Lives of the Circus Animals: A Novel

Critically acclaimed novelist Christopher Bram has written some of his best work about life in the performing arts. In Father of Frankenstein, the basis for the Academy Award-winning movie Gods and Monsters, it was Hollywood in the thirties and fifties. In The Notorious Dr. August: His Real Life and Crimes, it was the strange world of Victorian music and spiritualism. Now, in Lives of the Circus Animals, Bram explores contemporary New York theater, spending several days and nights with a diverse handful of men and women.
There is Caleb Doyle, a hot new playwright whose newest work, Chaos Theory, has just bombed. His sister, Jessie, also loves theater but has no outlet for her talents except to work as the personal assistant to British actor Henry Lewse, "the Hamlet of his generation," while he does a Broadway musical. Henry loves Shakespeare, money, grass, and boys.
Then there's Frank Earp, an ex-actor who courts Jessie and is directing a troupe of acting students in a homemade play. Among the students is Toby Vogler, a nice kid from the Midwest who has a whole other career at night. Toby was once Caleb Doyle's boyfriend.
Overseeing this world like an unhappy god is Kenneth Prager, second-string theater critic for the New York Times.
Leaping from one life to another, one day to the next, the novel throws these people together in a serious comedy about love and work and make-believe. Lives of the Circus Animals is a cross between a Mozart opera and a Preston Sturges movie. A look at theater people who are just like everyone else, only more so, it's a comic celebration of how we all strive to stay sane while living in the shadow of those two impostors, success and failure.

Literature & Fiction

Bram, Christopher

Literary

William Morrow

Lives of the Circus Animals is a brilliant new comedy about New York theater people: actors, writers, personal assistants, and a drama critic for the New York Times. They are male, female, straight, gay, in love with their work or in love with each other, and one of them, British star Henry Lewse, "the Hamlet of his generation," is famous. Award-winning novelist Christopher Bram gives us ten days and nights in this small-town world in the heart of a big city, an engaging novel that is also a satiric celebration of the quest for sanity in the face of those two impostors, success and failure.

Contemporary

Harper-perennial

Previously titled Father of Frankenstein, this acclaimed novel was the basis for the 1998 film starring Sir Ian McKellen, Lynn Redgrave, and Brendan Fraser. It journeys back to 1957 Los Angeles, where James Whale, the once-famous director of such classics as Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, is living in retirement, haunted by his past. Rescuing him from his too-vivid imagination is his gardener, a handsome ex-marine. The friendship between these two very different men is sometimes tentative, sometimes touching, often dangerous—and always captivating.This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

Gods and Monsters: A Novel

United States

The Notorious Dr. August: His Real Life and Crimes

Christopher Bram tells the story of Augustus Fitzwilliam Boyd, alias Dr. August, a clairvoyant pianist who communes with ghosts, and who finds meaning in his life through a strange love triangle with a righteous ex-slave and nervous white governess. Spanning the years between the Civil War and the early 1920's, this riveting and ambitious historical novel displays the immense talents of a prodigious, highly esteemed author working at the height of his powers.

Zack Knowles and Daniel Wexler have been together for twenty-one years. Zack is a psychiatrist, Daniel an art teacher at a college in Virginia. In the fall of 2002, a few months before the Iraq War, a new artist in residence, Abbas Rohani, arrives with his Russian wife, Elena, and their two children.
But Abbas is not quite what he seems, and soon he and Daniel begin an affair. After love throws the two families together, politics threatens the future of both in ways no one could have predicted.
A novel that explores how the personal becomes political, Exiles in America offers an intimate look at the meaning of marriage, gay and straight, and demonstrates the breathtaking skill and daring imagination that have garnered Christopher Bram widespread critical acclaim.

Exiles in America: A Novel

Zack Knowles, a psychologist, and Daniel Wexler, an art teacher at a college in Virginia, have been together for twenty-one years. In the fall of 2002, a few months before the Iraq War, a new artist in residence, Abbas Rohani, arrives with his Russian wife, Elena, and their two children. But Abbas is not quite what he seems, and he begins an affair with Daniel. Soon politics intrude upon two families thrown together by love, threatening the future of both in ways no one could have predicted. A novel that explores how the personal becomes political, Exiles in America offers an intimate look at the meaning of marriage, gay and straight.

