In Scotland, 1933, Bobby MacBryde is on his way to the Glasgow School of Art, after years grafting at Lees Boot Factory. As he sets off to his future, on his first day he meets Robert Colquhoun, a quiet man with loose dark curls, who will never leave his side again.

Together they will spend every penny and every minute devouring Glasgow—its botanical gardens, the Barras market, a whole hidden city—all the while loving each other behind closed doors. With the world on the brink of war, their unrivalled talent will take them to Paris, Rome, London. They will become stars as the bombs fall, hosting wild parties with the likes of Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, and Elizabeth Smart. But the brightest stars burn fastest.

Stunningly reimagined, The Two Roberts is a profoundly moving story of devotion and obsession, art, and class. It is a love letter to MacBryde and Colquhoun, the almost-forgotten artists who tried to change the way the world sees—and paid a devastating price.

Available from House of Anansi

DAMIAN BARR is an award-winning writer, broadcaster, and journalist. His memoir Maggie & Me, won Stonewall Writer of the Year and Sunday Times Memoir of the Year. His debut novel, You Will Be Safe Here, was shortlisted for six major awards. He hosts the internationally syndicated television show Big Scottish Book Club, now in its sixth series. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in Brighton, England.

The post The Two Roberts – a forbidden wartime love story borne of the passion for art, travel, and high society appeared first on PinkPlayMags.

National Trust houses and landscapes might seem to embody conventional family values, but for generations some very different stories were hidden away. These belong to owners now considered queer for defying the norms of sexual orientation or gender identity – sometimes blatantly, occasionally as open secrets, but most often very discreetly.

These stories are set against the queer history of the National Trust itself, such as its foundation in 1895 against the backdrop of Oscar Wilde’s trials; hidden queer influences within the Trust in its early days; and the role of homophobia in its reorganisation in the 1960s; and the evolution to inclusivity and understanding in the twenty-first century.

Available from Bloomsbury

Michael Hall has published several books on architecture, country houses and collecting, including Waddesdon Manor: The Biography of a Rothschild House (3rd ed., 2012), George Frederick Bodley and the Later Gothic Revival in Britain and America (2014) and Art, Passion and Power: The Story of the Royal Collection (2017). A former Architectural Editor of Country Life and Editor of Apollo, he was Editor of The Burlington Magazine from 2017 to 2024.

The post A Queer Inheritance: Alternative Histories in the National Trust appeared first on PinkPlayMags.

A woman’s personal trauma and anxiety are intertwined with the lives of the feral dogs abandoned in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. As a lesbian love affair unravels, the secrets of a gift-giving crow are revealed. The life of a veterinarian is told through the animals that she has loved and that she has tried to save. A dying man dreams of returning as a vulture after death. The plight of sea turtles on the brink of extinction weaves through a mother’s devastation over the loss of a daughter.

Available from Arsenal Pulp Press

Nadja Lubiw-Hazard (she/her) is a Toronto-based writer and veterinarian. She is the author of the novel The Nap-Away Motel (Palimpsest Press) and two children’s books. As a manuscript, The Life of a Creature won the Siskiyou Prize for New Environmental Literature.

The post The Life of a Creature – story collection about the interconnection between humans and animals navigating love, loss, and healing appeared first on PinkPlayMags.

Spitz has brought his indefatigable energy and five decades of experiences in the fields and hollows of rock ‘n’ roll to bear on his five-year journey to reexamine one of popular music’s greatest stories. There are myriad revisions to the conventional narrative which underscore just how in control of that narrative the band has been up to now—small example: no, Muddy Waters was not mopping the floors at Chess Records when the Stones showed up.

As with the Beatles and Led Zeppelin, Spitz’s greatest gift is for the big picture. He knows where the magic is, and why it is. He is as clear-eyed a connoisseur of the show business, the spectacle and the collateral damage of this whirlwind as anyone alive. That lucid gaze pierces a lot of incrusted bullshit, but the ultimate goal is to connect with a creative force whose power shows no signs of fading, over sixty years on.

