Here are 100 books that Leading Men fans have personally recommended if you like
Leading Men.
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I have always been a lover of love stories, yet it can be difficult to find “love stories” that aren’t put into other boxes or aren’t genre romances. My debut is also a family drama that spans sixty years of the twentieth century, but it’s a love story at its core. It’s sometimes classified as a romance because it’s a love story set on a beach. Still, it doesn’t quite fit into typical romance frameworks, which have characters meet and pulled apart before finally ending up back together. My book, instead, explores the reality of loving someone over decades and building a life together.
This is one of those books I am in awe of. Deeply immersive, I had to be pried away from this story once I began. The writing is spectacular and an absolute masterclass on writing chemistry between characters and writing young love.
This book falls on nearly any top-five list of mine. It is truly stunning and heartbreaking in turn. (Sorry, this isn’t a very light list, is it??) But to me, what makes love stories powerful is all the ways that love can be lost, the truth that love can be fleeting, impossible to hold onto forever, even if you have spent a lifetime with the one you love, at some point we all have to say goodbye. This is what makes love so beautiful.
Now a Major Motion Picture from Director Luca Guadagnino, Starring Armie Hammer and Timothee Chalamet, and Written by James Ivory
WINNER BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY ACADEMY AWARD Nominated for Four Oscars
A New York Times Bestseller A USA Today Bestseller A Los Angeles Times Bestseller A Vulture Book Club Pick
An Instant Classic and One of the Great Love Stories of Our Time
Andre Aciman's Call Me by Your Name is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents' cliffside mansion on the Italian Riviera. Each is unprepared…
Raised crisscrossing America, I developed a ceaseless wanderlust that took me around the world many times. En route, I collected the stories and characters that make up my work. Polish cops and Greek fishermen, mercenaries and arms dealers, child prostitutes and wannabe terrorists: I hung with them all in an unparalleled international career that had me smuggle banned plays from behind the Iron Curtain, maneuver through Occupied Territories, and stowaway aboard a ‘devil’s barge’ for a three-day crossing from Cape Verde that landed me in an African jail. Greece, where I’ve spent some seven years total, stole my heart 50 years ago.
The setup of The Rebellious Tide instantly made me want to read it.
A man abandons his pregnant wife, and thirty years later Sebastien, their son, seeks him out, wanting an explanation and revenge. The father is the captain of a luxury liner cruising the Mediterranean, and Sebastien joins the crew to secretly stalk his father to find out what kind of person he is.
The story is full of mystery and disturbing elements, not to mention fluid sexuality. Ultimately, Sebastien discovers something his father has hidden in the belly of the ship that makes him confront what he’s feared about his own identity. A new twist on a high seas mystery!
Sebastien's search for his father leads him to a ship harbouring a dangerous secret.
Sebastien has heard only stories about his father, a mysterious sailor who abandoned his pregnant mother thirty years ago. But when his mother dies after a lifetime of struggle, he becomes obsessed with finding an explanation - perhaps even revenge.
The father he's never met is Kostas, the commanding officer of a luxury liner sailing the Mediterranean. Posing as a member of the ship's crew, Sebastien stalks his unwitting father in search of answers as to why he disappeared so many years ago.
Raised crisscrossing America, I developed a ceaseless wanderlust that took me around the world many times. En route, I collected the stories and characters that make up my work. Polish cops and Greek fishermen, mercenaries and arms dealers, child prostitutes and wannabe terrorists: I hung with them all in an unparalleled international career that had me smuggle banned plays from behind the Iron Curtain, maneuver through Occupied Territories, and stowaway aboard a ‘devil’s barge’ for a three-day crossing from Cape Verde that landed me in an African jail. Greece, where I’ve spent some seven years total, stole my heart 50 years ago.
A psychological thriller set on the stunningly beautiful Greek island of Patmos. That was enough to make me want to crack the cover on this book, and what a great read it turned out to be!
