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• Burning : a novel
  Jane Chambers (1937-1983) was an award-winning poet, screenwriter and playwright, who broke new ground by bringing happy, well-adjusted lesbian characters to the stage in plays such as ‘Last Summer at Bluefish Cove’. In ‘Burning’, Cynthia and Angela are on holiday in a New England farmhouse when they are possessed by the spirits of two women persecuted for their love some two hundred years earlier. ‘Burning’, Chambers’s first novel, was originally published by Jove in 1978 before being published by JH Press, one of the Gay Presses of New York. In 1981, Chambers received a Human Fund for Dignity Award with Harvey Fierstein (actor and writer of ‘Torch Song Trilogy’, also seized in ‘Operation Tiger’). In the same year, she was diagnosed with a brain tumour and died two years later. Since 1984, the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award has been offered in her name.
• Cry to heaven
  ‘Cry to Heaven’ is a historical novel set in the world of eighteenth-century Italian opera. It follows castrato singer Guido Maffeo and his star student, the young Venetian nobleman Tonio Treschi, as they navigate same-sex love affairs, incestuous seductions and melodrama both on and off-stage. Anne Rice (1941-2021) was a prolific writer of gothic, erotic, and Christian fiction, perhaps best known for her 1976 debut, ‘Interview with the Vampire’, which was adapted into a feature film in 1994. ‘The Sleeping Beauty Quartet’, written under the pen name A.N. Roquelaure, explored sadomasochism and a range of sexualities and sexual practices. Rice has commented that “From the beginning, [...] gay readers [...] felt that my works involved a sustained gay allegory [...] I didn't set out to do that, but that was what they perceived.”
• Gaywyck
  ‘Gaywyck’ was the first novel by New York writer and photo editor Vincent Virga (1942-). The first edition of the book, the one seized during ‘Operation Tiger’, was published in 1980 by Avon and advertised with a quote from ‘New York Magazine’ stating it was the “first gay gothic” novel. As a fan of gothic romance – the title is a play on Anya Seton’s 1944 gothic novel, ‘Dragonwyck’ – Virga wrote the novel with gay characters “to show that genres know no gender”. Set in the nineteenth century at Gaywyck, a Long Island estate owned by the Gaylord family, the story follows Robert Whyte, who is employed to catalogue the library, and his relationship with Donaugh Gaylord. Dark family secrets are revealed, but the story ends happily for the couple. Virga’s second book, ‘A Comfortable Corner’, was also seized during ‘Operation Tiger’.