anyway since pride month is coming up and my local barnes and nobey has once again decided to only put young adult books in their corporate mandated rainbow display, y'all want some queer reading recs that aren't YA?
alright gang here we go, one queer-ass book for every day of pride month, plus a lot of bonus recs by extension because most of these authors have written more than one book. remember to buy from bookshop dot org or directly support a local indie by ordering through them 🖤
- Queer: A Graphic History (Meg-John Barker) - want a primer on queer theory but don't have the time and money to, you know, take a semester long class on queer theory? might I introduce you to this graphic novel written by nonbinary psychologist Meg-John Barker, who's written several other nonfiction books on gender and sexuality that I can't recommend enough.
- The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Becky Chambers) - warm and fuzzy slice of life sci-fi, with lots of cool aliens and travelling between planets. a very queer-friendly universe with lots of exploration of gender and sexuality, plus a cute side romance between a human lady and a kickass lizard woman. all three sequels are hugely recommended, as are Chambers' novellas.
- How to Find a Princess (Alyssa Cole) - a Black f/f retelling of Anastasia, featuring a reluctant long-lost princess falling for the investigator tasked with tracking her down and bringing her back to the royal life. I'm told it includes such beloved tropes as fake marriage and only one bed!
- In the Vanishers' Palace (Aliette de Bodard) - gorgeous f/f Beauty and the Beast novella, told as a post-apocalyptic story that seamlessly blends science fiction with Vietnamese mythology. a dragon takes a young woman away from her village, intending to have the young woman serve as a tutor for her two young children, and - wait for it - romance ensues.
- Black Water Sister (Zen Cho) - a closeted Malaysian lesbian is haunted by her deceased grandmother, a medium who served a mysterious entity called Black Water Sister. grandma has unfinished business with a Shady Corporation, and her granddaughter is going to help her get retribution whether she likes it or not.
- This Is How You Lose the Time War (Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone) - a novel that will make you YEARN. following the letters exchanged between assassins Red and Blue, agents on opposite sides of a conflict that stretches across multiple timelines. the two women start as rivals, but become something more to each other very quickly, with absolutely zero chill.
- The Death of Vivek Oji (Akwaeke Emezi) - warning up front: as the title suggests, this will not have a happy ending. but the novel offers a touching account of a Nigerian family struggling to make sense of an adult child whose gender and sexual expression baffle them, and the impact of that child's death on the entire community.
- Alice Isn't Dead (Joseph Fink) - adapted from the podcast of the same name, this novel follows a Black lesbian trucker with bigtime anxiety as she hits the highways of America to search for Alice, her missing wife. along the way she's going to discover a lot of creepiness, and some skin-crawling conspiracies.
- River of Teeth (Sarah Gailey) - absolutely buckwild romp of a novella following an alternate history heist crew of hippopotamus riders, including their bisexual leader and his nonbinary Black demolitions expert love interest.
- A Dowry of Blood (S.T. Gibson) - admittedly I haven't read this book yet and don't know a TON about it, but what I DO know is that it's a spin on Dracula that makes the infamous brides a polycule, which is simply fantastic if you ask me.
- The Case of the Mysterious Letter (Alexis Hall) - a Sherlock Holmes pastiche following the adventures of one Dr. John Wyndham, a gay trans doctor, and Shaharazad Haas, a freewheeling pansexual sorceress. takes place in a universe full of magic, eldritch horror, and luridly entertaining oddities.
- Hunger (Roxane Gay) - not a lighthearted rec, but a truly stirring one. Gay recounts her life as the queer daughter of Haitian immigrants, and how her relationship with food and bodyweight was forever changed by a childhood sexual assault. highly recommended reading for anyone looking to increase their understanding of the violence of fatphobia.
- Wow, No Thank You (Samantha Irby) - full disclosure, Irby is one of my personal favorite essayists of all time, but it's well deserved - the bitch is funny. in her third and most recent collection, Irby mines the humor in moving from Chicago to live in a small city (the same city as me, incidentally) with her new wife and two step-children, plus the highs and lows of working on a show like Shrill.
- Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel (Julian K. Jarboe) - a collection of extremely queer, cyberpunky short stories, heavy on the critique of capitalism. you might know them from this tweet; now support their fiction!
- How We Fight For Our Lives (Saeed Jones) - poetic memoir, focused on being a gay Black boy growing up in the south, growing up and moving away from home, complicated maternal relationships, grappling with masculinity.
