Leisure Reading: Pride Month

In a series of personal essays, prominent journalist and LGBTQIA+ activist George M. Johnson's All Boys Aren't Blue explores his childhood, adolescence, and college years in New Jersey and Virginia.
From the memories of getting his teeth kicked out by bullies at age five, to flea marketing with his loving grandmother, to his first sexual relationships, this young-adult memoir weaves together the trials and triumphs faced by Black queer boys.
Both a primer for teens eager to be allies as well as a reassuring testimony for young queer men of color, All Boys Aren't Blue covers topics such as gender identity, toxic masculinity, brotherhood, family, structural marginalization, consent, and Black joy. Johnson's emotionally frank style of writing will appeal directly to young adults. (Publisher)

James Fitzgerald likes his life the way it is. He has a stable academic career teaching American literature; a comfortable townhouse in Brooklyn; a satisfying, open marriage with his partner of fifteen years; a sweet and playful young boyfriend; and a recently-published, well-received novel about a famous early-twentieth-century Harvard professor. But his poise is shattered when a woman appears at a book signing bearing a surprise gift: an unsent letter from her brother Gregory, James’ first boyfriend and—ever since Gregory’s sudden death twenty-five years ago—the dark gravitational center of James’ intellectual and emotional life. What follows is a near hallucinatory night of soul-questioning as James, wandering the streets of New York, re-examines his stormy, life-altering relationship with Gregory, a charismatic, self-destructive activist and writer and the real impetus behind James’ new novel.
Rapidly shifting between the late 1980s, when AIDS cut a deadly swath through the gay community, and the dawn of the Trump era, where social media and political polarization threaten another kind of death sentence, American Scholar tells the story of a man driven to discover but afraid to know the truth about himself and his loves past and present. (Publisher)

Any Other City is a two-sided fictional memoir by Tracy St. Cyr, who helms the beloved indie rock band Static Saints. Side A is a snapshot of her life from 1993, when Tracy arrives in a labyrinthine city as a fledgling artist and unexpectedly falls in with a clutch of trans women, including the iconoclastic visual artist Sadie Tang.
Side B finds Tracy in 2019, now a semi-famous musician, in the same strange city, healing from a traumatic event through songwriting, queer kinship, and sexual pleasure. While writing her memoir, Tracy perceives how the past reverberates into the present, how a body is a time machine, how there's power in refusing to dust the past with powdered sugar, and how seedlings begin to slowly grow in empty spaces after things have been broken open.
Motifs recur like musical phrases, and traces of what used to be there peek through, like a palimpsest. Any Other City is a novel about friendship and other forms of love, travelling in a body across decades, and transmuting trauma through art making and queer sex - a love letter to trans femmes and to art itself. (Publisher)

Toronto is home to multiple and thriving queer communities that reflect the dynamism of a global city. Any Other Way is an eclectic and richly illustrated local history that reveals how these individuals and community networks have transformed Toronto from a place of churches and conservative mores into a city that has consistently led the way in queer activism, not just in Canada but internationally.
From the earliest pioneers to the parades, pride and politics of the contemporary era, Any Other Way draws on a range of voices to explore how the residents of queer Toronto have shaped and reshaped one of the world’s most diverse cities.
Any Other Way includes chapters on: Oscar Wilde’s trip to Toronto; early cruising areas and gay/lesbian bars; queer shared houses; a pioneering collective counter-archive project; bath house raids; LBGT-police conflicts; the Queen Street art/music/activist scene; and a profile of Jackie Shane, the trans R&B singer who performed in drag in both Toronto and Los Angeles, and gained international fame with her 1962 chart-topping single, ‘Any Other Way.’ (Publisher)

War machines and AI gods run amok in The Archive Undying, national bestseller Emma Mieko Candon's bold entry into the world of mecha fiction.
WHEN AN AI DIES, ITS CITY DIES WITH IT
WHEN A CITY FALLS, IT LEAVES A CORPSE BEHIND
WHEN THAT CORPSE RUNS OFF, ONLY DEVOTION CAN BRING IT BACK
When the robotic god of Khuon Mo went mad, it destroyed everything it touched. It killed its priests, its city, and all its wondrous works. But in its final death throes, the god brought one thing back to life: its favorite child, Sunai. For the seventeen years since, Sunai has walked the land like a ghost, unable to die, unable to age, and unable to forget the horrors he's seen. He's run as far as he can from the wreckage of his faith, drowning himself in drink, drugs, and men. But when Sunai wakes up in the bed of the one man he never should have slept with, he finds himself on a path straight back into the world of gods and machines.
The Archive Undying is the first volume of Emma Mieko Candon's Downworld Sequence, a sci-fi series where AI deities and brutal police states clash, wielding giant robots steered by pilot-priests with corrupted bodies.
Come get in the robot. (Publisher)

Catherine Hernandez's most gripping and affecting novel yet, Behind You is inspired by a horrifying chapter in Canadian history and follows fictional characters terrorized by a fictional perpetrator.
Alma is a film editor working on a True Crime series about the twentieth century's most notorious killers. It's not until the series' last episode, which features the Scarborough Stalker, that Alma remembers coming of age while the serial rapist and killer was attacking women and girls in Scarborough in the late 80s and early 90s.
Two storylines unfold. In the past, young Alma watches as an entire city hunts for an elusive, terrifying suspect, while she herself faces jeopardy from closer corners. In the present, adult Alma must come to terms with her own ideas of consent in order to stop her teenage son Mateo's dangerous behaviour toward his girlfriend.
Weaving back and forth in time, Behind You is a moving story of one girl’s resilience as she enters adulthood and a chilling portrayal of the insidiousness if rape culture. It daringly turns the whodunit genre on its head by asking "Who hasn't done it?" As in, who hasn't been complicit in sexual harm? (Inside Book Flap)

2024 Winner Lambda Literary Awards, Lesbian Fiction

When X--an iconoclastic artist, writer, and polarizing shape-shifter--falls dead in her office, her widow, CM, hurls herself into writing a biography of the woman she deified. On a quest to find out where X was born, CM instead opens a Pandora's box of secrets, betrayals, and destruction. All the while, she immerses herself in the history of the Southern Territory, a fascist theocracy that split from the rest of the country after World War II, and which finally, in the present day, is being forced into an uneasy reunification.
A masterfully constructed literary adventure complete with original images assembled by X's widow, Biography of X follows CM as she traces X's peripatetic trajectory over decades and through her collaborations and feuds with everyone from Bowie and Waits to Sontag and Acker. At last, when she finally understands the scope of X's defining artistic project, CM realizes her wife's deceptions were far crueler than she imagined. Pulsing with suspense and intellect while blending nonfiction and fiction, Biography of X is a roaring epic that plumbs the depths of grief, art, and love. (Back Cover)

Out in the desert in a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly but who has haunted the edges of his life: Juan Gay. Playful raconteur, child lost and found and lost, guardian of the institutionalized, Juan has a project to pass along, one built around a true artifact of a book--Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns--and its devastating history. This book contains accounts collected in the early twentieth century from queer subjects by a queer researcher, Jan Gay, whose groundbreaking work was then co-opted by a committee, her name buried. The voices of these subjects have been filtered, muted, but it is possible to hear them from within and beyond the text, which, in Juan's tattered volumes, has been redacted with black marker on nearly every page. As Juan waits for his end, he and the narrator recount for each other moments of joy and oblivion; they resurrect loves, lives, mothers, fathers, minor heroes. In telling their own stories and the story of the book, they resist the ravages of memory and time. (Book Jacket, Inside Flap)

