Yancey Harrington Braxton, one of Harris's most dramatic creations, is back and she has decided she wants to star in her own reality TV series. She's left her NFL star beau and found a rich, well-connected lover who just might be able to get her where she wants to be. There are two big speed bumps in her path--two women fierce enough to derail her plans. These are Madison B., the music chart's latest hot ticket and then Ava Middlebrooks, who happens to be Yancey's own mama dearest.

Harris takes his readers on a wild ride, a story filled with passion, intrigue, sensuality and characters driven by ruthless ambition. Lynn Harris died just a few months back, while on a book promotion in Los Angeles; he was 54. Harris had a fascinating and curious life. I hope someone is planning to write his biography. He was a lovely man and had the gift from early on to become a successful popular writer.

MAMA DEAREST is a hardcover from Pocket Books, $25.99

Fifty authors selected a title and make the case for its place in the canon. Maureen Duffy writes about Sappho. Mark Merlis opts for A SHROPSHIRE LAD. Fenton Johnson, DE PROFUNDIS; Jane DeLynn, MRS. DALLOWAY; Randall Kenan, FORBIDDEN COLORS; John Weir, A TASTE OF HONEY; Jonathan Franzen, EUSTACE CHISHOLM AND THE WORKS; Andrew Holleran, MY FATHER AND MYSELF; Carol Guess, THE TERRIBLE GIRLS.

It's a smart list--I'm an easy sell for these list compilations--but the writers selected to make their contributions are all in the business and know the history of our literature. This is very well done.

FIFTY GAY AND LESBIAN BOOKS is a trade paperback from Alyson Books, $16.95

BARNEY FRANK is a hardcover from University of Massachusetts Press. It includes photos and an index. Frank is pictured here with Mrs. Roosevelt in the early 1960s. $29.95

He turns the table and tells his own story in IN AND OUT OF HOLLYWOOD: A BIOGRAPHER'S MEMOIR He was born in England in the 1930s. His childhood was troubled. He married young and moved with his wife to Australia to begin his career as writer and editor. By the 1960s, he was in Hollywood. He captured the brass ring when he located the reels of Orson Welles's unfinished Latin American epic, IT'S ALL TRUE, long thought to be lost. This coup got him on all the A lists as well as a feature writer's slot with THE NEW YORK TIMES.

His memoir is full of his reflections on leading Hollywood personalities of the last forty years, including a report on the ways of gay life in Tinseltown, the joys and the dangers in the years before AIDS.

IN AND OUT OF HOLLYWOOD is a hardcover from Terrace Books, an imprint of the University of Wisconsin Press, $29.95

We start with Gary Griswold, a sprightly if somewhat dim scion of Albany old money. He suddenly goes missing. His ex-wife wants to know what happened to him. She's also concerned about his 38 million dollars in cash. Who wouldn't be?

Albany's only gay PI, Donald Strachey, is soon on the case and a little out of his element. Gary had had some sort of religious conversion and he and his scratch have disappeared into Thailand, a land where corruption has its own profile. Stratchey and his lover Timmy comb the Land of Smiles for a man with a taste for bad choices and a daffy plan to buy himself 38 mil of good karma.

THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE is a trade paperback from MLR Press, $14.99

Bergman's reflections on incidents in daily life reflecting gender perceptions are both amusing and profound. Why do people behave this way or that? This is a very personal book, commentary on family and friends. Bergman's text is infused with wit and sharp social observation. Yes, the core of these essays are about gender and identity but so much more is about the way we live today.

THE NEAREST EXIT MAY BE BEHIND YOU is a trade paperback from Arsenal Pulp Press, $18.95

SORDID TRUTHS tells his story of leaving college after one year to head out for the London, lured by the dream of sex and money. He started working as a prostitute and became something of a celebrity in his line of work. He met all kinds--some well-to-do Euro trash types, by his account, had him on Speed-Dial.

Enter Chi Chi LaRue and Shaw's life changed. He very quickly became a sensation in the gay adult film biz, more than fifty films and numerous awards. Shaw's writing is candid and witty, a charming account.

SORDID TRUTHS is a trade paperback from Alyson Books, $15.95

His latest book, which has captured considerable press, is CITY BOY: MY LIFE IN NEW YORK DURING THE 1960s and '70s. Born in Cincinnati, raised in Chicago, educated in Michigan, White, instead of going to Harvard to pursue a PhD, followed a lover to New York City. Timing is all, and White's timing was exquisite. It was a time when his life was full of promiscuous opportunity; he also got to befriend the literary and artistic movers and shakers when New York was not only running itself into the ground but undergoing enormous cultural changes. White seems to be a master of literary politicking and it has done him well. He has worked incredibly hard at his literary career and it all paid off when A BOY'S OWN STORY was published in 1982. It created a sensation and he hasn't stopped since. CITY BOY is an entertaining look back at those days in the trenches and his emergence, finally, as the glorious peacock!

CITY BOY is a hardcover from Bloomsbury, $26.00

His latest is MURDER IN THE GARDEN DISTRICT. Chanse MacLeod is the fellow who has to work it all out. This time it's a powerful political family, resident in a swank Garden District palazzo, a family stuffed with secrets. And it ends in murder.

MacLeod winds up digging through decades of murders and cover-ups--this is New Orleans!--to get to the truth before more lives are ruined, perhaps even his!

MURDER IN THE GARDEN DISTRICT is a trade paperback from Alyson Books, $14.95