LGBTQ: Adult Fiction & Literature

""A young, queer Palestinian American woman pieces together her great aunt's secrets in this sweeping debut, a family saga confronting questions of sexual identity, exile, and lineage. In a Pacific Northwest hospital far from the Rummani family's ancestral home in Palestine, the heart of a stillborn baby begins to beat and her skin turns a vibrant, permanent cobalt blue. On the same day, the Rummanis' centuries-old soap factory in Nablus is destroyed in an air strike. The family matriarch and keeper of all Rummani lore, Aunt Nuha, believes that the blue girl embodies their sacred history, harkening to a time when the Rummanis were among the wealthiest soap-makers and their blue soap was a symbol of a legendary love. Decades later, Betty returns to her Aunt Nuha's gravestone, faced with a difficult decision: Should she stay in the only country she's every known or should she follow her heart for the woman she loves, perpetuating her family's cycle of exile?"

"First Son Alex Claremont-Diaz, with his sister and the Veep's genius granddaughter, are the White House Trio, a beautiful millennial marketing strategy for his mother, President Ellen Claremont. Then photos of a confrontation with his longtime nemesis Prince Henry at a royal wedding leak to the tabloids. The plan for damage control: stage a fake friendship between the First Son and the Prince. Alex soon discovers that beneath Henry's Prince Charming veneer, there's a soft-hearted eccentric with a dry sense of humor and more than one ghost haunting him. As President Claremont kicks off her reelection bid, Alex finds himself hurtling into a relationship with Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations."

""This genre-bending debut collection of stories constructs eight eerie worlds full of desire, wisdom, and magic blooming amidst decay. In stories that beckon and haunt, Fruiting Bodies ranges confidently from the fantastical to the gothic to the uncanny, as it follows characters-mostly queer, mostly women-on the precipice of change. In "The Changeling," two young cousins wait in dread for a new family member to arrive, convinced that he may be a dangerous supernatural creature. In "Endangered Animals," Jane prepares to say goodbye to her almost-love while they road-trip across a country irrevocably altered by climate change. In the title story, partners Agnes and Geb feast peacefully on the mushrooms that sprout from Agnes's body-until an unwanted male guest disturbs their cloistered home. For readers of Carmen Maria Machado and Karen Russell, Fruiting Bodies offers stories about knowledge in a world on the verge of collapse, knowledge that alternately empowers or devastates. Pulling beautifully, brazenly, from a variety of literary traditions, Kathryn Harlan firmly establishes herself as a thrilling new voice in fiction"

"Though Owen Tanner has never met anyone else who has a chatty bird in their chest, medical forums would call him a Terror. From the moment Gail emerged between Owen’s ribs, his mother knew that she had to hide him away from the world. After a decade spent in hiding, Owen takes a brazen trip outdoors in the middle of a forest fire, and his life is upended forever. Suddenly, Owen is forced to flee the home that had once felt so confining and hide in plain sight with his uncle and cousin in Washington. There, he feels the joy of finding a family among friends; of sharing the bird in his chest and being embraced fully; of falling in love and feeling the devastating heartbreak of rejection before finding a spark of happiness in the most unexpected place; of living his truth regardless of how hard the thieves of joy may try to tear him down. But the threat of the Army of Acronyms is a constant, looming presence, making Owen wonder if he’ll ever find a way out of the cycle of fear."

"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"

"A gritty and gorgeous debut that follows a cast of gay and transgender club kids navigating the Harlem ball scene of the 80s and 90s, inspired by the real House of Xtravaganza made famous by the seminal documentary "Paris is Burning""--

"A love story stitched across time and war, shaped by the power of books. In the heart of World War II, Tom and Ben became lovers. Brought together by a secret project designed to hide British targets from German radar, the two founded a love that could not be revealed. When the project went wrong, Tom and Ben vanished into nothingness, presumed dead. Their bodies were never found. Now the two are lost in time, hunting each other across decades, leaving clues in books of poetry and trying to make their desperate time lines overlap"

"In an original world reminiscent of Edwardian England in the shadow of a World War, cabals of noble families use their unique magical gifts to control the fates of nations, while one young man seeks only to live a life of his own. Magic marked Miles Singer for suffering the day he was born, doomed either to be enslaved to his family's interest or to be committed to a witches' asylum. He went to war to escape his destiny and came home a different man, but he couldn't leave his past behind." (click title to read more)

"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."

