Top 30 Must-Read LGBT Books
Hello fellow book lovers! Welcome to Cozy Book Cafe. Thank you for visiting our website. Here you will discover the most anticipated books of 2025. Dive into captivating new stories, discover new authors, and let your imagination soar. 🖤
LGBT books are all about celebrating a fabulous mix of voices and experiences—think romance, identity, community, and justice. They cover a whole bunch of genres, but they all have one thing in common: the magic of real storytelling.
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⭐ Book Club Top Pick ⭐
Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
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 easygoing even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warmhearted 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, it all changes in an instant.
Tags - LGBT Books, Historical Fiction, Romance, Book Club, Contemporary, New Books 2025.
These Heathens by Mia McKenzie
Dear Lord, please forgive me for the sins I’ve committed. And for the one I’m still planning to commit tomorrow. Amen.
Where do you get an abortion in 1960 Georgia, especially if your small town’s midwife goes to the same church as your parents?
For seventeen-year-old Doris Steele, the answer is Atlanta, where her favorite teacher, Mrs. Lucas, calls upon her brash, wealthy childhood best friend, Sylvia, for help.
While waiting to hear from the doctor who has agreed to do the procedure, Doris spends the weekend scandalized by, but drawn to, the people who move in and out of Sylvia’s orbit: celebrities whom Doris has seen in the pages of Jet and Ebony, civil rights leaders such as Coretta Scott King and Diane Nash, women who dance close together, boys who flirt too hard and talk too much, atheists! And even more shocking? Mrs. Lucas seems right at home.
From the guests at a queer kickback to the student activists at a SNCC conference, Doris suddenly finds herself surrounded by so many people who seem to know exactly who or what they want. Doris knows she doesn’t want a baby, but what does she want? Will this trip help her find out?
Tags - LGBT Books, Historical Fiction, Coming Of Age, Literary Fiction, New Books 2025.
Wayward Girls by Susan Wiggs
In 1968 we meet six teens confined at the Good Shepherd—a dark and secretive institution controlled by Sisters of Charity nuns—locked awaymerely for being gay, pregnant, or simply unruly.
Mairin— free-spirited daughter of Irish immigrants, committed to keep her safe from her stepfather.
Angela—denounced for her attraction to girls, sent to the nuns for reform, but instead found herself the victim of a predator.
Helen—the daughter of intellectuals detained in Communist China, she saw her “temporary” stay at the Good Shepherd stretch into years.
Odessa—caught up in a police dragnet over a racial incident, she found the physical and mental toughness to endure her sentence.
Denise—sentenced for brawling in a foster home, she dared to dream of a better life.
Janice—deeply insecure, she couldn’t decide where her loyalty lay—except when it came to her friend Kay, who would never outgrow her childlike dependency.
Sister Bernadette—rescued from a dreadful childhood, she owed her loyalty to the Sisters of Charity even as her conscience weighed on her.
Wayward Girls is a haunting but thrilling tale of hope, solidarity, and the enduring strength of young women who find the courage to break free and find redemption...and justice.
Tags - LGBT Books, Historical Fiction, Women's Fiction, Book Club, New Books 2025.
Girls Girls Girls by Shoshana von Blanckensee
It’s the summer of ’96 and best friends (and secret girlfriends) Hannah and Sam are driving across the country from Long Beach, New York, to the fabled queer paradise of San Francisco, free from the harsh gazes of their neighbors and the stifling demands of Hannah’s devout Orthodox Jewish mother. In San Francisco, they will finally be together as a real couple, out in the open, around other queer people . . . even if the move means leaving behind Hannah’s beloved Bubbe.
When the financial strains of West Coast living push the girls to start stripping at The Chez Paree—yet another secret Hannah must keep from her family—Hannah feels trapped. Sam wants her at the club, but Hannah hates stripping nearly as much as she hates disappointing Sam. Then Hannah meets Chris, an older butch lesbian, who is immediately taken with her. Desperate to stay in San Francisco and away from the leering men at the club, Hannah proposes an escort arrangement.
