, Hedy Lamarr--he even rescues neighbor Dorothy Parker from a drunken tumble. His is a charming evocation of the Old Hollywood, a specific culture largely gone by the late 1960s.

UNDER THE RAINBOW is new in trade paperback from Carroll & Graf. I had hoped there were be a spread of photos; there is not. An index is included, $15.00

EDMUND WHITE takes on an American legend, Stephen Crane, in his latest novel, HOTEL DE DREAM. Crane got famous young but was taken by TB when he was twenty-eight years old. We find him and his wife Cora living in a damp, old castle in Sussex in the UK. (Henry James was a neighbor and came to visit.) They had moved to the UK to avoid the gossip about Cora, said to have been the proprietor of a bordello in Florida, named Hotel De Dream.

Crane wants to write a companion novel to his MAGGIE, GIRL OF THE STREETS. This one is going to be a poignant story about a boy prostitute and the married man who ruins his own life to win the boy's love. Crane starts dictating the novel as his health fails. His friends try to dissuade him from this project as they are certain publication of such a book will destroy his career. Crane never finished this scandalous novel, but White, in his-novel-within-a-novel, writes the novel Crane never did, combining the youthful simplicity of Crane's own prose with White's elegant literary shaping, a beautiful blend of passion in its many guises.

HOTEL DE DREAM is a hardcover from Ecco, $23.95

SEAN MERIWETHER and GREG WHARTON are the editors of MEN OF MYSTERY: HOMOEROTIC TALES OF INTRIGUE AND SUSPENSE. The authors they collect in this volume want to answer the question: Has the gritty glamour of being a sexual outlaw faded?

MEN OF MYSTERY features sixteen stories that take a walk on the wild side, down the dark alleys searching for crimes of passion and rough sex that still carries a threat. Meet dirty cops, Mob types, even ghosts from the beyond. These stories are about the hard guys, tough guys and rough guys in a down-and-dirty world. Writers included are: Jeff Mann, Trebor Healey, Simon Sheppard, Steve Berman, Patrick Califia and others.

MEN OF MYSTERY is a trade paperback from Harrington Park Press, $15.95

I haven't had a new board game for our market in many, many years. What was the last one? I think Gay Trivial Pursuit. Our new one is HOMOGENIUS. What is the object of the game? The person who gets out of the closet first wins! The game is designed for two or more players (up to four)--a sense of humor is recommended. There's a game board, question cards, game pieces and a single die (it's pinkish).

HOMOGENIUS comes in a square shrink-wrapped box, $29.95

When Juan Jilles is in college, he falls in love with Darnell. The affair gets off to a bad start; Darnell convinces Juan to help him rob one of Philadelphia's largest banks. Darnell is killed during the job; Juan makes off with $175,000 in booty. This is the kick off of REGINALD L. HALL's novel, IN LOVE WITH A THUG.

Juan grieves for his friend but moves right along, opening a popular celebrity hair salon with the stolen cash. Into his life comes Bryant Thompson, a fellow with lots of baggage--drugs, drama and deception. Bryant is all pumped out and a hustler, and Juan succumbs to Bryant's fast-paced and addictive milieu. Juan's life takes a different spin and begins to wobble out of control. This is a look at destructive love and the price some pay for happiness.

IN LOVE WITH A THUG is a trade paperback from Strebor Books International, $13.00

LEN RICHMOND is the author of NAKED IN PARADISE. This is the story of three men in love. Our narrator is still getting over the break-up with his last beau, the handsome, hard-drinking Mikey. He tries the gay personal ads, but winds up meeting straight men who are curious about sex with another man.

Then comes Kieran, a comely college guy, who is half his age, who is looking for new sex, new drugs, and new experiences. Turns out that these two hit it off and all is going well...until Mikey returns on the scene. Mikey promptly falls in love with Kieran. An affectionate ménage a trois comes out of all this, but there is the question: can three men navigate the choppy emotional waters of a complex relationship without rules?

NAKED IN PARADISE is a trade paperback from Sybaritic Press, $11.99

JOHN HEMINGWAY has written a memoir about his family. The book is titled STRANGE TRIBE. It is a story about gender confusion and suicide and family stuff. John is the son of Gregory Hemingway. Gregory was the third son (and last child) of Ernest Hemingway. Hem wanted a daughter. Didn't get one.

Ernest, famous as a macho animal-murderer, actually grew up kind of a sissy and had a fascination with androgyny in his life and his work. His world-wide celebrity may have warped many things--as perhaps with the late Norman Mailer--but he got pretty trapped in his pose. It was to his son Gregory that he used the phrase "strange tribe" to describe the Hemingway gens. Gregory was ten years old when Papa entered the room to find Greg (nicknamed by Hem as Gigi, pronounced "Giggy") pulling on mother's (Pauline, Hem's wife #2) silk stockings. Gregory went on to marry four times, as had his father, cross-dressed all his life, had sex-reassignment surgery, and the day before he died, was taken into custody, as Gloria, while, drunkenly, changing into women's attire. He died in the women's police tank in Dade County.

Then the suicides. Ernest's father, brother and sister were suicides. Ernest too. His granddaughter, Margaux, herself an attractive, and famously androgynous, model killed herself, rumored to be on the same day as Grandpa. Once suicide gets into the clan, believe me, it's hard to get out. Is there a price to be paid by men who pose as hyper-masculinists? Think Teddy Roosevelt--another killer of wildlife. (I will, on occasion, think of Brigid Brophy's line about Ernest Hemingway, and I paraphrase: He had the guts to steal Gertrude Stein's style but wasn't half the man she was.) This is a sad but still fascinating story--heartbreaking in an All-American way. Why.

STRANGE TRIBE is a hardcover from The Lyons Press, $24.95

Calamus is always delighted to host an event featuring JOE HAYES, our bestselling author. Not only a fascinating fiction writer, Hayes is also an engaging painter. For the past two years, we have held a presentation of Joe's latest paintings. We are delighted to host the 2007 Hayes Collection on Saturday, December 1st, 2 to 5 PM.
 

WILLIAM MANN will be at Calamus Bookstore on Friday, December 14th, at 7 PM, to discuss his book, KATE: THE WOMAN WHO WAS HEPBURN, which has just been released in a trade paperback edition.

Beside his fiction titles, which have a loyal following, Mann has chronicled the film world in: BEHIND THE SCREEN: HOW GAYS AND LESBIAN SHAPED HOLLYWOOD, WISECRACKER: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF  WILLIAM HAINES and his affectionate appreciation, EDGE OF MIDNIGHT: THE LIFE OF JOHN SCHLESINGER.

One reviewer noted that Mann's KATE is "not just the best on Hepburn--it's a book that sets new standards in movie biography."