- The House in the Cerulean Sea (T.J. Klune) - the softest m/m romance you ever will see! a nebbish social worker for magical creatures is sent to inspect an unusual orphanage whose occupants include a slime monster and the literal baby antichrist, and inevitable ends up falling for their passionate caregiver. you will cry, reader.
- Phoenix Extravagant (Yoon Ha Lee) - a nonbinary artist just trying to mind their own business gets hired to paint magic symbols on enormous dragon mechas, which seems like a pretty sick gig - until they realize they're now complicit in supporting an imperialist war machine. uh oh...
- In The Dream House (Carmen Maria Machado) - difficult but absolutely riveting memoir recounting the author's harrowing relationship with an abusive girlfriend. also check out her collection of creepy short stories, Her Body and Other Parties.
- Winter's Orbit (Everina Maxwell) - m/m space opera romance, including: political intrigue! murder! arranged marriage! begrudgingly working together with your new spouse to solve a murder so that you don't take the blame for it! and... MORE!
- One Last Stop (Casey McQuiston) - new release alert! a young woman moves to New York, develops a crush on a hot lesbian on the subway, and then finds out that lesbian is actually a displaced time traveler from the 70s. hot damn!
- She Who Became the Sun (Shelley Parker-Chan) - a historical fantasy retelling the founding of the Ming Dynasty, following an ambitious child who enrolls in a monastery to pass as a male monk. sounds like your typical Mulan-style "cis girl pretending to be a boy," but Parker-Chan says the protagonist doesn't strictly identity as female and that they consider her to be genderqueer.
- Feed (Tommy Pico) - epic poetry (the whole book is one long poem bro it never ends) by a Kumeyaay writer, with a focus on reconnecting with lost culture through shared meals and food so evocative that it made me learn to cook.
- Witchmark (C.L. Polk) - you guys, this one has everything! a gay man on the run from his influential family, a hot love interest who needs him to help solve a dramatic murder, exploration of magic-based social inequality, critiques of imperialist war, and chase scenes that take place on bikes. the sequels, Stormsong and Starsoul, are equally queer and lean even more heavily into themes of radical social reform.
- Sorrowland (Rivers Solomon) - a young queer Black woman escapes from an isolated cult and tries to live a peaceful life in the woods with her twin children - only to discover she's developing some pretty fucked up superpowers.
- The Jasmine Throne (Tasha Suri) - you might have seen me mention this one as part of my Hot Book Summer, since it's an upcoming June release! do you like epic fantasy, f/f romance, and princesses working together with secret priestesses to topple empires? oh BOY, then do I have a book for you!
- Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl's Confabulous Memoir (Kai Cheng Thom) - modern fairy tale about a teenage martial arts prodigy who runs away from home, joins a vigilante street gang to protect trans sex workers (!!!), and finds herself™ along the way.
- Space Opera (Catherynne M. Valente) - okay, so you know Eurovision? great, now take Eurovision and put it in space and if Earth loses our whole planet is going to get blown up, and our only hope is a washed up queer singer from a punk band that hasn't been cool for years. good luck!
- Dear America: Notes From an Undocumented Citizen (Jose Antonio Vargas) - an excellent memoir from gay journalist and immigration rights activist! Vargas recounts coming to America from the Philippines as a young child, growing up unaware that he had entered the United States without documentation, and the community that helped him in the uphill struggle to live a visible public life as a writer.
- The Chosen and the Beautiful (Nghi Vo) - remember Jordan Baker from The Great Gatsby, and how she was definitely a lesbian? Vo says not only is Jordan queer, she's also an Asian-American adopted into a wealthy white family and she has magic powers.
- The Collected Schizophrenias (Esmé Weijun Wang) - a truly stirring memoir, written by the first-generation bisexual daughter of Taiwanese immigrants. Wang writes with gut-wrenching beauty about her diagnosis, the way her family endeavored to keep their history with mental health problems under wraps, and her struggles through higher education and institutionalizations.
alright fuck it, 20 more! happy pride!
- Common Bonds (edited by Claudie Arsenault, C.T. Callahan, B.R. Sanders, and RoAnna Sylver) - an upcoming anthology of stories centering aromantics.
- The Natural Mother of the Child: A Memoir of Nonbinary Parenthood (Krys Malcolm Belc) - it's exactly what it sounds like, babey! a recent memoir by a nonbinary individual about the experience of carrying out a pregnancy and giving birth to a child.
