Act Well Your Part
by Don Sakers

At first Keith Graff dislikes his new school, Oak Grove High. He misses his old friends, and wonders if he'll ever fit in. Then, he joins the school's drama club, where he meets the boyish Brian Davenport. Young love, fag bashing and sweet revenge.

Alf
by Bruno Vogel

The story of a friendship between two boys at a Berlin prep school, Felix and Alf. Fearful of the sexual side of their relationship, Alf enlists in the German army, and his letters from the front radicalize his friend, who becomes an agitator against the war.

Annie on my Mind
by Nancy Garden

A pensive story of love between women that earned high praise from all corners. Chosen by the American Library Association as one of the Best of the Best Books for Young Adults,1970-1982. Tells us what it feels like to be a young woman who is just coming to terms with her lesbianism. Clearly written, consistent, lyrical, and best of all, believable.

Aubade
by Kenneth Martin

When it was first published in 1957, this novel created a storm of controversy with its frank revelations about adolescent homosexual feelings and influenced many major figures of the time. Written in the first person by a sixteen-year-old Irish boy, it deals uncompromisingly with the early homosexual love affair of a young man. With a new introduction by the author.

Blackbird
by Larry Duplechan

It was a month to remember for Johnnie Ray Rousseau, a gay black high school boy: it was the month Todd Waterson, high-school hero and all-around hunk, got the baptist minister's daughter pregnant, the month sweet Cherie Barker, his girlfriend, decided the time had come for them to make love, the month he met Marshall MacNeill, surely the sexiest man ever to walk the earth. And, of course, the month of his exorcism.

The Blue Lawn
by William Taylor

In this striking departure for New Zealand humorist William Taylor (Agnes the Sheep), David and Theo are schoolmates whose mutual attraction is in turn denied, acknowledged, and deferred. Like Ursula LeGuin's Very Far Away from Anywhere Else, this is a love story about the choice of abstinence, making the passion unfulfilled but all the more aching. "If I touched you right now, well, first off, I wouldn't know much what to do and, second, I wouldn't know how to stop doing what it is I didn't know what to do if I did get started," says David in a remarkable evocation of the barely articulated stumblings of first love.

by John Fox

The story of Billy Connors, high school student, swim team member and all-around regular guy who has to face the fact that he's gay.

A Boy's Own Story
by Edmund White

This is the autobiographical story of the boyhood of this famous gay author. It tells the story of his late childhood and early adolescence. The dominant feature of White's story is his discovery of his gayness, and his coming to terms with it.

Case of the Good-For-Nothing Girlfriend: A Nancy Clue Mystery
by Mabel Maney and published by Cleis Press

The sequel to The Case of the Not-So-Nice Nurse is another hoot, a lampooning of girls' fiction of the past full of hapless, do-gooding detectives with "keen sleuthing abilities, up-to-the-minute fashion sense, and gracious finishing-school manners." Girlfriend finds our hapless heroine, Nancy Clue, racing home to River Depths, Illinois, to confess the murder of her father, prominent attorney Carson Clue; expose the terrible truth about him; and free Hannah Gruel, the selfless housekeeper who has shouldered the blame. With Nancy is the love of her life, nurse Cherry Aimless, whose wardrobe may be smaller than Nancy's but whose most treasured outfit is her nurse's whites complete with "cunning cape and perky cap." With a honey like Cherry, who is always careful to keep an ample supply of freshly starched, white linen handkerchiefs in her seasonally appropriate handbag, we know Nancy can't miss. Nor, with butch ex-con Midge and her perfectly lipsticked girlfriend, Velma, along for the ride, does this hilarious, dyke-ish caper.

Changelings
by Jo Sinclair

Two teenage girls, one Jewish and one black, forge a friendship as their neighborhood seethes with racial strife. This novel shows how such struggles affect younger generations, whose survival lies in their power to love.

Cody
by Keith Hale

This novel explores a different type of friendship where the lines between straight and gay blur, where two minds merge, making each one whole in the process. Trotsky, as he is known to his friends, feels it as love. But what does Cody feel? A teen coming out classic.