But as Hannah falls deeper into Chris’ world and Sam starts to meet new queer friends, a rift forms between them. Without Sam, who is Hannah? And what does San Francisco mean to Hannah alone—a space rich with queer possibility or an intimidating, unfamiliar place just as lonely as the one she’d left behind? An achingly tender and resonant story of survival, first love, and growing up queer in the '90s, Girls Girls Girls is a piercing exploration of the choices we make in the thrilling and often confounding search for ourselves and home.
Tags - LGBT Books, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Jewish, Coming Of Age, New Books 2025.
The Lilac People by Milo Todd
In 1932 Berlin, a trans man named Bertie 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 is to flee 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 unknown moment of World War II and trans history.
Tags - LGBT Books, Historical Fiction, World War II, Transgender, Germany, New Books 2025.
Woodworking by Emily St. James
An unforgettable and heartwarming book-club debut following a trans high school teacher from a small town in South Dakota who befriends the only other trans woman she knows: one of her students.
Erica Skyberg is thirty-five years old, recently divorced―and trans. Not that she's told anyone yet. Mitchell, South Dakota, isn't exactly bursting with other trans women. Instead, she keeps to herself, teaching by day and directing community theater by night. That is, until Abigail Hawkes enters her orbit.
Abigail is seventeen, Mitchell High’s resident political dissident and Only Trans Girl. It’s a role she plays faultlessly, albeit a little reluctantly. She's also annoyed by the idea of spending her senior year secretly guiding her English teacher through her transition. But Abigail remembers the uncertainty―and loneliness―that comes with it. Besides, Erica isn’t the only one struggling to shed the weight of others’ expectations.
As their unlikely friendship evolves, it comes under the scrutiny of their community. And soon, both women―and those closest to them―are forced to ask: Who are we if we choose to hide ourselves? What happens once we disappear into the woodwork?
Detransition Baby meets Fleishman is in Trouble in this remarkable debut novel from an incisive contemporary voice. A story about the awkwardness of growing up and the greatest love story of all, that between us and our friends, Woodworking is a tonic for the moment and a celebration of womanhood in all its multifaceted joy.
Tags - LGBT Books, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Transgender, Book Club, New Books 2025.
Hazelthorn by C.G. Drews
Evander has lived like a ghost in the forgotten corners of the Hazelthorn estate ever since he was taken in by his reclusive billionaire guardian, Byron Lennox-Hall, when he was a child. For his safety, Evander has been given three ironclad rules to follow:
He can never leave the estate. He can never go into the gardens. And most importantly, he can never again be left alone with Byron's charming, underachieving grandson, Laurie.
That last rule has been in place ever since Laurie tried to kill Evander seven years ago, and yet somehow Evander is still obsessed with him.
When Byron suddenly dies, Evander inherits Hazelthorn’s immense gothic mansion and acres of sprawling grounds, along with the entirety of the Lennox-Hall family's vast wealth. But Evander's sure his guardian was murdered, and Laurie may be the only one who can help him find the killer before they come for Evander next.
Perhaps even more concerning is how the overgrown garden is refusing to stay behind its walls, slipping its vines and spores deeper into the house with each passing day. As the family’s dark secrets unravel alongside the growing horror of their terribly alive, bloodthirsty garden, Evander needs to find out what he’s really inheriting before the garden demands to be fed once more.
Tags - LGBT Books, Amazon, Goodreads, New Books 2025.
The Slip by Lucas Schaefer
Austin, Texas: It’s the summer of 1998, and there’s a new face on the scene at Terry Tucker’s Boxing Gym. Sixteen-year-old Nathaniel Rothstein has never felt comfortable in his own skin, but under the tutelage of a swaggering, Haitian-born ex-fighter named David Dalice, he begins to come into his own. Even the boy’s slightly stoned uncle, Bob Alexander, who is supposed to be watching him for the summer, notices the change. Nathaniel is happier, more confident—tanner, even. Then one night he vanishes, leaving little trace behind.
Across the city, Charles Rex, now going simply by “X,” has been undergoing a teenage transformation of his own, trolling the phone sex hotline that his mother works, seeking an outlet for everything that feels wrong about his body, looking for intimacy and acceptance in a culture that denies him both. As a surprising and unlikely romance blooms, X feels, for a moment, like he might have found the safety he’s been searching for. But it's never that simple.
