Staff Picks
Brave the Rainbow: Celebrating LGBTQIA+ Pride Month
- Morgan R.
- Tuesday, June 09, 2020
Collection
A very small sampling of books by and/or about LGBTQIA+ folx to celebrate Pride month, and to read any time of year!
Find Me
Published in 2019
In this spellbinding exploration of the varieties of love, the author of the worldwide bestseller Call Me by Your Name revisits its complex and beguiling characters two decades after their first meeting. No novel in recent memory has spoken more movingly to contemporary readers about the nature of love than Andr? Aciman's haunting Call Me by Your Name . First published in 2007, it was hailed as "a love letter, an invocation . . . an exceptionally beautiful book" (Stacey D'Erasmo, The New York Times Book Review ). Nearly three quarters of a million copies have been sold, and the book became a much-loved, Academy Award?winning film starring Timoth?e Chalamet as the young Elio and Armie Hammer as Oliver, the graduate student with whom he falls in love. In Find Me , Aciman shows us Elio's father, Samuel, on a trip from Florence to Rome to visit Elio, who has become a gifted classical pianist. A chance encounter on the train with a beautiful young woman upends Sami's plans and changes his life forever. Elio soon moves to Paris, where he, too, has a consequential affair, while Oliver, now a New England college professor with a family, suddenly finds himself contemplating a return trip across the Atlantic. Aciman is a master of sensibility, of the intimate details and the emotional nuances that are the substance of passion. Find Me brings us back inside the magic circle of one of our greatest contemporary romances to ask if, in fact, true love ever dies.
We Ride Upon Sticks
Published in 2020
Acclaimed novelist Quan Barry delivers a tour de female force in this delightful novel. Set in the coastal town of Danvers, Massachusetts, where the accusations began that led to the 1692 witch trials, We Ride Upon Sticks follows the 1989 Danvers High School Falcons field hockey team, who will do anything to make it to the state finals?even if it means tapping into some devilishly dark powers. In chapters dense with 1980s iconography?from Heathers to "big hair"?Barry expertly weaves together the individual and collective progress of this enchanted team as they storm their way through an unforgettable season. Helmed by good-girl captain Abby Putnam (a descendant of the infamous Salem accuser Ann Putnam) and her co-captain Jen Fiorenza (whose bleached blond "Claw" sees and knows all), the Falcons prove to be wily, original, and bold, flaunting society's stale notions of femininity in order to find their glorious true selves through the crucible of team sport and, more importantly, friendship.
Good Boy
Published in 2020
This program includes an introduction read by the author. From bestselling author of She's Not There , New York Times opinion columnist, and human rights activist Jennifer Finney Boylan, Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs , a memoir of the transformative power of loving dogs. This is a book about dogs: the love we have for them, and the way that love helps us understand the people we have been. It's in the love of dogs, and my love for them, that I can best now take the measure of the child I once was, and the bottomless, unfathomable desires that once haunted me. There are times when it is hard for me to fully remember that love, which was once so fragile, and so fierce. Sometimes it seems to fade before me, like breath on a mirror. But I remember the dogs. In her New York Times opinion column, Jennifer Finney Boylan wrote about her relationship with her beloved dog Indigo, and her wise, funny, heartbreaking piece went viral. In Good Boy, Boylan explores what should be the simplest topic in the world, but never is: finding and giving love. Good Boy is a universal account of a remarkable story: showing how a young boy became a middle-aged woman?accompanied at seven crucial moments of growth and transformation by seven memorable dogs. "Everything I know about love," she writes, "I learned from dogs." Their love enables us pull off what seem like impossible feats: to find our way home when we are lost, to live our lives with humor and courage, and above all, to best become our true selves. A Macmillan Audio production from Celadon Books
The Truth About Keeping Secrets
Published in 2020
Sometimes it's safer for the truth to stay secret... Sydney's dad is the only psychiatrist for miles in their small Ohio town. He knows everybody's secrets. He is also dead. Grief-stricken Sydney can't understand why the police have no explanation for what happened the night of her dad's car crash. And when June Copeland, the homecoming queen whose life seems perfect, shows up at the funeral, Sydney's confusion grows. Sydney and June grow closer in the wake of the accident, but it's clear that not everyone is happy about their new friendship. What is picture-perfect June hiding? And does Sydney even want to know?
