Editor Steve Berman has selected twenty stories--some moving essays, some splendid works of fiction--from the prior year that best feature the lives, loves and losses of gay men. With tales by fresh voices and established writers, Best Gay Stories offers readers indiscretions, poignant trysts, and reminiscences that are as evocative as they are imaginative.

In the newest edition of "Best Gay Stories," editor Berman has selected confessions and stories that range in scope from sensational to extra-liberating: a personal remembrance of the Stonewall Riots; a tale of awkward first love; the allure of Tadzio; and other explorations of the gay community's desires, heartaches, and wants.

A lonely seventeen-year-old who has dreamed of meeting a different and special boy desperately seeks help from his friend Trace, a Goth girl, to free him from the clutches of a handsome ghost he has met on a rural New Jersey highway.

More than an anthology of coming out stories, From Boys to Men is a stunning collection of essays about what it is like to be gay and young, to be different and be aware of that difference from the earliest of ages. In these memoirs, coming out is less important than coming of age and coming to the realization that young gay people experience the world in ways quite unlike straight boys. Whether it is a fascination with soap opera, an intense sensitivity to their own difference, or an obsession with a certain part of the male anatomy, gay kids — or kids who would eventually identify as gay — have an indefinable but unmistakable gay sensibility. Sometimes the result is funny, sometimes it is harrowing, and often it is deeply moving. Essays by lauded young writers like Alex Chee (Edinburgh), Aaron Hamburger (Faith for Beginners), Karl Soehnlein (The World of Normal Boys), Trebor Healy (Through It Came Bright Colors), Tom Dolby (The Trouble Boy), David Bahr, and Austin Bunn, are collected along with those by brilliant, newcomers such as Michael McAllister, Jason Tougaw, Viet Dinh, and the wildly popular blogger, Joe.My.God.

In the 2011 edition of Best Gay Stories Peter Dub questions the representations of gay men's lives found in the general media that present gay life and culture as some monolithic structure--that we all go to the same bars, shop in the same stores, eat in the same restaurants, hold the same kinds of political opinions, have similar backgrounds, and work the same kinds of jobs (more often than not urban, and vaguely white-collar.) He has collected authors who have stepped up the proverbial microphone to tell stories that are different through unique voices. Proof that we have moved well past the sentimental coming out story, the boy-meets-boy romance, the dangers and pleasures of sexual adventure, and we have done it without having to abandon them--because those things still happen and are still important. But we have found new ways of thinking about them, and have more experience to share, a deeper understanding of them, and we have added an array of other stories, from other parts of our lives, and dreams, and troubles to them. We have moved past the "gay story" and towards "gay stories." In these pages are a magnificent assortment of narratives and an equally fabulous range of ways of narrating them. The book includes experimental work and traditional tales, fantasy and realism, and as many different perspectives as one might hope to find.

In a beautifully detailed wordless picture book, a tumbledown building becomes home sweet home for a found family. A lonely little girl and her grandparent need to fill the run-down apartment in their building. But taking over the quarters above their store will mean major renovations for the new occupants, and none of the potential renters can envision the possibilities of the space—until one special couple shows up. With their ingenuity, the little girl’s big heart, and heaps of hard work, the desperate fixer-upper begins to change in lovely and surprising ways. In this bustling wordless picture book, JonArno Lawson’s touching story and Qin Leng’s gentle illustrations capture all angles of the building’s transformation, as well as the evolving perspectives of the girl and her grandparent. A warm and subtly nuanced tale, Over the Shop throws open the doors to what it means to accept people for who they are and to fill your home with love and joy.

In this charming, witty, and weird fantasy novel, Alexis Hall pays homage to Sherlock Holmes with a new twist on those renowned characters. Upon returning to the city of Khelathra-Ven after five years fighting a war in another universe, Captain John Wyndham finds himself looking for somewhere to live, and expediency forces him to take lodgings at 221b Martyrs Walk. His new housemate is Ms. Shaharazad Haas, a consulting sorceress of mercurial temperament and dark reputation. When Ms. Haas is enlisted to solve a case of blackmail against one of her former lovers, Miss Eirene Viola, Captain Wyndham is drawn into a mystery that leads him from the salons of the literary set to the drowned back-alleys of Ven and even to a prison cell in lost Carcosa. Along the way he is beset by criminals, menaced by pirates, molested by vampires, almost devoured by mad gods, and called upon to punch a shark. But the further the companions go in pursuit of the elusive blackmailer, the more impossible the case appears. Then again, in Khelathra-Ven reality is flexible, and the impossible is Ms. Haas' stock-in-trade.