Some other gay sports books with some slightly corny jacket copy, but great reading nevertheless:

Todd Brown's Entries From a Hot Pink Notebook (Washington Square) Ben a high school freshman, suffers from his first case of puppy love: the object of his silent affections is his track coach.

A married man falls for an underage youth on a tennis court in Ruth Turk's More Than Friends. Note how the cover closely imitates The Front Runner.

If Only for One Nite by James Earl Hardy Warren Reid was Mitchell's gymnastics coach - and his lover. But when Mitchell graduated, Warren dumped him, breaking his heart. Will Mitchell finally get to even the score at the reunion, or will he fall for Warren's charms and be the same fool for love twice? An evocative portrait of teenage experience.

Don Sakers' Lucky in Love: Purnell Johnson, start center of the high school basketball team, loves Lucky Beale, team manager. Sakers provides a double whammy: Purnell is black, Lucky is white. The story is one of star-crossed love with an upbeat, happy ending.

Harlem boxer Stormy Rhodes and his lover Carlos face homophobia and violence, yet also find warm support in unexpected quarters in M.S. Hunter?s The Final Bell.

Actor/boxer Steve Bell stars in a new film about a gay boxer, Like It Is although more about London club life, it uses the irony of a violent man who?s actually a bottom, offering ready-made conflict.

Oliver Mayer's Blade to the Heat, performed in many major theatrical venues, concerns a Latino boxer dealing with his tragic love for a fellow pugilist.

For gay male fiction, Baseball been beddy beddy good.

Changing Pitches by Steve Kluger: Pitcher Scotty Mackay gets teamed up with Jason Cornell, a catcher he hates. By August, Scotty's fallen in love with Jason, and he's got a major-league problem on his hands.

Out at the Old Ball Game by Bernie Bookbinder, is a sweet yet telling account of what happens when a star player comes out, big time. Written by a longtime Newsday sports writer.

Peter Lefcourt's The Dreyfuss Affair has long been a popular favorite. Its film version is neck and neck with The Front Runner in the record for Longest Development Limbo.

John Fox's The Boys on the Rock possibly best weaves the voice of a teenage male athlete in his first awakenings, and how being gay does make you a different athlete, and a different person.

Although I've not read Martina Navratalova's murder mysteries, I'm sure they're interesting.

My first women's sports novel was Aquamarine by Carol Anshaw, who eloquently answers the 'What If?' questions, vectoring separate plot lines of the same swimmers life if her world had been changed by winning, almost winning, and being out, and somewhat out.

Jennifer Levin’s Love and Death, & Other Disasters features the short story “Her Marathon” where visions of a winning athlete inspire a sedate New York City lesbian mother to take up running and feel the victory of a women’s 6-mile marathon.

Her novels further the exploration into athletic female swimmers, including Water Dancer and The Sea of Light, where memories of the Holocaust, cancer and sadistic coaches conflict with the lives of a college coach and her two star female swimmers.

But non-fiction and essays and interviews have also proven to be bestsellers.

Susan Fox Rogers’ Sportsdykes and Dan Woog’s Jocks both provide a diverse range of interviews, anecdotes and stories from athletes and their admirers.

MORE Athletic Type