More than a decade later, Nathaniel’s uncle Bob receives a shocking tip, propelling him to open his own investigation into his nephew’s disappearance. The resulting search involves gymgoers past and present, including a down-on-his-luck twin and his opportunistic brother; a rookie cop determined to prove herself; and Alexis Cepeda, a promising lightweight, who crossed the US-Mexico border when he was only fourteen, carrying with him a license bearing the wrong name and face.
Tags - LGBT Books, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Sports, Mystery, New Books 2025.
The Rebel Girls of Rome by Jordyn Taylor
Now:
Grieving the loss of her mother, college student Lilah is hoping to reconnect with a grandfather who refuses to talk about his past. Then she receives a mysterious letter from a fellow student, Tommaso, claiming he’s found a lost family heirloom, and her world is upended.
Soon Lilah finds herself in Rome, trying to unlock her grandfather’s history as a Holocaust survivor once and for all. But as she and Tommaso get closer to the truth—and their relationship begins to deepen into something sweeter—Lilah realizes that some secrets may be too painful to unbury…
Then:
It’s 1943, and nineteen-year-old Bruna and her family are doing their best to survive in Rome’s Jewish quarter under Nazi occupation. Until the dreaded knock comes early one morning, and Bruna is irrevocably separated from the rest of her family.
Overcome with guilt at escaping her family’s fate in the camps, she joins the underground rebellion. When her missions bring her back to her childhood crush, Elsa, Bruna must decide how much she’s willing to risk—when fully embracing herself is her greatest act of resistance.
Tags - LGBT Books, Historical Fiction, World War II, Contemporary, Romance, New Books 2025.
Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove
Spaceships aren’t programmed to seek revenge—but for Dracula, Demeter will make an exception.
Demeter just wants to do her job: shuttling humans between Earth and Alpha Centauri.
Unfortunately, her passengers keep dying—and not from equipment failures, as her AI medical system, Steward, would have her believe. These are paranormal murders, and they began when one nasty, ancient vampire decided to board Demeter and kill all her humans.
To keep from getting decommissioned, Demeter must join forces with her own team of monsters: A werewolf. An engineer built from the dead. A pharaoh with otherworldly powers. A vampire with a grudge. A fleet of cheerful spider drones. Together, this motley crew will face down the ultimate evil—Dracula.
The queer love child of pulp horror and classic sci-fi, Of Monsters and Mainframes is a dazzling, heartfelt odyssey that probes what it means to be one of society’s monsters—and explores the many types of friendship that make us human.
Tags - LGBT Books, Science Fiction, Horror, Fantasy, Vampires, New Books 2025.
The Corruption of Hollis Brown by K. Ancrum
Hollis Brown is stuck. Born to a blue-collar American Dream, Hollis lives in a rotting small town where no one can afford to leave. Hollis's only bright spots are his two best friends, cool girls Annie and Yulia, and the thrill of fighting his classmates.
As if his circumstances couldn’t get worse, a chance encounter with a mysterious stranger named Walt results in a frightening trap. After unknowingly making a deal at the crossroads, Hollis finds himself losing control of his body and mind, falling victim to possession. Walt, the ghost making a home inside him, has a deep and violent history rooted in the town Hollis grew up in and he has unfinished business to take care of.
As Walt and Hollis begin working together to put Walt’s spirit to rest, an unspeakable bond forms between them, and the boys begin falling for one another in unexpected ways. But it’s only a matter of time before Hollis’s best friends begin to notice that something about Hollis isn’t quite…right.
With the threat of a long-overdue exorcism looming before them, will Walt and Hollis be able to protect their love and undo the curse that turned their town from a garden of possibility into a place where dreams go to die?
Tags - LGBT Books, Horror, Fantasy, Romance, Paranormal, Supernatural, New Books 2025.
Isaac's Song by Daniel Black
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.
Tags - LGBT Books, Historical Fiction, African American, Coming Of Age, New Books 2025.
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab
This is a story about hunger. 1532. Santo Domingo de la Calzada. A young girl grows up wild and wily―her beauty is only outmatched by her dreams of escape. But María knows she can only ever be a prize, or a pawn, in the games played by men. When an alluring stranger offers an alternate path, María makes a desperate choice. She vows to have no regrets.