Halfling Saga, Book 1

At once cinematic yet intimate, Broughtupsy is an enthralling debut novel about a young Jamaican woman grappling with grief as she discovers her family, her home, is always just out of reach
Told through an intimate and atmospheric first-person account, Broughtupsy is a queer diasporic chronicle of twenty-year-old Akúa's return to her native Kingston, Jamaica, after living in the U.S. then Canada in the decade following her mother's death.
The reason for Akúa's return is a woeful one: her younger brother Bryson has just passed from sickle cell anemia, the same sickness that took their mother. Unmoored and in mourning, Akúa returns to Kingston to hopefully reconnect with her estranged older sister Tamika, her last living sibling, and to bring her brother home. As the two sisters visit significant places from their childhood, Akúa is confronted with the difficult realities of being gay in a deeply religious family, of feeling separate from her home culture after years of living abroad, and of battling the grief of losing her mother then brother at pivotal moments in her young life. Along the way, she meets Jayda, a bashful queer woman who shows her a different side of Kingston and gives her a glimmer of hope of how to be at peace with her sister and herself. At its core, Broughtupsy asks us: what are we willing to do for family? What are we willing to do to savor the feeling of home? (Publisher)

A surreal novella about the intensity and eroticism of girlhood friendships, the ecstasy of desire and disgust, and matriarchal mythmaking.
Seven, who works as a cleaner at a chiropractor’s office, reencounters Cecilia, a woman who has obsessed her since their school days. As the two of them board the same bus—each dubiously claiming not to be following the other—their chance meeting spurs a series of intensely vivid and corporeal memories. As past and present bleed together, Seven can feel her desire begin to unmoor her from the flow of time.
Smart, subversive, and gripping, Cecilia is a winding, misty road trip through bodily transformation, the inextricable histories of violence and love, and the ghosts of girlhood friendship. (Author's Website)

Canadian Writers in Person Lecture Series (2024)
https://www.yorku.ca/laps/huma/canadian-writers/
Winner, 2023 Governor General's Literary Award

Genre-blending stories of transformation and belonging that centre women of colour and explore queerness, family, and community.
A couple in a crumbling marriage faces divine intervention. A woman dies in her dreams again and again until she finds salvation in an unexpected source. A teenage misfit discovers a darkness lurking just beyond the borders of her suburban home.
The stories in Chrysalis, Anuja Varghese’s debut collection, are by turns poignant and chilling, blurring the lines between the real world and worlds beyond. Varghese delves fearlessly into complex intersections of family, community, sexuality, and cultural expectation, taking aim at the ways in which racialized women are robbed of power and revelling in the strange and dangerous journeys they undertake to reclaim it. (Publisher)

Canadian Writers in Person Lecture Series (2024)
https://www.yorku.ca/laps/huma/canadian-writers/

A collection of intersecting stories about Indigenous love and loneliness from one of contemporary literature’s most boundless minds.
Across the prairies and Canada’s west coast, on reserves and university campuses, at literary festivals and existential crossroads, the characters in Coexistence are searching for connection. They’re learning to live with and understand one another, to see beauty and terror side by side, and to accept that the past, present, and future can inhabit a single moment.
An aging mother confides in her son about an intimate friendship from her distant girlhood. A middling poet is haunted by the cliché his life has become. A chorus of anonymous gay men dispense unvarnished truths about their sex lives. A man freshly released from prison finds that life on the outside has sinister strictures of its own. A PhD student dog-sits for his parents at what was once a lodging for nuns operating a residential school—a house where the spectre of Catholicism comes to feel eerily literal.
Bearing the compression, crystalline sentences, and emotional potency that have characterized his earlier books, Coexistence is a testament to Belcourt’s mastery of and playfulness in any literary form. A vital addition to an already rich catalogue, this is a must-read collection and the work of an author at the height of his powers. (Publisher)

A queer Syrian refugee reckons with a life spent out of place.
“Writing this memoir is a betrayal.” So begins this electrifying personal account from Danny Ramadan, a celebrated novelist who has long enjoyed the shield his fiction provides. Now, to tell the story of his life, he must revisit dark corners of his past he’d rather forget and unearth memories of a city he can no longer return to.
Starting with his family’s humble beginnings in Damascus, he takes readers on an epic, border-crossing journey: to the city’s underground network of queer safe homes; to a clandestine party at a secluded villa in Cairo; through Arab Spring uprisings across the Middle East, a reckless hoax that threatens the safety of Syria’s LGBTQ+ community, and a traumatic six-week imprisonment; to beaches and sunsets with friends in Beirut; to an arrival in Vancouver that’s not as smooth as it promised to be; and ultimately to a life of hard-won comfort and love.
What emerges is a powerful refutation of the oversimplified refugee narrative—a book that holds space for joy alongside sorrow, for nuance and complicated ambivalences. Written with fearless intimacy, Crooked Teeth is a singular achievement in which a master storyteller learns that his greatest story is his own. (Author's Website)

2024 Giller Prize Shortlist

This sparkling, genre-bending novel opens with amateur historian Anne, who has a passion for research into the murkier corners of England in the 1600s. In an archive, Anne has stumbled across an obscure memoir, one that hints at an intricate tapestry of secret lives and loves.
The full story eventually weaves together five manuscripts, each a different thread in the same strange tale: The Plague descends upon a village, and two children, Joan and Thomasina, are the only survivors. They bond with each other and with "Old Nut," a woman who lives in the forest nearby. But when relatives return, Old Nut is accused of witchcraft and condemned to death. Joan is hired as a maid to well-educated Lady Margaret Long—and, being lively and curious, soon becomes a beloved companion. Thomasina is sent on a perilous voyage to Virginia, where she adopts boys' clothing and navigates life as a male.
Years later, Tom and Joan find each other and fall in love—but are discovered, naked, by a clergyman. Horrified, he believes there can only be one explanation for Tom's "unmanned" state: Joan is a witch and, like Old Nut years ago, must be tried for sorcery. It falls upon Anne, reading between faded pages and centuries, to uncover the fate of the lovers—and add her own contemporary line of "truth" to this tale from a time when there were no labels for who Tom and Joan might be. (Book Jacket, Inside Flap)

The Endsong, Book 1

Sascha Stronach's queer, Māori-inspired fantasy debut follows a thief turned cop who is murdered, brought back to life with a mysterious new power, and tasked with protecting her city from a devastating attack.
The port city of Hainak is alive: its buildings, its fashion, even its weapons. After a devastating war and a biotech revolution, all its inhabitants want is peace, no one more so than constable Jyn Yat-Hok.
Recently demoted on the force due to "lifestyle choices" after being caught at a gay club, Yat is barely holding it together, haunted by memories of a lover who vanished and voices that float in and out of her head like radio signals. When she stumbles across a dead body on her patrol, two fellow officers gruesomely murder her and dump her into the harbor. Unfortunately for them, she wakes up.
Resurrected by an ancient power, she finds herself with the ability to manipulate life force. Quickly falling in with the pirate crew who has found her, she must race against time to stop a plague from being unleashed by the evil that has taken root in Hainak. (Back Cover)

