Adult Fiction

By: Elizabeth Scott (Author), 2008, Paperback

Once upon a time, I was a little girl who disappeared. Once upon a time, my name was not Alice. Once upon a time, I didn't know how lucky I was. When Alice was ten, Ray took her away from her family, her friends -- her life. She learned to give up all power, to endure all pain. She waited for the nightmare to be over. Now Alice is fifteen and Ray still has her, but he speaks more and more of her death. He does not know it is what she longs for. She does not know he has something more terrifying than death in mind for her. This is Alice's story. It is one you have never heard, and one you will never, ever forget.

By: Poppy Z. Brite, 1993, Paperback

At a club in Missing Mile, N.C., the children of the night gather, dressed in black, look for acceptance. Among them are Ghost, who sees what others do not; Ann, longing for love; and Jason, whose real name is Nothing, newly awakened to an ancient, deathless truth about his father, and himself.

Others are coming to Missing Mile tonight. Three beautiful, hip vagabonds—Molochai, Twig, and the seductive Zillah, whose eyes are as green as limes—are on their own lost journey, slaking their ancient thirst for blood, looking for supple young flesh.

They find it in Nothing and Ann, leading them on a mad, illicit road trip south to New Orleans. Over miles of dark highway, Ghost pursues, his powers guiding him on a journey to reach his destiny, to save Ann from her new companions, to save Nothing from himself. . . . 

By: Alyson Root (Author), 2024, Paperback

Ellie Bishop is America’s sweetheart with a slew of award-winning rom-coms under her belt. Unfortunately for her, the sweet girl next door bit is tiresome and doesn’t allow her to show the acting world what she’s really capable of.

If only her manager would find the roles Ellie craves. When he comes with an offer for a reality TV show, Ellie is less than thrilled. Wild Celebrities is not the action-packed adventure she was looking for. In fact, this city slicker can’t think of anything worse than shipping off to God knows where for a month with only a backpack and a survival expert to keep her company. Her need for several caramel frappuccinos daily is legendary. There is no way in hell she’s going to subject herself to bugs and animals that could kill or eat her. No matter how much they offer to pay her.

Robin Stuart is looking for a new direction in life after working as a bodyguard for privileged divas. Not what she thought she would be doing after serving in the British Marines. That new direction comes in the form of Wild Celebrities when her best friend begs her to take his place. From the moment Robin finds out who her celebrity survivor is, she is sure of two things. One: Ellie Bishop is hot. Two: She’s going to be useless in the Amazon rainforest. The show is going to test more than Robin’s survival skills, of that she is sure!

When the unthinkable happens, Ellie and Robin and two crew members are catapulted into their worst nightmares. Robin is their only chance of making it out of the rainforest alive. Easier said than done. With lives on the line, can both women put aside their stark differences long enough to come up with an escape plan? Is there more to be found in the Amazon other than wild things?

Lambda Literary Award winner

This exciting and groundbreaking fiction anthology showcases a number of new and emerging 2SQ (Two-Spirit and queer Indigenous) writers from across Turtle Island. These visionary authors show how queer Indigenous communities can bloom and thrive through utopian narratives that detail the vivacity and strength of 2SQness throughout its plight in the maw of settler colonialism’s histories.

Here, readers will discover bio-engineered AI rats, transplanted trees in space, the rise of a 2SQ resistance camp, a primer on how to survive Indigiqueerly, virtual reality applications, motherships at sea, and the very bending of space-time continuums queered through NDN time. Love after the End demonstrates the imaginatively queer Two-Spirit futurisms we have all been dreaming of since 1492.

Contributors include Darcie Little Badger, Mari Kurisato, Kai Minosh Pyle, David Alexander Robertson, and jaye simpson.

Delilah Green Doesn't Care meets The Bold Type in this sapphic rom-com where two exes reconnect and are given a second chance at love. 

When her boyfriend of seven years suddenly breaks up with her, relationship advice columnist Gemma Cho is convinced that real love doesn’t exist. As a bisexual woman who’s had zero luck with both men and women, she’s ready to give up on her own romantic prospects. That is, until she's paired up with world-renowned photographer Celeste Min on a potentially career-saving piece on modern love. 
 