This is a story about love. 1827. London. A young woman lives an idyllic but cloistered life on her family’s estate, until a moment of forbidden intimacy sees her shipped off to London. Charlotte’s tender heart and seemingly impossible wishes are swept away by an invitation from a beautiful widow―but the price of freedom is higher than she could have imagined.
This is a story about rage. 2019. Boston. College was supposed to be her chance to be someone new. That’s why Alice moved halfway across the world, leaving her old life behind. But after an out-of-character one-night stand leaves her questioning her past, her present, and her future, Alice throws herself into the hunt for answers . . . and revenge.
This is a story about life―how it ends, and how it starts.
Tags - LGBT Books, Historical Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Vampires, New Books 2025.
I Am You by Victoria Redel
At eight years old, Gerta Pieters is forced to disguise herself as a boy and sent to work for a genteel Dutch family.
When their brilliant and beautiful daughter Maria sees through Gerta’s ruse, she insists that Gerta accompany her to Amsterdam and help her enter the elite, male-dominated art world.
While Maria rises in the ranks of society as a painting prodigy, Gerta makes herself invaluable in every way: confidante, muse, lover. But as Gerta steps into her own talents, their relationship fractures into a complex web of obsession and rivalry—and the secrets they keep threaten to unravel everything.
A mesmerizing historical novel, I Am You is a meditation on gender, an ode to artistic creation, and an unforgettable love story that reimagines the life of renowned still life painter Maria van Oosterwijck during the Dutch Golden Age.
Tags - LGBT Books, Amazon, Goodreads, New Books 2025.
Moonrising by Claire Barner
In 2073, controversial agronomist Dr. Alex Cole has dedicated her life to mutagenetic food, the only solution to feeding a world torn apart by climate change. When fierce opposition from radical environmentalists wipes out her lab funding, a surprising lifeline appears in the form of Mansoor Al Kaabi, a charismatic Emirati businessman who needs a sustainable food supply for his guests on the Moon’s first hotel.
Alex moves to the Moon colony with Mansoor, and they immediately dive into the challenging work. As she smuggles in illegal chickens, fights a vexing tomato fungus, and dreams of olive groves on the Moon, Alex is surprised to find herself falling in love not just with the lunar colony, but with Mansoor, whose vision for the future of the Moon extends far beyond luxury hotels.
Back on Earth, eccentric genius Victor Beard and Mansoor’s younger brother Rashid fight to push the Homestead Act through Congress. Without the support of the US government, they’ll never be able to achieve their goal to relocate humanity to the Moon and secure a second chance for life on Earth.
When eco-terrorists threaten the lunar colony, Alex, Mansoor, Victor, and Rashid must choose what they’re willing to die for–and what they’re really living for. Is it their grandiose visions of saving the planet, or is it each other?
Tags - LGBT Books, Science Fiction, Romance, Workplace, New Books 2025.
The Sunflower Boys by Sam Wachman
In many ways, twelve-year-old Artem’s life in Chernihiv, Ukraine, is normal. He spends his days helping on his grandfather’s sunflower farm, drawing in his sketchbook—a treasured gift from his father, who works in America—and swimming in the river with his little brother, Yuri. In secret, Artem has begun wrestling with romantic feelings for his best friend, Viktor. In a country where love between two boys is unthinkable, Artem has begun to worry that growing up, his life will never be normal.
Then, on a February night, Artem and Yuri are woken by explosions—the beginning of a war that will tear their life in two. The invading Russians destroy their home, killing their mother and grandfather, and leaving young Artem and Yuri to fend for themselves. Fleeing in hopes of somehow reuniting with their father, the brothers traverse the country their ancestors once fought and died for, with nothing but their backpacks and each other. Surrounded by death and destruction, Artem is certain of one thing—that whatever may come, he must keep himself and his brother alive.
A harrowing and gorgeous tale of love, identity, lost innocence, and survival set in a time of devastating war, The Sunflower Boys is a powerful, heartrending exploration of young queer love, the Ukrainian spirit, and a family’s struggle to survive.
Tags - LGBT Books, War, Young Adult, Coming of Age, Realistic Fiction, New Books 2025.
Somewhere Beyond the Sea by T.J. Klune
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.
Tags - LGBT Books, Amazon, Goodreads, New Books 2025.