In the years following World War II, a small group of gay writers established themselves as literary power players, fueling cultural changes that would resonate for decades to come, and transforming the American literary landscape forever.In EMINENT OUTLAWS, novelist Christopher Bram brilliantly chronicles the rise of gay consciousness in American writing. Beginning with a first wave of major gay literary figures-Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, Allen Ginsberg, and James Baldwin-he shows how (despite criticism and occasional setbacks) these pioneers set the stage for new generations of gay writers to build on what they had begun: Armistead Maupin, Edmund White, Tony Kushner, and Edward Albee among them.Weaving together the crosscurrents, feuds, and subversive energies that provoked these writers to greatness, EMINENT OUTLAWS is a rich and essential work. With keen insights, it takes readers through fifty years of momentous change: from a time when being a homosexual was a crime in forty-nine states and into an age of same-sex marriage and the end of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

Eminent Outlaws: The Gay Writers Who Changed America

History & Criticism

Twelve

"Fascinating...fun to read and will be the standard text of the defining era of gay literati." - Philadelphia Inquirer In the years following World War II a group of gay writers established themselves as major cultural figures in American life. Truman Capote, the enfant terrible, whose finely wrought fiction and nonfiction captured the nation's imagination. Gore Vidal, the wry, withering chronicler of politics, sex, and history. Tennessee Williams, whose powerful plays rocketed him to the top of the American theater. James Baldwin, the harrowingly perceptive novelist and social critic. Christopher Isherwood, the English novelist who became a thoroughly American novelist. And the exuberant Allen Ginsberg, whose poetry defied censorship and exploded minds. Together, their writing introduced America to gay experience and sensibility, and changed our literary culture. But the change was only beginning. A new generation of gay writers followed, taking more risks and writing about their sexuality more openly. Edward Albee brought his prickly iconoclasm to the American theater. Edmund White laid bare his own life in stylized, autobiographical works. Armistead Maupin wove a rich tapestry of the counterculture, queer and straight. Mart Crowley brought gay men's lives out of the closet and onto the stage. And Tony Kushner took them beyond the stage, to the center of American ideas. With authority and humor, Christopher Bram weaves these men's ambitions, affairs, feuds, loves, and appetites into a single sweeping narrative. Chronicling over fifty years of momentous change-from civil rights to Stonewall to AIDS and beyond-EMINENT OUTLAWS is an inspiring, illuminating tale: one that reveals how the lives of these men are crucial to understanding the social and cultural history of the American twentieth century.

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

“Nazi intrigue in a homosexual brothel . . . a spy thriller that breaks new ground.”—Kirkus Reviews Hank Fayette, Seaman Second Class, had enlisted in his Texas hometown, used his shore leave to visit a movie house on 42nd Street, and ended up in a gay brothel near Manhattan’s West piers. It was the wrong place to be at the wrong time. When this big, lanky blond with a country boy’s drawl—and a country boy’s hard muscular body—couldn’t fight his way clear of the Shore Patrol who raided the place, he figured he was on his way to the brig or a dishonorable discharge. But in 1942, a few months after Pearl Harbor, the Navy was more interested in capturing spies than in punishing “sex offenders,” and Hank was just the kind of sailor they had in mind. Their offer to Hank was simple: go back to the brothel, work undercover as a prostitute, and risk your life to entrap Nazi spies. This erotic, suspenseful novel captures the big-band feel of New York City in the forties, the intensity of a nation at war, and the passion of men for their country—and for each other. “Entertaining, sexy, and touching . . .”—Stephen McCauley “Strong, action-filled . . . a tightly knit plot . . . a very engaging story about murder and intrigue that is hard to put down.”—Lambda Rising Book Report

Hold Tight: A Novel

Plume

The new novel by the bestselling author of Hold Tight, this brilliant comedy of manners set among a group of Manhattan sophisticates depicts the friends of a dead filmmaker trying to put their lives back together--a task made more arduous by the young boyfriend he left behind.

In Memory of Angel Clare

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Bram, Christopher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Bram, Christopher

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Bram, Christopher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Lives of the Circus Animals: A Novel

Lives of the Circus Animals: A Novel

Gods and Monsters: A Novel

The Notorious Dr. August: His Real Life and Crimes

Exiles in America: A Novel

Exiles in America: A Novel

Eminent Outlaws: The Gay Writers Who Changed America

Eminent Outlaws: The Gay Writers Who Changed America

Hold Tight: A Novel

In Memory of Angel Clare