Ian, fleeing the emotional and financial fallout of his father’s death, joins Charlie, his best childhood friend, who’s rich and basking in the good island life. Or is it a good island life?
Ian finds himself drawn into a world where mysteries overlap, infidelities, and ambivalent sexuality are rampant, an errant bomb explosion may have missed its intended target, and the conclusion makes the ending to The Silence of the Lambs look like a cakewalk.
'The Destroyers is a smart, sophisticated literary thriller; for all its originality, it invokes the shades of Lawrence Durrell and Graham Greene' Jay McInerney, author of Bright, Precious Days
When Charlie and I were young, we played a game called Destroyers . . . We were sharpening our instincts, jettisoning attachments. We were honing strategies for survival ...
Ian Bledsoe is on the run, broke and humiliated, fleeing the emotional and financial fallout of his father's death. His childhood friend Charlie - rich, exuberant and basking in life on the Greek island of Patmos - is his last hope.
Raised crisscrossing America, I developed a ceaseless wanderlust that took me around the world many times. En route, I collected the stories and characters that make up my work. Polish cops and Greek fishermen, mercenaries and arms dealers, child prostitutes and wannabe terrorists: I hung with them all in an unparalleled international career that had me smuggle banned plays from behind the Iron Curtain, maneuver through Occupied Territories, and stowaway aboard a ‘devil’s barge’ for a three-day crossing from Cape Verde that landed me in an African jail. Greece, where I’ve spent some seven years total, stole my heart 50 years ago.
I’m a gay writer living in France, so of course, I had to read The Stuffed Coffin when it won France’s national 2019 Prize for Gay Thriller. And as a bonus, it’s set in Greece, the country which stole my heart long ago.
After breaking up with his boyfriend, Damien needs to get away and chooses a bucolic Greek village next to the sea. His first night there, he falls for a handsome youth, Nikos, but their relationship is anything but simple.
Meanwhile, bodies start appearing: drowned, run over, whatever. It’s hardly the calm respite Damien envisioned but readers will definitely enjoy this sometimes-quirky and definitely entertaining read.
Winner of the Prix du roman policier - Prix du roman gay 2019 in France! After breaking up with his boyfriend, Damien Drechsler needs a holiday. The Greek village of Levkos seems like the perfect place to go—dozy, sunny, bucolic, with lonely beaches and little bars where he can drown his sorrows. But the very first night, Damien meets Nikos, a dashing young man, who makes his heart beat faster all of a sudden. Then, he is almost run over by a reckless driver. The next day he learns that an old man has been killed in a suspicious-looking car…
Ever since I was a little guy, I've been told that I complicate things unnecessarily. I overthink and over-communicate, and often, my feelings are outsized to the situation. These are not things I do on purpose, but involuntary, like a sneeze or the way you reflexively clench with cuteness aggression when you see a grizzly bear’s little ears, even though you know it can hurt and eat and kill you. I love to find books with narrators who seemingly share this affliction. It makes me feel less alone, but more importantly, I love to see how other people's Rube Goldberg machines function.
This book made me dizzy with love. This memoir is overflowing with love. Love of the self, love of language, romantic love, familial love, pet love, fear of love, unrequited love, tough love, tender love.
Perhaps most of all, I was taken with the way the author navigates the world so internally, a very solitary yet romantic pursuit of belonging. I kept catching myself leaning forward while reading, propelled through the nonlinear story of Stewart's life by the swelling emotions and incredible control of language.
I spent two weeks reading this book on repeat because the powerful, poetic prose kept inspiring me to write. If this book were a cake, I would eat it forthwith.