The Keeper of Lonely Spirits by E.M. Anderson
In this mesmerizing, wonderfully moving queer cozy fantasy, an immortal ghost hunter must confront his tragic past in order to embrace his found family.
Find an angry spirit. Send it on its way before it causes trouble. Leave before anyone learns his name.
After over two hundred years, Peter Shaughnessy is ready to die and end this cycle. But thanks to a youthful encounter with one o’ them folk in his native Ireland, he can’t. Instead, he’s cursed to wander eternally far from home, with the ability to see ghosts and talk to plants.
Immortality means Peter has lost everyone he’s ever loved. And so he centers his life on the dead—until his wandering brings him to Harrington, Ohio. As he searches for a vengeful spirit, Peter’s drawn into the townsfolk’s lives, homes and troubles. For the first time in over a century, he wants something other than death.
But the people of Harrington will die someday. And he won’t.
As Harrington buckles under the weight of the supernatural, the ghost hunt pits Peter’s well-being against that of his new friends and the man he’s falling for. If he stays, he risks heartbreak. If he leaves, he risks their lives.
Tags - LGBT Books, Cozy Fantasy, Romance, Paranormal, New Books 2025.
All of Us Murderers by K.J. Charles
When Zeb Wyckham is summoned to a wealthy relative's remote Gothic manor, he is horrified to find all the people he least wants to see in the world: his estranged brother, his sneering cousin, and his bitter ex-lover Gideon Grey. Things couldn't possibly get worse.
Then the master of the house announces the true purpose of the gathering: he intends to leave the vast family fortune to whoever marries his young ward, setting off a violent scramble for her hand.
Zeb wants no part of his greedy family—but when he tries to leave, the way is barred. The walls of Lackaday House are high, and the gates firmly locked. As the Dartmoor mists roll in, there's no way out. And something unnatural may be watching them from the house's shadowy depths…
Fear and paranoia ramping ever-higher, Zeb has nowhere to turn but to the man who once held his heart. As the gaslight flickers and terror takes hold, can two warring lovers reunite, uncover the murderous mysteries of Lackaday House—and live to tell the tale?
Tags - LGBT Books, Amazon, Goodreads, New Books 2025.
This Princess Kills Monsters by Ry Herman
Someone wants to murder Princess Melilot. This is sadly normal.
Melilot is sick of being ordered to go on dangerous quests by her domineering stepmother. Especially since she always winds up needing to be rescued by her more magically talented stepsisters. And now, she's been commanded to marry a king she’s never met.
When hideous spider-wolves attack her on the journey to meet her husband-to-be, she is once again rescued—but this time, by twelve eerily similar-looking masked huntsmen. Soon she has to contend with near-constant attempts on her life, a talking lion that sets bewildering gender tests, and a king who can't recognize his true love when she puts on a pair of trousers. And all the while, she has to fight her growing attraction to not only one of the huntsmen, but also her fiancé’s extremely attractive sister.
If Melilot can't unravel the mysteries and rescue herself from peril, kingdoms will fall. Worse, she could end up married to someone she doesn’t love.
Tags - LGBT Books, Fantasy, Romance, Retellings, Romantasy, Cozy, New Books 2025.
The Incandescent by Emily Tesh
"Look at you, eating magic like you're one of us."
Doctor Walden is the Director of Magic at Chetwood School and one of the most powerful magicians in England.
Her days consist of meetings, teaching A-Level Invocation to four talented, chaotic sixth formers, more meetings, and securing the school's boundaries from demonic incursions.
Walden is good at her job―no, Walden is great at her job.
But demons are masters of manipulation. It’s her responsibility to keep her school with its six hundred students and centuries-old legacy safe.
And it’s possible the entity Walden most needs to keep her school safe from―is herself.
Tags - LGBT Books, Fantasy, Dark Academia, Urban Fantasy, Magic, New Books 2025.
The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong
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.
Tags - LGBT Books, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Book Club, Mental Health, New Books 2025.
The Lighthouse at the Edge of the World by J.R. Dawson
At the edge of Chicago, nestled on the shores of Lake Michigan, there is a waystation for the dead. Every night, the newly-departed travel through the city to the Station, guided by its lighthouse. There, they reckon with their lives, before stepping aboard a boat to go beyond.
