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Pride Month Reads

June is Pride Month. From non-fiction to classics to contemporary fiction, you'll find something to love in this list of books written by LGBTQ+ authors or featuring LGBTQ+ characters.

A queer history of the United States by Michael Bronski

"A Queer History of the United States is groundbreaking and accessible. It looks at how American culture has shaped the LGBT, or queer, experience, while simultaneously arguing that LGBT people not only shaped but were pivotal in creating our country. Using numerous primary documents and literature, as well as social histories, Bronski's book takes the reader through the centuries--from Columbus' arrival and the brutal treatment the Native peoples received, through the American Revolution's radical challenging of sex and gender roles--to the violent, and liberating, 19th century--and the transformative social justice movements of the 20th. Bronski's book is filled with startling examples of often ignored or unknown aspects of American history: the ineffectiveness of sodomy laws in the colonies, the prevalence of cross-dressing women soldiers in the Civil War, the effect of new technologies on LGBT life in the 19th century, and how rock music and popular culture were, in large part, responsible for the great backlash against gay rights in the late 1970s. More than anything, A Queer History of the United States is not so much about queer history as it is about all American history--and why it should matter to both LGBT people and heterosexuals alike"--

We are not broken : memoir by George M Johnson

"This is a memoir of George's boyhood in New Jersey, growing up with their brother and two cousins, all under the supervision of their larger-than-life grandmother." --

Becoming a man : the story of a transition by 1966- author P. Carl

"A remarkable, deeply moving memoir of one man's gender transition amid a pivotal political moment in America"--

Gay like me : a father writes to his son by Richie Jackson

"When Richie Jackson's son born through surrogacy comes out to him at the age of 18, Richie - now in his 50s, a successful producer and happily married - feels compelled to write him a letter. Gay Like Me is both a celebration of gay identity and a sorrowful warning. Jackson talks of his own progress and growth as a gay man coming of age through decades of political and cultural change. We've come a long way, he argues: discrimination is now outlawed in most states, gay men and women can marry, and there are drugs available to protect against AIDS. His son is going to be living in a newly liberated America. However, he also argues that nothing can be taken for granted. Bigotry and hatred still exist, nurtured by a President who draws votes and support by stirring up fear of The Other, and excluding minorities and anyone who can be labelled 'an outsider'. A newly constituted Supreme Court could revoke laws and turn the clock back. The gay identity can be worn with pride, but gay citizens needs always to be aware that their gains are fragile. Like Between the World and Me, this is a response to our times, and will strike a powerful chord with anyone who cares about human rights and the importance of tolerance and social progress. Angry, proud, moved, tender, this is also a powerful letter of love from a father to a son, relevant to everyone"--

The queer bible : essays

"In 2016, model and queer activist Jack Guinness decided that the LGBTQ+ community desperately needed to be reminded of its long and glorious history of stardom—and he was spurred to action. The following year, QueerBible.com was born, an online community devoted to celebrating queer heroes, both past and present. 'So much queer history is hidden or erased,” says Guinness. “The Queer Bible is a home for all those personal stories and histories.' In this book, contemporary queer heroes pay homage to those who helped pave their paths. Contributors include Vogue columnist Paris Lees (writing on Edward Enninful), singer and songwriter Elton John (writing on Divine), comedian Mae Martin (writing on Tim Curry), author Joseph Cassara (writing on Pedro Almodóvar), and many others, honoring timeless queer icons such as Susan Sontag, David Bowie, Sylvester, RuPaul, and George Michael through illuminating essays paired with stunning illustrations. The Queer Bible is a powerful and intimate essay collection of gratitude, and an essential, enduring love letter to the queer community. We stand on the shoulders of giants. Now we praise their names."--publisher's website

The 2000s made me gay : essays on pop culture by Grace Perry

"From The Onion and Reductress contributor, this collection of essays is a hilarious nostalgic trip through beloved 2000s media, interweaving cultural criticism and personal narrative to examine how a very straight decade forged a very queer woman "If youcame of age at the intersection of Mean Girls and The L Word: Read this book." -Sarah Pappalardo, editor in chief and co-founder of Reductress Today's gay youth have dozens of queer peer heroes, both fictional and real, but Grace Perry did not have thatluxury. Instead, she had to search for queerness in the teen cultural phenomena that the early aughts had to offer: in Lindsay Lohan's fall from grace, Gossip Girl, Katy Perry's "I Kissed A Girl," country-era Taylor Swift, and Seth Cohen jumping on a coffee cart. And, for better or worse, these touch points shaped her identity, and she came out on the other side, as she puts it, gay as hell. Join Grace on a journey back through the pop culture moments of the early 2000's, before the cataclysmic shift in LGBTQ representation and acceptance-a time not so long ago, that people seem to forget"--

The selected works of Audre Lorde by Audre Lorde

"A definitive selection of prose and poetry from the self-described "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet," for a new generation of readers. Audre Lorde is an unforgettable voice in twentieth-century literature, one of the first to center the experiencesof black, queer women. Her incisive essays and passionate poetry-alive with sensuality, vulnerability, and rage-remain indelible contributions to intersectional feminism, queer theory, and critical race studies. This essential reader showcases twelve landmark essays and more than sixty poems, selected and introduced by one of our most powerful contemporary voices on race and gender, Roxane Gay. The essays include "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House," "I Am Your Sister," and excerpts from the National Book Award-winning A Burst of Light. The poems are drawn from Lorde's nine volumes, including National Book Award nominee The Land Where Other People Live. As Gay writes in her astute introduction, The Selected Works of Audre Lorde celebrates "an exemplar of public intellectualism who is as relevant in this century as she was in the last.""--

The autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein

"Stein's most famous work; one of the richest and most irreverent biographies ever written, now illustrated by Maira Kalman"--

Thinking again : a diary by Jan Morris

"Jan Morris, one of 'Britain's greatest living writers' (Times, UK), returns with this whimsical yet deeply affecting volume on life as a redoubtable nonagenarian. The irrepressible Jan Morris-author of such classics as Venice and Trieste-is at it again:offering a vibrant set of reminiscences that remind us 'what a good, wise and witty companion Jan Morris has been for so many readers for so long' (Alexander McCall Smith, New York Times Book Review). 'Like Michel de Montaigne' (Danny Heitman, Wall StreetJournal), Morris waxes on the ironies of modern life in all their resonant glories and inevitable stupidities-from her daily exercise (a 'statutory thousand paces of brisk walk') to the troubles of Brexit; her enduring yet complicated love for America; and honest reflections on the vagaries and ailments of aging. Both intimate and luminously wise, Thinking Again is a testament to the virtues of embracing life, creativity, and, above all, kindness"--

The early stories of Truman Capote by Truman Capote

"In a small Southern town, a teenage girl anxiously waits for her date to arrive. A little boy meets his dream dog in Central Park. A woman fights to save the life of a child who has her lover's eyes. Best friends discuss the theoretical murder of husbands. In these never-before-published stories, written by Truman Capote when he was in his teens and twenties, Capote-the-Writer is already recognizable. His prose: witty, poignant, and crystal-clear. His characters: solitary, observant young children; charming and naïve young women whom you could imagine befriending Holly Golightly; aging urban sophisticates worn down by cynicism. His settings: the rural South of his childhood and the cosmopolitan New York of the 1940s. This splendid collection offers readers to opportunity to see the confident first steps of one of the 20th century's most-acclaimed writers onto the path that would lead to his most beloved works"--

Shuggie Bain : a novel by Douglas Stuart

"Shuggie Bain is the unforgettable story of young Hugh "Shuggie" Bain, a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Thatcher's war on heavy industry has put husbands and sons out of work, and the city's notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the wings. Shuggie's mother Agnes walks a wayward path: she is Shuggie's guiding light but a burden for his artistic brother and practical sister. She dreams of a house with its own front door while she flicks through the pages of the Freemans catalogue, ordering a little happiness on credit, anything to brighten up her grey life. Married to a "whoremaster" of a husband, Agnes keeps her pride by looking good-her beehive, make-up, and pearly-white false teeth offer a glamourous image of a Glaswegian Elizabeth Taylor. But under the surface, Agnes finds increasing solace in drink, and she drains away the lion's share of each week's benefits-all the family has to live on-on cans of extra-strong lager hidden in handbags and poured into tea mugs. Agnes's older children find their own ways to get a safe distance from their mother, abandoning Shuggie to look after her as she swings between alcoholic binges and sobriety. He is meanwhile doing all he can to somehow become the normal boy he desperately longs to be, but everyone has realized that Shuggie is "no right," and now Agnes's addiction has the power to eclipse everyone close to her-even and especially her beloved Shuggie. A heartbreaking novel of addiction, sexuality, and love, Shuggie Bain is an epic portrayal of a working-class family that is rarely seen in fiction"--

No one can pronounce my name : a novel by Rakesh Satyal

"In a suburb outside Cleveland, a community of Indian Americans has settled into lives that straddle the divide between Eastern and Western cultures. For some, America is a bewildering and alienating place where coworkers can't pronounce your name but will eagerly repeat the Sanskrit phrases from their yoga class. Harit, a lonely Indian immigrant in his mid-forties, lives with his mother who can no longer function after the death of Harit's sister, Swati. In a misguided attempt to keep both himself and his mother sane, Harit has taken to dressing up in a sari every night to pass himself off as his sister. Meanwhile, Ranjana, also an Indian immigrant in her mid-forties, has just seen her only child, Prashant, off to college. Worried that her husband has begun an affair, she seeks solace by writing paranormal romances in secret. When Harit and Ranjana's paths cross, they begin a strange yet necessary friendship that brings to light their own passions and fears"--

In West Mills by De'Shawn Charles Winslow

Alone in her one-room shack, ostracized from her relatives and cut off from her hometown, Knot Centre turns to her neighbor, Otis Lee Loving, in search of some semblance of family and home, but Otis is unable to fix the troubles within his own family, asdark secrets from his troubled past come to light.