"Natalie has made a vow of celibacy. After a string of sexual conquests, she is determined to figure out why the intense romantic connections she's spent her life chasing have left her emotionally high and dry. As Natalie sifts through her past and her present, she confronts her complicated feelings about her plus-sized figure, her bisexuality, and her thwarted career in fashion design.Piecing together toxic relationship patterns from her past, Natalie finds herself strutting down fashion runways and rekindling her passion for clothing design in the present. All the while, her best friend, Anastaze, struggles with her own secret..."

"For Avery Cullins-- library archivist, one- time teenage runaway, and gay man from a small Southern town--"family" means a live-in boyfriend and a surly turtle. But when his father, a renowned nuclear physicist, commits suicide, Avery's decade-long estrangement with his mother, who now suffers from dementia, comes to an end. With his boyfriend's help, Avery takes custody of his mother and, in a rented U-Haul, the trio heads cross country, back to an apartment in Cleveland and an uncertain future."

"Set over the course of twenty-four hours, Last Round at Guapa follows Rasa, a gay man living in an unnamed Arab country, and trying to carve out a life for himself in the midst of political and religious upheaval. Rasa spends his days translating for Western journalists, and pining for the nights when he can sneak his lover, Taymour, into his room. Then one morning Rasa's grandmother, the woman who raised him, catches them in bed together. " (click title for more)

"Brandon leaves his boyfriend in the city for a quiet life in the mountains, after an affair with a professor ends with Brandon being forced to kill a research animal. It is a violent, unfortunate episode that conjures memories from his military background. His new neighbors are using the increased temperatures to stage an agricultural project in an effort to combat globally heightened food prices and shortages. Brandon gets swept along with their optimism, while simultaneously applying to a new astronaut training program." (click title for more)

In 1974, the first year of busing in Boston, Massachusetts, seventeen-year-old Ann Ahern's lesbianism, which has isolated her from other white students, draws her to her African French teacher and leads her to insights into Blacks' struggles in the post-Civil Rights era.

"Tells three stories of lesbian love, including a tale about Chloe, a recent college graduate who finally acts on a crush that she has had on her mother's best friend."

As a teenager, athlete and Olympic hopeful Louisianne “Lou” Villars travels to Paris, where she becomes a coat check girl at the infamous Chameleon Club, a cabaret favored by the city's bohemian demimonde, Lou falls in (and out of) love with performer Arlette, eventually achieving notoriety as a cross-dressing professional racecar driver with connections to the Nazi party.

"After leaving his partner in New Mexico to start a new life in San Francisco, ESL teacher Aaron Englund seeks closure from a rejection-marked childhood and his own questionable choices by exploring his relationships with fellow misfits in his youth."

"When Romola Mitra, a young Indian bride in the United States, stumbles upon a letter she was not meant to open, it changes her life. Decades later, her son, Amit, finds that letter among Romola's possessions and thinks he has discovered a secret about her. But secrets sometimes conceal deeper secrets. Sometimes the secrets that could break us apart are the same that glue us together"

"Urologist Georgia Brown's sense of self-preservation is kicked into high gear after she's sexually harassed by a male surgeon at her medical clinic, but her outrage grows when her best doctor friend, Jonah, is dismissed for treating transgender patients. After traveling to Amsterdam to attend a medical conference, Georgia concocts a plan to persuade the board to reverse their decision about Jonah. But when her scheme to teach the hospital administration an important lesson begins to spiral out of control, Georgia worries she's caused more harm than good. After a medical crisis involving one of her friends, she learns that love and friendship are the antidotes for all the ills in her life"