Labyrinth Lost
Published in 2016
Nothing says Happy Birthday like summoning the spirits of your dead relatives. Alex is a bruja, the most powerful witch in a generation...and she hates magic. At her Deathday celebration, Alex performs a spell to rid herself of her power. But it backfires. Her whole family vanishes into thin air, leaving her alone with Nova, a brujo boy she can't trust. A boy whose intentions are as dark as the strange marks on his skin. The only way to get her family back is to travel with Nova to Los Lagos, a land in-between, as dark as Limbo and as strange as Wonderland...
Ordinary Girls
A Memoir
Published in 2019
A powerful and inspiring memoir of growing up in Puerto Rico and Miami Beach. Acclaimed essayist Jaquira D?az writes an unflinching account of growing up as a queer, biracial girl searching for home as her family splits apart and her mother struggles with mental illness and addiction. From her own struggles with depression and drug abuse to her experiences of violence to Puerto Rico's history of colonialism, every page vibrates with music and lyricism. Ordinary Girls is about fighting to be seen for who we really are. It's about girlhood in a dangerous world, about how we're not defined by the worst things we've ever done, and about surviving, even as we're losing the people we love.
Cantoras
A Novel
Published in 2019
-- Cantoras Cantoras is a tale about the fire in all our souls and those who make it burn.
Patsy
A Novel
Published in 2019
-- Beating with the pulse of a long-witheld confession, Patsy Expertly evoking the jittery streets of New York and the languid rhythms of Jamaica, Patsy As with her masterful debut, Here Comes the Sun, Nicole Dennis-Benn once again charts the geography of a hidden world?that of a paradise lost, swirling with the echoes of lilting patois, in which one woman fights to discover her sense of self in a world that tries to define her. Passionate, moving, and fiercely urgent, Patsy is a prismatic depiction of immigration and womanhood, and the lasting threads of love stretching across years and oceans.
LGBTQ Stats
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer People by the Numbers
Published in 2017
Twenty years ago it was impossible to imagine the president of the United States embracing same-sex marriage or Bruce Jenner transitioning to Caitlyn Jenner, an open transgender woman. LGBTQ Stats chronicles the ongoing LGBTQ revolution, providing the critical statistics, and draws upon and synthesizes newly collected data. Deschamps and Singer-whose previous books and films on LGBTQ topics have won numerous awards and found audiences around the globe-provide chapters on family and marriage, workplace discrimination, education, youth, criminal justice, and immigration, as well as evolving policies and laws affecting LGBTQ communities. A chapter on LGBTQ life around the globe contrasts the dramatic progress for LGBTQ people in the United States with violent backlash in countries such as Russia, Iran, and Nigeria, which have discriminatory laws that make same-sex activity punishable by prison or death. A lively, accessible, and eye-opening snapshot, LGBTQ Stats offers an invaluable resource for activists, journalists, lawmakers, and general readers who want the facts and figures on LGBTQ lives in the twenty-first century.
Untamed
Published in 2020
In her most revealing and powerful book yet, the beloved activist, speaker, and bestselling author of Love Warrior and Carry On, Warrior explores the joy and peace we discover when we stop striving to meet the expectations of the world, and start trusting the voice deep within us. " Untamed will liberate women?emotionally, spiritually, and physically. It is phenomenal. "?Elizabeth Gilbert, author of City of Girls and Eat Pray Love This is how you find yourself. There is a voice of longing inside each woman. We strive so mightily to be good: good partners, daughters, mothers, employees, and friends. We hope all this striving will make us feel alive. Instead, it leaves us feeling weary, stuck, overwhelmed, and underwhelmed. We look at our lives and wonder: Wasn't it all supposed to be more beautiful than this? We quickly silence that question, telling ourselves to be grateful, hiding our discontent?even from ourselves. For many years, Glennon Doyle denied her own discontent. Then, while speaking at a conference, she looked at a woman across the room and fell instantly in love. Three words flooded her mind: There She Is . At first, Glennon assumed these words came to her from on high. But she soon realized they had come to her from within. This was her own voice?the one she had buried beneath decades of numbing addictions, cultural conditioning, and institutional allegiances. This was the voice of the girl she had been before the world told her who to be. Glennon decided to quit abandoning herself and to instead abandon the world's expectations of her. She quit being good so she could be free. She quit pleasing and started living. Soulful and uproarious, forceful and tender, Untamed is both an intimate memoir and a galvanizing wake-up call. It is the story of how one woman learned that a responsible mother is not one who slowly dies for her children, but one who shows them how to fully live. It is the story of navigating divorce, forming a new blended family, and discovering that the brokenness or wholeness of a family depends not on its structure but on each member's ability to bring her full self to the table. And it is the story of how each of us can begin to trust ourselves enough to set boundaries, make peace with our bodies, honor our anger and heartbreak, and unleash our truest, wildest instincts so that we become women who can finally look at ourselves and say: There She Is . Untamed shows us how to be brave. As Glennon insists: The braver we are, the luckier we get.
