Strange Bedfellows

Rob Byrnes is the author of four novels, including the 2006 Lambda Literary Award-winning When the Stars Come Out and 2009 Lammy finalist Straight Lies. His short stories have also appeared in several anthologies, including Fool for Love (2009), Saints & Sinners 2010: New Fiction from the Festival (2010), and Men of the Mean Streets (2011).A native of Upstate New York, Byrnes was born and raised in Rochester and graduated from Union College in Schenectady before moving to Manhattan. He now resides in West New York, New Jersey, with his partner, Brady Allen.

If politics makes for strange bedfellows, perhaps no bedfellows are stranger than Grant Lambert and Austin Peebles.Austin Peebles is a professional politician with a problem: a prominent rightwing blogger has come into possession of a compromising cell phone photo of the congressional candidate... an image that could derail his campaign.Enter Grant Lambert-a professional criminal who lives so far below society's radar he's never even registered to vote-and his partner in life and crime, Chase LaMarca. If Grant and Chase can make the picture disappear, they'll make a cool $50,000. It sounds like easy money to the cash-strapped criminals, but then more pictures turn up, the double- and triple-crosses begin, and Grant, Chase, and their gang of gay and lesbian confederates find themselves immersed in the brutal sport of politics, as the stakes grow larger and the bedfellows get stranger and stranger...