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Books to Celebrate Pride Month |
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Fieldwork : a forager's memoir
by Iliana Regan
The National Book Award nominee presents a memoir of her life and heritage as a forager, her life in the forests of Michigans Upper Peninsula and how her complex gender identity informs her work as a chef.
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The late Americans
by Brandon Taylor
During a volatile year of self-discovery in the shared and private spaces of Iowa City, three friends, as each prepares for an uncertain future, head to a cabin to bid goodbye to their former lives?—?a moment of reckoning that leaves each of them irrevocably altered.
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Flux : a novel
by Jinwoo Chong
Brandon experiences his reality unraveling when he begins losing chunks of time and finding himself in an apartment he doesn't recognize and starts to suspect his new employers have discovered time travel and are covering up violent crimes.
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Endpapers
by Jennifer Savran
Dawn Levit, a bookbinder conservationist working at the Met in 2003 and dealing with her gender identity discovers a love letter hidden in the endpapers of a 1950's lesbian pulp novel and tries to track down the author.
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Giovanni's room
by James Baldwin
"The groundbreaking novel by one of the most important twentieth-century American writers--now in an Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics hardcover edition. Giovanni's Room is set in the Paris of the 1950s, where a young American expatriate finds himself caught between his repressed desires and conventional morality. David has just proposed marriage to his American girlfriend, but while she is away on a trip he becomes involved in a doomed affair with a bartender named Giovanni. With sharp, probing insight, James Baldwin's classic narrative delves into the mystery of love and tells an impassioned, deeply moving story that reveals the unspoken complexities of the human heart. Introduction by Colm Toibin"
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Pageboy : a memoir
by Elliot Page
The Oscar-nominated star who, after the success of Juno, became one of the world's most beloved actors, reveals how his career turned into a nightmare as he navigated criticism and abuse in Hollywood until he had enough and stepped into who he truly is with defiance, strength and joy.
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Your driver is waiting : a novel
by Priya Guns
For the first time ever, Damani, who drives for an app, starts dating a white girl with money, but when their romance intensifies and she finally lets her guard down, her girlfriend does something unforgivable, setting off an explosive chain of events.
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The humble lover : a novel
by Edmund White
An 80-year-old modern-day aristocrat sets his sights on August Dupond, the soloist in the New York City Ballet, and as they start a relationship and August moves in, messy entanglements and fierce rivalries ensue, in this unforgettable, outrageous tragicomedy that explores the many layers or love and sexual desire.
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Homebodies : a novel
by Tembe Denton-Hurst
A young black woman who discovers she is being replaced at her flashy media job writes a detailed letter outlining the racism and sexism she's endured which goes viral and launches her into the public zeitgeist.
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Better living through birding : notes from a Black man in the natural world
by Christian Cooper
"Christian Cooper is a self-described Blerd (Black nerd), an avid comics fan, and an expert birder who devotes every spring to gazing upon the migratory birds that stop to rest in Central Park, just a subway ride away from where he lives in New York City. When birdwatching in the park one morning in May 2020, Cooper was engaged in the ritual that had been a part of his life since he was ten years old. But when a routine encounter with a dog-walker escalates age old racial tensions, Cooper's viral video of the incident would send shockwaves through the nation. In Better Living Through Birding, Cooper tells the story of his extraordinary life leading up to the now-infamous encounter in Central Park and shows how a life spent looking up at the birds prepared him, in the most uncanny of ways, to be a gay, Black man in American today. From sharpened senses that work just as well in a protest as in a park, to what a bird like the Common Grackle can teach us about self-acceptance, Better Living Through Birding exults in the pleasures of a life lived in pursuit of the natural world and invites you to discover your own. Equal parts memoir, travelogue, and primer on the art of birding, this is Cooper's story of learning to claim and defend space for himself and others like him, from his days as a writer for Marvel Comics, where Cooper introduced the first gay storyline, to vivid and life-changing birding expeditions through Africa, Australia, the Americas and the Himalayas. Better Living Through Birding is Cooper's invitation into the wonderful world of birds, and what they can teach us about life, if only we would stop and listen"
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Lesbian love story : a memoir in archives
by Amelia Possanza
Sharing her journey to recover the personal histories of lesbians in the 20th century: who they were, how they loved, why their stories were destroyed and where their memories echo and live on, the author, along the way, discovers her own love and adds her record to the archive.