Kept animals : a novel by Kate Milliken

"Rory Ramos is a dutiful teenager with a love of photography who works as a ranch hand at the stable her stepfather manages in Topanga Canyon, a dry, dusty place reliant on horses and hierarchies. There she rides for the rich clientele, including twins June and Wade Fisk. June begins to take an interest in Rory-but she is more drawn to Vivian Price, the beautiful teenager with the movie-star father, who lives down the hill and, Rory can't help noticing, swims in her pool nearly every night. Rory's ambiguous roots and blue-collar upbringing keep her largely separate from the likes of the Prices and the Fisks-until her stepfather is involved in a tragic car accident. From that moment on, the lives of these teenagers become inextricably linked-are they friends or foes, lovers or rivals?-sparking a series of events that come to a head the night a wildfire tears through Topanga Canyon, and Rory's life is changed forever. Kept Animals is narrated by Rory's daughter, Charlie, twenty years after that fateful 1993 fire. Rory is away on assignment as a war photographer, and Charlie knows the key to her own existence lies in the story of what happened during that unseasonably warm fall. And without her mother to tell her the truth, she must unravel it by herself. Taut, propulsive, and deftly written, Kate Milliken's debut is a searing exploration of girlhood, class, and fate"--

The end of the day by Bill Clegg

"A retired widow in rural Connecticut wakes to an unexpected visit from her childhood best friend whom she hasn't seen in forty-nine years. An older man who has traveled from Manhattan to meet his newborn granddaughter collapses in a hotel lobby in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. A sixty-seven-year-old taxi driver in Kauai receives a phone call from the mainland that jars her back to a traumatic past. Seemingly disconnected lives come together as half-century old secrets begin to surface in Bill Clegg's second novel. At its heart, The End of the Day is about the phenomenon of female friendship, its force and its breaking points, as well its most shaping influences-family, class, age, and power"--

My Ántonia by Willa Cather

My Ántonia chronicles the life of Ántonia, a Bohemian immigrant woman, as seen through the eyes of Jim, the man unable to forget her. Jim, now a successful New York lawyer, recollects his upbringing on a Nebraska farm. Even after twenty years, Ántonia continues to live a romantic life in his imagination. When he returns to Nebraska, he finds Ántonia has lived a battered life. Although the man to whom she dedicated her life abandons her, she remains strong and full of courage

I am not myself these days : a memoir by Josh Kilmer-Purcell

An advertising executive describes how he moonlighted as a drag queen performing in nighclubs, detailing a surreal odyssey into Manhattan's dark underbelly as it chronicles his relationship with his crack-addicted, male-escort boyfriend

No ashes in the fire : coming of age black and free in America by Darnell L Moore

"When Darnell L. Moore was fourteen years old, three boys from his neighborhood tried to set him on fire as he was walking home from school. Darnell was tall and awkward and constantly bullied for being gay. That afternoon, one of the boys doused him withgasoline and tried lighting a match. It was too windy, and luckily Darnell's aunt arrived in time to grab Darnell and pull him to safety. It was not the last time he would face death. What happens to the black boys who come of age in neglected, poor, heavily policed, and economically desperate cities that the War on Drugs and mass incarceration have created? How do they learn to live, love, and grow up? Darnell was raised in Camden, NJ, the son of two teenagers on welfare struggling to make ends meet. Heexplored his sexuality during the height of the AIDS epidemic, when being gay was a death sentence. He was beaten down and ignored by white and black America, by his school, and even his church, the supposed place of sanctuary. He made it out, but as hequickly learned, escaping Camden, escaping poverty, and coming out do not guarantee you freedom. It wasn't until Darnell was pushed into the spotlight at a Newark rally after the murder of a young queer woman that he found his voice and his calling. He became a leading organizer with Black Lives Matter, a movement that recognized him and insisted that his life mattered. In recovering the beauty, joy, and love in his own life, No Ashes in the Fire gives voice to the rich, varied experiences of all those who survive on the edges of the margins. In the process, he offers a path toward liberation"--

Good boy : my life in seven dogs by Jennifer Finney Boylan

"From bestselling author of She's Not There, New York Times opinion columnist, and human rights activist Jennifer Finney Boylan, Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs, a memoir of the transformative power of loving dogs. This is a book about dogs: the love we have for them, and the way that love helps us understand the people we have been. It's in the love of dogs, and my love for them, that I can best now take the measure of the child I once was, and the bottomless, unfathomable desires that once haunted me. There are times when it is hard for me to fully remember that love, which was once so fragile, and so fierce. Sometimes it seems to fade before me, like breath on a mirror. But I remember the dogs. In her New York Times opinion column, Jennifer Finney Boylan wrote about her relationship with her beloved dog Indigo, and her wise, funny, heartbreaking piece went viral. In Good Boy, Boylan explores what should be the simplest topic in the world, but never is: finding and giving love. Good Boy is a universal account of a remarkable story: showing how a young boy became a middle-aged woman-accompanied at seven crucial moments of growth and transformation by seven memorable dogs. 'Everything I know about love,' she writes, 'I learned from dogs.' Their love enables us pull off what seem like impossible feats: to find our way home when we are lost, to live our lives with humor and courage, and above all, to best become our true selves"--

Call me by your name : a novel by André Aciman

The sudden and powerful attraction between a teenage boy and a summer guest at his parents' house on the Italian Riviera has a profound and lasting influence that will mark them both for a lifetime

You exist too much : a novel by Zaina Arafat

Told in vignettes that occur in American and Middle East settings, a debut novel follows the experiences of a young Palestinian-American who is marginalized for her sexual orientation before the traumas of her past drive her toward self-destructive impulses

Mostly dead things by Kristen N Arnett

Taking over her family's failing taxidermy shop in the wake of her father's suicide, a grief-stricken woman pursues less-than-legal ways of generating income while struggling to figure out her place among her eccentric loved ones.

The last nude by Ellis Avery

Paris, 1927, a day in July. A destitute young American named Rafaela Fano gets into the car of a dazzling stranger, the Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka. Struggling to halt a downward slide toward prostitution, Rafaela agrees to model for the artist. The two become lovers, and Rafaela inspires Tamara's most accomplished and prized works of art, including Beautiful Rafaela, one of the most important nudes of the twentieth century (New York Times). The relationship between the artist and her muse lasted less than a year, yet in 1980, just before Tamara died, she was working on a copy of Beautiful Rafaela. Author Ellis Avery imagines their affair from Rafaela's point of view, and the final day of Tamara's life from the painter's point of view. A window into Jazz Age Paris as the forces of history close in, The Last Nude is a story of genius and craft, art and money, friendship and desire

The teahouse fire by Ellis Avery

The Japanese tea ceremony, steeped in ritual, is at the heart of this story of an American girl, adopted by Kyoto's most important tea master and raised as attendant and surrogate younger sister to his privileged daughter Yukako. Pasts shrouded in secrets and mysterious traditions rocked by modernization make The Teahouse Fire a compelling and provocative story, lush in details and epic in scope

Giovanni's room by James Baldwin

In the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence, a young man finds himself caught between desire and conventional morality. With a sharp, probing imagination, James Baldwin's now-classic narrative delves into the mystery of loving and creates a moving, highly controversial story of death and passion that reveals the unspoken complexities of the human heart.

Are you my mother? : a comic drama by Alison Bechdel

Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home was a pop culture and literary phenomenon. Now, a second thrilling tale of filial sleuthery, this time about her mother: voracious reader, music lover, passionate amateur actor. Also a woman, unhappily married to a closeted gay man, whose artistic aspirations simmered under the surface of Bechdel's childhood . . . and who stopped touching or kissing her daughter good night, forever, when she was seven. Poignantly, hilariously, Bechdel embarks on a quest for answers concerning the mother-daughter gulf. It's a richly layered search that leads readers from the fascinating life and work of the iconic twentieth-century psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, to one explosively illuminating Dr. Seuss illustration, to Bechdel’s own (serially monogamous) adult love life. And, finally, back to Mother—to a truce, fragile and real-time, that will move and astonish all adult children of gifted mothers.