- ¡Hola Papi! How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons (John Paul Brammer) - if you aren't already reading John Paul Brammer's hilarious, heartfelt, and self-proclaimed "deranged" advice column, checking out this freshly published collection is a great place to start.
- Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex (Angela Chen) - one of my favorite pieces of recent queer nonfiction, following the writer's acceptance of her own asexuality as she navigates the stereotypes and stigma that plague the ace community.
- Finna (Nino Cipri) - a buckwild novella about a pair of coworkers who a.) just broke up and b.) have to go on an adventure to find a lost customer in an interdimensional furniture store.
- The Unbroken (C.L. Clark) - if the first list didn't include enough anti-empire queer fiction for you, here's another one in which a princess and female soldier forge a fragile alliance while working opposite sides of society to end a war.
- Gender Euphoria: Stories of Joy from Trans, Nonbinary and Intersex Writers (edited Laura Kate Dale) - compiled by trans lesbian and video game journalist Laura Kate Dale, enjoy this collection of euphoric stories from folks all over the gender spectrum.
- Hunger Pangs (Joy Demorra) - more queer vampires, folks! in this one, a dashing captain is assigned to an island full of vampires and finds himself with some Feelings about, and I quote, "the local vampire dandy lord." a nice touch is that you can choose to purchase the book with or without sex scenes included!
- The Traitor Baru Cormorant (Seth Dickinson) - more anti-empire fic, following a queer girl with a prodigious gift for numbers seeking to destroy the empire that colonized her homeland and killed one of her fathers from the inside out, by burying herself among its highest-ranking officials.
- Bingo Love (Tee Franklin) - SUPER cute comic series about an elderly interracial lesbian couple, tracking their relationship through decades :)
- Star Eater (Kerstin Hall) - okay so we have (checks notes) a lesbian taking out an order of cannibal nuns? cool!
- Burning Roses (S.L. Huang) - a fairytale reimagining that throws Little Red Riding Hood and Hou Yi, a legendary Chinese archer, together as a pair of crotchety, aging queer women who have to come together to slay the monsters ravaging their country.
- The Thirty Names of Night (Zeyn Joukhadar) - a contemporary novel about a closeted young trans man from a Syrian American family trying to solve the mystery of his mother's death, and what is has to do with the journal of a mysterious woman who painted rare birds.
- No Man of Woman Born (Rewoven Tales) (Ana Mardoll) - I'm just gonna quote the blurb directly from the author's website, because it slaps ass: "a collection of seven fantasy stories in which transgender and nonbinary characters subvert and fulfill gendered prophecies."
- Luisa: Now and Then (Carole Maurel and Mariko Tamaki) - a graphic novel in which 32 year old struggling photographer Luisa encounters her 15 year old self and struggles to deal with her past, while also grappling with her attraction to a female neighbor.
- Skye Falling (Mia McKenzie) - a middle aged queer woman who's spent her life going it alone is contacted by the 12 year old child who was born from an egg she donated in her 20s, kicking off a complicated contemporary story about family.
- Little Fish (Casey Plett) - a trans woman discovers that her grandfather - a dead and deeply conservative Mennonite - may have also been transgender, and goes looking for the pieces of his life while she and her own friends grapple with addiction, sex work, and mental illness.
- Glitter + Ashes: Queer Tales of a World that Wouldn't Die (edited by Dave Ring) - an anthology from Neon Hemlock, focused on tales of queer folk surviving various ends of the world against all odds. features C.L. Clark, who's also included on this very list, and countless other incredible talents.
- Jonny Appleseed (Joshua Whitehead) - a two-spirit sex worker and self-described "glitter princess" is called back home for his stepfather's funeral, and spends a whirlwind week navigating how to walk the line between his life in the big city and the reservation.
- The Black Tides of Heaven (Neon Yang) - okay let's have one more regime-toppling story: the queer man with a dictatorial mother and a highly praised twin sister begins to pull away from his family's rule, and finds himself torn between them and a growing rebelling.
oh look, here are a load more recommendations from Fantasy Hive with hardly any overlap with titles already on this list:
fantasy isn't really your thing? no worries, here's an even longer list from the Rumpus with everything from contemporary fiction to poetry to memoirs.
hold up, did you want romance? BookPage has your new queer romance recs right here.
I haven't read How to Find a Princess but I have read other Alyssa Cole books and she's an incredible writer! I have read Winter's Orbit and it's AMAZING!
Am I adding all of these books to my TBR? possibly... (Hunger Pangs is already on it I love Joy)