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The new life : a novel
by Tom Crewe
In late 19th-century London, after Oscar Wilde is arrested, two men, who have collaborated on a book in defense of homosexuality, must decide if publishing their project is bravery or foolishness as they risk ostracism, imprisonment, their safety and the safety of the people they love.
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Boulder
by Eva Baltasar
"The grim and lovely follow-up to Eva Baltasar's acclaimed Permafrost explores the darker sides of love and motherhood for two women determined to live as they like"
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Confidence : a novel
by Rafael Frumkin
A pair of best friends and occasional lovers who meet at a last-chance camp before juvenile detention embark on what they hope is a lucrative career in scam artistry with Nulife, a company that promises consumers a lifetime of bliss.
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Small joys : a novel
by Elvin James Mensah
While working at a dead-end job at a movie theater, college dropout Harley attempts to take his own life, but is interrupted by his new roommate who takes him under his wing, showing him everything that makes life worth living until their friendship becomes complicated, which causes him to falter once again.
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Less is lost
by Andrew Sean Greer
In this highly anticipated follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize-winning Less: A Novel, Arthur Less, after the death of an old lover and a sudden financial crisis, sets out on a literary adventure across the U.S. during which he must finally face his personal demons.
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Hijab butch blues : a memoir
by Lamya H
A queer Muslim immigrant recalls her coming of age and how she drew inspiration from the stories in the Quran throughout her lifetime search for safety and belonging.
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After Sappho : a novel
by Selby Wynn Schwartz
A series of vignettes taking pace from 1892 to 1923 intertwines the reimagined lives of Rina Faccio, Romaine Brooks and Virginia Woolf as they explore their creativity, education and forge queer identities.
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Detransition, baby : a novel
by Torrey Peters
A trans woman, her detransitioned ex and his cisgender lover build an unconventional family together in the wake of heartbreak and an unplanned pregnancy, in a book by the author of the novella, Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones.
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The red book of farewells
by Pirkko Saisio
"A contemporary classic exploring identity, politics, and revolution. This novel is composed as a series of farewells written by Pirkko Saisio-to her mother, to girlfriends she thought she'd spend her life with, and, finally, her to daughter"
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The people who report more stress : stories
by Alejandro Varela
"The People Who Report More Stress is a collection of connected stories examining issues of parenting, systemic and interpersonal racism, and class conflict in gentrified Brooklyn"
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Paul takes the form of a mortal girl : a novel
by Andrea Lawlor
It's 1993 and Paul Polydoris tends bar at the only gay club in a university town thrumming with politics and partying. He studies queer theory, has a dyke best friend, makes zines, and is a flaneur with a rich dating life. But Paul's also got a secret: he's a shapeshifter. Oscillating wildly from Riot Grrrl to leather cub, Paul transforms his body and his gender at will as he crossed the country--a journey and adventure through the deep queer archives of struggle and pleasure. Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is a riotous, razor-sharp bildungsroman whose hero/ine wends his/her way through a world gutted by loss, pulsing with music, and opening into an array of intimacy and connections
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On earth we're briefly gorgeous : a novel
by Ocean Vuong
An instant New York Times Bestseller! Longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction, the Carnegie Medal in Fiction, the 2019 Aspen Words Literacy Prize, and the PEN/Hemingway Debut Novel Award Shortlisted for the 2019 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
Winner of the 2019 New England Book Award for Fiction! Named one of the most anticipated books of 2019 by Vulture, Entertainment Weekly, Buzzfeed, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Oprah.com, Huffington Post, The A.V. Club, Nylon, The Week, The Rumpus, The Millions, The Guardian, Publishers Weekly, and more. “A lyrical work of self-discovery that’s shockingly intimate and insistently universal…Not so much briefly gorgeous as permanently stunning.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post 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. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one’s own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard. With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years. Named a Best Book of the Year by: GQ, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, Library Journal, TIME, Esquire, The Washington Post, Apple, Good Housekeeping, The New Yorker, The New York Public Library, Elle.com, The Guardian, The A.V. Club, NPR, Lithub, Entertainment Weekly, Vogue.com, The San Francisco Chronicle, Mother Jones, Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal Magazine and more! A first novel by the award-winning author of Night Sky with Exit Wounds is written in the form of a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read about the impact of the Vietnam war on their family
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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.