Fun home : a family tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

A memoir done in the form of a graphic novel by a cult favorite comic artist offers a darkly funny family portrait that details her relationship with her father--a funeral home director, high school English teacher, and closeted homosexual

Becoming a man : the story of a transition by 1966- author P. Carl

"A remarkable, deeply moving memoir of one man's gender transition amid a pivotal political moment in America."--

How to write an autobiographical novel : essays by Alexander Chee

"From the author of The Queen of the Night, an essay collection exploring how we form our identities in life, in politics, and in art" --

When I grow up I want to be a list of further possibilities by Chen Chen

"In this ferocious and tender debut, Chen Chen investigates inherited forms of love and family -- the strained relationship between a mother and son, the cost of necessary goodbyes -- all from Asian American, immigrant, and queer perspectives. Holding allaccountable, this collection fully embraces the loss, grief, and abundant joy that come with charting one's own path in identity, life, and love. When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities. To be a season of laughter when my father sayshis coworker is like that, he can tell because the guy wears pink socks, see, you don't, so you can't, you can't be one of them. To be the one my parents raised me to be. A season from the stormiest planet. A very good feeling with a man. Every feeling,in pink shoes. Every step, hot pink."--

Finna by Nino Cipri

When an elderly customer at a Swedish big box furniture store -- but not that one -- slips through a portal to another dimension, it's up to two minimum-wage employees to track her across the multiverse and protect their company's bottom line. Multi-dimensional swashbuckling would be hard enough, but those two unfortunate souls broke up a week ago. To find the missing granny, Ava and Jules will brave carnivorous furniture, swarms of identical furniture spokespeople, and the deep resentment simmering between them. Can friendship blossom from the ashes of their relationship? In infinite dimensions, all things are possible

Plain bad heroines : a novel by Emily M Danforth

"Our story begins in 1902, at the Brookhants School for Girls. Flo and Clara, two impressionable students, are obsessed with each other and with a daring young writer named Mary MacLane, the author of a scandalous bestselling memoir. To show their devotion to Mary, the girls establish their own private club and call it the Plain Bad Heroine Society. They meet in secret in a nearby apple orchard, the setting of their wildest happiness and, ultimately, of their macabre deaths. This is where their bodies are later discovered with a copy of Mary’s book splayed beside them, the victims of a swarm of stinging, angry yellow jackets. Less than five years later, the Brookhants School for Girls closes its doors forever—but not before three more people mysteriously die on the property, each in a most troubling way. Over a century later, the now abandoned and crumbling Brookhants is back in the news when wunderkind writer Merritt Emmons publishes a breakout book celebrating the queer, feminist history surrounding the “haunted and cursed” Gilded Age institution. Her bestselling book inspires a controversial horror film adaptation starring celebrity actor and lesbian it girl Harper Harper playing the ill-fated heroine Flo, oppo­site B-list actress and former child star Audrey Wells as Clara. But as Brookhants opens its gates once again, and our three modern her­oines arrive on set to begin filming, past and present become grimly entangled—or perhaps just grimly exploited—and soon it’s impossible to tell where the curse leaves off and Hollywood begins

In at the deep end by Kate Davies

"A fresh, funny, audacious debut novel about a Bridget Jones-like twenty-something who discovers that she may have simply been looking for love -- and, ahem, pleasure -- in all the wrong places (aka: from men)"--

Cantoras by Carolina De Robertis

"From the highly acclaimed, award-winning author of The Gods of Tango, a revolutionary new novel about five wildly different women who, in the midst of the Uruguayan dictatorship, find each other as lovers, friends, and ultimately, family. In 1977 Uruguay, a military government has crushed political dissent with ruthless force. In an environment where citizens are kidnapped, raped, and tortured, homosexuality is a dangerous transgression. And yet, despite such societal realities, Romina, Flaca, Anita "La Venus," Paz, and Malena--five cantoras, women who "sing"--somehow, miraculously, find each other and discover an isolated cape, Cabo Polonio, inhabited by just a lonely lighthouse keeper and a few rugged seal hunters. They claim this place as their secret sanctuary. Over the next 35 years, their lives move back and forth between Cabo Polonio and Montevideo, the city they call home, as they return, sometimes together, sometimes in pairs, with lovers in tow, or alone. Throughout it all, the women will be tested repeatedly--by their families, lovers, society, and each other--as they fight to live authentic lives. A genre-defining novel and De Robertis's masterpiece, Cantoras is a breathtaking portrait of queer love, community, forgotten history, and the strength of the human spirit. De Robertis has written a novel that is at once timeless and groundbreaking--a tale about the fire in all our souls and those who make it burn"--

Patsy : a novel by Nicole Dennis-Benn

When Patsy finally gets a U.S. travel visa in 1998, she is so sure that she is neither a good mother nor capable of becoming one that she plans to leave her young daughter, Tru, behind in Jamaica and never look back. There's something pulling Patsy , too, the promise of reunion with her girlhood best friend turned lover, Cicely, who left Jamaica a decade ago. But things quickly fall apart when Patsy arrives in Brooklyn to a less-welcoming situation than Cicely suggested in her letters. As Patsy survives the mind-numbing terror of undocumented life, stories from her past seep in to reveal her familiarity with hardship and a well of strength that is nonetheless invisible to her. Meanwhile, Tru deals with her own terror, suffering from her mother's abandonment while living with her father and his family, strangers to her at first. Ten years later, stoic teen Tru is almost undone by the loneliness of her gnawing depression and feelings of queerness, unaware that her mother, now a Manhattan nanny, shares both.

Disoriental by Négar Djavadi

"Kimiâ Sadr fled Iran at the age of ten in the company of her mother and sisters to join her father in France. Now twenty-five and facing the future she has built for herself as well as the prospect of a new generation, Kimiâ is inundated by her own memories and the stories of her ancestors, which come to her in unstoppable, uncontainable waves. In the waiting room of a Parisian fertility clinic, generations of flamboyant Sadrs return to her, including her formidable great-grandfather Montazemolmolk, with his harem of fifty-two wives, and her parents, Darius and Sara, stalwart opponents of each regime that befalls them."--Amazon

Frog music : a novel by Emma Donoghue

"Emma Donoghue's explosive new novel, based on an unsolved murder in 1876 San Francisco. Summer of 1876: San Francisco is in the fierce grip of a record-breaking heatwave and a smallpox epidemic. Through the window of a railroad saloon, a young woman called Jenny Bonnet is shot dead. The survivor, her friend Blanche Beunon, is a French burlesque dancer. Over the next three days, she will risk everything to bring Jenny's murderer to justice--if he doesn't track her down first. The story Blanche struggles to piece together is one of free-love bohemians, desperate paupers and arrogant millionaires; of jealous men, icy women and damaged children. It's the secret life of Jenny herself, a notorious character who breaks the law every morning by getting dressed: a charmer as slippery as the frogs she hunts. In thrilling, cinematic style, Frog Music digs up a long-forgotten, never-solved crime. Full of songs that migrated across the world, Emma Donoghue's lyrical tale of love and bloodshed among lowlifes captures the pulse of a boomtown like no other"--

Dog years : a memoir by Mark Doty

A memoir of the author's relationship with a pair of beloved canine companions is a tribute to their irrepressible personalities, their life-changing impact on the author and his family, and their role in how the author came to understand loss and grief

A year without a name : a memoir by Cyrus Grace Dunham

For as long as they can remember, Cyrus Grace Dunham felt like a visitor in their own body. Their life was a series of imitations--lovable little girl, daughter, sister, young gay woman--until their profound sense of alienation became intolerable. Moving between Grace and Cyrus, Dunham brings us inside the chrysalis of gender transition, asking us to bear witness to an uncertain and exhilarating process that troubles our most basic assumptions about who we are and how we are constituted. Written with disarming emotional intensity in a voice uniquely theirs, A Year Without a Name is a potent, thrillingly unresolved queer coming of age story