Diana, Princess of Wales stole the hearts of many people in the LGBTQ community and beyond.
An unorthodox biography of Diana Spencer told through a particular autistic and transmasculine lens. Examining issues of identity and self-determination, and the mythological parallels in the lives of the royal family and the author himself. (Back Cover)

Sumptuous and addictive, An Education in Malice is a dark-academia tale of blood, secrets, and insatiable hungers, from S.T. Gibson, author of the cult hit A Dowry of Blood.
Deep in the forgotten hills of Massachusetts stands Saint Perpetua's Women's College. Isolated and ancient, it is not a place for timid girls. Here, secrets are currency, ambition is lifeblood, and strange ceremonies welcome students into the fold.
On her first day of class, Laura Sheridan is thrust into an intense academic rivalry with the beautiful and enigmatic Carmilla. Together, they are drawn into the confidence of their demanding poetry professor, De Lafontaine, who holds her own dark obsession with Carmilla.
But as their rivalry blossoms into something far more delicious, Laura must confront her own strange hungers. Tangled in a sinister game of politics, bloodthirsty professors, and magic, Laura and Carmilla must decide how much they are willing to sacrifice in their ruthless pursuit of knowledge. (Back Cover)

The hardest thing in the world is to live only once…
One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to transform Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community on the brink.
Following the cycles of history, memory, and time, The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which love, labor, and loneliness form the bedrock of American life. At its heart is a brave epic about what it means to exist on the fringes of society and to reckon with the wounds that haunt our collective soul. Hallmarks of Ocean Vuong’s writing—formal innovation, syntactic dexterity, and the ability to twin grit with grace through tenderness—are on full display in this story of loss, hope, and how far we would go to possess one of life’s most fleeting mercies: a second chance. (Publisher)

2024 Winner Lambda Literary Awards, Gay Fiction

From the bestselling, award-winning author of Memorial and Lot, an irresistible, intimate novel about two young men, once best friends, whose lives collide again after a loss.
Cam is living in Los Angeles and falling apart after the love of his life has died. Kai's ghost won't leave Cam alone, his spectral visits wild, tender, and unexpected. When Cam returns to his hometown of Houston, he crashes back into the orbit of his former best friend, TJ, and TJ's family bakery. TJ's not sure how to navigate this changed Cam, impenetrably cool and self-destructing, or their charged estrangement. Can they find a way past all that has been said - and left unsaid - to save each other? Could they find a way back to being okay again, or maybe for the first time?
When secrets and wounds become so insurmountable that they devour us from within, hope and sustenance and friendship can come from the most unlikely source. Spanning Los Angeles, Houston, and Osaka, Family Meal is a story about how the people who know us the longest can hurt us the most, but how they also set the standard for love. With his signature generosity and eye for food, sex, love, and the moments that make us the most human, Bryan Washington returns with a brilliant new novel. (Book Jacket, Inside Flap)

It's 1922 at Far Cry Cannery, a quarter mile of boardwalk and wooden buildings strung along the rocks of Rivers Inlet on the northwest coast of British Columbia. The time has come for Anders Viken, storekeeper and honorary uncle to the recently orphaned Kit, to give an account of his secret self: the reason why he fled the loving grip of his family in Norway, his years of rough living, and his impossible love--the kind in which pain and longing are braided together.
As the sockeye flood up the inlet, Anders spends his long nights recording his confessions for eighteen-year-old Kit, the only remaining member of his chosen family after Kit's mother, Bobbie, scandalized the cannery town by running off with the handsome Chinese camp cook, and her father, Frank, was found drowned beside his own boat in the harbour. While her uncle does his reckoning, Kit fends off the advances of the cannery manager and tries to earn her keep. Oars in hand, she glides her skiff out over the great returning school and casts her net. This, at least, makes sense to her, as opposed to the convoluted workings of love. (Book Jacket, Inside Flap)

As you grow up, you receive lots of messages about gender. Most kids start to define their own gender identity as early as age four! But what if the messages you receive don’t seem to describe you? What if the things you like don’t match who people say you are? What if you don’t even know what gender you are?
From the illustrator behind What Are Your Words? and other books on gender and personal identity comes a resource for all kids, of any gender. This fun, heavily illustrated chapter book explains the basics of gender identity—what it is, what it means, and how to support yourself and others no matter who you are. (Back Cover)

In the1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence,a young man finds himself caught between desire 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 a deeply moving story that reveals the unspoken complexities of the human heart. One of the most brilliant and provocative literary figures of the past century, James Baldwin gives us a groundbreaking novel about love and the fear of love. (Back Cover)

From journalist and drag historian Elyssa Maxx Goodman, an intimate, evocative history of drag in New York City exploring its dynamic role, from the Jazz Age to Drag Race, in queer liberation and urban life
From the lush feather boas that adorned early female impersonators to the sequined lip syncs of barroom queens to the drag kings that have us laughing in stitches, drag has played a vital role in the creative life of New York City. But the evolution of drag in the city—as an art form, a community and a mode of liberation—has never before been fully chronicled.
Now, for the first time, Elyssa Goodman unearths the dramatic, provocative untold story of drag in New York City in all its glistening glory. Glitter and Concrete ducks beneath the velvet ropes of Harlem Renaissance balls, examines drag’s crucial role in the Stonewall Uprising, traces drag's influence on disco and punk rock as well as its unifying power during the AIDS crisis and 9/11, and culminates with the modern-day drag queen in the era of RuPaul’s Drag Race.
Including original interviews with high-profile performers, as well as glamorous color photos from exclusive sources and the author herself, Glitter and Concrete is a significant contribution to queer history and an essential read for anyone curious about the story that echoes beneath the heels. (Publisher)

A Great Gay Book: Stories of Growth, Belonging & Other Queer Possibilities is a gorgeously designed collection of art, essays, short fiction, poetry, interviews, profiles, and photography from the archives of the beloved queer magazine Hello Mr., as well as new material from today’s biggest LGBTQ+ creatives.
Hello Mr. was founded by Ryan Fitzgibbon in 2012. Over its ten-issue lifespan, the groundbreaking indie magazine became the first home for some of the most prestigious queer voices of a generation. With more than a decade’s devotion, and the publishing prowess of Abrams, Fitzgibbon has created an astonishing reminder of our collective power in A Great Gay Book.
Notable artists and writers featured include Jeremy Atherton Lin, Lady Bunny, Alexander Chee, Garth Greenwell, Saeed Jones, Wesley Morris, Chani Nicholas, Tommy Pico, Brontez Purnell, LJ Roberts, Mathew Rodriguez, Antwaun Sargent, Fran Tirado, Ocean Vuong, Bryan Washington, John Waters, Kehinde Wiley, J Wortham, Hanya Yanagihara, and many more. (Book's Website)