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All this could be different
by Sarah Thankam Mathews
Follows a young Indian American woman who is grappling with graduating into a recession, working a grueling entry-level corporate job and trying to date Marina, a beautiful dancer who always seems just beyond her grasp.
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The great believers
by Rebecca Makkai
"A dazzling new novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris, by the acclaimed and award-winning author Rebecca Makkai. In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico's funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico's little sister. Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago crisis, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways AIDS affected her life and her relationship with her daughter. The two intertwining stories takeus through the heartbreak of the eighties and the chaos of the modern world, as both Yale and Fiona struggle to find goodness in the midst of disaster"
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The idiot
by Elif Batuman
Embarking on her freshman year at Harvard in 1995, Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, begins a correspondence with an older mathematics student from Hungary while struggling with her changing sense of self, first love, and a daunting career prospect
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In the lives of puppets
by TJ Klune
When an unwitting act of betrayal leads to the capture of his android Gio, who once hunted humans, Victor Lawson and his assembled family must journey across an unforgiving and otherworldly country to the City of Electric Dreams to rescue Gio from decommission, or worse, reprogramming. 400,000 first printing.
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Pomegranate : a novel
by Helen Elaine Lee
The acclaimed author of The Serpent's Gift returns with a novel that follows a queer black woman who works to stay clean, pull her life together, and heal after being released from prison.
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The line of beauty : a novel
by Alan Hollinghurst
Moving into the attic room in the Notting Hill home of the wealthy, politically connected Fedden family in 1983, twenty-year-old Nick Guest becomes caught up in the rising fortunes of this glamorous family and finds his own life forever altered by his association during the boom years of the 1980s. By the author of The Swimming-Pool Library. Reprint.
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Orlando
by Virginia Woolf
Orlando doubles first as an Elizabethan nobleman and then as a Victorian heroine who undergoes all the transitions of history in an annotated edition of the classic novel that examines sex roles and social mores.
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The celebrants : a novel
by Steven Rowley
Reuniting in Big Sur to honor a decades-old pact to throw each other living“funerals,” celebrations to remind themselves life is worth living?—?and living well?—? five friends find their pact upended when one of them reveals a shocking secret.
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Happy stories, mostly
by Norman Erikson Pasaribu
"Happy Stories, Mostly is a short story collection by queer Indonesian author Norman Erikson Pasaribu. Blending together speculative fiction and absurdism, these stories ask what it means to be almost happy-to nearly find joy, to sort-of be accepted, butto never fully grasp one's desire"
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Countries of origin : a novel
by Javier Fuentes
"In this stunning debut, Javier Fuentes chronicles a tumultuous, passionate love affair between two young men from vastly different worlds during one, extraordinary summer in Spain, in what is ultimately a meditation on identity, class, belonging and desire. It is 2007, in New York where Demetrio, 30, is a celebrated pastry chef at the French restaurant, Le Bourrelet. It will be his seventh year as their pãatissier and the chef-owner, stern, but paternal feels he should move on. When Demetrio is offered a position as Head of Pastries at a Michelin-starred restaurant, he wants nothing more than to accept it. Undocumented, he is missing one crucial thing: papers. Terrified he will be found out, he makes the difficult decision of voluntary departure to permanently return to his homeland which he has not seen since he was a small child. This will mean leaving the only family he knows, his beloved uncle Chus, who brought him up and who he still lives with. On his flight to Madrid, he sits next to the handsome, playful and sensitive Jacobo, a student at NYU going home to his aristocratic, fascist family and there is an instant, unacknowledged electricity between them. In dimly lit bars in Madrid and on pebbled beaches by the sea far outside the city, Demetrio and Jacobo's subtle but intense relationship unfolds. Demetrio is tortured by a fear of true intimacy, and anxiety about their class difference. Both are struggling with their identities and sexuality and they avoid their true feelings and deep passion until a family tragedy sets them on a collision course back into one another's lives. Powerfully sensual, and dramatic, Countries of Origin is a story which immerses you in the intense emotions and conflicts of love and loss"
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