Mark Gatiss

Scribner

$13, paperback

In the sequel to the critically acclaimed The Vesuvius Club, gay secret agent Lucifer Box not only has to contend with an All About Eve work scenario (a younger agent has his eye on Box’s job), he has also been dispatched to keep an eye on the doings of fascist leader Olympus Mons.

Set in the 1920s and taking place from the Art Deco mecca of New York City to the winter majesty of Switzerland, Box must use his secret agent skills to keep tabs on members of F.A.U.S.T. (The Fascist Anglo-United States Trinity), while clearing himself of a false murder charge. If that weren’t enough, he must also uncover the meaning of a medieval prayer that can possibly unleash the Prince of Darkness upon the Earth.

Author Mark Gatiss hails from London and is also an actor who portrays more than 60 characters in the award-winning U.K. show “The League of Gentlemen.”

Jill Conner Browne (with Karin Gillespie)

Simon & Schuster

$22.95, hardcover

The very first novel from three-time New York Times nonfiction bestseller Jill Conner Browne is set in Jackson, Miss., in 1968 and focuses on high school student Jill, who ironically suffers from low self-esteem for a girl that’s so tall, and her fellow outcasts. Mary plays it fast and loose with both her smart mouth and reputation with the male populace of their high school. Patsy is the gal from Minnesota who navigates the waters of Southern living while avoiding the sharks that lie in wait in the cruel world of teenage academia. Then there’s Gerald, the gay boy who doesn’t yet have a name for why he feels so different.

When new girl Tammy arrives on the scene and is humiliated by the popular Key Club, the outcasts exact a very Southern revenge by becoming the Sweet Potato Queens.

Fast forward some years later, when the SPQs enter the labyrinth of adulthood with the requisite spousal/career challenges, which lead them to reaffirm their friendships.

Author Browne and her Southern-fried humor have filled the books The Sweet Potato Queens’ Wedding Planner and Divorce Guide and The Sweet Potato Queens’ Field Guide to Men: Every Man I Love is Either Married, Gay, or Dead, along with three other Sweet Potato titles. Browne hails from Jackson, Miss.

David Bret

Carroll & Graf

$25.95, hardcover

The life of actress Joan Crawford will forever be linked to wire-hanger beatings and floors that were not up to cleanliness codes, thanks to daughter Christina Crawford’s tell-all book Mommie Dearest and the film version that followed.

But what made the Oscar winner tick in real life is the focus of David Bret’s Joan Crawford: Hollywood Martyr, an uncensored look at the actress.

The book follows her meteoric rise to fame from humble beginnings working in a Kansas City laundry as Lucille LeSueur (her given name) to her stardom as Joan Crawford, where the line between acting and the real-life strong-willed woman were sometimes blurred.

Bret paints this particular portrait of Crawford with previously unpublished interviews. The book details Crawford’s succession of failed marriages (three of which were to gay men), why she really disinherited two of her four adopted children and how her own mother forced her into prostitution and pornographic films at an early age, which taught her how to claw her way to the top by any and all means possible.

Bret has previously published biographies of such celebrity luminaries as Marlene Dietrich, Elvis Presley and Rock Hudson.