After the death of her estranged father, artist Rita struggles with grief and regret. There was so much she wanted to ask him about his childhood, their family, and the Mi'kmaq language and culture from which Rita feels disconnected. But when Rita's girlfriend Molly forges an artist's residency application on her behalf, winning Rita a week to paint at an isolated cabin, Rita is both furious and intrigued. The residency is located where her father grew up.
On the first night at the cabin, Rita wakes to strange sounds. Was that a body being dragged through the woods? When she questions the locals about the cabin's history, they are suspicious and unhelpful. Ignoring her unease, Rita gives in to dark visions that emanate from the forest's lake and the surrounding swamp. She feels its pull, channelling that energy into art like she's never painted before. But the uncanny visions become more insistent, more intrusive, and Rita discovers that in the swamp's decay the end of one life is sometimes the beginning of another. (Back Cover)

Boy meets boy. Boys become friends. Boys fall in love. A bestselling LGBTQ+ graphic novel about life, love, and everything that happens in between.
Charlie and Nick are at the same school, but they’ve never met … until one day when they’re made to sit together. They quickly become friends, and soon Charlie is falling hard for Nick, even though he doesn’t think he has a chance.
But love works in surprising ways, and Nick is more interested in Charlie than either of them realised.
By Alice Oseman, winner of the YA Book Prize, Heartstopper is about love, friendship, loyalty and mental illness. It encompasses all the small stories of Nick and Charlie’s lives that together make up something larger, which speaks to all of us.
This is the first volume of Heartstopper, which is now an acclaimed live-action Netflix series. (Author's website)

Halfling Saga, Book 4

The thrilling final installment of BookTok sensation Melissa Blair's highly acclaimed romantasy series.
"Your land is not the one you take; it is the one you die for."
Keera has tried to keep her final promise to Brenna, the partner she was forced to kill to save a kingdom--but that promise has led to the most difficult struggles of her life. She's been at war with her worst self while battling King Damien for the freedom of the Halflings, and she's lost too many along the way. But when she finally unleashes the Fae magic that's been hidden away for hundreds of years, the conflict seems to be turning in the Halflings' favor.
Meanwhile, Keera's discovery of her
lover's staggering secret and the kidnapping of one of her closest allies threatens to tip her back into darkness, but she has no time to rest. Opening the kingdom's magical seals has transformed Keera in ways even the wisest Fae elders could not have anticipated, and the return of an evil thought long vanquished throws their rescue plans into chaos. And with the kingdom's Halfling population now posing a risk to the crown, the land is plunged into violence as the king begins a new blood purge. Keera and her allies must gather an army to meet Damien's forces in a final confrontation of epic--and tragic--proportions.
This stunning conclusion will leave readers breathless as Keera fights for her land, her people, and the promise of a better world. (Back Cover)

From international drag superstar and pop culture icon RuPaul, comes his most revealing and personal work to date--a deeply intimate memoir of discovery, found family, and self-acceptance. The House of Hidden Meanings is a self-portrait of the legendary icon on the road to global fame and changing the way the world thinks about drag.
Central to RuPaul's success has been his chameleonic adaptability. From drag icon to powerhouse producer of one of the world's largest television franchises, RuPaul's ever-shifting nature has always been part of his brand as both supermodel and supermogul. Yet that adaptability has made him enigmatic to the public. In this memoir, his most intimate and detailed book yet, RuPaul makes himself truly known.
In The House of Hidden Meanings, RuPaul strips away all artifice and recounts the story of his life with breathtaking clarity and tenderness, bringing his signature wisdom and wit to his own biography. From his early years growing up as a queer Black kid in San Diego navigating complex relationships with his absent father and temperamental mother, to forging an identity in the punk and drag scenes of Atlanta and New York, to finding enduring love with his husband Georges LeBar and self-acceptance in sobriety, RuPaul excavates his own biography life-story, uncovering new truths and insights in his personal history.
Here in RuPaul's singular and extraordinary story is a manual for living--a personal philosophy that testifies to the value of chosen family, the importance of harnessing what makes you different, and the transformational power of facing yourself fearlessly.
A profound introspection of his life, relationships, and identity, The House of Hidden Meanings is a self-portrait of the legendary icon on the road to global fame and changing the way the world thinks about drag. "I've always loved to view the world with analytical eyes, examining what lies beneath the surface. Here, the focus is on my own life--as RuPaul Andre Charles," says RuPaul.
If we're all born naked and the rest is drag, then this is RuPaul totally out of drag. This is RuPaul stripped bare. (Publisher)

Evolving from a conversation between Joshua Whitehead and Angie Abdou, Indigiqueerness is part dialogue, part collage, and part memoir. Beginning with memories of his childhood poetry and prose and travelling through the library of his life, Whitehead contemplates the role of theory, Indigenous language, queerness, and fantastical worlds in all his artistic pursuits. This volume is imbued with Whitehead’s energy and celebrates Indigenous writers and creators who defy expectations and transcend genres. (Publisher)

In the shared and private spaces of Iowa City, a loose circle of lovers and friends encounter, confront, and provoke one another in a volatile year of self-discovery. Among them are Seamus, a frustrated young poet; Ivan, a dancer turned aspiring banker who dabbles in amateur pornography; Fatima, whose independence and work ethic complicate her relationships with friends and a trusted mentor; and Noah, who “didn’t seek sex out so much as it came up to him like an anxious dog in need of affection.” These four are buffeted by a cast of artists, landlords, meatpacking workers, and mathematicians who populate the cafes, classrooms, and food-service kitchens of the city, sometimes to violent and electrifying consequence. Finally, as each prepares for an uncertain future, the group heads to a cabin to bid goodbye to their former lives—a moment of reckoning that leaves each of them irrevocably altered.
A novel of friendship and chosen family, The Late Americans asks fresh questions about love and sex, ambition and precarity, and about how human beings can bruise one another while trying to find themselves. It is Brandon Taylor’s richest and most involving work of fiction to date, confirming his position as one of our most perceptive chroniclers of contemporary life. (Publisher)

2024 Winner Lambda Literary Awards, Lesbian Memoir/Biography

Part journey into the archives, part memoir, this extraordinary debut uncovers the lesbian romances and role models written out of history and reveals what their stories can teach us about how to love
When Amelia Possanza moved to Brooklyn to build a life of her own, she found herself surrounded by queer stories: she read them on landmark placards, overheard them on the pool deck when she joined the world’s largest LGBTQ swim team, and even watched them on TV in her cockroach-infested apartment. These stories inspired her to seek out lesbians throughout history who could become her role models, in romance and in life.
Centered around seven love stories for the ages, Lesbian Love Story is Possanza’s journey into the archives to recover the personal histories of lesbians in the twentieth century: who they were, how they loved, why their stories were destroyed, and where their memories live on. Possanza’s hunt takes readers from a drag king show in Bushwick to the home of activists in Harlem and then across the ocean to Hadrian’s Library, where she searches for traces of Sappho in the ruins. Along the way, she discovers her own love—for swimming, for community, for New York City—and adds her record to the archive.
At the heart of this riveting, inventive history, Possanza asks: How could lesbian love help us reimagine care and community? What would our world look like if we replaced its foundation of misogyny with something new, with something distinctly lesbian? (Book Jacket, Inside Flap)

