Hot Type

Vanities

London, 1936: when Edward, a young British Communist, discovers the secret double life of his boyfriend, Brian, he flees to Spain to fight against Franco. In his farthest departure yet from the world of mothers and gay suburbanites languishing from incurable disease, author DAVID LEAVITT tries his hand at historical melodrama in While England Sleeps (Viking), a passionate rendering of political ambivalence overcome by personal loss.

Also this month: Emotional crises fill MARGARET FORSTER'S biography of Rebecca author Daphne du Maurier (Doubleday); SUSAN HILL has written the Rebecca sequel, Mrs. de Winter (Morrow). BETTY GOODWIN has culled the culinary secrets of the Cocoanut Grove, Ma Maison, and other restaurants in Hollywood du Jour (Angel City). More details of L.A. life can be found in producer ART LINSON'SA Pound of Flesh (Grove), RICHARD CHRISTIAN MATHESON'SCreated By (Bantam), and CASS WARNER SPERLING'SHollywood Be Thy Name (Prima). RON CHERNOW chronicles the saga of the German-Jewish banking dynasty in The Warburgs (Random House). Photographer ROXANNE LOWIT chronicles the glitterati in Moments (Vendome). ANNE RICE returns to The Witching Hour's dynasty of witches in Lasher (Knopf) - MARGARET THATCHER weighs in with The Downing Street Years (HarperCollins), her first volume of memoirs.

A young Caribbean woman is driven mad in KELVIN CHRISTOPHER JAMES'S first novel, Secrets (Villard). Tallulah, Vanessa, Natasha— all make appearances in the late director TONY RICHARDSON'S memoir, The Long Distance Runner (Morrow). PAUL MANDELBAUM has collected the juvenilia of 42 American authors (Crichton, Updike, Vidal, et al.) in First Words (Algonquin). AMOS OZ tells the story of a noble Israeli dreamer in Fima (Harcourt Brace). Architectural historian MICHAEL J. LEWIS details The Politics of the German Gothic Revival (Architectural History Foundation/

MIT Press). ANNE BILLSON'SSuckers is a black comedy about terminally chic London vampires (Atheneum). EDMUND WHITE looks at French thief-writer-dandyderelict-convict Jean Genet in Genet (Knopf). BRUNO NAVASKY translated the poetry of Japanese children for Festival in My Heart (Abrams). The Art of Love (Writers and Readers) is MELINDA CAMBER PORTER'S collection of poems and paintings. LEE FRIEDLANDER'S new photographic essay is Letters from the People (D.A.P.). LARRY BEINHART lampoons the Hollywood-Washington axis in his novel American Hero (Pantheon). DAVID STENN profiles Jean Harlow in Bombshell (Doubleday). And PETER MAYLE makes a daring leap into the void with two new books about Provence—a novel, Hotel Pastis (Knopf), and a gift book, Provence (Scribners), with paintings by MARGARET LOXTON.

H. A.