LGBTQ Fiction

Detransition, Baby

“This book led to my favorite book club conversation to date. The characters are messy and mostly unlikeable and Peters unflinchingly dives straight into topics in trans identity often considered taboo, without worrying about placating a cisgender audience. A quietly chaotic and fascinating character study.”

Miriasha, Phoenix Books

A Stonewall Honor Book * A Time Magazine Best YA Book of All TimeFrom Stonewall and Lambda Award–winning author Kacen Callender comes a revelatory YA novel about a transgender teen grappling with identity and self-discovery while falling in love for the first time.Felix Love has never been in love—and, yes, he’s painfully aware of the irony. He... Read more »

The Death of Vivek Oji

“This is not your usual mystery - it's a piecing together not of facts but of the soul. How did Vivek Oji die? The answer is complex, told in layered stories from Vivek's life from the ones who loved him the most. This book is about the parts of ourselves we hold secret, and the ones that make us feel the most free. It's honest, compelling, heartbreaking, and hopeful; it's a story you will never forget.”

Christy, Avid Bookshop

In 1955, eighteen-year-old Janet Jones keeps the love she shares with her best friend Marie a secret. It’s not easy being gay in Washington, DC, in the age of McCarthyism, but when she discovers a series of books about women falling in love with other women, it awakens something in Janet. As she juggles a romance she must keep hidden and a... Read more »

If you enjoyed Frankenstein, then you’ll love The Echo Wife.

“Riveting. There's a dark streak in Sarah Gailey's work, and it's really dark here. Come for the clones and the gossipy conceit of a husband having an affair with the wife's clone. Stay, because you can't stop listening. So much menace. So much horror. I lost sleep over this one.”

Robin, Books & Books @ The Studios of Key West

The second novel by the phenomenally talented Alice Oseman, the author of the million-copy bestselling Heartstopper books—now a major Netflix series.What if everything you set yourself up to be was wrong?Frances has always been a study machine with one goal: elite university. Nothing will stand in her way. Not friends, not a guilty secret—not... Read more »

Gideon the Ninth

“Gideon the Ninth is an epic science fantasy that if delivered into the hands of enough people will set the world on fire as it hasn’t been since The Hunger Games. Brilliance doesn’t come close to explaining Tamsyn Muir’s narrative where no single word is wasted or her engineering of a world with characters that end up belonging to you wholeheartedly even long after the last page. With fierce independence and hysterical wit, and laced with moments of pure heartbreaking tenderness and loyalty, Gideon and Harrow’s relationship simultaneously digs under your skin and tugs at your heartstrings. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.”

Nichole Cousins, Still North Books & Bar

The Black Flamingo

“This beautiful novel in verse has a tender, loving lens on the toxic directions we're sometimes forced to grow in before we are able to come into our own. In that way, it reminds me of Moonlight. The epilogue is beautiful and stands on its own—I want to print it out and pin it up in every middle and high school.”

Miriasha, Phoenix Books

If you enjoyed Shine, then you’ll love I'll Be the One.

“An uplifting, empowering and inclusive YA rom-com about a plus-size Korean-American girl competing in a K-Pop idol competition. She challenges toxic beauty standards with her refusal to change her body for the industry or her mother.”

Amy, Auburn Oil Co. Booksellers

"Tegan and Sara Quin’s joint memoir is perfect in audiobook form....Knowing and loving Tegan and Sara the musicians will obviously make this listen extra special, but it’s by no means a prerequisite to entry. High School, very literally, is for everyone." -- Paste, best audiobooks of 2019

This program is read by the authors and features bonus... Read more »

The Prettiest Star

“This beautiful, elegiac novel tells the story of the last homecoming to rural Ohio for Brian, who is dying of AIDS at the height of the 1980s epidemic. Told with empathy and heart, complemented by a pitch-perfect sense of time and place, The Prettiest Star is a deeply affecting story about what it means to understand each other and where we come from, even when our lives have taken us light years away.”

Ashley Warlick, M. Judson Booksellers & Storytellers

The House of Impossible Beauties

“Joseph Cassara's debut novel follows the life of Angel, a young transgender woman who goes on to become the "House Mother" of the legendary House of Xtravaganza. Gritty, yet always tender, House of Impossible Beauties explores the 1980's Harlem drag ball scene made famous in Jennie Livingston's documentary Paris is Burning in a way that is humanizing, deeply interesting, and impossible to put down. I was so entranced with this book that I went through it twice: once on the page and once on audio, which might have been an even more interesting experience, simply because narrator Christian Barillas presents a singular performance, uniquely emulating each character in a way that tattoos them indelibly on the mind. A 10/10 listening experience.”

Rachel, The King's English Bookshop

The Great Believers

“This flawlessly written and lovingly told story weaves the immediate toll AIDS took on the Chicago gay community in the 80's with the longterm impact on survivors and their families. Makkai threads it all compellingly together with art world intrigue and institutional drama. I don't want to diminish it in any way with comparisons, but The Great Believers brought to my mind several of my favorite contemporary novels: A Little Life, Three Junes, and The Goldfinch. Rebecca Makkai, in my opinion, has launched herself into a whole new category of literary achievement with this, her third novel.”

Becky Dayton, The Vermont Book Shop

Red, White & Royal Blue

“ To everyone who started telling me to read this book a year ago, I’m sorry. You were right - I loved it, unequivocally. The romance was sweet and gentle and real. But the humor put it over the top for me. I needed to laugh like that, desperately. And I did, a lot. A whole lot. But I also cried - because this book is pure, wholesome, and hopeful, even when it dipped into the darker places (with so much grace). Red, White, & Royal Blue gave my heart wings, and I'm still soaring. So to everyone who's still hesitant, don't be me - get on this train ASAP.”

Britt, Second Star to the Right

“This debut has it all: music, books, aliens, adventure, resistance, queerness, and a bold heroine tying it all together. ”—Ms. Magazine

Can a girl who risks her life for books and an Ilori who loves pop music work together to save humanity?

When a rebel librarian meets an Ilori commander…

Two years ago, a misunderstanding between the leaders of... Read more »

“This book is epic.” —Cosmopolitan
“A hopeful and moving love story.” —Publishers Weekly

Fangirl meets Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda in this “sensitive and complex” (BCCB) coming-of-age novel from New York Times bestselling author Christina Lauren about two boys who fall in love in a writing class—one from a progressive family and the other... Read more »

Jordan O’Neill isn’t a fan of labels, considering he has a few. Gay, geek, librarian, socially awkward, a nervous rambler, an introvert, an outsider. The last thing he needs is one more. But when he realises adding the label asexual might explain a lot, it turns his world upside down. Hennessy Lang moved to Surry Hills after splitting with his... Read more »

If you enjoyed The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, then you’ll love The House in the Cerulean Sea.

“Go ahead and kick me right in the feels why don’t you? Heartwarming, uproarious, uplifting. I loved every minute, and I completely and utterly fell in love with every single one of the kids. I'm torn between desperately wanting a sequel, and hoping nothing more is ever written because of how perfect this gem is. This is the book that swoops in right when you need it and says you're perfect just as you are. This is the book that shows us family, and hope, and fighting for what's right. Did I mention I loved it?”

Britt, Second Star to the Right