Butter honey pig bread : a novel by Francesca Ekwuyasi

Spanning three continents, Butter Honey Pig Bread tells the interconnected stories of three Nigerian women: Kambirinachi and her twin daughters, Kehinde and Taiye. Kambirinachi believes that she is an Ogbanje, or an Abiku, a non-human spirit that plagues a family with misfortune by being born and then dying in childhood to cause a human mother misery. She has made the unnatural choice of staying alive to love her human family but lives in fear of the consequences of her decision. Kambirinachi and her two daughters become estranged from one another because of a trauma that Kehinde experiences in childhood, which leads her to move away and cut off all contact. She ultimately finds her path as an artist and seeks to raise a family of her own, despite her fear that she won't be a good mother. Meanwhile, Taiye is plagued by guilt for what her sister suffered and also runs away, attempting to fill the void of that lost relationship with casual flings with women. She eventually discovers a way out of her stifling loneliness through a passion for food and cooking. But now, after more than a decade of living apart, Taiye and Kehinde have returned home to Lagos. It is here that the three women must face each other and address the wounds of the past if they are to reconcile and move forward. For readers of African diasporic authors such as Teju Cole and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Butter Honey Pig Bread is a story of choices and their consequences, of motherhood, of the malleable line between the spirit and the mind, of finding new homes and mending old ones, of voracious appetites, of queer love, of friendship, faith, and above all, family

The death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi

"A tender, potent, and compulsively readable novel of a Nigerian-Indian family and the deeply held secret that tests their traditions and bonds"--

Pizza girl : a novel by Jean Kyoung Frazier

"Eighteen years old, pregnant, and working as a pizza delivery girl in suburban Los Angeles, our charmingly dysfunctional heroine is deeply lost and in complete denial about it all. She's grieving the death of her father (who she has more in common with than she'd like to admit), avoiding her supportive mom and loving boyfriend, and flagrantly ignoring her future. Her world is further upended when she becomes obsessed with Jenny, a stay-at-home mother new to the neighborhood, who comes to depend on weeklydeliveries of pickled covered pizzas for her son's happiness. As one woman looks toward motherhood and the other towards middle age, the relationship between the two begins to blur in strange, complicated, and ultimately heartbreaking ways. Bold, tender,propulsive, and unexpected in countless ways, Jean Kyoung Frazier's Pizza Girl is a moving and funny portrait of a flawed, unforgettable young woman as she tries to find her place in the world"--

Upright women wanted by Sarah Gailey

"Esther is a stowaway. She's hidden herself away in the Librarian's book wagon in an attempt to escape the marriage her father has arranged for her-a marriage to the man who was previously engaged to her best friend. Her best friend who she was in love with. Her best friend who was just executed for possession of resistance propaganda. The future American Southwest is full of bandits, fascists, and queer librarian spies on horseback trying to do the right thing"--

Difficult women by Roxane Gay

"Award-winning author and powerhouse talent Roxane Gay burst onto the scene with An Untamed State and the New York Times bestselling essay collection Bad Feminist (Harper Perennial). Gay returns with Difficult Women, a collection of stories of rare forceand beauty, of hardscrabble lives, passionate loves, and quirky and vexed human connection. The women in these stories live lives of privilege and of poverty, are in marriages both loving and haunted by past crimes or emotional blackmail. A pair of sisters, grown now, have been inseparable ever since they were abducted together as children, and must negotiate the elder sister's marriage. A woman married to a twin pretends not to realize when her husband and his brother impersonate each other. A stripperputting herself through college fends off the advances of an overzealous customer. A black engineer moves to Upper Michigan for a job and faces the malign curiosity of her colleagues and the difficulty of leaving her past behind. From a girls' fight clubto a wealthy subdivision in Florida where neighbors conform, compete, and spy on each other, Gay delivers a wry, beautiful, haunting vision of modern America reminiscent of Merritt Tierce, Jamie Quatro, and Miranda July"--

Howl : and other poems by Allen Ginsberg

The care and feeding of ravenously hungry girls by Anissa Gray

Shortly before Thanksgiving 2013, small-town Michigan restaurateur Althea receives a multi-year sentence for food stamp fraud and charity embezzlement. While awaiting transport to prison, Althea makes friends with other inmates and refuses visits from her teenage twins, sullen and explosive Kim and shy Baby Vi. Althea’s youngest sister, Lillian, has lavishly refurbished their childhood home, where she cares for the twins and her ex-husband’s grandmother. The middle sister, Viola, returns from Chicago to help; she has been inadequately coping with a separation from her wife and backsliding into bulimia. Lillian bristles at their brother’s suggestion he take the girls in, fearing he would physically and emotionally abuse them as he did her. After Kim runs away, Viola and Lillian keep the news from Althea while scrambling to find Kim. Gray uses alternate chapters narrated by the three sisters to fill in details of their upbringing by an itinerant preacher father who was prone to abusive outbursts the rare times he was at home, and their current struggles to heal and cope.

Cleanness by Garth Greenwell

"A queer American teacher describes a series of intimate encounters with lovers, friends, and students in and around Sofia, Bulgaria"--

What belongs to you by Garth Greenwell

Lyrical and intense, it tells the story of a man caught between longing and resentment, unable to separate desire from danger, and faced with the impossibility of understanding those he most longs to know

Less : a novel by Andrew Sean Greer

Receiving an invitation to his ex-boyfriend's wedding, Arthur, a failed novelist on the eve of his fiftieth birthday, embarks on an international journey that finds him falling in love, risking his life, reinventing himself, and making connections with the past.

Hide : a novel by Matthew Griffin

Gay life in the South doesn't always take place in a colonial row house in Savannah or a beachfront condo in Myrtle Beach. In Griffin's debut novel, it's lived out in the shadows in a run-down North Carolina mill town, where Wendell Wilson, a taxidermist, has lived a long and eventful life with Frank Clifton, a World War II veteran who melted Wendell's heart the minute they met. Or melted the world, anyway, for with Frank's smile, "the branches shuddered off their casts of ice, and the power lines broke free of their insulation, snapped taut and scattered it over the street in pieces that still cupped the hollow channel where the wire had run." That's some powerful allure. The title of Griffin's novel is both noun and verb, for while Wendell works magic with the bodies of unfortunate animals, the men keep their relationship secret, lest they be hounded out of town. But now Frank is 83, has had a mild stroke, and has affairs to get in order. As Frank grapples with a faltering mind and body and difficult memories of war, Wendell finds himself in the unwished-for role of caretaker.

Guapa by Saleem Haddad

In an unnamed Middle Eastern country, a young translator deals with the fallout after his grandmother catches him with another man. Set against the backdrop of a country on the brink of civil war, Haddad's debut novel follows a young gay man, Rasa, over a tense 24 hours. First his grandmother catches him in bed with his lover, then his best friend is arrested at a gay cinema. As Rasa grapples with these conflicts, he also remembers his past--from his sexual awakening to his four years in America for college to experiences at his one refuge, the neighborhood bar/underground gay club that gives the novel its title.

A world between : a novel by Emily Hashimoto

In 2004, college students Eleanor Suzuki and Leena Shah meet in an elevator. Both girls are on the brink of adulthood, each full of possibility and big ideas, and they fall into a whirlwind romance. Years later, Eleanor and Leena collide on the streets of San Francisco. Although grown and changed and each separately partnered, the two find themselves, once again, irresistibly pulled back together. Emily Hashimoto's debut novel perfectly captures the wonder and confusion of growing up and growing closer. Narrated in sparkling prose, A World Between follows two strikingly different but interconnected women as they navigate family, female friendship, and their own fraught history

Crosshairs : a novel by Catherine Hernandez

"In this captivating dystopian novel, a larger-than-life drag queen and her allies join forces to rise up when a post-Trump regime rounds those deemed "Other" into concentration camps"--

Carol by Patricia Highsmith

Trapped in a boring, dead-end day job in a department store, stage designer Therese Belivet finds her life forever changed when she encounters--and falls in love with--Carol Aird, an alluring suburban housewife in the midst of a divorce.

Southernmost by Silas House

"When an evangelical preacher in Tennessee offers shelter to two gay men after a catastrophic flood, he's met with resistance by his wife and congregation, and eventually loses custody of his son. He decides to kidnap his son and flee to Key West, where he suspects his estranged gay brother is living"--

Boys of Alabama : a novel by Genevieve (Genevieve Katherine) Hudson

"In this haunting debut novel from Lambda Award finalist Genevieve Hudson, a young German transplant falls in love, questions his faith, and navigates a strange power. A queer coming-of-age told with magical realism, Boys of Alabama guides us through 16-year-old Max's first year in America. Conflicted about leaving Germany, Max is in awe of his new "home" - here, the heat is thick, the food is grossly delicious, and football and religion-seemingly intertwined-permeate everything. While his parents don't know what to make of an Ameircan South pining for the "good ol' days," or the people who live there, shy Max thrives-he makes the football team, goes to church for the first time, and even makes friends. When Max meets Pan in Chemistry class, they embark on a quixotic, strange, and consuming relationship. They tell each other their secrets; Max tells Pan about his witchy powers, Pan tells Max about the snake poison initiations of a local church. But the boys aren't sure whose secrets are darker, or what ismore frightening - their true selves, or staying true in an intolerant Alabama. Written in atmospheric, propulsive prose, Boys of Alabama is an evocative and urgent novel of young love, identity, faith, and the dangers of each"--