The Book of Pride
LGBTQ Heroes Who Changed the World
Published in 2019
A keepsake that honors more than fifty LGBTQ pioneers, activists, and revolutionaries and tells their stories of dedication and triumph through never-before-published original interviews. The Book of Pride pays tribute to dozens of extraordinary and influential leaders who sparked the worldwide LGBTQ-rights movement. These courageous civil rights pioneers-nurses in Texas and chemists in Philadelphia; Muslims and Catholics; the loud and fearless marching in streets and the quiet and determined persevering in the face of persecution-are captured in gorgeous interviews accompanied by beautiful photographs. Mason Funk shines a spotlight on these individuals on the front lines of the fight for equality and acceptance and their stunning achievements in the 1960s and beyond. Meet Evan Wolfson, the architect of the national marriage equality movement. And Charles Silverstein, a critical player in getting the American Psychiatric Association to declassify homosexuality as a mental illness in 1973. These are just two of the remarkable figures in The Book of Pride. In sharing these stories, this important volume not only reflects on the past, it inspires young leaders and citizens today to practice tolerance, celebrate diversity, and work for positive change in their communities. A record of the remarkable history of the LGBTQ movement, it reminds us of the necessity to fight, to resist, and to counter the forces of oppression with ferocity, community, and, most importantly, pride.
The Mercies
Published in 2020
After the men in an Arctic Norwegian town are wiped out, the women must survive a sinister threat in this "perfectly told" 1600s parable of "a world gone mad" (Adriana Trigiani). Finnmark, Norway, 1617. Twenty-year-old Maren Magnusdatter stands on the craggy coast, watching the sea break into a sudden and reckless storm. Forty fishermen, including her brother and father, are drowned and left broken on the rocks below. With the menfolk wiped out, the women of the tiny Arctic town of Vardø must fend for themselves. Three years later, a stranger arrives on their shore. Absalom Cornet comes from Scotland, where he burned witches in the northern isles. He brings with him his young Norwegian wife, Ursa, who is both heady with her husband's authority and terrified by it. In Vardø, and in Maren, Ursa sees something she has never seen before: independent women. But Absalom sees only a place untouched by God, and flooded with a mighty evil. As Maren and Ursa are drawn to one another in ways that surprise them both, the island begins to close in on them, with Absalom's iron rule threatening Vardø's very existence. Inspired by the real events of the Vardø storm and the 1621 witch trials, The Mercies is a story of love, evil, and obsession, set at the edge of civilization. One of the Best Books of the Year (Good Housekeeping)
Boys of Alabama
Published in 2020
O, The Oprah Magazine "31 LGBTQ Books That'll Change the Literary Landscape in 2020" Lit Hub "Most Anticipated Books by LGBTQ Authors For the First Half of 2020" Ms. Magazine "Reads for the Rest of Us: Feminist Books Coming Out in 2020" "A gripping, uncanny, and queer exploration of being a boy in America, told with detail that dazzles and disturbs." ?Michelle Tea, author of Against Memoir In this bewitching debut novel, a sensitive teen, newly arrived in Alabama, falls in love, questions his faith, and navigates a strange power. While his German parents don't know what to make of a South pining for the past, shy Max thrives in the thick heat. Taken in by the football team, he learns how to catch a spiraling ball, how to point a gun, and how to hide his innermost secrets. Max already expects some of the raucous behavior of his new, American friends?like their insatiable hunger for the fried and cheesy, and their locker room talk about girls. But he doesn't expect the comradery?or how quickly he would be welcomed into their world of basement beer drinking. In his new canvas pants and thickening muscles, Max feels like he's "playing dress-up." That is until he meets Pan, the school "witch," in Physics class: "Pan in his all black. Pan with his goth choker and the gel that made his hair go straight up." Suddenly, Max feels seen, and the pair embarks on a consuming relationship: Max tells Pan about his supernatural powers, and Pan tells Max about the snake poison initiations of the local church. The boys, however, aren't sure whose past is darker, and what is more frightening?their true selves, or staying true in Alabama. Writing in verdant and visceral prose that builds to a shocking conclusion, Genevieve Hudson "brilliantly reinvents the Southern Gothic, mapping queer love in a land where God, guns, and football are king" (Leni Zumas, author of Red Clocks). Boys of Alabama becomes a nuanced portrait of masculinity, religion, immigration, and the adolescent pressures that require total conformity.