From an exhilarating new voice, a breathtaking memoir about gay desire, Blackness, and growing up. Darius Stewart spent his childhood in the Lonsdale projects of Knoxville, where he grew up navigating school, friendship, and his own family life in a context that often felt perilous. As we learn about his life in Tennessee--and eventually in Texas and Iowa, where he studies to become a poet--he details the obstacles to his most crucial desires: hiding his earliest attraction to boys in his neighborhood, predatory stalkers, doomed affairs, his struggles with alcohol addiction, and his eventual diagnosis with HIV. Through a mix…
As a gay writer who has navigated some difficult life changes of my own, including cancer, a gay bashing, and the death of an early love, I always enjoy finding writers whose gay characters must deal with their own challenging life issues. Whether it's a coming-of-age tale, a puzzling mystery, or a suspenseful fantasy, each character comes to terms with accepting who he is in an often hostile world.
All the Croy books are so descriptive and imaginative, well-plotted, and with great characters the reader cares about. It's been fun seeing them grow, change and develop through the series, set in the small, fictional town of Croy. Rumor has it this is the last in the series, but I'm hoping for more.
Set in the same Oklahoma town as the rest of the cycle, this fourth and final book in the series starts on the same afternoon that ends Book 3, but on the other side of town. Characters that appeared only in the wings before-gender-fluid Beau and robust farm boy Frank-suddenly take center stage. Beau follows his dream of starting a rock band, and Frank faces the devastating end of his only real connection in life and the disintegration of his family. Their lives intersect with the three young adults readers have come to know: Joanie, with her insatiable curiosity and…
As a queer fantasy author, my work strongly focuses on detailed plots and lush world-building, but as a reader, I have to admit that the things that hook me on a story are vibrant characters—particularly when they come in couples. After all, it’s the characters that explore their lush worlds and who bring detailed plots to life. One of my absolute favorite reading experiences is following a dynamic couple as they play off each other’s strengths and defend one another’s weaknesses to overcome all odds. It’s just the best feeling, in my opinion. So if you’re looking for a great fantasy book—or series—featuring gay couples, here are five of my favorites!
The world of The Sea
of Stars is amazingly creative; a modern setting that flawlessly incorporates
magicians, scheming courtiers, enchanted animals, and prophetic astronomy in
an age of cell phones, animal activists, and labor agencies. The majority of
common people are ruled over by nobles and magicians who regularly strip human
beings of their souls and lock them away inside animals, thus creating a
soulless human workforce as well as intelligent animal servants. As weird as
that may sound, the characters are so well written that the book is
astoundingly humane and moving.
I sympathized completely with Grand Magician Zachary Drake
in his disdain for the ruling class and its dehumanizing practices. Though,
I’ll admit, a couple of times I was so fascinated by the unexpected creativity of
the world that I almost wanted to see more. And I definitely appreciated
Drake’s snark and cynical commentary.
Thomas Myrdin knows that intrigue is part of life at court, but that doesn’t make his king’s betrayal any easier to take. Yet heartbreak troubles him less than the apocalyptic visions that haunt him. Fiery premonitions that show the world burning in ruins—and the cause, the king’s daughter. Visions and vengeance awaken a strange new power within him, but not even he is sure if those visions are prophecy or madness.
Lord Adam Wexley harbors a secret longing for the elegant Thomas, but his duty is to protect the newborn princess. When a sudden threat arises, Adam…
This is a list for those who love a tough guy with a soft heart. If you crave a story with passion, heat, and that zing of a good thriller, then this is the list for you. I love a romance wrapped around a strong plot. I need a book to stimulate my mind and give my old heart its “Aw, shucks,” moment. I’ve been fascinated by those who serve and the long-term effects it has on mental health. These books tackle the effects of PTSD, trauma, and its consequences. I believe the romance genre, when done well, is one of the best for examining this darkness.
I stumbled over this book and soon found myself hooked. It’s a romance, yes, but the research into conflict and its effects put it up there on my list of thrillers. It’s not strictly speaking a thriller, it’s more of a military action story and romance, but the characters are wonderful. The way they react to the war zone conflict, the effect it has on the unit and the reporter embedded with them, it has a wonderful ring of truth. And that’s what I’m always looking for in a good romance, the ring of truth. You have to really feel the RPGs coming in, and Garrett does an amazing job of making you really feel it.
