Allusions: LGBTQ Writing

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by Literary Hub

A leading microbiologist tackles the scientific and sociopolitical impact of viruses in eleven striking essays.

Invisible in the food we eat, the people we kiss, and inside our own bodies, viruses flourish―with the power to shape not only our health, but our social, political, and economic systems. Drawing on his expertise in microbiology, Joseph Osmundson brings readers under the microscope to understand the structure and mechanics of viruses and to examine how viruses like HIV and COVID-19 have redefined daily life.

Osmundson’s buoyant prose builds on the work of the activists and thinkers at the forefront of the HIV/AIDS crisis and critical scholars like José Esteban Munoz to navigate the intricacies of risk reduction, draw parallels between queer theory and hard science, and define what it really means to “go viral.” This dazzling multidisciplinary collection offers novel insights on illness, sex, and collective responsibility. Virology is a critical warning, a necessary reflection, and a call for a better future.

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A mutilated conventioneer.

A trail of bodies.

The same grim signature.

Homicide Detective Kendall Parker isn’t sure he wants to return to the police force. His last case ended with the arrest of an innocent man for murder, and his long-time homicide partner was killed in the process. On leave from the APD, Parker has gotten sober, smoke-free, and is rebuilding a life alone.

But, the arrival of a brazen killer cuts short Parker’s sabbatical. His new homicide commander summons him to police headquarters with a direct plea from the mayor: go undercover for the FBI to flush out the predator. With the gay community under siege, Parker must prowl Atlanta’s gay bars and late-night dance clubs as bait in hopes of luring the killer.

Award-winning investigative journalist Calvin Slade is also on the trail. Aided by a hotshot young reporter, Slade soon discovers a shocking clue about the murders law enforcement has kept from the public. But, chasing the hottest story of his career may put him directly in the path of a savage beast.

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In 2021, Caputo’s second book (CHAMELEON: A Memoir) was published. This memoir shows another side of the author in which he vividly describes his harrowing journey coming out of the closet and living authentically, post-Stonewall, pre-HIV/AIDS epidemic, and thereafter. In addition, Caputo discusses how the Christian Right has been notorious for using their Bible to discriminate and relentlessly trying to derail the progress of the LGBTQ+ community while denying them their fundamental human and American rights

In 2008, Michael Caputo started his own business. He did that for six years and became one of the most famous massage therapists on the planet when the Daily News interviewed him in May of 2012 in light of the John Travolta sex scandal involving numerous male massage therapists from around the country. Caputo unexpectedly ended up on the front page of the Daily News and was written up in People Magazine and the National Enquirer. For weeks he was bombarded with phone calls from all the major media outlets worldwide begging him for an interview.

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It’s 1994, an election year when violent crime is rampant, voters want action, and politicians smell blood. When a Latino teenager confesses to the murder of a pretty-boy cokehead outside a gay bar in L.A., the cops consider the case closed. But Benjamin Justice, a disgraced former reporter for the Los Angeles Times, sees something in the jailed boy others don’t. His former editor, Harry Brofsky, now toiling at the rival Los Angeles Sun, pries Justice from his alcoholic seclusion to help neophyte reporter Alexandra Templeton dig deeper into the story. But why would a seemingly decent kid confess to a brutal gang initiation killing if he wasn’t guilty? And how can Benjamin Justice possibly be trusted, given his central role in the Pulitzer scandal that destroyed his career? Snaking his way through shadowy neighborhoods and dubious suspects, he’s increasingly haunted by memories of his lover Jacques, whose death from AIDS six years earlier precipitated his fall from grace. As he unravels emotionally, Templeton attempts to solve the riddle of his dark past and ward off another meltdown as they race against a critical deadline to uncover and publish the truth.

Awarded an Edgar by Mystery Writers of America for Best First Novel on initial release, this 25th Anniversary edition has been revised by the author. A foreword for the 2020 edition by Christopher Rice (Bone Music) is included.

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"This is the most important book about AIDS and gay men since Randy Shilts's And the Band Played On. And it is far better." - Martin Duberman, The Nation

"Rotello's ambitious book is the Silent Spring of the AIDS epidemic." - The Boston Globe

Gabriel Rotello, an award-winning gay journalist and long-time AIDS activist, has done in this book something no writer has done before. Weaving together the strands of ecology theory, epidemiology and sexual politics, he shows how the AIDS epidemic, like other epidemics from influenza to bubonic plague to today's rapidly emerging viruses, result as much from human behaviors as from specific microbes. He argues convincingly that AIDS was probably a rare disease syndrome in humans that erupted into an epidemic only when cultural changes - including the gay male sexual revolution of the seventies - created ideal conditions for it's evolution and spread.

For the first time ever, Rotello describes in detail the surprising scientific consensus about why, precisely, AIDS hit gay men so hard. Rebutting both the left's position that AIDS was merely an accident, and simplistic right-wing theories that blame promiscuity alone, Rotello presents the compelling but troubling verdict embraced by epidemiologists: AIDS was spread by a fusion of factors built right into the fabric of urban gay life after Stonewall.

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It's the summer of 1991 and serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer has been arrested. His monstrous crimes inspire dread around the globe. But not so much for Emory Hughes, a closeted young man in Chicago who sees in the cannibal killer a kindred spirit, someone who fights against the dark side of his own nature, as Emory does. He reaches out to Dahmer in prison via letters.

The letters become an escape—from Emory's mother dying from AIDS, from his uncaring sister, from his dead-end job in downtown Chicago, but most of all, from his own self-hatred.

Dahmer isn't Emory's only lifeline as he begins a tentative relationship with Tyler Kay. He falls for him and, just like Dahmer, wonders how he can get Tyler to stay. Emory's desire for love leads him to confront his own grip on reality. For Tyler, the threat of the mild-mannered Emory seems inconsequential, but not taking the threat seriously is at his own peril.

Can Emory discover the roots of his own madness before it's too late and he finds himself following in the footsteps of the man from Milwaukee?

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