Crystal Boys
by Pai Hsien-yung

The first Chinese novel with a gay theme made into the film "Outcasts." Cast out from his family after coming out, A-qing, the adolescent hero, drifts into a life of hustling among the buoliquan, or "glass community"- Taiwanese for the gay community in which individuals are called "crystal boys."

Dance on My Grave
by Aidan Chambers

Sixteen-year-old Hal realizes he is gay and has a wonderful summer romance with Barry, in a positive story about homosexuality and falling in love for the first time. Chambers tells the story of a homosexual relationship in which one of the partners is dominant and that ends in tragedy. Told by Hal, the younger and weaker of the two, the book begins dramatically with a newspaper clipping: Halhas been charged with 'wilful damage' for 'interfering with a grave.' Part of the story is told by the notes of a social worker, part by Hal in retrospect, and most of it by Hal as a running narrative. Chambers' style is often staccato, often introspective; this is not an easy book to read. What should appeal to readers are the effective communication of deep and often anguished feelings, the perceptive depiction of relationships, and the depth and consistency of characterization.

Dare Truth or Promise
by Paula Boock and published by Houghton Mifflin

Willa and Louie could not be more different. Louie, who wants to be a lawyer, is an outstanding student and a prefect at her New Zealand high school. Willa lives in a pub and just wants to get through her exams so she can become a chef. But they are immediately and completely attracted to one another when they first meet as employees at a fast-food restaurant, and they soon fall in love. Louie's mother suspects the affair and orders her daughter to stop seeing Willa. Unwilling to defy her family, Louie seeks counsel from an understanding priest at her church and finally comes to accept her sexuality and her love for Willa. Boock's characters are lively and believable; even Louie's mother is multidimensional. Like M. E. Kerr's Deliver Us from Evie (1994), this is a heartening novel in which the lesbian lovers stay together despite family and societal objections.

Deliver us from Evie
by M.E. Kerr

Here, finally, is a challenger to Annie on My Mind. This well crafted, interesting, and believable novel features a midwestern farm family with a lesbian daughter. Kerr creates a character who knows who she is and feels at home in her difference. Evie's younger brother Parr narrates the story. Parr plays a key role in the action that revolves around how the town deals with Evie's love for the wealthy daughter of the town's most powerful man. A real refreshing heroine. I'm still so high on this book I'm not sure how to annotate it. I'll give you an excerpt: "Mom got up and rinsed out her coffee cup. She said, 'I just hope Evie has the name without the game. It's bad enough to look that way, but it's awful to look it and actually be it....Then you're a stereotype. You're what everybody's always thought one of those women was like.' 'I'm what everybody thinks a farm boy's like. I'm driving around on tractors, going to 4-H, planting in the spring, harvesting in the fall- what's the difference?' 'The difference is you're not against the law, Parr. And the church doesn't call you a sinner.' 'Maybe something's wrong with the law.'

Drowning of Stephan Jones
by Bette Greene and published by Starfire Press

When a gay couple moves to the artsy community near town, Carla is not the least bit offended. However, Andy, the boy she adores, wages war against the men. A tragic night of violence leads Carla to realize that Andy's heinous actions can no longer be denied, and she must stand up for what she believes in.As her mother battles a citizens' group that wants to ban all "anti-Christian" literature from the public library, Carla faces her own battle of torn loyalties when her boyfriend starts persecuting the homosexual owners of an antiques shop.

Dream Boy
by Jim Grimsley

In a corner of the rural South seething with hatred and petty meanness, Nathan and Roy must keep their love hidden from their friends, church, and families. That comes easily to Nathan, who is used to keeping secrets. But he is afraid of the secret he has always kept, even from Roy--the terrible truth about his father that makes his life impossible.

Enchanted Youth
by Richie McMullen and published by Gay Men's Press

In this sensitive, revealing memoir, McMullen recounts his year as a
London "rent boy," a prostitute engaging in homosexual acts. In 1958, when he's 15, prostitution offers McMullen an escape from his abusive father (described in his earlier Enchanted Boy ) and the "cold hearted" city of Liverpool. He ends up in "The Meat Rack" at Piccadilly Circus, where boys hang around "like marketable produce in a butcher's shop," waiting for customers.