Celeste is extremely talented and sexy, and would be the perfect collaborator and rebound for Gemma if it weren’t for one major fact: she’s Gemma’s ex, the one that broke her heart in college and moved to a whole other country before Gemma could even make sense of what went wrong between them. Heightened by the unmistakable sparks that still fly between them, Gemma and Celeste struggle to keep their relationship strictly professional. For the sake of her career, Gemma needs this piece to do well. And for the sake of what’s left of her beaten up hopeless romantic heart, she wants to fall head over heels for Celeste again. But can she trust Celeste to feel the same this time around?

Ravi moved to the U.S. as a teenager to escape the ambient terrors of growing up gay in India. The novel picks up Ravi’s story a couple of decades later, when he meets two very different men who will change his life forever. Usman works at a resort in Goa where Ravi and his family are vacationing. Their connection is instantaneous, but the odds are stacked against the pair right from the get-go. Usman is young, closeted, and deeply conflicted about reconciling his sexuality with his religious beliefs and cultural expectations. Ravi lives in Boston, and their lives seem worlds apart, literally and figuratively. Adam is carefree and seemingly perfect, except that he doesn’t believe in monogamy or long-term relationships, both of which he considers fossilized relics of an outdated, heteronormative era. Adam and Usman both force Ravi to reckon with his own past as he explores the space between love and loneliness.

Lucky Day is the newest novel of terror from Chuck Tingle, USA Today bestselling author of Bury Your Gays, where one woman must go up against the most horrifying concept of all: nothing.

Vera is a survivor of a global catastrophe known as the Low Probability Event, but she definitely isn't thriving. Once a passionate professor of statistics, she no longer finds meaning in anything at all.

But when problematic government agent Layne knocks on her door, she's the only one who can help him uncover the connection between deadly spates of absurdity and an improbably lucky casino. What's happening in Vegas isn't staying there, and the world is at risk of another disaster.

When it comes to Chuck Tingle, the only thing more terrifying than a serious horror novel is an absurd one...

Also by Chuck Tingle:
Bury Your Gays
Camp Damascus
Straight

By: Zee Carlstrom (Author), 2025, Hardcover

An electrifying debut about a nonbinary corporate burnout embarking on a road trip from Chicago to Arkansas to find their conspiracy-theorist father, who has gone missing―for fans of Detransition Baby and Chain-Gang All-Stars

The newly nameless narrator of Make Sure You Die Screaming has rejected the gender binary, has flamed out with a vengeance at their corporate gig, is most likely brain damaged from a major tussle with their now ex-boyfriend, and is on a bender to end all benders.

A call from their mother with the news that their MAGA-friendly, conspiracy-theorist father has gone missing launches the narrator from Chicago to deep red Arkansas in a stolen car. Along the way, the narrator and their new bestie―a self-proclaimed "garbage goth" with her own emotional baggage (and someone on her tail)―unpack the narrator’s childhood and a recent personal loss that they refuse to face head-on.

An unflinching interrogation of class rage, economic (im)mobility, gender expression, and the rot at the heart of capitalism, Make Sure You Die Screamingis the loud, funny, tragic, suspenseful road trip novel of our times.

By Ashley Herring Blake, 2024, paperback

Two exes find themselves stuck at the same house for Christmas in this holiday romance by Ashley Herring Blake, USA Today bestselling author of Iris Kelly Doesn't Date.

It's been five years since Charlotte Donovan was ditched at the altar by her ex-fiancée, and she’s doing more than okay. Sure, her single mother never checks in, but she has her strings ensemble, the Rosalind Quartet, and her life in New York is a dream come true. As the holidays draw near, her ensemble mate Sloane persuades Charlotte and the rest of the quartet to spend Christmas with her family in Colorado—it is much cozier and quieter than Manhattan, and it would guarantee more practice time for the quartet’s upcoming tour. But when Charlotte arrives, she discovers that Sloane’s sister Adele also brought a friend home—and that friend is none other than her ex, Brighton.

All Brighton Fairbrook wanted was to have the holliest, jolliest Christmas—and try to forget that her band kicked her out. But instead, she’s stuck pretending like she and her ex are strangers—which proves to be difficult when Sloane and Adele’s mom signs them all up for a series of Christmas dating events. Charlotte and Brighton are soon entrenched in horseback riding and cookie decorating, but Charlotte still won’t talk to her. Brighton can hardly blame her after what she did.

After a few days, however, things start to slip through. Memories. Music. The way they used to play together—Brighton on guitar, Charlotte on her violin—and it all feels painfully familiar. But it’s all in the past and nothing can melt the ice in their hearts...right?

