Trans Rights Readathon (Adult Fiction)

If you enjoyed Red Island House, then you’ll love You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty.

“Save this one for your next long trip, because you definitely won’t be able to stop once you jump on the roller coaster that is Feyi Adekola’s life. Art, travel, deep abiding friendship, and food all narrated by the brilliant Bahni Turpin.”

Angie, The Country Bookshop

“Like a dish of comfort food you’ll want to devour.” —The Washington Post
“It’s hard to say which aspect of TJ Alexander’s novel is sweeter: the slow-burn romance or the drool-worthy desserts.” —Time

A high-strung pastry chef’s professional goals are interrupted by an unexpected career transition and the introduction of her wildly attractive... Read more »

WINNER, Amazon Canada First Novel Award; Lambda Literary Award; Firecracker Award for Fiction Finalist, Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year It's the dead of winter in Winnipeg and Wendy Reimer, a thirty-year-old trans woman, feels like her life is frozen in place. When her Oma passes away Wendy... Read more »

An embittered dog walker obsessed with a social media influencer inadvertently puts a curse on a young man—and must adventure into a mysterious dimension in order to save him—in this wildly inventive, delightfully subversive, genre-nonconforming debut novel about illusion, magic, technology, kinship, and the emergent future.The year is 20__, and... Read more »

Several People Are Typing

“If you have ever had a crappy office job this is the book for you. It is one of the best satire books that I have read in a long time. Mildly horrifying and constantly hilarious, this book points out the mundane absurdity of desk jobs. This book is told completely through Slack messages, and starts when a mid-level worker's conscious get uploaded and stuck into the app. Though working in an office is often boring, this book never is. ”

Ruthie, Underground Books

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

"Cindy Kay masterfully narrates this unique audiobook, which combines a variety of genres to tell a moving story of self-acceptance and finding safety even in the bleakest of times." - AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award review

Good Omens meets The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet in Ryka Aoki's Light From Uncommon Stars, a defiantly joyful... Read more »

If you enjoyed The Song of Achilles, then you’ll love She Who Became the Sun.

“Can you switch your fate with another’s? Can you seize the opportunity to become great when everything in the world is hell-bent on making you nothing? Zhu’s destiny was nothingness, a destiny that terrifies her. When her brother dies, she decides to take his destiny. Thus begins her journey through monasteries, cities, and wars. She encounters a Eunuch general who struggles with his identity and desire for revenge, a monk who bends the rules to survive, a woman whose strength is in her vulnerability, and a whole cast of amazing characters. This retelling of the establishment of the Ming Dynasty is exquisitely told. It has everything I love in a fantasy adventure: a trickster monk, a tortured warrior, fate, and lil’ bit of magic.”

Izzy, Off the Beaten Path

"In these irreverent pages, a shapeshifter gets a crash course in gender and sexuality by inhabiting both sides of the binary and arriving precisely somewhere in the middle." —O, The Oprah Magazine

“HOT” (Maggie Nelson) • “TIGHT” (Eileen Myles) • “DEEP” (Michelle Tea)

It's 1993 and Paul Polydoris tends bar at the only gay club in a university town... Read more »

An extraordinary debut novel, Freshwater explores the surreal experience of having a fractured self. It centers around a young Nigerian woman, Ada, who develops separate selves within her as a result of being born "with one foot on the other side." Unsettling, heartwrenching, dark, and powerful, Freshwater is a sharp evocation of a rare way of... Read more »

Gritty and unflinching, yet also tender, fantastical, and funny, a trans woman’s coming-of-age tale about finding a community among fellow outcasts.

Camila Sosa Villada’s extraordinary first novel is a rich, nuanced portrait of a marginalized community: their romantic relationships, friendships and squabbles, difficulties at work, aspirations and... Read more »

Meet Margaret. At age twelve, she was head detective of the mystery club Girls Can Solve Anything. Margaret and her three best friends led exciting lives solving crimes, having adventures, and laughing a lot. But now that she's entered high school, the club has disbanded, and Margaret is unmoored—she doesn't want to grow up, and she wishes her... Read more »

A whirlwind romance between an eccentric archivist and a grieving widow explores what it means to be at home in your own body in this clever, humorous, and heartfelt novel.

When archivist Sol meets Elsie, the larger than life widow of a moderately famous television writer who's come to donate her wife's papers, there's an instant spark. But Sol... Read more »

A Lady for a Duke

“Heartwarming and truly lovely—two childhood best friends, who thought they were irrevocably lost from each other, find one another again, both changed and the same. They fall in love—or perhaps, finally name the love that has always existed between them. With splashes of romantic angst, sharp wit, PTSD, addiction issues, this story is overall touching and beautifully hopeful.”

Emma, Content

This program is read by the author.

"Nevada is a book that changed my life: it shaped both my worldview and personhood, making me the writer I am. And it did so by the oldest of methods, by telling a wise, hilarious, and gripping story." —Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, Baby

A beloved and blistering cult classic and finalist for the Lambda... Read more »

Squid Game meets The Left Hand of Darkness meets Under the Skin in this radical literary sensation from South Korea about an alien's hunt for food that transforms into an existential crisis about what it means to be human.After crashing their spacecraft in the middle of nowhere, a shapeshifting alien find themself stranded on an unfamiliar... Read more »

Tell Me I'm Worthless

“The haunted house at the center of the novel is old. It carries a history of violence that has painted its walls both literally and metaphorically with blood. In the contemporary moment of the novel, Alice and Ila are torn—struggling to live their lives while still haunted by the brutally traumatic experience they shared a few years before. In her forward, Rumfitt states the novel is about two things: trauma and fascism. Do not take this warning lightly. It is exacting and precise in its critique of contemporary anti-trans discourse—of rhetoric that is as saturated with hatred and fear as the house at the novel’s center is with blood. TW: Racism, anti-semitism, trans-phobia, sexual assault, self harm, suicide”

Jenni, Mysterious Galaxy Books

Upright Women Wanted

“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

STARRED Reviews in Library Journal and Booklist!
A Most-Anticipated Title in CrimeReads, BookRiot, Tor.com, Electric Lit, and more.
Featured in Autostraddle, Apartment Therapy, Goodreads, and more.

Gretchen Felker-Martin's Manhunt is an explosive post-apocalyptic novel that follows trans women and men on a grotesque journey of survival.

“A modern... Read more »

Sorrowland

“Vern is fleeing an abusive cult that targets Black people. As their body mutates into something entirely new, Vern must face the past before they can move towards their future. This book is many things: an adult fairytale, a Southern gothic horror, a thriller that twists and turns. A testament to forging pain into strength, this book is unlike anything else you’ve read.”

Samantha, Rediscovered Books