Sixteen-year-old Yamilet Flores prefers to be known for her killer eyeliner, not for being one of the only Mexican kids at her new, mostly white, very rich Catholic school. But at least here no one knows she's gay, and Yami intends to keep it that way.
After being outed by her crush and ex-best friend before transferring to Slayton Catholic, Yami has new priorities: keep her brother out of trouble, make her mom proud, and, most importantly, don't fall in love. Granted, she's never been great at any of those things, but that's a problem for Future Yami.
The thing is, it's hard to fake being straight when Bo, the only openly queer girl at school, is so annoyingly perfect. And smart. And talented. And cute. So cute. Either way, Yami isn't going to make the same mistake again. If word got back to her mom, she could face a lot worse than rejection. So she'll have to start asking, WWSGD: What would a straight girl do?
Told in a captivating voice that is by turns hilarious, vulnerable, and searingly honest, The Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School explores the joys and heartaches of living your full truth out loud. (Back Cover)

Dark Star Trilogy, Book 2

In the stunning second novel of the Dark Star trilogy, Sogolon the Moon Witch tells her own story: of her life, how she gained her power, and what happened in the search for a missing child.
At the center of this startling, fantastically inventive novel is Sogolon, a fearless and resourceful woman who remembers. Mocked and battered as a child, she is drawn into life as a servant at the royal court, where she learns that power is the ultimate goal. It's there that she come to know Keme, a royal scout, and because of him she learns to harness her rage and her passion, her hate and her vengeance, and becomes the Moon Witch.
As the Moon Witch, Sogolon is a match for anyone, including Aesi, the cunning chancellor to the king, and Tracker, a mercenary she traveled with in Black Leopard, Red Wolf.
As Moon Witch, Spider King unfolds, it becomes clear that Sogolon sees the search for a mysterious boy at the center of Black Leopard, Red Wolf very differently than Tracker does. And her own story is so much more than that: Here she confronts new adversaries, suffers both unexpected joy and unbearable loss, and over the course of her 177 years comes to realize that truth is a matter of opinion and that to trust a man is to risk losing a part of oneself.
By turns sweeping and intimate, epic and human, and drawing from African myth and mythology, Moon Witch, Spider King is brilliant fantasy, a worthy complement to Black Leopard, Red Wolf, and the gripping story of a woman who will risk everything to live life on her terms. (Book Jacket, Inside Flap)

2024 Winner Lambda Literary Awards, Bisexual Fiction

Sly, surprising, and razor-sharp, Natural Beauty follows a young musician into an elite, beauty-obsessed world where perfection comes at a staggering cost.
Our narrator produces a sound from the piano no one else at the Conservatory can. She employs a technique she learned from her parents—also talented musicians—who fled China in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. But when an accident leaves her parents debilitated, she abandons her future for a job at a high-end beauty and wellness store in New York City.
Holistik is known for its remarkable products and procedures—from remoras that suck out cheap Botox to eyelash extensions made of spider silk—and her new job affords her entry into a world of privilege and gives her a long-awaited sense of belonging. She becomes transfixed by Helen, the niece of Holistik’s charismatic owner, and the two strike up a friendship that hazily veers into more. All the while, our narrator is plied with products that slim her thighs, smooth her skin, and lighten her hair. But beneath these creams and tinctures lies something sinister.
A piercing, darkly funny debut, Natural Beauty explores questions of consumerism, self-worth, race, and identity—and leaves readers with a shocking and unsettling truth. (Publisher)

Savannah "Sav" Henry is almost the person she wants to be, or at least she's getting closer. It’s the second semester of her sophomore year. She’s finally come out as bisexual, is making friends with the other queers in her dorm, and has just about recovered from her disastrous first queer “situationship.” She is cautiously optimistic that her life is about to begin.
But when she learns that Izzie, her best friend from childhood, has gotten engaged, Sav faces a crisis of confidence. Things with Izzie haven’t been the same since what happened between Sav and Izzie’s older brother when they were sixteen. Now, with the wedding around the corner, Sav is forced to reckon with trauma she thought she could put behind her.
On top of it all, Sav can’t stop thinking about Wes from her Gender Studies class—sweet, funny Wes, with their long eyelashes and green backpack. There’s something different here—with Wes and with her new friends (who delight in teasing her about this face-burning crush); it feels, terrifyingly, like they might truly see her in a way no one has before.
With a singularly funny, heartfelt voice, Old Enough explores queer love, community, and what it means to be a sexual assault survivor. Haley Jakobson has written a love letter to friendship and an honest depiction of what finding your people can feel like—for better or worse. (Publisher)

We need community to live. But what does it look like? Why does it often feel like it’s slipping away?
We are all hinged to some definition of a community, be it as simple as where we live, complex as the beliefs we share, or as intentional as those we call family. In an episodic personal essay, Casey Plett draws on a range of firsthand experiences to start a conversation about the larger implications of community as a word, an idea, and a symbol. With each thread a cumulative definition of community, and what it has come to mean to Plett, emerges.
Looking at phenomena from transgender literature, to Mennonite history, to hacker houses of Silicon Valley, and the rise of nationalism in North America, Plett delves into the thorny intractability of community’s boons and faults. Deeply personal, authoritative in its illuminations, On Community is an essential contribution to the larger cultural discourse that asks how, and to what socio-political ends, we form bonds with one another. (Publisher)

Collector's Edition ; New Bonus Chapter
For cynical twenty-three-year-old August, moving to New York City is supposed to prove her right: that things like magic and cinematic love stories don’t exist, and the only smart way to go through life is alone. She can’t imagine how waiting tables at a 24-hour pancake diner and moving in with too many weird roommates could possibly change that. And there’s certainly no chance of her subway commute being anything more than a daily trudge through boredom and electrical failures.
But then, there’s this gorgeous girl on the train.
Jane. Dazzling, charming, mysterious, impossible Jane. Jane with her rough edges and swoopy hair and soft smile, showing up in a leather jacket to save August’s morning when she needs it most. August’s subway crush becomes the best part of her day, but pretty soon she discovers there’s one big problem: Jane doesn’t just look like an old school punk rocker. She’s literally displaced in time from the 1970s, and August is going to have to use everything she tried to leave in her own past to help Jane. Maybe it’s time to start believing in some things, after all.
Casey McQuiston’s One Last Stop is a magical, sexy, bighearted romance where the impossible becomes possible as August does everything in her power to save the girl lost in time. (Book Jacket, Inside Flap)

Best friends Anita and Rainie have made countless visits to their home base: an old sycamore tree and its neighboring lot of stray dogs who have a mysterious ability to communicate with humans. The girls learn that they are preceded by generations of dog-headed women and women-headed dogs whose bloodlines knot them together like thread. Anita convinces her best friend Rainie to become a dog with her, tying a collar of red string around each of their necks to preserve their kinship forever. But when the two girls are separated, Anita sinks into her dreams and lands herself in a coma that only Rainie knows how to rouse her from. As Anita’s body begins to rot, her mind straying farther and farther away from the waking world, it is up to Rainie to rebuild her friend’s body and keep Anita from being lost forever. Tasked with gathering new organs from the mythical landscape of their shared childhood, Rainie must return to the past and ask herself how far she is willing to go to reunite with the girl who has haunted her and hunted her in equal measure.
In rhythmically poetic and visceral lore, K-Ming Chang veers away from the ordinary and into the macabre. Filled with ghosts and bodily entrails, this is a story about the horror and beauty of intimacy, being tethered to another person across time and space, and transforming our origins. (Author's Website)

