An involving story about movies and queer life in San Francisco decades ago, another about an immigrant who conflates gender-bending sex with colonialism, and a lighthearted romcom are today’s very different reading experiences.

“Midnight at the Cinema Palace” >> by Christopher Tradowsky (Simon & Schuster, $28.99)

But that was the thing in SF, one night you might be the life of the block party, the queen of the night dancing high on a stoplight, and by the next morning, you’d have vanished without a trace… he wondered, again, if he would ever know how it felt to have sex without the angel of death hanging over him. — from “Midnight at the Cinema Palace”

What a journey we take into San Francisco in 1993 in this quirky, thoughtful debut novel by a St. Paul resident who teaches art history and mentors in the Augsburg University MFA program.

At the height of the AIDS epidemic, Walter moves from the Midwest to San Francisco where he knows nobody. Newly out of the closet, he’s soon captivated by a queer couple; Cary, a woman, and her stylish partner Sasha, a male who could be taken for a woman. The couple, who Walter thinks are straight out of film noir, bond with him over mutual love of cinema and classics from Hollywood’s golden age. They take Walter under their wings and the trio join other young queer people moving from hot clubs to drag parades to making friends like Lawrence, a former child actor and filmmaker living with HIV. Cary and Walter try to write a film script, but mostly quibble over details like a name for their non-existent production.

Although AIDS hangs over this story, there is also a sort of frenetic joy in it, as though the characters know instinctively their scene is coming to an end. So, too, might Walter’s friendship with Cary and Sasha, as he realizes what the couple’s gender bending means to their relationships. And there’s humor, as when sometimes-clueless Walter is knocked over by a drag queen dressed as Queen Elizabeth who falls from a lamp post.

Tradowsky, who drew inspiration for his novel from living in San Francisco in the ’90s, told his publisher he wrote this book at a “dark time” when we were in pandemic lockdown and his teaching job was precarious — “In reaching for joy, I realized that an entire novel could be a love letter to my obsessions, to the things I love best: to San Francisco, to queerness, to the cinematic experience, and above all, to friendship… how to live beyond social conventions, openly, playfully, messily, (sometimes haphazardly), beautifully, deeply, queerly.”

Involving, tender, madcap, filled with references to sometimes-obscure films, this is a big novel you can lose yourself in for a long summer read.

Tradowsky will introduce his book at 7 p.m. Thursday at Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls.

“The Perfect Match” >> by M. E. Bakos (Independently published, $14.95)

She looked devastated when I shoved the paper at her, and I felt guilty. There was a spark, too. Animal attraction. She wore that danged cute jeans jacket again, and her tousled hair fell around her face. — from “The Perfect Match”

Merry is having trouble with her landlord in this debut romance from the author of the Home Renovator mystery series. She has returned to her little Minnesota hometown of Reindeer Falls after a divorce along with Fido, the faithful dog she adopted after her breakup. As soon as she moves into her new apartment she’s scolded by Joel, the manager, who thinks dogs bark and poop too much. This testy relationship continues although Joel is becoming increasingly charmed by Merry, who does notice his wavy brown hair and dimple. Merry has her own problems. Her aunt is a matchmaker, sending her to blind dates that do not end well. And her ex-husband makes an appearance asking for forgiveness. Told in the voices of Joel and Merry, this romance, set around the Christmas holidays, is just right for fans who know from the beginning these two are made for each other.

Bakos will sign books from 10 a.m. to noon Friday at Lake Country Booksellers, 4766 Washington Ave., White Bear Lake.

“The Seers” >> by Sulaiman Addonia (Coffee House Press, $18)

This edgy, frank and complex account of an Eritrean young woman’s conflating of her sexual desires and her emotions after fleeing to London is not for everyone, but those with an open mind to literature will see asylum seekers in a new way as they follow Hannah, who has escaped war in her home country and ended up in England. Told in 120 pages as one long chapter, with no paragraphs or quotation marks, we see Hannah in limbo in a foster home, unable to work or go to school until the Home Office accepts her. The narrative moves from that foster home, where she experiences racial taunts from the man across the street, to later living under a tree in a park. She often tells her thoughts to her boyfriend, BB, even when he’s not there. With her sex partners, male or female, she finds a home in their bodies:

“BB, we are not in Europe on a quest to find alternatives to our countries lying in ruins but to construct our own in the island of our lust, I said. I don’t understand, Hannah, he said. Are you equating sex to a country? I didn’t know whether his question was genuine or had a hint of mockery about it. But who are we, I thought, if we don’t savour our ridiculousness, our madness, in the way we embrace sanity?”

Racism, colonialism, memories of war-torn countries from which these characters came, are all woven into this imaginative look into an immigrant woman’s experiences.

Addonia is an Eritrean-Ethiopian-British author living in Belgium. His previous novels are “The Consequences of Love” and “Silence Is My Mother Tongue.”

“The Seers” is one of seven titles by authors from around the world being produced and published by Minneapolis-based Coffee House through a $35,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.