A single man by Christopher Isherwood

When A Single Man was originally published, it shocked many by its frank, sympathetic, and moving portrayal of a gay man in midlife. George, the protagonist, is adjusting to life on his own after the sudden death of his partner, and determines to persist in the routines of his daily life; the course of A Single Man spans twenty-four hours in an ordinary day. An Englishman and a professor living in suburban Southern California, he is an outsider in every way, and his internal reflections and interactions with others reveal a man who loves being alive despite everyday injustices and loneliness. Wry, suddenly manic, constantly funny, surprisingly sad, this novel catches the texture of life itself

Black leopard, red wolf by Marlon James

"In the first novel in Marlon James's Dark Star trilogy, myth, fantasy, and history come together to explore what happens when a mercenary is hired to find a missing child"--

The city we became by N Jemisin

"Five New Yorkers must come together in order to save their city from destruction in the first book of a stunning new series by Hugo award-winning and NYT bestselling author N. K. Jemisin. Every great city has a soul. Some are ancient as myths, and othersare as new and destructive as children. New York? She's got six. When a young man crosses the bridge into New York City, something changes. He doesn't remember who he is, where he's from, or even his own name. But he can feel the pulse of the city, can see its history, can access its magic. And he's not the only one. All across the boroughs, strange things are happening. Something is threatening to destroy the city and her six newborn avatars unless they can come together and stop it once and for all"--

Being Jazz : my life as a (transgender teen) by Jazz Jennings

Before she was in preschool, Jazz knew she wasn't a boy, and she didn't understand why no one else did. Her parents took her to meet with a well-versed therapist, who told them Jazz is transgender, and they started on a journey with no map. Obstinate school faculty and officials soon made it clear that there was no protocol for someone like Jazz, and the family's necessary activism began in earnest, by way of an article in the local paper. That article got the attention of producers of a national TV show, who pursued Jazz's family until they agreed to take a leap of faith and do an interview. Jazz's mother became involved in public speaking at conferences, and she and Jazz began their outreach and advocacy work, even starting their own organization and agreeing to do a reality show. As Jennings relates, through it all, she manages to keep it apart from her typical teenage life, replete with summer-camp experiences, cute-but-jerky boys, best friends, and ex-best friends and marked with a passion for art and mermaids. Her outlook is bright, even as she struggles with depression—hereditary and unrelated to being trans. Jazz is fearlessly up front with people about being trans, and her gender meter is pinned on GIRL, but she also touches on gender variations and carefully stresses that not all trans people are like her.

All boys aren't blue : a memoir-manifesto by George M Johnson

In a series of personal essays, a prominent journalist and LGBTQIA+ activist George M. Johnson explores his childhood, adolescence, and college years in New Jersey and Virginia. From the memories of getting his teeth kicked out by bullies at age five, to flea marketing with his loving grandmother, to his first sexual relationships, this young-adult memoir weaves together the trials and triumphs faced by Black queer boys. Both a primer for teens eager to be allies as well as a reassuring testimony for young queer men of color, It covers topics such as gender identity, toxic masculinity, brotherhood, family, structural marginalization, consent, and Black joy

The prophets : a novel by Robert Jones

"A singular and stunning debut novel about the forbidden union between two enslaved young men on a Deep South plantation, the refuge they find in each other, and a betrayal that threatens their existence"--

How we fight for our lives : a memoir by Saeed Jones

"Written from the crossroads of sex, race, and power in America, How We Fight for Our Lives is a stunning coming-of-age memoir and a haunting reflection of the nation as a whole"--

The thirty names of night : a novel by Zeyn Joukhadar

"From the author of the acclaimed and award-winning debut The Map of Salt and Stars, a remarkably moving and lyrical novel following three generations of Syrian Americans who are linked by the truths they carry close to their hearts. Five years after a suspicious fire killed his mother, a closeted Syrian American trans boy sheds his birth name and searches for a new one. He has been unable to paint since his mother's ghost has begun to visit him each evening. The only time he feels truly free is when he slips out at night to paint murals on buildings in the once-thriving Manhattan neighborhood known as Little Syria. One night, he finds the tattered journal of a Syrian American artist named Laila Z. She famously and mysteriously disappeared more than sixtyyears before, but her journal contains proof that Laila Z's past is intimately tied to his mother's-and his grandmother's--in ways he never could have expected. Even more surprising, Laila Z's story reveals the histories of queer and transgender people within his community that he never knew. Following his mother's ghost, he uncovers the silences kept in the name of survival by his own community, his own family, and within himself, and discovers the family that was there all along. The Thirty Names of Night is an imaginative and intimate exploration of how we all search for and ultimately embrace who we are"--

The house in the cerulean sea by TJ Klune

"A magical island. A dangerous task. A burning secret. Linus Baker leads a quiet, solitary life. At forty, he lives in a tiny house with a devious cat and his old records. As a Case Worker at the Department in Charge Of Magical Youth, he spends his days overseeing the well-being of children in government-sanctioned orphanages. When Linus is unexpectedly summoned by Extremely Upper Management he's given a curious and highly classified assignment: travel to Marsyas Island Orphanage, where six dangerous children reside: a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, an unidentifiable green blob, a were-Pomeranian, and the Antichrist. Linus must set aside his fears and determine whether or not they're likely to bring about the end of days. But the children aren't the only secret the island keeps. Their caretaker is the charming and enigmatic Arthur Parnassus, who will do anything to keep his wards safe. As Arthur and Linus grow closer, long-held secrets are exposed, and Linus must make a choice: destroy a home or watch the world burn. An enchanting story, masterfully told, The House in the Cerulean Sea is about the profound experience of discovering an unlikely family in an unexpected place-and realizing that family is yours"--

A star is bored by Byron Lane

"A hilariously heartfelt novel about living life at full force, and discovering family when you least expect it, influenced in part by the author's time as Carrie Fisher's beloved assistant. Charlie Besson is about to have an insane job interview. His caris idling, like his life, outside the Hollywood mansion of Kathi Kannon. THE Kathi Kannon, star of stage and screen and People magazine's worst dressed list. She needs an assistant. He needs a hero. Kathi is an icon, bestselling author, and an award winning actress, most known for her role as Priestess Talara in the iconic blockbuster sci-fi film. She's also known for another role: crazy Hollywood royalty. Admittedly so. Famously so. Fabulously so. Charlie gets the job, and embarks on an odyssey filled with late night shopping sprees, last minute trips to see the aurora borealis, and an initiation to that most sacred of Hollywood tribes: the personal assistant. But Kathi becomes much more than a boss, and as their friendship grows, Charlie must make a choice. Will he always be on the sidelines of life, assisting the great forces that be, or can he step into his own leading role? Laugh-out-loud funny, and searingly poignant, Byron Lane's A Star is Bored is a novel that, like the star at its center, is enchanting and joyous, heartbreaking and hopeful"--

Under the rainbow by Celia Laskey

"In the small town of Big Burr, Kansas, ministers warn that "Satan was the first to demand equal rights," a lesbian-owned bed and breakfast mysteriously burns to the ground, and casually bigoted social media posts are the norm. But when a national nonprofit labels Big Burr "the most homophobic town in America" and sends in a task force in a Real World-style experiment - as residents for two years, they'll attempt to broaden hearts and minds - no one is truly prepared for the other. Avery desperately wants to fit in with her new high school classmates, but with her "lesbian crusader" mom running the task force, she's terrified that it's only a matter of time until she's outed. Across town, Linda tries to escape her grief over her son's death by befriending the arrivals, who know mercifully little about her past. But to Christine, profoundly attached to the carefully orchestrated rhythms of Big Burr life, they are not only a threat but a call to action. As tensions roil the town, cratering relationships and forcing closely guarded secrets into the light, local and interloper alike are forced to consider what it really means to belong. Told with warmth and wit, in a chorus of unexpected voices, Under the Rainbow is a poignant articulation of our complicated humanity that reminds us we are more alike than we'd like to admit"--

Paul takes the form of a mortal girl : a novel by Andrea Lawlor

Its 1993 and Paul Polydoris tends bar at the only gay club in a university town thrumming with politics and partying. He studies queer theory, has a dyke best friend, makes zines, and is a flâneur with a rich dating life. But Pauls also got a secret: hes a shapeshifter. Oscillating wildly from Riot Grrrl to leather cub, Womens Studies major to trade, Paul transforms his body at will in a series of adventures that take him from Iowa City to Boystown to Provincetown and finally to San Franciscoa journey through the deep queer archives of struggle and pleasure. Andrea Lawlors debut novel offers a speculative history of early 90s identity politics during the heyday of ACT UP and Queer Nation. Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is a riotous, razor-sharp bildungsroman whose hero/ine wends his way through a world gutted by loss, pulsing with music, and opening into an array of intimacy and connections

Her body and other parties : stories by Carmen Maria Machado

Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. She bends genres to shape startling stories that map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies." -- From the publisher

