Put These Popular Books by LGBTQ+ Authors on Your Reading List

Goodreads Description: “Isaac is at a crossroads in his young life. Growing up in Missouri, the son of a caustic, hard-driving father, he was conditioned to suppress his artistic pursuits and physical desires, notions that didn’t align with a traditional view of masculinity. But now, in late ’80s Chicago, Isaac has finally carved out a life of his own. He is sensitive and tenderhearted and has built up the courage to seek out a community. Yet just as he begins to embrace who he is, two social catalysts—the AIDS crisis and Rodney King’s attack—collectively extinguish his hard-earned joy. At a therapist’s encouragement, Isaac begins to write down his story. In the process, he taps into a creative energy that will send him on a journey back to his family, his ancestral home in Arkansas, and the inherited trauma of the nation’s dark past. But a surprise discovery will either unlock the truths he’s seeking or threaten to derail the life he’s fought so hard to claim.

Poignant, sweeping and luminously told, Isaac’s Song is a return to the beloved characters of Don’t Cry for Me and a high-water mark in the career of an award-winning author.”

Goodreads Description: “A coma can change a man, but the world Jack Jr. awakens to is one he barely recognizes. His advertising job is history, his Manhattan apartment is gone, and the love of his life has left him behind. He’s been asleep for two years; with no one to turn to, he realizes it’s been ten years since he last saw his family. 

Lost and disoriented, he makes a reluctant homecoming back to the bustling Korean American enclave of Fort Lee, New Jersey; back into the waiting arms of his parents, who are operating under the illusion he never left; and back to Joja, their ever-struggling sushi restaurant that he was set to inherit before he ran away from it all. As he steps back into the life he abandoned—learning his Appa’s life lessons over crates of tuna on bleary-eyed 4 AM fish runs, doling out amberjack behind the omakase counter while his Umma tallies the night’s pitiful number of customers, and sparring with his recovering alcoholic brother, James—he embraces new roles,: that of romantic interest to the male nurse who took care of him throughout, and that of sage (but underqualified) uncle to his gangly teenage nephew.

There is value in the joyous rhythms of this once-abandoned life. But second chances are an even messier business than running a restaurant, and the lure of a self-determined path might, once again, prove too hard to resist.

Why do we run from those we love, and why do we still love those who run from us? A highly entertaining and poignant story about second chances and self-discovery, I Leave It Up to You pilots through the loss, love, and absurdity of finding one’s footing after the ground gives way.”

Goodreads Description: “As a trans person who grew up visibly queer prior to transition, Faye’s life has alienated her from many of society’s heterosexual [assumptions;] here she unpicks these assumptions with wit and devastating clarity.

Having spent much of her late twenties and early thirties trying—and often failing—to find the relationship, career, sex life, and social life she equated with happiness and success, Faye began to realise that many of the women around her were also burning out in pursuit of these ideals, where the stakes seemed high and the rewards often disappointing. If we reject this idea of what a young woman’s life should be, Faye asks, what comes next?”

Goodreads Description: “In the wake of a catastrophic two-year relationship, Melissa Febos decided to take a break—for three months she would abstain from dating, from relationships, and sex. Her friends were amused. Did she really think three months was a long time? But to Febos, it was. Ever since her teens, she had been in one relationship after another. As she puts it, she could trace a “daisy chain of romances” from her adolescence to her mid-thirties. Finally, she would carve out time to focus on herself and examine the patterns that had produced her midlife disaster. Over those first few months, she gleaned insights into her past and awoke to the joys of being single. She decided to extend her celibacy not knowing it would become the most fulfilling and sensual year of her life. No longer defined by her romantic pursuits, she learned to relish the delights of solitude, the thrill of living on her own terms, the sensual pleasures unmediated by lovers, and the freedom to pursue her ideals without distraction or guilt. Bringing her own experiences into conversation with those of women throughout history—from Hildegard von Bingen, Virginia Woolf, and Octavia Butler to the Shakers and Sappho—Febos situates her story within a newfound lineage of role models who unapologetically pursued their ambitions and ideals.

