|
|
All Boys Aren't Blue : A Memoir-Manifesto
by George M. Johnson
A first book by the prominent journalist and LGBTQIA+ activist shares personal essays that chronicle his childhood, adolescence and college years as a Black queer youth, exploring subjects ranging from gender identity and toxic masculinity to structural marginalization and Black joy.
|
|
|
|
We Ride Upon Sticks
by Quan Barry
Nearly three centuries after their coastal community's witch trials, the women athletes of the 1989 Danvers Falcons hockey team combine individual and collective talents with 1980s iconography to storm their way to the state finals.
|
|
|
|
The House of Impossible Beauties
by Joseph Cassara
A first novel, inspired by the House of Xtravaganza made famous in the documentary Paris Is Burning, follows a cast of gay and transgender kids navigating the Harlem ball scene of the 1980s and 1990s.
|
|
|
|
Patsy
by Nicole Dennis-Benn
When Patsy gets her long-coveted visa to America, it comes after years of yearning to leave Pennyfield, the beautiful but impoverished Jamaican town where she was raised. More than anything, Patsy wishes to be reunited with her oldest friend, Cicely, whose letters arrive from New York steeped in the promise of a happier life and the possible rekindling of their young love. But Patsy's plans don't include her overzealous, evangelical mother--or even her five-year-old daughter, Tru. Beating with the pulse of a long-witheld confession, Patsy gives voice to a woman who looks to America for the opportunity to choose herself first--not to give a better life to her family back home.
|
|
|
|
The Death Of Vivek Oji
by Akwaeke Emezi
When Vivek's mother opens her front door one morning in Nigeria, she finds her grown child wrapped in colorful cloth, dead on her front step. As the family tries to unravel the mysteries and secrets of their child's life, the reader is along for the journey, learning about Vivek's relationships and identities as the family does.
|
|
|
|
The Sweetness of Water
by Nathan Harris
In the waning days of the Civil War, brothers Prentiss and Landry, freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, seek refuge on the homestead of George Walker and his wife, Isabelle. The Walkers, wracked by the loss of their only son to the war, hire the brothers to work their farm, hoping through an unexpected friendship to stanch their grief.
Prentiss and Landry, meanwhile, plan to save money for the journey north and a chance to reunite with their mother, who was sold away when they were boys.
Parallel to their story runs a forbidden romance between two Confederate soldiers. The young men, recently returned from the war to the town of Old Ox, hold their trysts in the woods. But when their secret is discovered, the resulting chaos, including a murder, unleashes convulsive repercussions on the entire community.
In the aftermath of so much turmoil, it is Isabelle who emerges as an unlikely leader, proffering a healing vision for the land and for the newly free citizens of Old Ox.
|
|
|
|
Crosshairs : a novel
by Catherine Hernandez
The author of Scarborough presents a dystopian tale set in a near-future world where a queer Black performer and his allies fight an oppressive regime that is incarcerating the LGBTQ+ community, people of color and the disabled.
|
|
|
|
Love & Other Disasters
by Anita Kelly
While competing on a popular cooking show, Dahlia Woodson stirs up trouble when she gets involved with a nonbinary contestant, and as their relationship heats up both in and out of the kitchen, she wonders if they have the right ingredients for a happily ever after.
|
|
|
|
The Thirty Names of Night: A Novel
by Zeyn Joukhadar
Five years after a suspicious fire killed his ornithologist mother, a closeted Syrian American trans boy sheds his birth name and searches for a new one. The only time he feels truly free is when he slips out at night to paint murals on buildings in the once-thriving Manhattan neighborhood known as Little Syria, but he’s been struggling ever since his mother’s ghost began visiting him each evening.
One night, he enters the abandoned community house and finds the tattered journal of a Syrian American artist named Laila Z, who dedicated her career to painting birds. She mysteriously disappeared more than sixty years before, but her journal contains proof that both his mother and Laila Z encountered the same rare bird before their deaths.
What happened to Laila Z and the rare bird his mother died trying to save? Following his mother’s ghost, he uncovers the silences kept in the name of survival by his own community, his own family, and within himself, and discovers the family that was there all along.
|
|
|
|
The Prophets : a novel
by Robert Jones
Two enslaved young men on a Deep South plantation find refuge in each other while transforming a quiet shed into a haven for their fellow slaves, before an enslaved preacher declares their bond sinful. A first novel.
|
|
|
|
Vagabonds!
by Eloghosa Osunde
In Nigeria, the lives of a group of vagabonds—the poor, the queer, the drivers and dancers, the abused, displaced and vulnerable—intertwine in bustling markets and underground clubs, churches and hotel rooms where they are seized and challenged by spirits who command the city's dark energy.
|
|
|
|
Tell Me How To Be
by Neel Patel
While packing up the family home, widow Renu embarks on an emotional affair with the man she almost married while her son slips back into old habits, forcing both of them to choose between the lives they left behind and the ones they've since created.
|
|
|
|
The Starless Sea
by Erin Morgenstern
Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a graduate student in Vermont when he discovers a mysterious book hidden in the stacks. As he turns the pages, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, key collectors, and nameless acolytes, he reads something strange: a story from his own childhood.
Bewildered by this inexplicable book and desperate to make sense of how his own life came to be recorded, Zachary uncovers a series of clues - a bee, a key, and a sword - that lead him to a masquerade party in New York, to a secret club, and through a doorway to an ancient library hidden far below the surface of the earth.
Together with Mirabel, a fierce, pink-haired protector of the place, and Dorian, a handsome, barefoot man with shifting alliances, Zachary travels the twisting tunnels, darkened stairwells, crowded ballrooms, and sweetly soaked shores of this magical world, discovering his purpose - in both the mysterious book and in his own life.
|
|
|
|
Mrs. Everything : A Novel
by Jennifer Weiner
Jo and Bethie Kaufman were born into a world full of promise.
Growing up in 1950s Detroit, they live in a perfect “Dick and Jane” house, where their roles in the family are clearly defined. Jo is the tomboy, the bookish rebel with a passion to make the world more fair; Bethie is the pretty, feminine good girl, a would-be star who enjoys the power her beauty confers and dreams of a traditional life.
But the truth ends up looking different from what the girls imagined. Jo and Bethie survive traumas and tragedies. As their lives unfold against the background of free love and Vietnam, Woodstock and women’s lib, Bethie becomes an adventure-loving wild child who dives headlong into the counterculture and is up for anything (except settling down). Meanwhile, Jo becomes a proper young mother in Connecticut, a witness to the changing world instead of a participant.
Neither woman inhabits the world she dreams of, nor has a life that feels authentic or brings her joy. Is it too late for the women to finally stake a claim on happily ever after?
|
|
|
|
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
by Ocean Vuong
Poet Ocean Vuong’s debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and the redemptive power of storytelling
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation.
|
|
|