Wow, No Thank You
Published in 2020
A Vintage Paperback Original. A new rip-roaring essay collection from the smart, edgy, hilarious, unabashedly raunchy, and bestselling Samantha Irby. Irby is forty, and increasingly uncomfortable in her own skin despite what Inspirational Instagram Infographics have promised her. She has left her job as a receptionist at a veterinary clinic, has published successful books and has been friendzoned by Hollywood, left Chicago, and moved into a house with a garden that requires repairs and know-how with her wife in a Blue town in the middle of a Red state where she now hosts book clubs and makes mason jar salads. This is the bourgeois life of a Hallmark Channel dream. She goes on bad dates with new friends, spends weeks in Los Angeles taking meetings with "tv executives slash amateur astrologers" while being a "cheese fry-eating slightly damp Midwest person," "with neck pain and no cartilage in [her] knees," who still hides past due bills under her pillow. The essays in this collection draw on the raw, hilarious particulars of Irby's new life. Wow, No Thank You is Irby at her most unflinching, riotous, and relatable.
Under the Rainbow
Published in 2020
When a group of social activists arrive in a small town, the lives and beliefs of residents and outsiders alike are upended, in this wry, embracing novel. Big Burr, Kansas, is the kind of place where everyone seems to know everyone, and shares the same values?or keeps their opinions to themselves. But when a national nonprofit labels Big Burr "the most homophobic town in the U.S." and sends in a task force of queer volunteers in an experiment?they'll live and work in the community for two years in an attempt to broaden hearts and minds?no one is truly prepared for what will ensue. Furious at being uprooted from her life in L.A. and desperate to fit in at her new high school, Avery fears that it's only a matter of time before her "gay crusader" mom outs her. Still grieving the death of her son, Linda welcomes the arrivals, who know mercifully little about her past. And for Christine, the newcomers are not only a threat to the comforting rhythms of Big Burr life, but a call to action. As tensions roil the town, cratering relationships and forcing closely guarded secrets into the light, everyone must consider what it really means to belong. Told with warmth and wit, Under the Rainbow is a poignant, hopeful articulation of our complicated humanity that reminds us we are more alike than we'd like to admit.
Something That May Shock and Discredit You
Published in 2020
Named one of the most anticipated books of the year by Entertainment Weekly , O, The Oprah Magazine , BuzzFeed , Electric Literature , Yahoo Lifestyle , and Bitch Media "A delightful hybrid of a book... Youll laugh, you'll cry, often both at once. Everyone should read this extraordinary book." ? Kirkus Reviews (starred review) From the New York Times bestselling author of Texts From Jane Eyre and Merry Spinster , writer of Slate 's "Dear Prudence" column, and cofounder of The Toast comes a hilarious and stirring collection of essays and cultural observations spanning pop culture?from the endearingly popular to the staggeringly obscure. Daniel Mallory Ortberg is known for blending genres, forms, and sources to develop fascinating new hybrids?from lyric rants to horror recipes to pornographic scripture. In his most personal work to date, he turns his attention to the essay, offering vigorous and laugh-out-loud funny accounts of both popular and highbrow culture while mixing in meditations on gender transition, family dynamics, and the many meanings of faith. From a thoughtful analysis of the beauty of William Shatner to a sinister reimagining of HGTV's House Hunters , and featuring figures as varied as Anne of Green Gables, Columbo, Nora Ephron, Apollo, and the cast of Mean Girls , Something That May Shock and Discredit You is a hilarious and emotionally exhilarating compendium that combines personal history with cultural history to make you see yourself and those around you entirely anew. It further establishes Ortberg as one of the most innovative and engaging voices of his generation?and it may just change the way you think about Lord Byron forever.
