David Leavitt

"It is the Saturday after the 2016 presidential election, and in a plush weekend house in Connecticut, an intimate group of friends, New Yorkers all, has gathered to recover from what they consider the greatest political catastrophe of their lives. They have just sat down to tea when their hostess, Eva Lindquist, proposes a dare. Who among them would be willing to ask Siri how to assassinate Donald Trump? Liberal and like-minded-editors, writers,...

25 year-old Philip realizes he must come out to his parents after falling in love for the first time with a man. Philip's parents are facing their own crisis: pressure from developers and the loss of their longtime home. But the real threat to this family is Philip's father's own struggle with his latent homosexuality, realized only in his Sunday afternoon visits to gay porn theaters. Philip's admission to his parents and his father's hidden life...

David Leavitt's second collection of stories further confirms a talent deep and wonderfully creative in its empathy. A Place I've Never Been explores family relationships, friendships, and romantic relationships, among characters whose sexuality is fluid or uncertain — a barrier or under threat. A real estate agent happily married to a woman finds himself in love with another man in "Houses." A man entering a bold new world of gay

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A homosexual love affair between a concert pianist and his young page turner. The affair becomes complicated when the youth's mother misconstrues the pianist's attention in her son as an interest in her. The settings are Rome and New York. By the author of While England Sleeps.

Family matriarch Louise Cooper, mother of gay siblings April and Danny, suffers one medical malady after another, while Nat, her computer scientist husband, enjoys a longterm affair on the side. As Louise's condition deteriorates, tensions mount and family members attempt to define and justify their conflicting feelings.

"This account of expatriate life in the 'city of the lily' begins by asking why Florence has always proven to be such a popular destination for suicides, then moves into an analysis of what makes the city, in Henry James's words, such a 'delicate case' for locals and visitors alike." "Moving fleetly between present and past, Leavitt's narrative limns the history of the foreign colony from its origins in the middle of the nineteenth century until...

"There is much to be learned and untangled in the true story of Edmund White's own boyhood - the weirdness and extent of his young sex life, the depth of both his occasional despair and treachery, and the intellectual and artistic brilliance that White displayed so early on." "Forced from the age of three to be best friend and "advisor" to his unhinged, divorced mother, fearful of his imperious father yet also sexually attracted to him, White evolved...