In the dream house : a memoir by Carmen Maria Machado

"In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado's account of a relationship gone bad and bold dissection of hte mechanisms and cultural representations of pyschological abuse. Machado traces the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, and struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming. Each chapter in this inventive memoir is driven by its own narrative trope--the haunted house, erotica, the bildungsroman--through which Machado holds her story up to the light and examines it from different angles. She considers her religious adolescence, unpacks the stereotype of lesbian relationships as safe and utopian, and widesn the view with essayistic explorations of the history and reality of abuse in queer relationships." --book jacket

The great believers by Rebecca Makkai

"A dazzling new novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris, by the acclaimed and award-winning author Rebecca Makkai In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery inChicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dyingand after his friend Nico's funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico's little sister. Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into acult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago crisis, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways AIDS affected her life and her relationship with her daughter. The two intertwining stories takeus through the heartbreak of the eighties and the chaos of the modern world, as both Yale and Fiona struggle to find goodness in the midst of disaster"--

A memory called Empire by Arkady Martine

Ambassador Mahit Dzmare arrives in the center of the multi-system Teixcalaanli Empire only to discover that her predecessor, the previous ambassador from their small but fiercely independent mining Station, has died. But no one will admit that his death wasn't an accident―or that Mahit might be next to die, during a time of political instability in the highest echelons of the imperial court. Now, Mahit must discover who is behind the murder, rescue herself, and save her Station from Teixcalaan's unceasing expansion―all while navigating an alien culture that is all too seductive, engaging in intrigues of her own, and hiding a deadly technological secret―one that might spell the end of her Station and her way of life―or rescue it from annihilation

All my mother's lovers : a novel by Ilana Masad

"For fans of Mostly Dead Things and Goodbye Vitamin, a warm and witty debut novel about love, loss, and a transformative roadtrip"--

Logical family : a memoir by Armistead Maupin

The best-selling author of the Tales of the City series chronicles his odyssey from the old South to freewheeling San Francisco, a personal journey that shaped his evolution from a curious youth to a ground-breaking writer and gay rights pioneer

The days of Anna Madrigal : a novel by Armistead Maupin

Follows ninety-two-year-old Anna Madrigal, the legendary transgender landlady of 28 Barbary Lane, as she joins her former tenant Brian on a road trip to Nevada where she attends to unfinished business she has long avoided

Redefining realness : my path to womanhood, identity, love & so much more by Janet Mock

"In a landmark book, an extraordinary young woman recounts her coming-of-age as a transgender teen--a deeply personal and empowering portrait of self-revelation, adversity, and heroism. In 2011, Marie Claire magazine published a profile of Janet Mock in which she publicly stepped forward for the first time as a trans woman. Since then, Mock has gone from covering the red carpet for People.com to advocating for all those who live within the shadows of society. Redefining Realness offers a bold new perspective on being young, multiracial, economically challenged, and transgender in America. Welcomed into the world as her parents' firstborn son, Mock set out early on to be her own person--no simple feat for a young person like herself. She struggled as the smart, determined child in a deeply loving, yet ill-equipped family that lacked money, education, and resources. Mock had to navigate her way through her teen years without parental guidance but luckily with a few close friends and mentors she overcame extremely daunting hurdles. This powerful memoir follows Mock's quest for identity, from her early gender conviction to a turbulent adolescence in Honolulu that found her transitioning through the halls of her school, self-medicating with hormones at fifteen, and flying across the world for sex reassignment surgery at just eighteen. Ever resilient, Mock emerged with a scholarship to college and moved to New York City, where she earned her masters degree, basked in the success of an enviable career, and told no one about her past. It wasn't until Mock fell for a man who called her the woman of his dreams that she felt ready to finally tell her story, becoming a fierce advocate for girls like herself. A profound statement of affirmation from a courageous woman, Redefining Realness shows as never before what it means to be a woman today and how to be yourself when you don't fit the mold created for you"--

Surpassing certainty : what my twenties taught me by Janet Mock

Janet Mock has become a vital and indispensable voice in the trans community. Here she expands on her story, exploring her posttransition years and her first marriage. Not long after undergoing gender-reassignment surgery, Mock began performing at a strip club in Waikiki, HI, to earn extra money. It was there that she met Troy, a yeoman stationed on the island of Oahu. They fell in love and developed the trust necessary for Mock to disclose her trans status. His acceptance gave her confidence and, after they married, he supported her as she pursued her education, first at the University of Hawaii and then at New York University, where she earned a master's degree in journalism. The couple grew apart as Mock's career took off, but she credits him with providing encouragement along with her first real experience of love. She also discusses her life as a young woman in New York, as well as her efforts to create a space for herself in a field where women of color are all too scarce.

Out of the shadows : reimagining gay men's lives by Walt Odets

A clinical psychologist, writer and gay activist reflects on what it means to be gay today through moving stories of friends and patients in the aftermath of the AIDS epidemic and shifting social values.

Something that may shock and discredit you by Daniel Mallory Ortberg

"Daniel Mallory Ortberg is known for blending genres, forms, and sources to develop fascinating new hybrids--from lyric rants to horror recipes to pornographic scripture. In his most personal work to date, he turns his attention to the essay, offering vigorour and loug-out-loud funny account of both oppular and highbrow culture while mixing in meditations on gender transition, relationship dynamics, and the many meanings of faith." --book jacket

Love after love : a novel by Ingrid Persaud

"After Betty Ramdin's abusive husband dies, she invites a colleague, Mr. Chetan, to move in with her and her son, Solo, as their lodger. Over time, these three form an unconventional family, loving each other deeply and depending upon one another. Then, on a fateful night, Solo overhears Betty confiding in Mr. Chetan and learns a secret that plunges him into torment. Ultimately sends him running to live a lonely life in New York City, devastating Betty in the process. Yet, both Solo and Betty are buoyed by the continuing love and friendship of Mr. Chetan, until his own burdensome secret is uncovered with heart breaking consequences. In vibrant, addictive Trinidadian prose, Love After Love questions who and how we love, the obligations of family, and theconsequences of choices made in desperation"--

Detransition, baby : a novel by Torrey Peters

A trans woman, her detransitioned ex, and his cisgender lover build an unconventional family together in the wake of heartbreak and an unplanned pregnancy

On swift horses : a novel by Shannon Pufahl

"In the burgeoning postwar West, two outsiders are torn between the constraints of convention and the demands of their private selves. Muriel is newly transplanted from her rural Kansas hometown to life in a dusty rental in San Diego, where her husband has his eye on a suburban homestead in nearby Mission Valley. Resless within her new amarriage, Muriel misses her late mother, a freethinking divocee, and her prodigal brother-in-law, Julius, a charismatic card sharp who made the world feel expansive in ways she only dimly understands. Waiting tables at a horsemen's lounge, Muriel gets a second-hand eduncation in racing and risk--until one day she sneaks off to the track and wins enough to embolden larger dreams. Hundreds of miles away, Julius is testing his fate in Las Vegas, spotting scams at casino where tourists watch atomic tests from the room. The job offers stability, and an unexpected romance with Henry, a young card cheat. But when bad luck befalls Henry, Julius heads south to search for him in the plazas and dives of Tijuana, trading one city of dangerous illusions for another." --book jacket

Lake life by David James Poissant

"The Starling family is scattered across the country. Parents Richard and Lisa live in Ithaca, New York, and work at Cornell University. Their son Michael, a shoe salesman, resides with his elementary school teacher wife, Diane, in Dallas. His brother, Thad, an aspiring poet, makes his home in New York City with his famous painter boyfriend, Jake. But for years they've reunited for vacation each summer at their North Carolina lake house. Now that's about to end, as Richard and Lisa have decided to retire,move to Florida, and sell the lake house. Before they do, the group will spend one final weekend at the lake. However, what's supposed to be a joyous farewell takes a nightmarish turn when they witness a neighbor boy drown. The stress of this tragedy unlooses a series dramatic revelations among the Starlings: Michael's alcoholism, Thad's and Jake's open relationship, Richard's infidelity, Diane's pregnancy, Lisa's loss of a daughter before the birth of her two sons. As the weekend unfolds, the family's strength is tested, and each member is forced to reckon with who they are and what they want out of life. Set in contemporary America, Lake Life is a sprawling domestic novel in the mold of John Updike's Rabbit series, Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections and Elizabeth Stroud's Olive Kitteridge"--