Nera has spent decades watching her father―the ferryman of the dead―sail across the lake, each night just like the last.
But tonight, something is wrong.
The Station's lighthouse has started to flicker out. The terrifying, ghostly Haunts have multiplied in the city. And now a person―a living person―has found her way onto the boat.
Her name is Charlie. She followed a song. And she is searching for someone she lost.
Tags - LGBT Books, Fantasy, Romance, Paranormal, Urban Fantasy, New Books 2025.
Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World by Mark Waddell
Colin is a low-level employee at Dark Enterprises, a Hell-like multinational corporation solving the world’s most difficult problems in deeply questionable ways. After years of toiling away in a cubicle, he’s ready to climb the corporate ladder and claim the power he’s never had.
The only problem is, he’s pretty sure he’s about to be terminated. Like, terminated. That’s tough, because his BFF has just set him up with a great guy. In fact, maybe he’s a little too great. And he asks a lot of questions . . .
When Colin meets a shadowy figure promising his deepest desire in return for a small, unspecified favor, he can’t resist the urge to fast-track his goals. He asks for the one thing that will improve his life: a promotion.
But that small favor unleashes an ancient evil. People in New York are disappearing, the world might be ending, and Management is starting to notice. Getting to the top is never easy, and now it’s up to Colin to save the world. It’s the ultimate power move, after all.
Tags - LGBT Books, Amazon, Goodreads, New Books 2025.
Compound Fracture by Andrew Joseph White
On the night Miles Abernathy—sixteen-year-old socialist and proud West Virginian—comes out as trans to his parents, he sneaks off to a party, carrying evidence that may finally turn the tide of the blood feud plaguing Twist Creek: Photos that prove the county’s Sheriff Davies was responsible for the so-called “accident” that injured his dad, killed others, and crushed their grassroots efforts to unseat him.
The feud began a hundred years ago when Miles’s great-great-grandfather, Saint Abernathy, incited a miners’ rebellion that ended with a public execution at the hands of law enforcement. Now, Miles becomes the feud’s latest victim as the sheriff’s son and his friends sniff out the evidence, follow him through the woods, and beat him nearly to death.
In the hospital, the ghost of a soot-covered man hovers over Miles’s bedside while Sheriff Davies threatens Miles into silence. But when Miles accidently kills one of the boys who hurt him, he learns of other folks in Twist Creek who want out from under the sheriff’s heel. To free their families from this cycle of cruelty, they’re willing to put everything on the line—is Miles?
Tags - LGBT Books, Horror, Thriller, Transgender, Disability, Published 2024.
I Make Envy on Your Disco by Eric Schnall
It’s the new millennium and the anxiety of midlife is creeping up on Sam Singer, a thirty-seven-year-old art advisor. Fed up with his partner and his life in New York, Sam flies to Berlin to attend a gallery opening.
There he finds a once-divided city facing an identity crisis of its own. In Berlin the past is everywhere: the graffiti-stained streets, the candlelit cafés and techno clubs, the astonishing mash-up of architecture, monuments, and memorials.
A trip that begins in isolation evolves into one of deep connection and possibility. In an intensely concentrated series of days, Sam finds himself awash in the city, stretched in limbo between his own past and future—in nightclubs with Jeremy, a lonely wannabe DJ; navigating a flirtation with Kaspar, an East Berlin artist he meets at a café; and engaged in a budding relationship with Magda, the enigmatic and icy manager of Sam’s hotel, whom Sam finds himself drawn to and determined to thaw.
I Make Envy on Your Disco is at once a tribute to Berlin, a novel of longing and connection, and a coming-of-middle-age story about confronting the person you were and becoming the person you want to be.
Tags - LGBT Books, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Travel, Germany, Published 2024.
When the World Tips Over by Jandy Nelson
The Fall siblings live in hot Northern California wine country, where the sun pours out of the sky, and the devil winds blow so hard they whip the sense right out of your head.
Years ago, the Fall kids’ father mysteriously disappeared, cracking the family into pieces. Now Dizzy Fall, age twelve, bakes cakes, sees spirits, and wishes she were a heroine of a romance novel. Miles Fall, seventeen, brainiac, athlete, and dog-whisperer, is a raving beauty, but also lost, and desperate to meet the kind of guy he dreams of. And Wynton Fall, nineteen, who raises the temperature of a room just by entering it, is a virtuoso violinist set on a crash course for fame . . . or self-destruction.
