Candyass

Over the past twenty years debates about pornography have raged within feminism and beyond. Throughout the 1970s feminists increasingly addressed the problem of men's sexual violence against women, and many women reduced the politics of men's power to questions about sexuality. By the 1980s these questions had become more and more focused on the issue of pornography--now a metaphor for the menace of male power. Collapsing feminist politics into sexuality and sexuality into pornography has not only caused some of the deepest splits between feminists, but made it harder to think clearly about either sexuality or pornography--indeed, about feminist politics more generally. This provocative collection, by well-known feminists, surveys these arguments, and in particular asks why recent feminist debates about sexuality keep reducing to questions of pornography.

Special Memories is an astonishing recollection of meetings and discussions with some of the most well-known movers and shakers of the times. The author shares incredible close-ups with, to name a few, Marilyn Monroe, John Lennon, Elvis Presley, Jimmy Durante, Frank Sinatra, and Robert Kennedy. Some of the stories reveal shocking details, such as a torrid White House love affair, how Russian leader Leonid Brezhnev was almost killed just minutes before a summit conference in Washington, why John Wayne started to like pork over steak, and how Frank Sinatra burned a hole in the author’s new sport coat. A box of tissue is suggested for some of the encounters the author had, especially the sad behind-the-scene tug-a-war Marilyn had during her short life, Jimmy Doolittle experienced after the bombing of Tokyo, and John Daily had during his early professional golf career. In his nineteenth book, Special Memories, Elvin Bell takes readers on an emotional roller-coaster ride of superstar meltdown, victories, and heartfelt personal stories. It is a sip and flip thriller.

In Beyond Cantua Creek, a seasoned political insider with White House experience, shares some fascinating experiences during the Nixon Administration, including the Nixon-Brezhnev White House Summit Conference. During the Iron Curtain era, Elvin Bell led several intelligence missions into Russia, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, in addition to later serving two special assignments in the White House and completing a tour in the Pentagon during the Ronald Reagan administration. He utilizes his political experience to provide a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the power structure that existed during the Nixon administrationa foundation that allowed a secretary to appoint her own boyfriend to be secretary of the interior. As he shares the contents of startling conversations and meetings with Soviet President Leonid Ilych Brezhnev, Nixons secretary Rosemary Woods, Hollywood producer Sam Peckinpah, and scores of other notables, Bell captures the drama that escaped media attention and instead thrived behind the walls of the White House and elsewhere. Beyond Cantua Creek is a compelling compilation that will encourage lively discussions about politics, a presidential administration that will never be forgotten, and the eccentricities of those who once ruled Hollywood.

“Kwanzaa for Conrad & The Survival Tango” offers a gritty, sometimes funny picture of a brilliant man who manages to swim out of schizophrenia into a “normal” creative life as a writer.

Winner of the 2012 Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize Shortlisted for the 2012 Edmonton Public Library Alberta Readers' Choice Award In 1941, a young man imagines thrilling battles and heroic acts when he lies about his age and joins the army. Assigned to the Winnipeg Grenadiers, part of the Canadian army in Hong Kong, Freddy McKee becomes a prisoner of war six weeks after arriving in Hong Kong. Five years pass and Freddy finally returns home from the war, but three women—Joanna Keegan, her daughter Hope, and the beautiful and mysterious Su Li—feel echoes of Freddy’s ordeal in each of their lives. For Freddy, the memory of war is a heavier burden than the weapon he once carried. Freddy must fight to survive in a world that has left him behind.

Arthur is a young gay man in Montreal at a crossroads. He gets lost in a blizzard of boys and endless possibilities—looking to fall in love and to experience devotion—but he finds himself increasingly immersed in a world of hedonism and deception, especially as he deals with the messy remains of his relationship with Jeremy, his chimerical ex-boyfriend and first love. He moves to New York in search of something more, but due to a lack of foresight and chaotic romantic entanglements, he finds he still yearns for authentic connections with others. In a world that celebrates youth and extended adolescence, what does it mean to grow up? Candyass is a coming-of-age novel with hard edges and a soft heart: a striking debut work about what it means to be young, queer, and urban today; a radical chronicle of queer love and desire among millennials, whose feelings and impulses flicker and fade along with the bright lights of the city at night. Nick Comilla lives in Brooklyn, New York.