Finalist for the 2026 Eric Hoffer Book Award
Desire draws them together. What follows is never simple.
A brand-new collection of five gay-themed stories by John Stewart Wynne (Lambda Literary Award-nominated author of the novel The Red Shoes) about how desire re-shapes us. Ranging in locations from East Hampton to the Scottish Highlands to Provincetown and Tahiti, the stories vary in tone?tragic, ironic, mystical?but share an emotional core and a commonality: that getting close changes everything.
- A Killing in East Hampton?A story of class, resentment, and suspicion in a young, wealthy, gay married couple's new neighborhood?where a friendship across generations ends in betrayal.
- Narcissist?A professor falls under the spell of a beautiful teen who, like the mythical Narcissus, only offers back his own reflection.
- We're Going Places?A retired soap star whisks away his young fiancé to Tahiti, but ambition, aging, and the need for visibility follow them around the world.
- Louise, Don't Go?Two older women meet in a hotel in the Scottish Highlands and engage in a delicate act of longing and spectral memory, blurring the boundary between past and future.
- Blonds?A young runaway lands in Provincetown and finds comfort in a relationship with a reclusive housepainter?until jealousy unravels everything they've built.
These stories explore the shifting ground between love and loss, intimacy and illusion, in quiet storms of tension. Dark, tender, and emotionally precise, they reveal just how far the heart will go?and what it leaves behind.
Recently Released, Tree Line Books presents its new edition of John Stewart Wynne's novel The Red Shoes, Lambda Literary Award nominee for Best Gay Fiction
"The Red Shoes is a beautiful dark queer re-telling of the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale. Wynne immediately engages the reader with finely detailed descriptions, nuanced character development, and an air of mystery that makes this 400+ page text read like a novella." (Lambda Literary Review)
"I read this so fast I got blisters turning pages. The Red Shoes is so astonishingly good, original, beautiful and amazing . . . it's like a sumptuous meal with all flavors?salty, bitter, sweet, hot . . . I think it is a great work of art." (Kate Christensen, PEN/Faulkner Award winner)
Also available from Tree Line Books, John Stewart Wynne's highly acclaimed debut story collection The Other World, originally published by City Lights
"The Other World is among the most remarkable books I have ever read. There are six stories and at least three of them are masterpieces ... one of the best books of the decade." (The James White Review)
"With so much tepid and sentimental fiction coming out, Wynne's stories in The Other World are like a plunge in cold water. A book to handle with asbestos gloves but well worth the walk through fire." (Paul Monette, National Book Award winner)