The Raven Tower
Published in 2019
Gods meddle in the fates of men, men play with the fates of gods, and a pretender must be cast down from the throne in this masterful first fantasy novel from Ann Leckie, New York TimesFor centuries, the kingdom of Iraden has been protected by the god known as the Raven. He watches over his territory from atop a tower in the powerful port of Vastai. His will is enacted through the Raven's Lease, a human ruler chosen by the god himself. His magic is sustained via the blood sacrifice that every Lease must offer. And under the Raven's watch, the city flourishes. But the power of the Raven is weakening. A usurper has claimed the throne. The kingdom's borders are tested by invaders who long for the prosperity that Vastai boasts. And they have made their own alliances with other gods. It is into this unrest that the warrior Eolo--aide to Mawat, the true Lease--arrives. And in seeking to help Mawat reclaim his city, Eolo discovers that the Raven's Tower holds a secret. Its foundations conceal a dark history that has been waiting to reveal itself...and to set in motion a chain of events that could destroy Iraden forever.
In the Dream House
Published in 2019
A revolutionary memoir about domestic abuse by the award-winning author of Her Body and Other Parties In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado's engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad, and a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming. And it's that struggle that gives the book its original structure: each chapter is driven by its own narrative trope?the haunted house, erotica, the bildungsroman?through which Machado holds the events up to the light and examines them from different angles. She looks back at her religious adolescence, unpacks the stereotype of lesbian relationships as safe and utopian, and widens the view with essayistic explorations of the history and reality of abuse in queer relationships. Machado's dire narrative is leavened with her characteristic wit, playfulness, and openness to inquiry. She casts a critical eye over legal proceedings, fairy tales, Star Trek , and Disney villains, as well as iconic works of film and fiction. The result is a wrenching, riveting book that explodes our ideas about what a memoir can do and be.
God in Pink
A Novel
Published in 2016
Lambda Literary Award winner, Best Gay Fiction. A revelatory novel about being queer and Muslim, set in war-torn Iraq in 2003. Ramy is a young gay Iraqi struggling to find a balance between his sexuality, religion, and culture. Ammar is a sheikh whose guidance Ramy seeks, and whose tolerance is tested by his belief in the teachings of the Qur'an. Full of quiet moments of beauty and raw depictions of violence, God in Pink poignantly captures the anguish and the fortitude of Islamic life in Iraq.
Like a Love Story
Published in 2019
"A love letter to queerness, self-expression, and individuality (also Madonna) that never shies away from the ever-present fear within the queer community of late '80s New York, Like a Love Story made me feel so full?of hope, love, courage, pride, and awe for the many people who fought for love and self-expression in the face of discrimination, cruelty, and death. "A book for warriors, divas, artists, queens, individuals, activists, trend setters, and anyone searching for the courage to be themselves."?Mackenzi Lee, New York Times bestselling author of The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue It's 1989 in New York City, and for three teens, the world is changing. Reza is an Iranian boy who has just moved to the city with his mother to live with his stepfather and stepbrother. He's terrified that someone will guess the truth he can barely acknowledge about himself. Reza knows he's gay, but all he knows of gay life are the media's images of men dying of AIDS. Judy is an aspiring fashion designer who worships her uncle Stephen, a gay man with AIDS who devotes his time to activism as a member of ACT UP. Judy has never imagined finding romance...until she falls for Reza and they start dating. Art is Judy's best friend, their school's only out and proud teen. He'll never be who his conservative parents want him to be, so he rebels by documenting the AIDS crisis through his photographs. As Reza and Art grow closer, Reza struggles to find a way out of his deception that won't break Judy's heart?and destroy the most meaningful friendship he's ever known. This is a bighearted, sprawling epic about friendship and love and the revolutionary act of living life to the fullest in the face of impossible odds.
