KRAKOW MELT, DANIEL ALLEN COX

Shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award and Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT Fiction, this novel by Daniel Allen Cox (Shuck; Basement of Wolves) is an incendiary story about two pyromaniacs who fight homophobia in Krakow, one of the fronts of the Solidarnosc revolution. It's 2005 and Poland's moral crisis escalates as Pope John Paul II approaches death while the country's president makes homophobic declarations. Radek is a bisexual artist convinced that fire is the great stabilizer; he meets Dorota, literature student and budding pyromaniac. Driven by rage and sexual curiosity, they buck Church, government, and the LGBT community to find sexual freedom, escaping their enemies by scaling the crumbling walls and ideas of the city.