There are a hundred reasons why falling for a gorgeous, tattooed soldier is a terrible idea. An office romance with tanks and guns?
No thanks.
Besides, Connor Regan has other things on his mind. After his brother’s death, he finds himself bound for Iraq to embed with an elite SAS team. He sets his boots on the ground looking for closure and solace—anything to ease the pain of James’s death.
Instead he finds Sergeant Thompson—a moody, inked Adonis with a sinfully rare smile.
Nat is a veteran commander, hardened by years of combat and haunted by the loss of his…
I am an anthropologist who has written or edited more than a dozen books on topics that range from the lives of trans sex workers, to the anthropology of fat. I have conducted extensive fieldwork in Papua New Guinea, Brazil, and Scandinavia. I work at Uppsala University in Sweden, where I am a Distinguished University Professor of Anthropology, and where I direct a research program titled Engaging Vulnerability.
As befitting the cheeky title, this book – about what it means to be, and to become, a gay man – is incisive, erudite, and a lot of fun to read. A pioneer of queer theory (and with this intervention, I suspect, a renegade from it), David Halperin is an unapologetic camp. He challenges received wisdom about how gay sensibility supposedly is misogynist, passé, irrelevant or dead, and his reflections on everything from Joan Crawford’s pizazz,to the current state of gay marriage, vacillate between being capacious and withering. “Sometimes I think homosexuality is wasted on gay people” he sniffs at one point, dispensing a delightful, and typically barbed, aperçu.
No one raises an eyebrow if you suggest that a guy who arranges his furniture just so, rolls his eyes in exaggerated disbelief, likes techno music or show tunes, and knows all of Bette Davis's best lines by heart might, just possibly, be gay. But if you assert that male homosexuality is a cultural practice, expressive of a unique subjectivity and a distinctive relation to mainstream society, people will immediately protest. Such an idea, they will say, is just a stereotype-ridiculously simplistic, politically irresponsible, and morally suspect. The world acknowledges gay male culture as a fact but denies it as…
As a queer fantasy author, my work strongly focuses on detailed plots and lush world-building, but as a reader, I have to admit that the things that hook me on a story are vibrant characters—particularly when they come in couples. After all, it’s the characters that explore their lush worlds and who bring detailed plots to life. One of my absolute favorite reading experiences is following a dynamic couple as they play off each other’s strengths and defend one another’s weaknesses to overcome all odds. It’s just the best feeling, in my opinion. So if you’re looking for a great fantasy book—or series—featuring gay couples, here are five of my favorites!
This is a book I’m particularly excited to share because I
was given the chance to read it in advance of its release. And I can say that
it’s fabulous fun! A swords and sorcery tale brimming with assassins, magical
music, battles for a throne, and dynamic lovers!
Balen is a gallant paladin who has made tough sacrifices to
win his post as the king’s personal guard. One of the most painful of those
sacrifices was leaving his witty and musically talented lover, Zavrius. So imagine
his shock and chagrin after a series of mysterious assassinations leave Zaverius
as the sole heir to the throne and Balen sworn to never leave his side! Awkward
doesn’t even begin to describe it…but in the very best way — I promise!
The banter between the characters never failed to make me
smile. And I adored that I could side with Zavrius for a…
Since time immemorial the warriors of the Paladin Order have harnessed arcane powers to protect their rulers. For Balen, who has given up his chance at love and fought his way to the top of the Paladin Order, there can be no greater honor than to serve his king. But when assassins annihilate the royal family, Balen suddenly finds himself sworn to serve the very man he abandoned. Now with their nation threatened by enemies both within and outside the kingdom, Balen must fight hidden traitors and unnatural assassins, while also contending with the biting wit and dangerous charm of…