The seep by Chana Porter

"Trina Goldberg-Oneka is a fifty-year-old trans woman whose life is irreversibly altered in the wake of a gentle-but nonetheless world-changing-invasion by an alien entity called The Seep. Through The Seep, everything is connected. Capitalism falls, hierarchies and barriers are broken down; if something can be imagined, it is possible. Trina and her wife, Deeba, live blissfully under The Seep's utopian influence-until Deeba begins to imagine what it might be like to be reborn as a baby, which will give her the chance at an even better life. Using Seeptech to make this dream a reality, Deeba moves on to a new existence, leaving Trina devastated. Heartbroken and deep into an alcoholic binge, Trina follows a lost boy she encounters, embarking on an unexpected quest. In her attempt to save him from The Seep, she will confront not only one of its most avid devotees, but the terrifying void that Deeba has left behind. A strange new elegy of love and loss, The Seep explores grief, alienation, and the ache of moving on"--

On swift horses : a novel by Shannon Pufahl

"In the burgeoning postwar West, two outsiders are torn between the constraints of convention and the demands of their private selves. Muriel is newly transplanted from her rural Kansas hometown to life in a dusty rental in San Diego, where her husband has his eye on a suburban homestead in nearby Mission Valley. Resless within her new amarriage, Muriel misses her late mother, a freethinking divocee, and her prodigal brother-in-law, Julius, a charismatic card sharp who made the world feel expansive in ways she only dimly understands. Waiting tables at a horsemen's lounge, Muriel gets a second-hand eduncation in racing and risk--until one day she sneaks off to the track and wins enough to embolden larger dreams. Hundreds of miles away, Julius is testing his fate in Las Vegas, spotting scams at casino where tourists watch atomic tests from the room. The job offers stability, and an unexpected romance with Henry, a young card cheat. But when bad luck befalls Henry, Julius heads south to search for him in the plazas and dives of Tijuana, trading one city of dangerous illusions for another." --book jacket

Honey girl by Morgan Rogers

"With her newly completed PhD in astronomy in hand, Grace Porter goes on a girls' trip to Vegas to celebrate. She's a straight A, hardworking high achiever. She is not the kind of person who goes to Vegas and gets drunkenly married to a woman whose name she doesn't know . . . until she does exactly that. This one beautiful, spontaneous moment upends Grace's carefully laid life plans. Staggering under the weight of her parents' expectations, a struggling job market and feeling of burnout, Grace flees her home in Portland for a summer in New York with the wife she barely knows. In New York, she's able to ignore all the constant questions about her future and falls hard for her creative and gorgeous wife, Yuki Yamamoto. But when reality comes crashing in, Grace must face that she's been running from all along-the fears that make us human and the need for connection, especially when navigating the messiness of adulthood."--back cover

If I was your girl by Meredith Russo

A new kind of big-hearted audiobook about being seen for who you really are. Amanda Hardy is the new girl in school. Like anyone else, all she wants is to make friends and fit in. But Amanda is keeping a secret, and she's determined not to get too close to anyone. But when she meets sweet, easygoing Grant, Amanda can't help but start to let him into her life. As they spend more time together, she realizes just how much she is losing by guarding her heart. She finds herself yearning to share with Grant everything about herself, including her past. But Amanda's terrified that once she tells him the truth, he won't be able to see past it. Because the secret that Amanda's been keeping' It's that at her old school, she used to be Andrew. Will the truth cost Amanda her new life, and her new love' If I Was Your Girl is a universal story about feeling different and a love story that everyone will root for

Dress your family in corduroy and denim by David Sedaris

In a collection of essays, the Rooster gets married at an uproarious wedding, an estrangement occurs over a rubber vs. plastic debate, and the author gets the upper hand during a slumber party game of strip poker.

The subtweet : a novel by Vivek Shraya

Everyone talks about falling in love, but falling in friendship can be just as captivating. When Neela Devaki's song is covered by internet-famous artist Rukmini, the two musicians meet and a transformative friendship begins. But as Rukmini's star rises and Neela's stagnates, jealousy and self-doubt creep in. With a single tweet, their friendship implodes, one career is destroyed, and the two women find themselves at the center of an internet firestorm. Celebrated multidisciplinary artist Vivek Shraya's second novel is a stirring examination of making art in the modern era, a love letter to brown women, an authentic glimpse into the music industry, and a nuanced exploration of the promise and peril of being seen. A story of female friendship, with a fast-paced plot and a nuanced examination of art, brown culture, social media, call-out culture, the music industry, and sexism. Following two women from the throes of first friend infatuation to a tweet that splits them apart and destroys one career, THE SUBTWEET is a book only artist Vivek Shraya could write.

The prettiest star by Carter Sickels

"Small-town Appalachia doesn't have a lot going for it, but it's where Brian is from, where his family is, and where he's chosen to return to die. At eighteen, Brian, like so many other promising young gay men, arrived in New York City without much more than a love for the freedom and release from his past that it promised. But within six short years, AIDS would claim his lover, his friends, and his future. With nothing left in New York but memories of death, Brian decides to write his mother a letter asking to come back to the place, and family, he was once so desperate to escape. Set in 1986, a year after Rock Hudson's death shifted the public consciousness of the epidemic and brought the news of AIDS into living rooms and kitchens across America, The Prettiest Star is part Dog Years by Mark Doty and part Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt. But it is also an urgent story now: it a novel about the politics and fragility of the body; it is a novel about sex and shame. And it is a novel that speaks to the question of what home and family means when we try to forge a life for ourselves in a world that can be harsh and unpredictable. It is written at the far reaches of love and understanding, and zeroes in on the moments where those two forces reach for each other, and sometimes touch"--

Marriage of a thousand lies by SJ Sindu

"Lakshmi, called Lucky, is an unemployed millennial programmer. She likes to dance, to have a drink or two, and she makes art on commission. Fifty bucks gets you high-resolution digital images of anything you want (orcs, mermaids, cos-playing couples in sexy boudoir scenes) and a nice frameable print. Lucky's husband, Krishna, is an editor for a greeting card company. Both are secretly gay. They present their conservative Sri Lankan-American families with a heterosexual front, while each dates on the side. When Lucky's grandmother has a nasty fall, Lucky returns to her mother's home to act as caretaker and unexpectedly reconnects with her childhood best friend and first lover, Nisha. Nisha has agreed to an arranged marriage with a man she doesn't know, but finds herself attracted to her old friend. The attraction is mutual and Lucky tries to save Nisha from entering a marriage based on a lie. But does Nisha really want to be saved? And what does Lucky want, anyway? It doesn't always get better. To live openly means that Lucky would lose most of the community she was born into--a community she loves, an irreplaceable home. As Lucky, an outsider no matter what choices she makes, is pushed to the breaking point, Marriage of a Thousand Lies offers a moving exploration of friendship, family, and love, shot through with humor and loss"--

The deep by Rivers Solomon

Yetu holds the memories of her people, the wajinru, water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slavers now living idyllic lives in the deep. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly, is forgotten by everyone, save one. Save the historian. Yetu remembers for all the wajinru, and the memories—painful and wonderful, traumatic and terrible and miraculous—are destroying her. So she flees to the surface, escaping the memories and the expectations and the responsibilities, and she discovers a world the wajinru left behind long ago. Yetu will learn more than she ever expected about her own past and about the future of her people. If they are all to survive, they'll need to reclaim the memories, reclaim their identities, and own who they really are

Exile music by Jennifer Steil

"An atmospheric and meditative novel based on an unexplored slice of World War II history, following a young Jewish girl whose family flees refined and urbane Vienna for safe harbor in the mountains of Bolivia As a young girl growing up in Vienna in the 1930s, Orly has an idyllic childhood filled with music. Her father plays the viola in the Philharmonic, her mother is a well-regarded opera singer, her beloved and charismatic older brother holds the neighborhood in his thrall, and most of her eccentric and wonderful extended family live within the city limits. Only vaguely aware of Hitler's rise or how definitive her Jewish heritage will become to her family's identity, Orly spends her days immersed in play with her best friend and upstairs neighbor, Analiese. Together they dream up vivid and elaborate worlds, where all of the things they love about their own lives can exist forever. But in 1938, Orly's peaceful life is shattered. Her older brother flees Vienna first, and soon Orly, her father, and her mother procure refugee visas for La Paz, a city high up in the Bolivian Andes. La Paz couldn't be more different from Vienna--the altitude alone sabotages her mother's efforts to bake the pastries they loved back home. Even as the number of Jewish refugeesin the small town grows, her family is haunted by the music that can no longer be their livelihood, by the missing brother who was once the heart of their family, and Orly yearns for the solace of her friendship with Analiese. Yet they find a daily rhythmin this strange, new land. Years pass, the war ends, and suddenly the threat they fled looms again. Just as Bolivia took in Jewish refugees, the country now accepts a small number of Nazi refugees. Orly reckons with a darkness that not even victory at war can extinguish, and she must decide: Is the security and joy of her day to day life in La Paz what defines home, or is the pull of her past in Europe too strong to ignore? In lyrical and atmospheric prose, Exile Music illuminates one girl's coming of age in a family separated and defined by war, whose hope takes root on an unfamiliar shore"--

Becoming Eve : my journey from ultra-Orthodox rabbi to transgender woman by Abby Stein

"Abby Stein was raised in a Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn, profoundly isolated in a culture that lives according to the laws and practices of an eighteenth-century Eastern European enclave, speaking only Yiddish and Hebrew and shunning modern life.Stein was born as the first son in a rabbinical dynastic family, poised to become a leader of the next generation of Hasidic Jews. But Stein felt certain at a young age that she was a girl. Without access to TV or the internet, and never taught English,she suppressed her desire for a new body while looking for answers wherever she could find them, from forbidden religious texts to smuggled secular examinations of faith. Finally, she orchestrated a personal exodus from ultra-Orthodox manhood into mainstream femininity--a radical choice that forced her to leave her home, her family, and her way of life"--

Unbound : transgender men and the remaking of identity by Arlene Stein

Drawn from interviews with transgender people, medical and psychological experts, as well as activists, an award-winning sociologist reveals how a younger generation of trans men are changing our perceptions about gender.