Theo and Kit have been a lot of things: childhood best friends, crushes, lovers, and now estranged exes. After a brutal breakup on the flight to their dream European food and wine tour, they exited each other's lives.
Time apart has done them good. Theo is a bartender and an aspiring sommelier with a long roster of lovers. Kit graduated as the reigning sex god of his pastry school and now bakes at one of the finest restaurants in Paris. All that remains is the unused voucher for the European tour that never happened. Four years later, it seems like a great idea to finally take the trip. Solo. Separately.
It's not until Theo and Kit board the tour bus that they discover they've both accidentally had the exact same idea, and now they're trapped with each other for three weeks of the most romantic sights and sensuous flavors of France, Spain, and Italy. But it'll be fine, as long as they agree they're absolutely over each other.
So, when Theo suggests a friendly wager to see who can sleep with their hot Italian tour guide first, Kit is game. In fact, why stop there? Why not a full-on European hookup competition?
But sometimes a taste of everything only makes you crave what you can't have. (Back Cover)

A celebration of those who march with pride.
Toronto’s inaugural Gay Pride March took place in 1974 when a hundred people gathered to march from Allan Gardens to Queen’s Park, calling on lawmakers to include sexual orientation in the Ontario Human Rights Code. The march helped lay the groundwork for what has become one of the largest gay pride festivals in the world. In Pride, Lambda-award-winning writer Michael Rowe brings this history, and the challenges the gay community has faced since, into sharp focus while Toronto photographer Angel Guerra captures his city’s pride parade on a human scale. In 120 photographs, Guerra zooms in from the glorious spectacle to the small scenes and single participants, shining a light on moments of joy, strength, ferocity, resilience and love. At a time when 2SLGBTQI+ rights are under renewed threat throughout the world, Guerra and Rowe’s work captures the power of a movement that contains multitudes. (Back Cover)

An essential resource for young readers that details the people, events and places that have shaped queer history in North America.
In this exploration of the history of LGBTQ+ activism in North America, middle-grade readers can learn about the key people who led the fight for equality, the events that brought about change and the places where history was made. Presented in an A to Z format, with one topic per letter (“P Is for Pride”), the entries include subjects such as coming out, pride flags, Jazz Jennings and the Stonewall Inn. Young readers will be particularly interested in learning about youth activists such as Gavin Grimm, the history of the first gay-straight alliance and the ongoing issue of banned children’s books in America.
Author Robin Stevenson has won numerous awards, including a Stonewall Book Award Honor. She has carefully curated the key people, places and events in queer history across North America to offer a pitch-perfect compilation of individual stories that are accessible, interesting and inspiring. Queer History A to Z is a must-have resource for young readers, and a terrific jumping-off point for discussions about history, identity and the progress made by the LGBTQ+ community. With so many fascinating biographies and cultural history lessons throughout, it also makes an excellent general social studies resource. Eye-catching art by Vivian Rosas appears on every spread, capturing many of the iconic images of the LGBTQ+ rights movement. Extensive back matter includes short biographies of LGBTQ+ activists, a timeline, a glossary, resources for kids, selected author’s sources and an index. (Publisher)

Curvaceous, clever, and an avid reader, seventeen-year-old Bobby Ashton never misses a main character moment. So when it comes to asking out his crush, he plans a romantic gesture grand enough to go down in local history. Unfortunately, though, his extensive knowledge of every rom-com trope ever doesn’t prepare him for how tragically he misreads the situation. Suddenly Bobby’s very public romantic gesture turns into an ordeal so embarrassing it could be a villain origin story.
Having masterfully shattered every plan for his perfect summer before college, Bobby’s last resort is working at his uncle’s sleepy bookstore. Soon, Bobby is expertly recommending books for customers to perfectly cure what ails them. Attempting to rebound after a breakup? There’s a book for that. Trying to tame your crochety coworker? There’s a book for that too. Then a plot twist Bobby never saw coming walks through the door in the form of Luke, an unfairly attractive and staunchly anti-romantic lifeguard.
Bobby’s blossoming connection with Luke reminds him of some of his favorite tropes: grumpy-sunshine, quippy banter, and even forced proximity. But after his last romantic disaster, should Bobby use all the tricks in his arsenal to turn Luke’s head? Or is he misreading all the signs again? Do grand gestures really need to be so . . . grand?
Perfect for fans of Becky Albertalli, Kacen Callender, and Jason June, Recommended Reading is a bighearted rom-com about discovering love beyond what’s in the books . . . but hey, the perfect recommendation can get you pretty far! (Author's Website)

Spring Break, 2009: Five days, three friends, and one big city.
Roaming marks a triumphant return to the graphic novel and deft foray into new adult fiction for Caldecott Medal-winning authors Jillian Tamaki (Boundless) and Mariko Tamaki (Cold).
Over the course of a much-anticipated trip to New York, an unexpected fling blossoms between casual acquaintances and throws a long-term friendship off-balance. Emotional tensions vibrate wildly against the resplendently illustrated backdrop of the city, capturing a spontaneous queer romance in all of its fledgling glory. Slick attention to the details of a bustling, intimidating metropolis are softened with a palette of muted pastels, as though seen through the eyes of first-time travelers. The awe, wonder, and occasional stumble along the way all come to life with stunning accuracy in this sumptuous softcover with gorgeous jacket.
Roaming is the third collaboration from the critically acclaimed team behind Skim and Governor General’s Literary Award winner This One Summer. Moody, atmospheric, and teeming with life, the magic of this comics duo leaks through the pages with lush and exquisite pen work. The Tamakis’ singular, elegant vision of an urban paradise slowly revealing its imperfections to the tune of its visitors’ rhythms is a masterpiece–a future classic for generations to come. (Publisher)

By the author of Little Fish and A Dream of a Woman:eleven unique short stories featuring young trans women stumbling through loss, sex, harassment, and love in settings ranging from a rural Mennonite town to a hipster gay bar in Brooklyn. These stories, shiny with whiskey and prairie sunsets, rattling subways and neglected cats, show growing up as a trans girl can be charming, funny, frustrating, or sad, but never will it be predictable.
A Safe Girl to Love, winner of the Lambda Literary Award for transgender fiction, was first published in 2014. Now back in print after a long absence, this new edition includes an afterword by the author. (Publisher)

Halfling Saga, Book 2

Cerulean Chronicles, Book 2

Hope is the thing with feathers. And hope is the thing with fire.
A magical house. A secret past. A summons that could change everything.
Arthur Parnassus lives a good life, built on the ashes of a bad one. He's the headmaster of a strange orphanage on a distant and peculiar island, and he hopes to soon be the adoptive father to the six magical and so-called dangerous children who live there.
Arthur works hard and loves with his whole heart so none of the children ever feel the neglect and pain that he once felt as an orphan on that very same island so long ago. And he is not alone: joining him is the love of his life, Linus Baker, a former caseworker in the Department in Charge of Magical Youth; Zoe Chapelwhite, the island's sprite; and her girlfriend, Mayor Helen Webb. Together, they will do anything to protect the children. But when Arthur is summoned to make a public statement about his dark past, he finds himself at the helm of a fight for the future that his family, and all magical people, deserve. And when a new magical child hopes to join them on their island home--one who finds power in calling himself monster, a name Arthur worked so hard to protect his children from--Arthur knows they're at a breaking point: their family will either grow stronger than ever or fall apart. Welcome back to Marsyas Island. This is Arthur's story.
Somewhere Beyond the Sea is a story of resistance, lovingly told, about the daunting experience of fighting for the life you want to live and doing the work to keep it.