At its heart the story is about two gentlemen, Mick and Keith, and their unique, fraught, alchemical bond, often tested, never sundered – The Glimmer Twins. The bandmates, like Charlie Watts, who found their groove in relation to this double star made the trip intact, while those who struggled, like Brian Jones and Mick Taylor, were chewed up and spit out.

This is a story with many dark corners, including a surprising number of deaths. But whether Jagger and Richards sold their souls to the devil at the crossroads for blues greatness, or just squeezed their heroes for every drop of inspiration, in the end their connection to their music and to each other put them in a category of one, where they very much remain.

Available from Penguin Random House

The post The Rolling Stones: The Biography – a deep dive into the minds of The Glimmer Twins, Mick and Keith appeared first on PinkPlayMags.

Ten years later, Alex and Ben find each other again—she’s conquering Montreal’s contemporary art world, he’s running a thriving restaurant in Ottawa. But their success feels hollow. As they excavate their shared past, they must confront the ghost of Rob’s disappearance and the trauma that pushed them apart.

Pulsing with the raw energy of basement punk shows and DIY creativity, late-night manifestos and first heartbreaks, Temporary Palaces is a blazing debut that captures a generation caught between idealism and survival, art and activism, the dreams that define us and the compromises that save us.

Available from House of Anansi Press

Jeff Miller is the author of the award-winning creative nonfiction collection Ghost Pine: All Stories True. His stories have appeared in several anthologies, and he frequently publishes criticism. Jeff holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia and lives in Nova Scotia.

The post Temporary Palaces appeared first on PinkPlayMags.

Moving seamlessly between quiet melancholy, wry humour, and the supernatural, Super Castle Fun Park is a novel that defies expectations: a tragicomic, very human story about isolation, ghosts, technology, and our deep, abiding need for connection.

Available from Arsenal Pulp Press

Daniel Zomparelli (he/him) is the author of the poetry books Jump Scare,Davie Street Translations, and Rom Com, co-written with Dina Del Bucchia (all published by Talonbooks). His story collection Everything Is Awful and You’re a Terrible Person (Arsenal Pulp Press) was a finalist for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and won the ReLit Short Fiction Award. He co-edited Queer Little Nightmares (Arsenal Pulp Press) with David Ly. Born and raised in Vancouver, he now lives in Glendale, CA.

The post Super Castle Fun Park – tales of loneliness, desire for connection, and apparitions appeared first on PinkPlayMags.

Loch Baillie pens an unfiltered queer Bildungsroman that traces both a geographical and emotional journey from his birthplace in New England to where he comes to settle in Quebec.

Available from Goose Lane Editions

Loch Baillie is originally from Massachusetts, Loch Baillie (he/il) is a queer writer and editor based in Quebec City, Canada. He is the author of two poetry chapbooks, ice, dove parachute (Cactus Press) and Citronella (Anstruther Press), as well as the collection River Running (icehouse poetry/Goose Lane Editions, 2026). Loch’s writing has appeared in magazines such as Maclean’s, yolk literary, and Ahoy. He is an associate poetry editor at Plenitude Magazine and a board director for the the Quebec Writers’ Federation. From 2o22-2025, Loch served as poet-in-residence for the Jarislowsky Chair of Undergraduate Teaching Excellence. He is currently pursuing his MA in English literature at Université Laval

The post “River Running” is a collection of raw and confessional tales of queer youth struggles and survival appeared first on PinkPlayMags.

In a journey across continents and decades, we watch the impacts of one of the greatest health crises of the last hundred years through the eyes of those who both survived it and must now remember those who didn’t. At once an odyssey through time and a love story to the narrator’s found family, this haunting, lyrical novel in five parts explores questions of grief, statelessness, and memory and is a meditation on survival in the age of AIDS. It’s an evocative debut novel reflecting the determination and resilience of a gay diaspora as it faced extinction.