By abstaining from all forms of romantic entanglement, Febos began to see her life and her self-worth in a radical new way. Her year of divestment transformed her relationships with friends and peers, her spirituality, her creative practice, and most of all her relationship to herself. Blending intimate personal narrative and incisive cultural criticism, The Dry Season tells a story that’s as much about celibacy as its pleasure, desire, fulfillment. Infused with fearless honesty and keen intellect, it’s the memoir of a woman learning to live at the center of her own story, and a much-needed catalyst for a new conversation around sex and love.”

Goodreads Description: “An arrest for cocaine possession in the Hamptons on the last day of a sweltering New York summer leaves Smith, a young queer Black Stanford graduate, in a state of turmoil. Pulled into the court system and mandated treatment, he finds himself in an absurd but dangerous situation: His class protects him, but his race does not.

It’s just weeks after the death of his beloved roommate Elle, a glamorous member of the Black elite, and he’s still reeling from the tabloid spectacle—as well as the lingering questions of how well he really knew his closest friend and what exactly happened to her that night. He flees to his hometown of Atlanta, but the weight of expectations from his family of doctors, lawyers, and college presidents only pushes him further into his downward spiral. When his close friend Carolyn goes off the rails, Smith decides to return to New York to find out what happened to her and Elle. But it’s not long before he begins to lose himself to his old life, drawn back into the city’s underworld where his search for answers may end up costing him his freedom and his future.

Smith goes on a dizzying journey through the New York City nightlife circuit, anonymous recovery rooms, Atlanta’s Black society set, police investigations and courtroom dramas, and a circle of friends coming of age in a new era. Great Black Hope is a propulsive, glittering story about what it means to exist between worlds, to be upwardly mobile yet spiraling downward, and how to find a way back to hope.”

Publication Date: June 10

Goodreads Description: “These lively essays by luminary writers offer a queer perspective on how people experience other cultures and how other cultures receive queer people. This anthology of essays includes the perspectives of gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, and trans American authors from multiple ethnic identities, showcasing the travel writing of both established and emerging authors across a wide age spectrum to address these central questions. Contributors include Alexander Chee, Edmund White, Daisy Hernández, Putsata Reang, Bani Amor, Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, Garrard Conley, Nicole Shawan Junior, Raluca Albu, Genevieve Hudson, Zoë Sprankle, and Calvin Gimpelevich. Their essays take the reader to different areas of the world including Spain, Ukraine, Florida, Cuba, New York City, Ecuador, Cambodia, Russia, Senegal, Berlin, Paris, and more.”

Goodreads Description: “With warmth and humour, Elizabeth Lovatt reimagines the women who called and volunteered for the Lesbian Line in the 1990s, whilst also tracing her own journey from accidentally coming out to disastrous dates to finding her chosen family. With callers and agents alike dealing with first crushes and break-ups, sex and marriage, loneliness and illness, this is a celebration of the ordinary lives of queer women.

Through these revelations of the complexities, difficulties, and revelries of everyday life, Lovatt investigates the ethics of writing about queer ‘sheros’ and the role living-history plays in the way we live today. What do we owe to our lesbian forebears? What can we learn from them when facing racism, transphobia, and ableism in the community today?

Steeped in pop culture references and feminist and queer theory, Thank You for Calling the Lesbian Line is a timely and vital exploration of how lesbian identity continues to remake and redefine itself in the 21st century, and where it might lead us in the future.”

Goodreads Description: “1982. Dawn is a young mother, still adjusting to life with her husband, when Hazel lights up her world like a torch in the dark. Theirs is the kind of connection that’s impossible to resist, and suddenly life is more complicated, and more joyful, than Dawn ever expected. But she has responsibilities and commitments. She has a daughter.

2022. Heron has just received news from his doctor that turns everything upside down. He’s an older man, stuck in the habits of a quiet existence. Telling Maggie, his only child—the person around whom his life has revolved—seems impossible. Heron can’t tell her about his diagnosis, just as he can’t reveal all the other secrets he’s been keeping from her for so many years.

A Family Matter is a heartbreaking and hopeful exploration of love and loss, intimacy and injustice, custody and care, and whether it is possible to heal from the wounds of the past in the changed world of today.”

Goodreads Description: “The venerated Reverend Doctor John Freeman did not raise his son, Davis, to be touched by any man, let alone a white man. He did not raise his son to whisper that man’s name with tenderness.