A stunning new novel from the author of Scarborough, finalist for Canada Reads and an award-winning film, about starting a new life and the unbreakable bond between the women of a family
Mary Grace Concepcion has left her family in Manila to find a better life for them all. After three years in Hong Kong, Mary Grace arrives in Toronto in the dead of winter to work as a live-in nanny. As she rises at 5 a.m. each day to care for other people's children, she reminds herself of the reason for sacrifice. In two years, if all goes well, she can bring Ale, her husband, to Canada to join her.
But this vast new city, so different from heat and bustle of their San Marcelino neighbourhood back home, is as cold and bewildering as the false smiles and growing demands of her employers, who soon drop her without a second thought. Mary Grace must find new work to keep her visa and her dream of reunification with her family alive. Although, after so much time away, she wonders if her family is falling apart.
It isn't until Mary Grace begins caring for Liz, an Alzheimer's patient, in a quiet bungalow beside the Rouge River in Scarborough, that she begins to build a surprising new community for herself. The floodgates of memory are opened, for Mary Grace and for Liz, about the women who have given them strength and love in the past and who hold the promise of what the future could be.
Beautifully narrated through the all-seeing eye of the newest member of Mary Grace's family, The Story of Us is a novel about the strength and connections of women, about blood and chosen family, and how belonging can be found where we least expect it. (Inside Book Flap)

The Endsong, Book 2

Sascha Stronach's Maori-inspired Endsong trilogy reopens on a city in flames, where a magic-wielding pirate crew uncovers an age-old fight among the gods that threatens their world.
The steel city of Radovan is consumed by fire. Stranded in its harbor is the crew of the Kopek, the survivors of a bioterror attack in their home city of Hainak. They bear scars: their captain, Sibbi, has gone missing; Yat, their newest Weaver, is fighting for control of her own mind; and their weaving powers are in a badly weakened state.
To disable the technology that prevents the group from escaping, Sen and Kiada must plot their way through the ruins of the foreign capital, which is patrolled by a hostile militia, using wits alone. But to navigate through Radovan, Kiada will have to rely on her own history with the city--one she shares with a band of misfits dubbed Fort Tomorrow and their leader, Ari, a charismatic thief.
Ari may hold the key not only to saving Radovan from complete annihilation, but to the history of their world, which will come into play as the gods begin to unleash destruction on humanity and one another. (Back Cover)

They Both Die at the End
The First to Die at the End (Prequel)

In this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of personal and social loss, embodying the paradox of sitting in grief while being determined to survive beyond it. Shifting through memory, and in concert with the themes of his novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong contends with the meaning of family and the cost of being the product of an American war in America. At once vivid, brave, and propulsive, these poems circle fragmented lives to find both restoration as well as the epicenter of the break.
The author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds, winner of the 2016 Whiting Award, the 2017 T. S. Eliot Prize, and a 2019 MacArthur fellowship, Vuong writes directly to our humanity without losing sight of the current moment. These poems represent a more innovative and daring experimentation with language and form, illuminating how the themes we perennially live in and question are truly inexhaustible. Bold and prescient, and a testament to tenderness in the face of violence, Time Is a Mother is a return and a forging forth all at once. (Publisher)

In an alternate version of 1893 America, New York is part of the Free States, where people may live and love whomever they please (or so it seems). The fragile young scion of a distinguished family resists betrothal to a worthy suitor, drawn to a charming music teacher of no means. In a 1993 Manhattan besieged by the AIDS epidemic, a young Hawaiian man lives with his much older, wealthier partner, hiding his troubled childhood and the fate of his father. And in 2093, in a world riven by plagues and governed by totalitarian rule, a powerful scientist’s damaged granddaughter tries to navigate life without him—and solve the mystery of her husband’s disappearances.
These three sections are joined in an enthralling and ingenious symphony, as recurring notes and themes deepen and enrich one another: A townhouse in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village; illness, and treatments that come at a terrible cost; wealth and squalor; the weak and the strong; race; the definition of family, and of nationhood; the dangerous righteousness of the powerful, and of revolutionaries; the longing to find a place in an earthly paradise, and the gradual realization that it can’t exist. What unites not just the characters, but these Americas, are their reckonings with the qualities that make us human: Fear. Love. Shame. Need. Loneliness.
To Paradise is a fin de siècle novel of marvelous literary effect, but above all it is a work of emotional genius. The great power of this remarkable novel is driven by Yanagihara’s understanding of the aching desire to protect those we love—partners, lovers, children, friends, family and even our fellow citizens—and the pain that ensues when we cannot. (Publisher)

Halfling Saga, Book 3

"It seems fate has dealt me the same hand again. I know how to play it."
A new king is on the throne and the rebellion lies in ruins. Keera spends her days drinking and her nights avoiding the strange dreams that have haunted her since she returned from the capital.
Keera's family in Myrelinth won't let her go without a fight. With new intelligence about the magical seals left behind by Keera's ancient kin, the Light Fae, she rallies to face her demons and unleash the formidable powers she inherited from her people. But a shocking truth is hiding in plain sight, one with the power to unravel the entire rebellion...
A Vicious Games is the pivotal third installment in the Halfling Saga that will upend everything Keera thought she knew about her enemies . . . and her allies. (Back Cover)

2024 Giller Prize Shortlist

As a boy in 1960s Cairo, Tarek knows that his entire life is written in advance. He'll be a doctor like his father, marry, and have children. Under the watchful eyes of his mother and his sister, he starts to do just that - until Ali enters his life and turns it upside down. The two men, from very different worlds, embark on an unsayable relationship that threatens to tear apart Tarek's family.
Years later, as Tarek is living a solitary life in Montreal, someone starts writing about him and to him, piecing together a past he wants only to forget. But who is the writer of this tale? And will he figure it out in time? (Back Cover)

Follow cousins on a road trip to Pride as they dive into family secrets and friendships in this contemporary novel—perfect for fans of David Levithan and Becky Albertalli.
As kids, Mark and his cousin Talia spent many happy summers together at the family cottage in Ontario, but a fight between their parents put an end to the annual event. Living on opposite coasts—Mark in Halifax and Talia in Victoria—they haven't seen each other in years. When their grandfather dies unexpectedly, Mark and Talia find themselves reunited at the cottage once again, cleaning it out while the family decides what to do with it.
Mark and Talia are both queer, but they soon realize that's about all they have in common, other than the fact that they'd both prefer to be in Toronto. Talia is desperate to see her high school sweetheart Erin, who's barely been in touch since leaving to spend the summer working at a coffee shop in the Gay Village. Mark, on the other hand, is just looking for some fun, and Toronto Pride seems like the perfect place to find it.
When a series of complications throws everything up in the air, Mark and Talia—with Mark's little sister Paige in tow—decide to hit the road for Toronto. With a bit of luck, and some help from a series of unexpected new friends, they might just make it to the big city and find what they're looking for. That is, if they can figure out how to start seeing things through each other's eyes. (Publisher)