"By far the best book I've read this year.” ―Roxane Gay

#1 Best Book of 2022 (Vulture) • A Best Horror Novel of All Time (Cosmopolitan) • One of the Best Horror Novels of 2022 (Esquire, Library Journal, Paste, and CrimeReads) • A Top 10 Horror Debuts of 2022 (Booklist) • A Goodreads Choice Award nominee for Best Horror • A Best Book of 2022 (Tor.com) • A Best SFF Book of 2022 (Gizmodo) • A Top 25 Most Influential Works of Postwar Queer Literature (The New York Times Style Magazine).

Manhunt is an explosive post-apocalyptic novel that follows trans women and trans men on a grotesque journey of survival.

“A modern horror masterpiece.” ―Carmen Maria Machado

Beth and Fran spend their days traveling the ravaged New England coast, hunting feral men and harvesting their organs in a gruesome effort to ensure they'll never face the same fate.

Robbie lives by his gun and one hard-learned motto: other people aren't safe.

After a brutal accident entwines the three of them, this found family of survivors must navigate murderous TERFs, a sociopathic billionaire bunker brat, and awkward relationship dynamics―all while outrunning packs of feral men, and their own demons.

"A filthy, furious delight."―The New Yorker

Also by Gretchen Felker-Martin:
Cuckoo
Black Flame

(The Exalted)

What good is it to know the truth if you're powerless to change it?
Philadelphia, 1950.
Nobody suspects that private detective Katsumi Okazaki uses prophecy magic to solve her cases. But her uncanny "intuition" at finding the truth can't help her prove that her new client's wife was murdered. Not when everyone else is convinced the death was accidental. To make matters more complicated, Kat's new client is an Exalter--afflicted with unpredictable magical abilities as collateral damage from the war--and her story stirs up Kat's own painful memories of displacement and the love she lost.
Luckily, Kat has plenty of practice burying her personal problems under a mountain of work. She sets out with her ethically questionable but trustworthy assistant to find evidence and catch the killer. But dread creeps in when she realizes she's being tailed. Is someone trying to thwart her investigation, or does the government still not trust her?
Either way, Kat can't let her client down. And if what her magic tells her is real, then catching the killer might not be enough... not if she's going to be able to live with herself when it's done.
The first book in The Exalted series, Marigolds and Murder is a queer fantasy murder mystery that blends WWII history with magic.

(Grievers Trilogy, Book 2) (Black Dawn, 3)

★ "brown’s sensational second contribution to AK Press’s Black Dawn series.... Equally thrilling and thought-provoking, this will put readers in mind of speculative greats like Octavia Butler and Samuel R. Delaney." —Publishers Weekly (starred review) 

A tale of survival, of moving beyond seemingly insurmountable devastation toward, if not hope itself, then the road to hope. 

In the second installment of the Grievers Trilogy, adrienne maree brown brings to bear her background as an activist rooted in Detroit. The pandemic of Syndrome H-8 continues to ravage the city of Detroit and everyone in Dune's life. In Maroons, she must learn what community and connection mean in the lonely wake of a fatal virus. Emerging from grief to follow a subtle path of small pleasures through an abandoned urban landscape, she begins finding other unlikely survivors with little in common but the will to live. Together they begin to piece together the puzzle of their survival, and that of the city itself.

By: Dale Peck (Author), 2015, Paperback

Dale Peck’s debut is a tour de force in which Martin and John find each other again and again: in a trailer park, a high-end jewelry store, a Kansas barn, and later, in New York City, living under the shadow of the AIDS epidemic. Though their names remain the same, their identities are constantly shifting, creating a fractured view of loss and desire in the early years of the AIDS crisis. Vaulting through self and history,

Martin and John is one of the most remarkable novels to emerge from an America ravaged by disease, and one of the finest and most complex love stories of the ’90s. Martin and John is the first volume of Gospel Harmonies, a series of seven stand-alone books (four have been written) which follow the character of John as he attempts to navigate the uneasy relationship between the self and the postmodern world.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • A newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a remarkable search for a family secret that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum. Electrifying, funny, and wholly original, Martyr! heralds the arrival of an essential new voice in contemporary fiction.

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR SO FAR FOR 2024 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND ATIME MUST-READ BOOK OF THE YEAR

“Kaveh Akbar is one of my favorite writers. Ever.” —Tommy Orange, Pulitzer Prize–nominated author of There There

“The best novel you'll ever read about the joy of language, addiction, displacement, martyrdom, belonging, homesickness.” —Lauren Groff, best-selling author of Matrix and Fates and Furies

Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.

Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others.