But on the eve of his wedding, all Davis can think about is how beautiful he wants to look when he meets his beloved Everett at the altar. Never mind that his mother, who died decades before, and his father, whose anger drove Davis to flee their home in Ohio for a freer life in New York City, won’t be there to walk him down the aisle. All Davis needs to be happy in this life is Everett, his new family, and his burgeoning career as an award-winning violist.

When Davis learns during the wedding reception that his father has died in a terrible car accident, years of childhood trauma and unspoken emotion resurface. Davis must revisit everything that went wrong between them, his fledgling marriage and irresistible self-confidence spiraling into a pit of despair.

In resplendent prose, Denne Michele Norris’s When the Harvest Comes fearlessly reveals the pain of inheritance and the heroic power of love, reminding us that in the end we are more than the men who came before us.”

Goodreads Description: “It’s 2044 and life is bleak for many Americans, but not for Mason Daunt. Safe in his Los Angeles mansion, Mason can remain blissfully unaware of the relentless wildfires engulfing California, the proliferation of violent right-wing militias, and the rampant authoritarianism destroying American society. He’s so rich, in fact, that he and his partner Yunho Kim are throwing a 100-person, $100,000 baby shower to celebrate their newborn-on-the-way. When a potentially apocalyptic event hits Los Angeles on the day of their celebration, though, the wealthy gay couple refuses to cancel their party. Surely it’s not the end of the world? But as Mason runs a few last-minute errands, a staggering twist thrusts him into the mounting chaos, and threatens the lives of everyone he holds dear.

Shot through with biting wit, brutal gore, primal sex, and unexpected catharsis, It’s Not the End of the World is a nerve-shredding roller coaster of a novel that will leave readers shocked, heartbroken, and inspired to question their most firmly held convictions. What happens when our current battles with climate change, capitalism, and white supremacy are pushed to their breaking points? And how can we find hope?”

Goodreads Description: “In this collection of one novel and three stories, Torrey Peters’s keen eye for the rough edges of community and desire push the limits of trans writing.

In Stag Dance, the titular novel, a group of restless lumberjacks working in an illegal winter logging outfit plan a dance that some of them will volunteer to attend as women. When the broadest, strongest, plainest of the axmen announces his intention to dance as a woman, he finds himself caught in a strange rivalry with a pretty young jack, provoking a cascade of obsession, jealousy, and betrayal that will culminate on the big night in an astonishing vision of gender and transition.

Three startling stories surround Stag Dance: “Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones” imagines a gender apocalypse brought about by an unstable ex. In “The Chaser,” a secret romance between roommates at a Quaker boarding school brings out intrigue and cruelty. In the last story, “The Masker,” a party weekend on the Las Vegas strip turns dark when a young crossdresser must choose between two guides: a handsome mystery man who objectifies her in thrilling ways, or a cynical veteran trans woman offering unglamorous sisterhood.

Acidly funny and breathtaking in its scope, with the inventive audacity of George Saunders or Jennifer Egan, Stag Dance provokes, unsettles, and delights.”

Goodreads Description: “Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s Space Shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space.

Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, who are kind and easy-going even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warm-hearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane.

As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.

Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, everything changes in an instant.

Fast-paced, thrilling, and emotional, Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her best: transporting readers to iconic times and places, with complex protagonists, telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love, this time among the stars.”

Goodreads Description: “In 1932 Berlin, Bertie, a trans man, and his friends spend carefree nights at the Eldorado Club, the epicenter of Berlin’s thriving queer community. An employee of the renowned Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld at the Institute of Sexual Science, Bertie works to improve queer rights in Germany and beyond, but everything changes when Hitler rises to power. The institute is raided, the Eldorado is shuttered, and queer people are rounded up. Bertie barely escapes with his girlfriend, Sofie, to a nearby farm. There they take on the identities of an elderly couple and live for more than a decade in isolation.

In the final days of the war, with their freedom in sight, Bertie and Sofie find a young trans man collapsed on their property, still dressed in Holocaust prison clothes. They vow to protect him—not from the Nazis, but from the Allied forces who are arresting queer prisoners while liberating the rest of the country. Ironically, as the Allies’ vise grip closes on Bertie and his family, their only salvation becomes fleeing to the United States.

Brimming with hope, resilience, and the enduring power of community, The Lilac People tells an extraordinary story inspired by real events and recovers an occluded moment of trans history.”

Goodreads Description: “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.”