A Study in Honor
Published in 2018
A selection in Parade's roundup of "25 Hottest Books of Summer 2018" A Paste Magazine's Most Anticipated 25 books of 2018 pick A Medium's Books pick for We Can't Wait to Read in 2018 list Set in a near future Washington, D.C., a clever, incisive, and fresh feminist twist on a classic literary icon?Sherlock Holmes?in which Dr. Janet Watson and covert agent Sara Holmes will use espionage, advanced technology, and the power of deduction to unmask a murderer targeting Civil War veterans. Dr. Janet Watson knows firsthand the horrifying cost of a divided nation. While treating broken soldiers on the battlefields of the New Civil War, a sniper's bullet shattered her arm and ended her career. Honorably discharged and struggling with the semi-functional mechanical arm that replaced the limb she lost, she returns to the nation's capital, a bleak, edgy city in the throes of a fraught presidential election. Homeless and jobless, Watson is uncertain of the future when she meets another black and queer woman, Sara Holmes, a mysterious yet playfully challenging covert agent who offers the doctor a place to stay. Watson's readjustment to civilian life is complicated by the infuriating antics of her strange new roommate. But the tensions between them dissolve when Watson discovers that soldiers from the New Civil War have begun dying one by one?and that the deaths may be the tip of something far more dangerous, involving the pharmaceutical industry and even the looming election. Joining forces, Watson and Holmes embark on a thrilling investigation to solve the mystery?and secure justice for these fallen soldiers.
Anger Is a Gift
Published in 2018
*31st Annual Lammy Finalist for LGBTQ Children ' s/Young Adult category* *2019 ALA Schneider Family Book Award Teen Winner* * Buzzfeed 's 24 Best YA Books of 2018* * Vulture 's 38 Best LGBTQ YA Novels* * Book Riot 's Best Books 2018* * Hyable 's Most Anticipated Queer YA Books of 2018* * The Mary Sue 's 18 Books You Should Read in 2018* Moss Jeffries is many things?considerate student, devoted son, loyal friend and affectionate boyfriend, enthusiastic nerd. But sometimes Moss still wishes he could be someone else?someone without panic attacks, someone whose father was still alive, someone who hadn't become a rallying point for a community because of one horrible night. And most of all, he wishes he didn't feel so stuck. Moss can't even escape at school?he and his friends are subject to the lack of funds and crumbling infrastructure at West Oakland High, as well as constant intimidation by the resource officer stationed in their halls. That was even before the new regulations?it seems sometimes that the students are treated more like criminals. Something will have to change?but who will listen to a group of teens? When tensions hit a fever pitch and tragedy strikes again, Moss must face a difficult choice: give in to fear and hate or realize that anger can actually be a gift. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Little Fish
Published in 2018
When thirty-year-old trans woman Wendy Reimer comes across evidence that her late grandfather?a devout Mennonite farmer?might have been transgender himself, she dismisses this revelation, having other problems at hand. But as she and her friends struggle to cope with their increasingly volatile lives?which range from alcoholism, to sex work, to suicide?Wendy grows increasingly drawn to the lost pieces of her grandfather's life, becoming determined to unravel the mystery of his truth. Alternately warm-hearted and dark-spirited, desperate and mirthful, Little Fish explores the winter of discontent in the life of one transgender woman as her past and future become irrevocably entwined.
The Priory of the Orange Tree
Published in 2019
The New York Times bestselling " epic feminist fantasy perfect for fans of Game of Thrones " (Bustle). A world divided. A queendom without an heir. An ancient enemy awakens. The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction?but assassins are getting closer to her door. Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic. Across the dark sea, Tan? has trained all her life to be a dragonrider, but is forced to make a choice that could see her life unravel. Meanwhile, the divided East and West refuse to parley, and forces of chaos are rising from their sleep.
