When You Are Engulfed in Flames
by David Sedaris

1st of the triumvirate of queer humourists at this year's Writers' Festival.

Lesbian romance goes mainstream in this charming tale… nervous and sexy and funny in the best romantic-comedy tradition… razor-sharp prose, full-bodied portraits of all the secondary characters and shrewd observations about everything… warmhearted, readable and entertaining.’

– Kirkus

Ha'penny
by Jo Walton

Ha'penny is the sequel to Jo Walton's chilling, heartbreaking novel Farthing, an alternate history about a quisling Britain that makes peace with Hitler and helps create a stable, thousand-year Reich on the Continent. The story, a murder mystery in a Britain on the edge of fascism, made several none-to-subtle (and very apt) comparisons to Tony Blair's Britain, where Habeas Corpus and due process have been replaced by universal surveillance and a National ID Database.
Ha'penny is a thriller, not a murder-mystery, but it is otherwise the twin of Farthing. It continues the story of New Scotland Yard Inspector Carmichael, a compromised, closeted homosexual who is the pained lackey of the fascist plan to sell Britain out to the Reich. In Ha'penny, Carmichael is called on to investigate a plot to assassinate Hitler and the Prime Minister, a plot that's mixed up with the IRA, radical Lords, and a family of divided aristocratic girls, one of whom is a Communist, one of whom is married to Himmler, and one of whom is Viola Lark, a star of stage who has just been cast as Hamlet in a cross-cast production on the Strand.

Wiffle Lever to Full!
By Leslie Feinberg

Wiffle Lever to Full! is an enjoyable romp through the late seventies and eighties, taking in many of the cultural touchstones shared by people of my generation (including, in some cases, the appropriation of earlier TV cults to be our very own). The number of conventions that take place across the country every year, and the enthusiasm with which the stars and creators of the shows participate, was a real eye-opener to me, and the whole book was an enjoyable mixture of memoir, cultural history and travelogue. If it makes me think one serious thought, it is this: in our multi-channel age, with the growth of YouTube et al, will the kids of today have any common cultural memories to get together and share over too many pints of beer? Time will tell, but I suspect that their lives will be the poorer for it if they do not. – bookgeeks

Price: $35