Summer Reading: Independent Booksellers Share Their Top Picks For Summer Reading

NPR:

This summer's rays of literary sunshine come from 15 authors whose topics range from loaves of bread to small-town life in the Texas Hill Country. There's fiction from Sarah Blake, Hilary Thayer Hamann and Brady Udall, whose 600-page novel, The Lonely Polygamist, about a man with four wives who finds himself drawn to a fifth woman, was picked by two of our booksellers. There's also poetry (and a memoir) from quadriplegic writer Paul Guest, the story behind the making of the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's, and a first-person, nonfiction book from Ander Monson that's definitely Not a Memoir. The title even says so.

Read the whole story: NPR

Comments

[Giselle Nagy]

12:45 PM on 06/03/2010

Sizzling Hot Summer Read: STILETTOS AND STEEL by Jeri Estes
Jessica is no every day, gal-next-door. She's a Catholic lesbian tomboy during the 1960s, determined to break out of her Ozzie and Harriet world. Befriending two black drag queens whom she meets at the Queen Mary female impersonator show, Jessica escapes the San Fernando Valley, drawn to the opulent beauty of San Francisco. The young lady & her new pals take up residence in the low-rent, red light Tenderloin district. Based on an amazing true story, STILETTOS AND STEEL reveals California's untold history of women banished to the Tenderloin district; the original gay ghetto of the west coast, four years before The Castro. In a seedy neighborhood run by dirty cops and corrupt politicians, the outcast women survive as gangsters, classy butch pimps and gorgeous femme hookers. Author Jeri Estes reveals this never before seen world of the sixties, based on her own experience of having survived in the "TL" for four years as a pimp. Come along for a ride in Bunny's white-walled, pink Caddy convertible and stroll through the dark and dangerous streets with butch wiseguys, sporting three-piece Italian men's suits leading the way. Pack your .38 and slip on your fedora. There's gonna be plenty of trouble as these women very boldly take you to a place you've never been before.
LOOK INSIDE:
http://www.amazon.com/Stilettos-Steel-Jeri-Estes/dp/0984517308/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275582769&sr=1-1