Then an enigmatic rainbow-haired girl shows up, tipping the Falls’ world over. She might be an angel. Or a saint. Or an ordinary girl. Somehow, she is vital to each of them. But before anyone can figure out who she is, catastrophe strikes, leaving the Falls more broken than ever. And more desperate to be whole.
With road trips, rivalries, family curses, love stories within love stories within love stories, and sorrows and joys passed from generation to generation, this is the intricate, luminous tale of a family’s complicated past and present. And only in telling their stories can they hope to rewrite their futures.
Tags - LGBT Books, Contemporary, Romance, Magical Realism, Fantasy, Family, Published 2024.
Blessings by Chukwuebuka Ibeh
Obiefuna has always been the black sheep of his family—sensitive where his father, Anozie, is pragmatic, a dancer where his brother, Ekene, is a natural athlete. But when Obiefuna’s father witnesses an intimate moment between his teenage son and another boy, his deepest fears are confirmed, and Obiefuna is banished to boarding school.
As he navigates his new school’s strict hierarchy and unpredictable violence, Obiefuna both finds and hides who he truly is. Back home, his mother, Uzoamaka, must contend with the absence of her beloved son, her husband’s cryptic reasons for sending him away, and the hard truths that they’ve all been hiding from. As Nigeria teeters on the brink of criminalizing same-sex relationships, Obiefuna’s identity becomes more dangerous than ever before, and the life he wants drifts further out of reach.
Set in post-military Nigeria and culminating in the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act of 2013, Blessings is an elegant and exquisitely moving story that asks how to live freely in a country that forbids one’s truest self, and what it takes for love to flourish despite it all.
Tags - LGBT Books, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Nigeria, Coming Of Age, Published 2024.
Lord of the Empty Isles by Jules Arbeaux
Five years ago, Idrian ordered a withering—a death curse—cast on Remy's brother that cost him his life, and Remy hasn't been the same since. Now Remy finally has the materials he needs to return the favour, but he has one major problem. When he casts the withering, it rebounds onto him.
The implications are unthinkable: Remy is fatebound to his brother's killer.
Even worse, the only way to slow the curse for long enough to find a cure is to join forces with Idrian and his criminal crew. But when he gets there, Remy discovers there are more than just their lives at stake.
Idrian is the sole provider of life-saving supplies to tens of thousands of innocents, and when he dies, they'll die with him. Caught up in perilous heists and a race against time, Remy finds himself truly living for the first time since his brother died.
Too bad for Remy—the only way to stop a withering is to kill the witherer.
Tags - LGBT Books, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Found Family, Romance, Space, Published 2024.
Don't Let the Forest In by C.G. Drews
Once upon a time, Andrew had cut out his heart and given it to this boy, and he was very sure Thomas had no idea that Andrew would do anything for him. Protect him. Lie for him. Kill for him.
High school senior Andrew Perrault finds refuge in the twisted fairytales that he writes for the only person who can ground him to reality―Thomas Rye, the boy with perpetually ink-stained hands and hair like autumn leaves. And with his twin sister, Dove, inexplicably keeping him at a cold distance upon their return to Wickwood Academy, Andrew finds himself leaning on his friend even more.
But something strange is going on with Thomas. His abusive parents have mysteriously vanished, and he arrives at school with blood on his sleeve. Thomas won't say a word about it, and shuts down whenever Andrew tries to ask him questions. Stranger still, Thomas is haunted by something, and he seems to have lost interest in his artwork―whimsically macabre sketches of the monsters from Andrew's wicked stories.
Desperate to figure out what's wrong with his friend, Andrew follows Thomas into the off-limits forest one night and catches him fighting a nightmarish monster―Thomas's drawings have come to life and are killing anyone close to him. To make sure no one else dies, the boys battle the monsters every night. But as their obsession with each other grows stronger, so do the monsters, and Andrew begins to fear that the only way to stop the creatures might be to destroy their creator...
Tags - LGBT Books, Horror, Fantasy, Gothic, Dark Academia, Mystery, Published 2024.
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