Edmund White’s death is hitting me hard. I never met him, but his novels and memoirs were a constant presence during my coming-out years and thereafter. I remember buying his books back in the 1990’s at Charis Books & More and at Outwrite, the LGBTQ bookstore that used to be in Atlanta. The main character in my short story “Time After Time” (which will be published in an upcoming anthology on August 1st) is looking at an Edmund White book when he meets his partner in a bookstore. I have an autographed copy of Edmund White’s recent novel The Humble Lover, which reads very much like a gay John Updike novel (and I say that as a fan of the late John Updike). The world of modern-day queer literature has lost one of its founding lights. Rest in Peace, Edmund White.
Here are some words I never thought I’d be able to say: There is a queer bookstore in Cobb County, Georgia.
It’s called The Lavender Bookshop, and it’s at 1289 Roswell Road, Suite 700, Marietta GA 30062, just under half a mile from the Big Chicken (if you’re from Cobb County, you know what that is).
It’s an indie bookstore with a warm and inviting atmosphere, a full calendar of monthly book clubs and other events, a comprehensive Young Adult section, and a very good selection of contemporary as well as classic queer books. These are the first three books I bought, two of them new and one of them a classic:
The Resurrectionist by A. Rae Dunlap (2025). Victorian-era graverobbers? Dark Academia? How could I not buy this?
Book Boyfriend by Kris Ripper (2022), a gay romcom novel from Carina Adores, the LGBTQ+ imprint of Harlequin.
The City and the Pillar by Gore Vidal, first published in 1948. I know about Gore Vidal mainly from his very public, sometimes raucous literary feuds with Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, and William F. Buckley. This will be the first novel I’ve read by him.
I have switched from Audible to Libro.fm for my audiobooks going forward, and I have switched over from Amazon Kindle to the easy-to-use Bookshop e-reader on my phone and iPad. The first two ebooks I downloaded from Bookshop were Burn to Strike, the new Joe Ledger novel by Jonathan Maberry, and The Get Off, the new Hard Case Crime novel from Christa Faust (both Jonathan and Christa are allies, and I’ve met both at literary conventions and they are both cool as hell).
The first time I visited The Lavender Bookshop, I actually had to leave quickly because I got emotional. I never thought I’d ever see a queer bookstore in Cobb County. But there it is. It’s totally queer and it’s totally awesome. Check it out.
Shadow Haunted 