Homie
Published in 2020
Danez Smith is our president Homie is Danez Smith's magnificent anthem about the saving grace of friendship. Rooted in the loss of one of Smith's close friends, this book comes out of the search for joy and intimacy within a nation where both can seem scarce and getting scarcer. In poems of rare power and generosity, Smith acknowledges that in a country overrun by violence, xenophobia, and disparity, and in a body defined by race, queerness, and diagnosis, it can be hard to survive, even harder to remember reasons for living. But then the phone lights up, or a shout comes up to the window, and family?blood and chosen?arrives with just the right food and some redemption. Part friendship diary, part bright elegy, part war cry, Homie is the exuberant new book written for Danez and for Danez's friends and for you and for yours.
An Unkindness of Ghosts
Published in 2017
Aster has little to offer folks in the way of rebuttal when they call her ogre and freak. She's used to the names; she only wishes there was more truth to them. If she were truly a monster, she'd be powerful enough to tear down the walls around her until nothing remains of her world. Aster lives in the lowdeck slums of the HSS Matilda, a space vessel organized much like the antebellum South. For generations, Matilda has ferried the last of humanity to a mythical Promised Land. On its way, the ship's leaders have imposed harsh moral restrictions and deep indignities on dark-skinned sharecroppers like Aster. Embroiled in a grudge with a brutal overseer, Aster learns there may be a way to improve her lot--if she's willing to sow the seeds of civil war.
Docile
Published in 2020
There is no consent under capitalism K. M. Szpara's Docile is a science fiction parable about love and sex, wealth and debt, abuse and power, a challenging tour de force that at turns seduces and startles. To be a Docile is to be kept, body and soul, for the uses of the owner of your contract. To be a Docile is to forget, to disappear, to hide inside your body from the horrors of your service. To be a Docile is to sell yourself to pay your parents' debts and buy your children's future. Elisha Wilder's family has been ruined by debt, handed down to them from previous generations. His mother never recovered from the Dociline she took during her term as a Docile, so when Elisha decides to try and erase the family's debt himself, he swears he will never take the drug that took his mother from him. Too bad his contract has been purchased by Alexander Bishop III, whose ultra-rich family is the brains (and money) behind Dociline and the entire Office of Debt Resolution. When Elisha refuses Dociline, Alex refuses to believe that his family's crowning achievement could have any negative side effects?and is determined to turn Elisha into the perfect Docile without it. Content warning: Docile contains forthright depictions and discussions of rape and sexual abuse. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Invisible Kingdom. Volume 1, Issue 1-5.
Published in 2019
Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning author G. Willow Wilson (Ms. Marvel, Wonder Woman) and Eisner winning artist Christian Ward (Black Bolt) team up for this epic new sci-fi saga! In a small solar system in a far-flung galaxy, two women-one a young religious acolyte and the other, a hard-bitten freighter pilot-uncover a conspiracy between the leaders of the most dominant religion and an all-consuming mega-corporation. On the run from reprisals on both sides, this unlikely pair must decide where their loyalties lie-and risk plunging the world into anarchy if they reveal the truth.
A Wild and Precious Life
A Memoir
Published in 2019
-- -- is remarkable portrait of an iconic woman, gay life in New York in the second half of the twentieth century, and the rise of LGBT activism.
Frankissstein
A Love Story
Published in 2019
Lake Geneva, 1816. Nineteen-year-old Mary Shelley is inspired to write a story about a scientist who creates a new life-form. In Brexit Britain, a young transgender doctor called Ry is falling in love with Victor Stein, a celebrated professor leading the public debate around AI and carrying out some experiments of his own in a vast underground network of tunnels. Meanwhile, Ron Lord, just divorced and living with his mom again, is set to make his fortune launching a new generation of sex dolls for lonely men everywhere. Across the Atlantic, in Phoenix, Arizona, a cryogenics facility houses dozens of bodies of men and women who are medically and legally dead? but waiting to return to life. What will happen when homo sapiens are no longer the smartest being on the planet? In fiercely intelligent prose, Jeanette Winterson shows us how much closer we are to that future than we realize. Funny and furious, bold and clear-sighted, Frankissstein is a love story about life itself.