In Wild Failure, characters encounter feelings of shame, desire, attachment, and disconnection as they find themselves navigating their way through bad decisions, unusual situations, and fraught relationships.
In “Oh, El,” a dominant woman can’t stop herself from toying with the tender heart of her co-worker. The title story, “Wild Failure,” is a doomed love story between an agoraphobic and a wilderness hiker. In “Half-Pipe,” a teen girl’s heterosexual ambivalence results in chaos at a skate park. A group of idealistic roommates find themselves the subject of a true crime podcast in “Murder at the Elm Street Collective House.” In “The Sex Castle Lunch Buffet,” a woman reflects on her brief stint at a nineties strip club after she learns of the death of a former client.
Wild Failure is replete with Whittall’s perceptive humor and acute insights into human nature. It’s also a dynamic and vibrant collection of poetic fiction that contend with the meaning of desire in a world that devalues femininity and queerness. (Publisher)

When Helen Keremos, Private Detective, is hired by a beautiful recording artist who has just won a million dollar lottery prize, her plan for a quiet life on the West Coast is quickly diverted. Helen is fiercely loyal, an independent woman whose magnetic personality and storied career make her the city's premier private eye, suspicious of all stereotypes and not afraid to bend the rules. Rising star Sonia Deerfield has been receiving blackmail threats from an anonymous caller, and though she is surrounded by her keenly invested business team of "friends," Helen wonders how trustworthy they really are. As the stakes get higher and attempts are made on their lives, the two women are drawn closer together through the twists and turns of the blackmailer's dangerous pursuit--and their chemistry is no mystery.
In 1978 Eve Zaremba introduced detective Helen Keremos to readers in a pulp fiction series. The 1987 instalment of the series, Work for a Million, featured the first openly lesbian detective in genre fiction. The novel was adapted into a graphic novel in 2019 by television and comic book writer Amanda Deibert, and will be published more than forty years after readers fell in love with Helen Keremos and Eve Zaremba.
Vivid historical research into Toronto of the late-1970s and a dazzling cast of familiars and foes are brought to life on the page by Canadian artist Selena Goulding in a mixture of full colour and black and white illustrations. (Publisher)

As the Archduke Franz Ferdinand arrives in Sarajevo on a sunny June day in 1914, Rafael Pinto is busy crushing herbs and grinding tablets at the pharmacy he inherited from his estimable father. It’s not quite the life he had expected during his student days in libertine Vienna, but it’s nothing a dash of laudanum from the high shelf, a summer stroll, and erotic fantasies about passersby can’t help.
And then the world explodes. War devours all that Pinto has known, and the only thing he has to live for is the attention and affection of Osman. A fellow soldier, a man of action to complement Pinto’s introspective, poetic soul, Osman is Pinto’s protector and the love of his life. Together, Pinto and Osman will make it out of the trenches, survive imprisonment, and tangle with spies and Bolsheviks. Over mountains and across deserts, from Sarajevo to Shanghai, from one world to another, their love lives on.
An epic story tht spans decades and continents, The World and All That It Holds showcases Aleksandar Hemon's celebrated talent at its apex. (Book Jacket, Inside Flap)

Acclaimed as one of the best books of the year by NPR, Kirkus Reviews, Time, and Amazon, and named a Top 10 Book of the Year by the Washington Post, Young Mungo is a brilliantly constructed and deeply moving story of queer love and working-class families by the Booker Prize-winning author of Shuggie Bain. Growing up in a housing estate in Glasgow, Mungo and James are born under different stars--Mungo a Protestant and James a Catholic--and they should be sworn enemies. Yet against all odds, they fall in love as they find sanctuary and dream of escape in the pigeon dovecote that James has built for his prize racing birds. But when Mungo’s mother sends him on a fishing trip to a remote loch with two strange men, he will need all his strength and courage to find his way back to a place where he and James might still have a future. (Back Cover)

Coming Soon!

Investigator Mossa and Scholar Pleiti reunite to solve a new mystery in the follow-up to the cozy space-opera detective mystery The Mimicking of Known Successes, which Hugo Award-winning author Charlie Jane Anders called "an utter triumph."
Mossa has returned to Valdegeld on a missing person's case, for which she'll once again need Pleiti's insight. Seventeen students and staff members have disappeared from Valdegeld University--yet no one has noticed. The answers to this case may lie on the moon of Io--Mossa's home--and the history of Jupiter's original settlements during humanity's exodus from Earth.
But Pleiti's faith in her life's work as a scholar of the past has grown precarious, and this new case threatens to further destabilize her dreams for humanity's future, as well as her own. (Book Jacket, Inside Flap)

Coming Soon!

A cozy Gaslamp mystery and sapphic romance set on Jupiter by the author of the critically-acclaimed Centenal Cycle.
On a remote, gas-wreathed outpost of a human colony on Jupiter, a man goes missing. The enigmatic Investigator Mossa follows his trail to Valdegeld, home to the colony's erudite university--and Mossa's former girlfriend, a scholar of Earth's pre-collapse ecosystems.
Pleiti has dedicated her career to aiding the larger effort towards a possible return to Earth. When Mossa shows up without warning to request Pleiti's assistance in her latest investigation, the two embark on a twisting path in which the future of rebuilding Earth is at stake--and, perhaps, a new future together. (Book Jacket, Inside Flap)

A whimsical and healing novel about a trans man in New York who--almost thirty, laid off, broke--moves back to his small Illinois hometown, walks into the bookstore he worked at in high school . . . and slips through time to come face-to-face with his pre-transition, teenage self
If you had one chance to talk to your younger self . . . would you? What would you say?
When Darby left Oak Falls for college in NYC, all he wanted was to get as far away as possible, find a community where he could start fresh--and finally forget about his childhood best friend, Michael, and just how painfully their friendship ended.
Now, about to turn thirty, Darby suddenly finds himself unemployed. With no better alternative, and questionong where he really belongs, he moves back to his hometown. But the changes in Oak Falls--the planned community with his mother's new condo, the trendy coffee shop--make him feel off-balance. And Michael's still here, their relationship still distant and strained. Even though they've both changed.
One thing is familiar: In Between Books, Darby's refuge growing up and eventual high school job. When he walks into the bookstore now, Darby feels an eerie sense of déjà vu--everything is exactly the same. Even the newspapers are dated 2009. And behind the register is a teen who looks a lot like Darby did at sixteen. . . who just might give Darby the opportunity to change his own present for the better--if he can figure out how before his connection to the past vanishes forever.
The In-Between Bookstore is a stunning novel of love, self-discovery, and the choices that come with both, for anyone who has ever wondered what their life might be like if they had the chance to go back and take a bigger, braver risk. (Book Jacket, Inside Flap)