Transgender history : the roots of today's revolution by Susan Stryker

"A timely second edition of the classic text on transgender history, with a new introduction and updated material throughout Covering American transgender history from the mid-twentieth century to today, Transgender History takes a chronological approach to the subject of transgender history, with each chapter covering major movements, writings, and events. Chapters cover the transsexual and transvestite communities in the years following World War II; trans radicalism and social change, which spanned from 1966 with the publication of The Transsexual Phenomenon, and lasted through the early 1970s; the mid-'70s to 1990-the era of identity politics and the changes witnessed in trans circles through these years; and the gender issues witnessed through the '90s and '00s. Transgender History includes informative sidebars highlighting quotes from major texts and speeches in transgender history and brief biographies of key players, plus excerpts from transgender memoirs and discussion of treatments of transgenderism in popular culture"--

Fairest : a memoir by Meredith Talusan

"A heartrending immigrant memoir and a uniquely intersectional coming-of-age story of a life lived in duality and the in-between, and how one navigates through race, gender, and the search for love"--

Real life by Brandon (Brandon L Taylor

"A novel of rare emotional power that excavates the social intricacies of a late-summer weekend -- and a lifetime of buried pain. Almost everything about Wallace, an introverted African-American transplant from Alabama, is at odds with the lakeside Midwestern university town where he is working toward a biochem degree. For reasons of self-preservation, Wallace has enforced a wary distance even within his own circle of friends -- some dating each other, some dating women, some feigning straightness. But aseries of confrontations with colleagues, and an unexpected encounter with a young straight man, conspire to fracture his defenses, while revealing hidden currents of resentment and desire that threaten the equilibrium of their community"--

Cemetery boys by Aiden Thomas

Yadriel, a trans boy, summons the angry spirit of his high school's bad boy, and agrees to help him learn how he died, thereby proving himself a brujo, not a bruja, to his conservative family.

Catherine House : a novel by Elisabeth (Novelist) Thomas

Catherine House is a school of higher learning like no other. Hidden deep in the woods of rural Pennsylvania, this crucible of reformist liberal arts study with its experimental curriculum, wildly selective admissions policy, and formidable endowment, has produced some of the world's best minds: prize-winning authors, artists, inventors, Supreme Court justices, presidents. For those lucky few selected, tuition, room, and board are free. But acceptance comes with a price. Students are required to give the House three years--summers included--completely removed from the outside world. Family, friends, television, music, even their clothing must be left behind. In return, the school promises a future of sublime power and prestige, and that its graduates can become anything or anyone they desire

The master : a novel by Colm Tóibín

Nineteenth-century writer Henry James is heartbroken when his first play performs poorly in contrast to Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest" and struggles with subsequent doubts about his sexual identity

Space between : explorations of love, sex, and fluidity by Nico Tortorella

Actor and LGTBQIA+ advocate Nico Tortorella's narrative investigation of love, sex, gender, addiction, family, fame, and fluidity through the lens of their nonbinary identity Nico Tortorella is a seeker. Raised on a steady regimen of Ram Dass and raw food, they have always been interested in the more spiritual aspects of life. That is, until the desire for fame and fortune eclipsed their journey toward enlightenment and sent Nico on a downward spiral of addiction and self-destructive behavior. It wasn't until they dug deep and began to examine the fluidity of both their sexuality and gender identity that they became more comfortable in their own skin, got sober from alcohol, entered into an unconventional marriage with the love of their life, and fully embraced a queer lifestyle that afforded them the opportunity to explore life outside the gender binary. It was precisely in that space between that Nico encountered the diverse community of open-minded, supportive peers they'd always dreamed of having. By expanding on themes explored on their popular podcast, The Love Bomb, Nico shares the intimate details of their romantic partnerships, the dysfunction of their loud but loving Italian family, and the mining of their feminine and masculine identities into one multidimensional, sexually fluid, nonbinary individual. Nico is a leading voice of the fluidity movement by encouraging open dialogue and universal acceptance. Space Between is at once an education for readers, a manifesto for the labeled and label-free generation, and a personal memoir of love, identity, and acceptance

Short stuff : a young adult LGBTQ+ anthology

Four LGBTQ young adult romances, exploring friendship, family, and courage.

On earth we're briefly gorgeous : a novel by Ocean Vuong

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born--a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam--and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity

Lot : stories by Bryan Washington

Coming of age in his family's Houston restaurant, a mixed-heritage teen navigates bullying, his newly discovered sexual orientation, and the ripple effects of a disadvantaged community

Memorial : a novel by Bryan Washington

"A rom-com novel about two young people at a crossroads in their relationship"--

The paying guests by Sarah Waters

It is 1922, and London is tense. Ex-servicemen are disillusioned, the out-of-work and the hungry are demanding change. And in South London, in a genteel Camberwell villa, a large silent house now bereft of brothers, husband and even servants, life is about to be transformed, as impoverished widow Mrs Wray and her spinster daughter, Frances, are obliged to take in lodgers

Something to talk about by Meryl Wilsner

"A showrunner and her assistant give the world something to talk about when they accidentally fuel a ridiculous rumor in this debut romance. Hollywood powerhouse Jo is photographed making her assistant Emma laugh on the red carpet, and just like that, the tabloids declare them a couple. The so-called scandal couldn't come at a worse time-threatening Emma's promotion and Jo's new movie. As the gossip spreads, it starts to affect all areas of their lives. Paparazzi are following them outside the office, coworkers are treating them differently, and a "source" is feeding information to the media. But their only comment is "no comment." With the launch of Jo's film project fast approaching, the two women begin to spend even more time together, getting along famously. Emma seems to have a sixth sense for knowing what Jo needs. And Jo, known for being aloof and outwardly cold, opens up to Emma in a way neither of them expects. They begin to realize the rumor might not be so off base after all...but is acting on the spark between them worth fanning the gossip flames?"--

Why be happy when you could be normal? by Jeanette Winterson

This memoir is a tough-minded search for belonging, for love, an identity, a home, and a mother by the author of "Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit"--winner of the Whitbread First Novel award and the inspiration behind the award-winning BBC television adaptation "Oranges."

The fixed stars : a memoir by Molly Wizenberg

"At age 36, while serving on a jury, author Molly Wizenberg found herself drawn to a female attorney she hardly knew. Married to a man for nearly a decade and mother to a toddler, Wizenberg tried to return to her life as she knew it, but something inside her had changed irrevocably. Instead, she would discover that the trajectory of our lives is rarely as smooth or as logical as we'd like to believe. Like many of us, Wizenberg had long understood sexual orientation as a stable part of ourselves: we're 'born this way.' Suddenly she realized that her story was more complicated. Who was she, she wondered, if something at her very core could change so radically? The Fixed Stars is a taut, electrifying memoir exploring timely and timeless questions about desire, identity, and the limits and possibilities of family. In honest and searing prose, Wizenberg forges a new path: through the murk of separation and divorce, coming out to family and friends, learning to co-parent a young child, and realizing a new vision of love. The result is a frank and moving story about letting go of rigid definitions and ideals that no longer fit, and learning instead who we really are." --book jacket

Another Brooklyn : a novel by Jacqueline Woodson

Torn between the fantasies of her youth and the realities of a life marked by violence and abandonment, August reunites with a beloved old friend who challenges her to reconcile past inconsistencies and come to terms with the difficulties that forced her to grow up too quickly

How much of these hills is gold by C Pam Zhang

"Ba dies in the night; Ma is already gone. Newly orphaned children of immigrants, Lucy and Sam are suddenly alone in a land that refutes their existence. Fleeing the threats of their western mining town, they set off to bury their father in the only way that will set them free from their past. Along the way, they encounter giant buffalo bones, tiger paw prints, and the specters of a ravaged landscape as well as family secrets, sibling rivalry, and glimpses of a different kind of future."--From publisher's description

Recipient of the National Medal, the nation's highest honor for libraries.