When a former student tells the world that a high school teacher is gay, the man tries hard to assert his manliness.

"In December 1930, just before Christmas, the Gibbsville social circuit is electrified with parties and dances, where the music plays late into the night and the liquor flows freely. At the center of the social elite stand Julian and Caroline English -- the envy of friends and strangers alike. But in one rash moment born inside a highball glass, Julian breaks with polite society and begins a rapid descent toward self-destruction".

This book explores the life of men in various contexts: work, play, prayer, war, home, and friendship. Using essays and stories, myths and history, to bring life to the subject, Bennett defines what a man should be, how he should live, and to what he should aspire.

This brilliant epic novel set in New York and Prague introduces us to two misfit young men who make it big by creating comic-book superheroes. Joe Kavalier, a young artist who has also been trained in the art of Houdiniesque escape, has just smuggled himself out of Nazi-invaded Prague and landed in New York City. His Brooklyn cousin Sammy Clay is looking for a partner to create heroes, stories, and art for the latest novelty to hit America the comic...

"Out in the desert in a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly but who has haunted the edges of his life: Juan Gay. Playful raconteur, child lost and found and lost, guardian of the institutionalized, Juan has a project to pass along, one built around a true artifact of a book--Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns--and its devastating history. This book contains accounts collected in the early...

George Stevens' stunning adaptation of Theodore Dreiser's An American tragedy garnered six Academy Awards and guaranteed immortality for screen lovers Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor. Clift is a poor young man determined to win a place in respectable society and the heart of beautiful socialite Elizabeth Taylor. Shelley Winters plays the factory girl whose dark secret threatens Clift's professional and romantic prospects. Consumed with fear...

Barney Panofsky is a seemingly ordinary man who lives an extraordinary life. With his father, Izzy as his sidekick, Barney reflects on the many highs, and a few too many lows, of his long and colorful life. Not only does Barney turn out to be a true romantic, he is also capable of all kinds of sneaky acts of gallantry, generosity, and goodness when it is least expected. His gloriously full life is played out on a grand scale all the way through the...

Dan Torrance remains traumatized by the sinister events that occurred at the Overlook Hotel when he was a child, spending his days self-medicating away the 'shine' with alcohol. His hope for a peaceful existence soon becomes shattered when he meets Abra, a teen who shares his extrasensory gift.' Together, they form an unlikely alliance to battle the True Knot, a cult whose members try to feed off the shine of innocents to become immortal.

James White is a troubled twenty-something trying to stay afloat in a frenzied New York City. He retreats further into a self-destructive, hedonistic lifestyle, but as his mother battles a serious illness James is forced to take control of his life. As the pressure on him mounts, James must find new reserves of strength or risk imploding completely.