"'Some years ago, in Dodge, I was a sporting woman. I didn't mind whoring-it can be good work in the right house-but it demands a great deal of keeping still, and I'm one of those itchy, fidgety sorts who's always looking out the window or glancing toward the door, so it was only a matter of time until I had to move on.' In the Spring of 1877, Bridget-sixteen years old and already disillusioned after caring for her alcoholic father-is orphaned while crossing the Kansas prairie. She arrives penniless in Dodge City, and, thanks to the allure of her bright red hair and country-girl beauty, is soon recruited to work at the Buffalo Queen, the only brothel in town run by women. Bridget takes to brothel life instantly, appreciating the good food, good pay, and good friendships she forms with her fellow "sporting women," even catching the eye of the town's Sheriff's Deputy, who offers the Queen protection and security. Then, Spartan Lee-the most legendary (and only) female gunfighter in the region-rides into town, and Bridget falls in love. Hard. Sick of having been pushed and pulled by other people's whims and decisions, Bridget resolves to claim her own destiny. But her quest for autonomy detonates a series of events that explodes the tenuous safety she's secured for herself and her friends at the Buffalo Queen"

"When lonely transgender exorcist, Colin Hart, finds himself challenged by an unruly haunted house in Gideon, Colorado, he's kept awake by ghosts, demons, ghouls, and the handsome nonbinary homeowner, Bishop Martínez. Unlike the simple hauntings Colin is accustomed to, Bishop's house is a living beacon, attracting a plethora of inhuman creatures, including a vengeful wolf-headed spirit who might be the key to quieting their sleepless nights. But as a heartbreaking mystery unravels, Colin comes face-to-face with the past Bishop tried to bury, opens a closet full of bloody skeletons, and trips into an accidental romance. As paranormally skilled as Colin might be, this particular haunting may be too messy for him to handle..."

"Olivia McAfee knows what it feels like to start over. Her picture-perfect life--living in Boston, married to a surgeon and raising their beautiful son, Asher--was upended when her husband revealed a darker side. She never imagined that she would end up back in her New Hampshire hometown, living in the house she grew up in and taking over her father's beekeeping business. Lily Campanello is familiar with do-overs, too. When she and her mom relocate to Adams, New Hampshire, for her final year of high school, they both hope it will be a fresh start. And for just a short while, these new beginnings are exactly what Olivia and Lily need. Their paths cross when Asher falls for the new girl in school, and Lily can't help but fall for him, too."

"On his deathbed, a dying black man writes a letter to his estranged, gay son and shares with him the truth that lives in his heart and tries to create a place where the pair can find peace."

"A literary coming-of-age poetry collection, an ode to the places we call home, and a piercingly intimate deconstruction of daughterhood, Black Girl, Call Home is a love letter to the wandering black girl and a vital companion to any woman on a journey to find truth, belonging, and healing. As a competitive spoken-word poet who draws large crowds of people, Jasmine Mans's collection is divided into six sections, each with a corresponding active telephone number where she has recorded excerpts of her poems. You can listen now, just dial! Using poetry to bring change to the world with positive agitation and hoping to prompt dialogue where there is normally fear, poet Jasmine Mans explores the intersection of race, feminism, and queer identity in her latest collection..."

"Dark, irreverent, and truly innovative, the speculative stories in Homesick meditate on the theme of home and our estrangement from it, and what happens when the familiar suddenly shifts into the uncanny. In stories that foreground queer relationships and transgender or nonbinary characters, Cipri delivers the origin story for a superhero team comprised of murdered girls; a housecleaner discovering an impossible ocean in her least-favorite clients' house; a man haunted by keys that appear suddenly in his throat; and a team of scientists and activists discovering the remains of a long-extinct species of intelligent weasels."

"Andrea Gibson's latest collection is a masterful showcase from the poet whose writing and performances have captured the hearts of millions. With artful and nuanced looks at gender, romance, loss, and family, Lord of the Butterflies is a new peak in Gibson's career. Each emotion here is deft and delicate, resting inside of imagery heavy enough to sink the heart, while giving the body wings to soar."

"On the surface, Niru leads a charmed life. Raised by two attentive parents in Washington, D.C., he's a top student and a track star at his prestigious private high school. Bound for Harvard in the fall, his prospects are bright. But Niru has a painful secret: he is queer--an abominable sin to his conservative Nigerian parents. No one knows except Meredith, his best friend, the daughter of prominent Washington insiders--and the one person who seems not to judge him. When his father accidentally discovers Niru is gay, the fallout is brutal and swift. Coping with troubles of her own, however, Meredith finds that she has little left emotionally to offer him. As the two friends struggle to reconcile their desires against the expectations and institutions that seek to define them, they find themselves speeding toward a future more violent and senseless than they can imagine. Neither will escape unscathed."