Available from Dundurn Press

Ellis Scott was born in the U.K. and grew up in Canada. He has published nine stories in literary journals, including The Iowa Review, Yolk, and The Fiddlehead. His first short story was nominated for a 2020 Pushcart Prize.  Night Terminus is his first novel.

The post Night Terminus – a gay man’s decades long global journey of love, lust, and longing for life appeared first on PinkPlayMags.

Big Lou Junod dominated every room he entered. He worshipped the sun and the sea, his own bronzed body, Frank Sinatra, and beautiful women. He was a successful traveling handbag salesman who carried himself like a celebrity. He’d return from the road with stories of going to nightclubs where the stars—Ava Gardner, maybe Liz Taylor—“couldn’t keep their eyes off . . . your father.” He had countless affairs and didn’t do much to hide them.

Lou could be cruel to Fran, his wife of fifty-nine years, but he loved his youngest son. Tom was a skin-and-bones, nervous boy, devoted to his mother, but Lou sought to turn him into a version of himself. He showered him with advice about how to dress (“A turtleneck is the most flattering thing a man can wear”), how to be an alpha male, and especially, how to attract and bed women. His parting speech when Tom went to college was: “Do yourself a favor and date a Jewish girl. They’re all nymphos.” When Tom started seeing his future wife, Janet, Lou’s efforts to entice Tom into his version of manhood accelerated on nights in New York, L.A., and Paris.

Tom wrestled with Lou’s imposing presence all his life. When one of Lou’s mistresses stood up at his funeral and announced, “Can we all . . . just agree . . . that this . . . was a man,” Tom set off to learn the facts of his father’s life, and why he was the way he was. The stunning secrets he uncovered—about his father, his father’s lovers, and deceptions going back generations—staggered Tom, but in the process allowed him, at last, to become his own man, by his own lights.

In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man is an intensely emotional detective story powered by a series of cascading revelations. The book is a triumph of bravura writing; it is a tale of a son reckoning with the consequences of his father’s life, and in the end, the story of the son’s redemption.

Available from Penguin Random House

Tom Junod is a senior writer for ESPN, where his work has won an Emmy and the Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting. He is a two-time winner of the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing and a winner of the James Beard Award for essay writing. Previously, he was a staff writer at GQ and Esquire. The film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood was based on his article in Esquire. He lives in Atlanta with his wife and daughter.

The post In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man – a son discovers the truth behind his father’s machismo and secret life appeared first on PinkPlayMags.

Whisked from her local scene and thrust into the eye of a hurricane of grief on a global stage, Melissa joined Hole for the band’s 1994 Live Through This world tour just after the deaths of Kurt Cobain and Hole’s prior bassist, Kristen Pfaff, with Courtney Love at the center of it all. It was a tour of passionate intensity, as a chaotic yet stunningly powerful band constantly threatened to spin out of control. Melissa brings the reader with raging intimacy into the action, offering a heroic portrait of the unforgettable Courtney Love as she howled into the darkness as if to keep grief at bay.

That was only the beginning of Melissa’s journey through alternative rock. Part rock memoir, part travel diary, part psychedelic scrapbook, Even the Good Girls Will Cry is a behind-the-scenes rock ’n’ roll memoir with a soulful intimacy and mystic undertone that sets it apart from memoirs by her peers. It is a vivid dispatch from the last analog decade, artistically capturing that bygone era in all its messy, angsty glory.

Available from Da Capo/Grand Central Publishing

Melissa Auf der Maur, was born and raised in Montreal, Canada with a fine arts education. She is an acclaimed musician, photographer, curator and producer, best known as the former bassist of rock bands Hole and The Smashing Pumpkins.  In 2010 she co-founded Basilica Hudson, a multidisciplinary art center in Hudson, NY, where she lives with her family and magic cats.

The post Even the Good Girls Will Cry – A ’90s Rock Memoir From Melissa Auf der Maur appeared first on PinkPlayMags.