Fall is the perfect time to read a biography and sink into someone else's skin for a while, which makes this reading by two biographers of exceptional gay men a perfectly timed joy. Wendy Moffatt's A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E. M. Forster examines the novelist's creative life and his gay awakening as twinned narratives. Justin Spring's biography of Samuel Steward is a revelation; Steward (who the book declares is an important "secret sexual historian") crossed paths with Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein, and Dr. Kinsey. Only now can his story—a story that is vitally important to gay history—be told. (Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Ave, 624-6600, 7 pm, free)