"It's the summer before Nina's senior year in high school and she needs to get away. She escapes from her family and small town, and enrolls in an acting course in Cape Cog. There, she meets Sarah, a teaching assistant with the theatre program, who captures her heart. Nina knows they are destined to be "coupled and inseparable," as Shakespeare describes the faithful swans of Juno." --Page [2] of cover.

"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"

"In the years preceding World War I, two young women meet, by chance, in a provincial town in France. Suzanne Malherbe, a shy seventeen-year-old with a talent for drawing, is completely entranced by the brilliant but troubled Lucie Schwob, who comes from a family of wealthy Jewish intellectuals. They embark on a clandestine love affair, terrified they will be discovered, but then, in an astonishing twist of fate, the mother of one marries the father of the other. As "sisters" they are finally free of suspicion, and, hungry for a more stimulating milieu, they move to Paris at a moment when art, literature, and politics blend in an explosive cocktail." (click title to read more)

"Ari Wexler, a trans guy in his late twenties, is barely scraping by. His family life is a mess, he feels like a failure when it comes to love, and his job at a college music library is on the rocks. His relationship with Itche Mattes, his doting best friend, helps him get through the days. Then a famous actress comes to town and sweeps Itche off his feet, leaving her dreadful sidekick to step on Ari's toes. As Ari's despair grows, a fascinating music project falls into his lap, and he's faced with a choice: to remain within his comfort zone, however small and stifling, or to take a risk that could bring meaning and joy to his life."

"This is Claude. He's five years old, the youngest of five brothers. He also loves peanut butter sandwiches. He also loves wearing a dress, and dreams of being a princess.When he grows up, Claude says, he wants to be a girl. Rosie and Penn want Claude to be whoever Claude wants to be. They're just not sure they're ready to share that with the world. Soon the entire family is keeping Claude's secret. Until one day it explodes."

"Some Go Hungry is a fictional account drawn from the author's own experiences working in his family's provincial Indiana restaurant--and wrestling with his sexual orientation--in a town that was rocked by the scandalous murder of his gay high school classmate in the 1980s. Now a young man who has embraced his sexuality, Grey Daniels returns from Miami Beach, Florida, to Fort Sackville, Indiana, to run Daniels' Family Buffet for his ailing father."

"Guy rises to the top of the modeling world and becomes the darling of Fire Island's gay community during the 1970s and 80s, but the lavish attention he receives comes at a high price."

"Set in a declining textile town in North Carolina, Hide is the love story of Wendell Wilson, a taxidermist, and Frank Clifton, a veteran of World War II. They meet after the war, in a time when such love holds real danger. But, severing nearly all ties with the rest of the world, they carve out a home for themselves on the outskirts of town and for decades... But when Wendell finds Frank lying motionless outside at the age of eighty-three, their carefully crafted life together begins to unravel.

You€™v́e met her before. Confused. Scared. Indecisive and unsure. Walk with Kyla as she attempts to bandage aching wounds still bruised from a love once lost. Can she move forward in a relationship when fantasies and invitations from the past lure her back to a time and place she€™ś spent three years hiding from, yet can't let go?

"Brady Stewart lives for the fire. Nightmares of the fire haunt Nicole McMillan. Whether fighting fires in the Kuwaiti desert, in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico or the heartland of Oklahoma, both women hide behind a smoke screen of who they really are. When they meet and face the challenge of their lives, their passion ignites because where there's smoke, there's fire."

"Despite coming-of-age issues heavily laced with substance abuse, depression and angst, not to mention self-mutilation, Liebegott's smart and funny debut boasts an easy charm sure to win her fans. Francesca, aka Goaty, 19, is a fledgling writer (and a virgin) who has followed Irene, her junior-college philosophy teacher, to San Francisco in hopes of building a committed lesbian relationship with her, despite Irene's live-in male and female lovers, Gustavo and Jenny."

With her daughter about to leave for college, fortysomething Alison Banks enrolls in a local college course to take her mind off things and finds herself falling for her instructor, Dana, a man who later confides that he wants to have a sex-change operation.