Execution, Texas: 1987
by D. Travers Scott

A sharply original coming-of-age story about a 17-year-old in the small town of Execution, Texas, whose struggles with his identity are complicated and complemented by those around him. This story introduces a startlingly original new voice that shows a depth and complexity of character, time, and place that far exceed expectations of a debut novel.

Entries from a Hot Pink Notebook
by Todd D. Brown and published by Washington Square Press

What if Holden Caulfield were coming of age--and coming out--in the Reagan years? This deft, funny, and irresistible debut novel puts an appealingly fresh spin on what it's like to be fourteen, freaked out by life, and never more eager to see what might happen next

The Front Runner
by Patricia Nell Warren

The Front Runner was a breakthrough gay novel, selling more than 10 million copies. The love story between Olympic runner Billy Sive and his coach, Harlan Brown, reflects the optimism of the early days of gay liberation, before Bowers vs. Hardwick, before "Don't ask, don't tell," before the rise of the religious right. Twenty-two years later, it remains a sensitive, well-paced depiction of male love with a cruelly dramatic climax. If Sive seemed a little too good-natured to be credible in 1974, he feels almost alien in the disillusioned, divided world of the 1990s.

Funny Boy: A Novel
by Shyam Selvadurai and published by Harvest Books

Set in Ceylon, this book talks about the growing pains of one boy who finds, at a young age, that he is attracted more to other boys than he is girls. It's not about limitless sexual tension, and it's not about public school buggery. It is, instead, a poignant and troubling tale of a boy coming to terms with himself and how he handles the world around him. Children, if you have ever noticed, can be frightfully cruel at times.

Getting Off Clean
by Timothy Murphy

Gay male coming-out novels usually deal more with the personal than with the political, but Getting Off Clean encompasses both. Eric Fitzpatrick is a bright, high school senior in Mendham, a working-class town in Massachusetts. He is determined to fit in, be popular, and go to college. The only problem is that he is gay and just coming out--a problem complicated when he begins having an affair with Brooks Tremont, a black student who attends a prestigious prep school outside of town. When racial violence breaks out in Mendham, both Eric and Brooks have to make some serious choices. Getting Off Clean, deftly written and incredibly smart, challenges us to think in new ways about sexuality, class, race, and the accomplishments of gay fiction.

A Ghost in the Closet: A Hardly Boys Mystery
by Mabel Maney

This hoot of a book works wonders--it's been known to cure migraines, lift depressions, and spur readers on to culinary triumphs like Salisbury Steak. The formula: 1 part Nancy Drew, 1 part Women's Barracks, and a sly dash of ever-so-gay humor. Maney's spot-on recreation of the original series' diction is half the fun. In-jokes abound: butch-femme couple Midge and Velma are my favorites, although Uncle Nelly Hardly is a close second. Maney is a genius, and these books are destined to hold pride of place in every gay and lesbian book collection.

Happy Endings are All Alike
by Sandra Scoppettone

It was the last summer before college, and Janet and Peggy were in love. But as Janet said, "It always seems as if when something great happens, then something lousy happens soon after." Soon her worst fears turned into brute reality.

Hey Joe
by Ben Neihart

A gay youth seeking love in New Orleans stumbles into a conspiracy to alter a jury verdict in this atmospheric novel by a new voice in American fiction. Neihart beautifully captures the colorful, seamy nightlife of "The Big Easy" while exploring the pain and elation of young love.

The House you Pass on the Way
by Jacqueline Woodson

Woodson takes the gay identity story far beyond the simplistic problem novel and connects it with every outsider's coming-of-age. Staggerlee is happy in her interracial family, but she is a loner at school and in her African American community, and she longs for a friend. Somehow she knows not to talk about the kiss she shared with a girl in her class. Then her girl cousin Trout comes to visit and they fall in love, but when Trout returns home and finds a boyfriend, Staggerlee is alone again. There's a lot of family history framing the central incident of the story (including famous grandparents who were killed by a bomb during a civil rights demonstration), and it's not always clear why, in such a short novel, we have to be told so much of the past before we can get to the immediate drama of the present. What many teens will relate to is the uncertainty, the sense that Staggerlee doesn't know who she is becoming and where her journey will take her.