The Black Marble Pool (Paperback or Softback)

When you first notice it, something seems a bit unusual. Then it occurs to you that most, if not all, of the pools you’ve ever seen before were painted blue or white. The Captain’s House pool is black. Not painted black. But constructed of black marble and black tile. The marble has streaks of white that look like lightning bolts in a black sky. There is a sexiness to this pool; a personality. It looks and feels like a warm, wet blanket, surrounding and protecting you like a dark, quiet womb.

There’s a dead body at the bottom of a pool in the backyard of a guest house in Key West. Who is he? And what caused his untimely demise? Maybe it’s suicide. Or an accident. But more likely – murder! And who’s responsible? One of the guests, the people who run the guest house or one of those mysterious women in town?

A Lambda Literary Awards Finalist in 1991, this edition includes a new foreword by renowned LGBTQ publicist and friend of Stan Leventhal, Michele Karlsberg.

“The pace is brisk: the plot keeps twisting, as no one is at all who they seem.” — Keith John Glaeske, Out In Print

“Stan was a literary activist who always gave to, built and endorsed literature and writers. On this Sunday morning, all these years later, I can still see Stan in his apartment window on Christopher Street, next door to the Stonewall Inn, overlooking Sheridan Square as he typed away.” – Michele Karlsberg

Stan Leventhal, author, editor, and publisher, lived in New York City in the 1980s through 1995 where he died of AIDS. He is fondly remembered as a generous, genuine and passionate advocate for social causes and other writers. He was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award three times: for the debut novel Mountain Climbing in Sheridan Square, Faultlines and The Black Marble Pool. He published one other novel and three collections of short stories.He served as a judge for the annual Bill Whitehead Memorial Award and was a member of the Publishing Triangle Steering Committee. His short stories and reviews appeared in Outweek, The Advocate, The New York Native, Torso, Mandate, Exquisite Corpse, The James White Review and Gaylaxian Gayzette.In addition, his work appeared in the anthologies: Gay Life, Shadows of Love, The Stiffest of the Corpse, and Sword of the Rainbow. The author was actively involved in the fight for literacy. His message to his readers: "Literature is crucial to our lives; reading is fun."

Michele Karlsberg is a renowned LGBTQ publicist, producer, publisher, event planner, literary executor, speaker, advocate and author. She has been instrumental in planning many conferences and festivals such as OUTWRITE, Saints and Sinners, and the Gay Games Cultural Festival. Michele's WORDS column appears monthly in the San Francisco Bay Times.