It is alleged that The Orange Man in The White House has never ever read a book in his life, so a very safe place to hang out right now is The Miami Book Fair.  Like the city that hosts it the Fair is beautifully diverse and one of the reasons it’s on our ‘must do’ list is because of its excellent coverage of LGBTQA+ new books and the authors, including this year:  here then a few volumes we couldnt leave withiut 

BARRY DILLER  WHO KNEW:  One of society’s worst-kept secrets is in this. Yes, Barry Diller is gay, and yet also married to Diane von Furstenberg, a woman. 81-year-old Diller, one of America’s most successful businessmen, reveals himself here—his successes, failures, and struggles—with surprising candor and intimacy in a memoir rich in Hollywood lore and filled with business acumen.

PS On Tuesday, November 16th, Diller will be making a Personal Appearance at the Fair: 7pm at The Auditorium Building 

“Baldwin: A Love Story,” Nicholas Boggs : we have always been big fans of the queer civil rights activist and gay icon. During his lifetime, he always considered his sexuality a private matter, so its’sgreat news that Boggs goes far beyond other scholars in tracing Baldwin’s relationships and their role in his work. The book was shortliseted for The Kirkus Award.

Mothers and Sons (Little, Brown, 2025), the newest novel by two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee Adam Haslett, concerns itself with the chilly yet tenacious relationship between a 40-year-old reclusive immigration lawyer and his mother. This former Episcopal priest runs a women’s retreat in Vermont, and Haslett gradually reveals a family history of heartbreak and regret, exploring how a single event can rupture a bond, while vulnerability and honesty might offer a route to repair. Stories of complicated family dramas like this are usually based on gay sons and mothers, and not the other way around !!!

Roddy Bottum THE ROYAL WE is a poetic survey of a time set in a magical city that once was and is no more. It is a memoir written by Bottum, a musician and artist, that documents his coming of age and out of the closet in 1980s San Francisco, a charged era of bicycle messengers, punk rock, street witches, wheatgrass, and rebellion. The book follows his travels from Los Angeles, growing up gay with no role models, to San Francisco, where he formed Faith No More and went on to tour the world relentlessly, surviving heroin addiction and the plight of AIDS, to become a queer icon.