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Sign up todayUpright Women Wanted
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Learn moreBookseller recommendation
“Both of these lively audiobooks follow determined found families as they fight against injustice and learn to trust one another. You might cry during their heartfelt adventures, but you will definitely cheer.”
— Mikayla • Green Apple Books
Bookseller recommendation
“A quite enjoyable audiobook! Great alternative history/dystopian future(??)”
— Julia • The Bookloft
Bookseller recommendation
“Dieselpunk dystopian queer-positive YA Western is a mouthful, but Sarah Gailey can say it with aplomb: this short novel about a youngster fleeing an oppressive, intolerant town and father captures something universal. Esther starts out a people pleaser, but during her wild ride, she shows that what she has learned about pathologically controlling behavior has made her a keen observer. When the Resistance turns out to include both the good and the dangerous, she's able to recognize both. She's no chosen child or supergirl, but when she uses her experience to inform her morals and her actions, she discovers that it's useful to resist even in slow and steady ways, though it may not (immediately) change the world.”
— Nialle • The Haunted Bookshop
Bookseller recommendation
“This book isn't the deepest thing I've ever read (or listened to!) but it was a lot of fun. And fun is plenty sometimes. Never minding my physical resemblance to every villain in the story, I still ended this short little book wanting to ride off into a dusty sunset with the Librarians. It's not often I feel like that.”
— Chris • Fact & Fiction
Bookseller recommendation
“Sarah Gailey has made me fall in love with them all over again. This novel is quirky, occasionally funny, and constantly heart wrenching. It's for anyone who's ever felt out of place, and a reminder of the beauty that can come when you accept yourself and find your people.”
— Jenny • Page 158 Books
Summary
In Upright Women Wanted, award-winning author Sarah Gailey reinvents the pulp Western with an explicitly antifascist, near-future story of queer identity.
"That girl's got more wrong notions than a barn owl's got mean looks."
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.