Books for Pride Month

An arrest for cocaine possession in the Hamptons on the last day of a sweltering summer leaves Smith, a young Black queer 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 is just weeks after the death of his beloved roommate Elle, a glamorous member of the Black elite, and he is still reeling from the tabloid spectacle - as well as the lingering question of how well he really knew his closest friend and what happened to her the night she died.

When he flees to his hometown of Atlanta and generations of his family of doctors and college presidents and lawyers - the weight of expectations haunts him. Then Carolyn, the closest friend he has left, goes off the rails, Smith returns to New York only to lose himself in his old life, drawn back into the city's underworld. Will his search for the truth about Elle cost 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 spiralling downward and how to find a way back to hope.

Eighteen-year-old Samantha Chan wants only one thing: revenge for her brother’s death in an illegal magical duel. Ever since that terrible day, she’s been quietly working with legitimate dueling champion Lysander Rook and biding her time until she can take down her brother’s killer: Mateus Blackwood.

Tamsin Blackwood is trapped. She wants to make a name for herself in the magical dueling circuit, but she can’t get away from the legacy of her father—and coach—Mateus Blackwood. When she receives a challenge from the undefeated Lysander and his assistant Sam, she jumps at the chance to earn enough fame and glory to finally escape her father’s influence.

Tamsin has no idea about Sam’s scheming, and Sam plans to keep it that way. Despite herself, though, she can’t help liking Tamsin, and the two girls quickly grow closer to each other than anyone else in their lives. But Sam won’t let anything get in the way of her revenge—not even her heart.

The beautiful and heartwarming new romance from Becky Albertalli, best-selling author of Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda.

Amelia Applebaum isn’t in love with Walter Holland. He just happens to be her favourite moderately famous, chaotically bisexual YouTuber. Who she just happened to invite to prom. (But it’s fine. No, for real. If you delete the post, it didn’t happen.) Okay, maybe her friends are right: she’s slightly parasocially infatuated. But Amelia just knows sparks would fly—if only she could meet Walter for real. If only he would host a meet-and-greet. If only it were just a short road trip away. And if only she could talk her best friends into making it the perfect last hurrah before graduation—even Amelia’s newly-single, always-cynical, guitar-toting best friend Natalie. One thing’s for sure: all roads lead to butterflies. But what if Amelia’s butterflies aren’t for Walter at all?

LGBTQ writing from ancient times to yesterday selected by award-winning translator Frank Wynne.

Drawing together writing from Catullus to Sappho, from Arthur Rimbaud to Anne Lister and Armistead Maupin, translator Frank Wynne has collected eighty of the finest works representing queer love by LGBTQ authors.

These pieces straddle the spectrum of queer experience, from Verlaine's sonnet in praise of his lover's anus and Emily Dickinson's exhortation of a woman's beauty, to Alison Bechdel's graphic novel of her coming out, Juno Dawson's reflections on gender and Oscar Wilde's 'De Profundis'.

With stories, poems, extracts and scenes from countries the world over, Queer is an unabashed and unapologetic anthology, which gives voice to those often silenced.

Reese nearly had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York, a job she didn't hate. She'd scraped together a life previous generations of trans women could only dream of; the only thing missing was a child. Then everything fell apart and three years on Reese is still in self-destruct mode, avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men.

When her ex calls to ask if she wants to be a mother, Reese finds herself intrigued. After being attacked in the street, Amy de-transitioned to become Ames, changed jobs and, thinking he was infertile, started an affair with his boss Katrina. Now Katrina's pregnant. Could the three of them form an unconventional family - and raise the baby together?

Hunter never expected to be a boy band star, but, well, here he is. He and his band Kiss & Tell are on their first major tour of North America, playing arenas all over the United States and Canada (and getting covered by the gossipy press all over North America as well). Hunter is the only gay member of the band, and he just had a very painful breakup with his first boyfriend--leaked sexts, public heartbreak, and all--and now everyone expects him to play the perfect queer role model for teens.

But Hunter isn't really sure what being the perfect queer kid even means. Does it mean dressing up in whatever The Label tells him to wear for photo shoots and pretending never to have sex? (Unfortunately, yes.) Does it mean finding community among the queer kids at the meet-and-greets after K&T's shows? (Fortunately, yes.) Does it include a new relationship with Kaivan, the star of the band opening for K&T on tour? (He hopes so.) But when The Label finds out about Hunter and Kaivan, it spells trouble—for their relationship, for the perfect gay boy Hunter plays for the cameras, and, most importantly, for Hunter himself.

In a crawlspace at the offices of Switchboard, a queer helpline in operation since 1974, lie dozens of log books kept by volunteers describing the phone calls they had taken: a teenager kicked out of home for dressing as the wrong gender; a lesbian terrified of having her baby taken away from her; a man arrested for chatting up another man; a young person wanting to know how to come out.

These logs documented traces of tens of thousands of queer lives, captured by people who lent an ear to those in need. The logs are a bridge to a past hidden from people like Tash Walker and Adam Zmith in their youth. Growing up under Section 28, which banned 'promoting the teaching of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship', Walker and Zmith encountered people grappling with feelings, questions and problems both familiar and different, and set out to learn from those on both sides of the calls.

The Log Books is a collection which captures queer lives in stunning detail, a journey of collective history and self-discovery.

Bestselling author
International bestselling author

In 1805, at a boarding school in York, two fourteen-year-old girls first meet.

Eliza Raine, the orphan daughter of an Indian mother, keeps herself apart from the other girls, tired of being picked out for being different. Anne Lister, a gifted troublemaker, is determined to conquer the world, refusing to bow to society’s expectations of what a woman can do.

As they fall in love, the connection they forge will remain with them for the rest of their lives.

Full of passion and heartbreak, evocative and wholly unique, Learned by Heart is the dazzling novel from acclaimed author Emma Donoghue.

Polari First Book Prize

From a god-fearing Muslim boy enraptured with their mother, to a vocal, queer drag queen estranged from their family, this is a heart-breaking and hilarious memoir about the author’s fight to be true to themselfMy name is Amrou Al-Kadhi – by day. By night, I am Glamrou, an empowered, fearless and acerbic drag queen who wears seven-inch heels and says the things that nobody else dares to. Growing up in a strict Iraqi Muslim household, it didn’t take long for me to realise I was different. When I was ten years old, I announced to my family that I was in love with Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone. The resultant fallout might best be described as something like the Iraqi version of Jerry Springer: The Opera. And that was just the beginning. This is the story of how I got from there to here: about my teenage obsession with marine biology, and how fluid aquatic life helped me understand my non-binary gender identity; about my two-year scholarship at Eton college, during which I wondered if I could forge a new identity as a British aristocrat (spoiler alert: it didn’t work); about discovering the transformative powers of drag while at university (and how I very nearly lost my mind after I left); and about how, after years of rage towards it, I finally began to understand Islam in a new, queer way. Most of all, this is a book about my mother.

Bestselling author
International bestselling author

Sam Waver's life has always been pretty quiet. A bit of a loner, he struggles to make friends, and his busy parents often make him feel invisible. Luckily for Sam, his older brother, Jason, has always been there for him. Sam idolises Jason, who seems to have life sorted - he's kind, popular, amazing at football, and girls are falling over themselves to date him.

But then one evening Jason calls his family together to tell them that he's been struggling with a secret for a long time. A secret which quickly threatens to tear them all apart. His parents don't want to know and Sam simply doesn't understand.

Because what do you do when your brother says he's not your brother at all? That he's actually . . . your sister?