Adult Nonfiction

By Pepper Schwartz, 2009 Paperback

Dr. Pepper Schwartz' has spent the past three decades encouraging women to embrace their sexual appetites. But when she became a single woman after 23 years of marriage, she had to take her own advice and discover how sex and dating could work for her at this unique time in her life.

Prime is her story of exploration—sex, adventure, and romance—spread out like a road map for women of every age. Whether you're looking to wake up a tired sex life, start a new relationship, or commit to the love of your life, you can find tempting tips and genuinely helpful guidance. Prime invites every woman to relish her sexuality, take risks, and go after what she really wants.

By: Prince (Author), Hanif Abdurraqib (Introduction), 2019, Paperback

A collection of the very first, the very last, and the very best interviews conducted with Prince over his nearly 40 year career.

There is perhaps no musician who has had as much influence on the sound of contemporary American music than Prince. His pioneering compositions brought a variety of musical genres into a singular funky and virtuosic sound. In this remarkable collection, and with his signature mix of seduction and demur, the late visionary reflects on his artistry, identity, and the sacrifices and soul-searching it took to stay true to himself. An Introduction by Hanif Abdurraqib offers astute, contemporary perspective and brilliantly contextualizes the collected interviews.

By: Brian Broome (Author), 2022, Paperback

WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE • WINNER OF A LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD • NEW YORK TIMESNOTABLE BOOK • NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' PICK • STONEWALL HONOR BOOK • NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, KIRKUS REVIEWS, LIBRARY JOURNAL, AMAZON AND APPLE BOOKS • TODAY SUMMER READING LIST PICK • ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY BEST DEBUT OF SUMMER PICK • PEOPLE BEST BOOK OF SUMMER PICK

A raw, poetic, coming-of-age “masterwork” (The New York Times)

Punch Me Up to the Gods introduces a powerful new talent in Brian Broome, whose early years growing up in Ohio as a dark-skinned Black boy harboring crushes on other boys propel forward this gorgeous, aching, and unforgettable debut. Brian’s recounting of his experiences—in all their cringe-worthy, hilarious, and heartbreaking glory—reveal a perpetual outsider awkwardly squirming to find his way in. Indiscriminate sex and escalating drug use help to soothe his hurt, young psyche, usually to uproarious and devastating effect. A no-nonsense mother and broken father play crucial roles in our misfit’s origin story. But it is Brian’s voice in the retelling that shows the true depth of vulnerability for young Black boys that is often quietly near to bursting at the seams.

Cleverly framed around Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem “We Real Cool,” the iconic and loving ode to Black boyhood, Punch Me Up to the Gods is at once playful, poignant, and wholly original. Broome’s writing brims with swagger and sensitivity, bringing an exquisite and fresh voice to ongoing cultural conversations about Blackness in America.

By: Kerrie Taber (Author, Cover Art), Jay Fox (Cover Art), 2023, Paperback

Quarantining Hate delves into a grandfather's secret and how the author came to terms with it. Her grandfather was responsible for the murder of thousands of Jews during World War II and was never held accountable for his crimes.

By: Essie Dennis, 2022, Paperback

As a young, queer, plus-size person, Essie Dennis has spent a lot of time feeling like they weren't enough - not queer enough, not feminine enough, not perfect enough. When they took to social media to share how they felt, they were overwhelmed by how many others felt the same.

I look too masculine to be non-binary
I look too feminine to be a lesbian
Am I too fat for drag?

Inviting you to challenge accepted beauty standards and the concept of 'the perfect body', Essie takes everything they have learned on their journey to self-acceptance and body satisfaction to help guide you towards loving your queer body. From gender, sexuality and reclaiming your body, through to food, politics, social media and fatphobia, this radical book starts a conversation about body image and mental health that queer people are so often left out of.

Fiercely and unapologetically written, and with honest advice and powerful stories from a diverse range of queer people throughout, this is an inspiring and necessary book that will show you that you areenough.

By: Krisitn Liam Kali, 2022, Paperback

The only evidence-based, up-to-date fertility guide for queer people from an experienced health care provider, this is also the first to be transgender inclusive and body-positive. 
 
Here, queer prospective parents will find sound advice for navigating complex medical, social and financial decisions. Trusted fertility midwife Kristin Kali walks you through the baby-making process: creating a timeline; fertile health for every body; preconception tests; identifying ovulation; donors, gamete banks, and surrogacy; methods of insemination including IUI, IVF and reciprocal IVF; navigating early pregnancy; and preparing for infant feeding, including lactation induction for trans women and nongestational parents.
 
This book is for all LGBTQ+ readers interested in creating family through pregnancy: anyone who identifies as queer, lesbians, gay men, bisexual people, trans and nonbinary people, couples, single parents by choice, poly families, and coparents. It’s an antidote to a culture and medical system that all too often centers heterosexual couples experiencing infertility while overlooking our unique needs. It also contains sidebars with guidance for reproductive healthcare professionals.

By:  Antoni Porowski, Tan France, Jonathan Van Ness, Bobby Berk, & Karamo Brown, 2018, Hardcover 

From the Fab Five--the beloved hosts of Netflix's viral hit Queer Eye--comes a book that is at once a behind-the-scenes exclusive, a practical guide to living and celebrating your best life, and a symbol of hope.

     Feeling your best is about far more than deciding what color to paint your accent wall or how to apply nightly moisturizer. It's also about creating a life that's well-rounded, filled with humor and understanding--and most importantly, that suits you. At a cultural moment when we are all craving people to admire, Queer Eye offers hope and acceptance. After you get to know the Fab Five, together they will guide you through five practical chapters that go beyond their designated areas of expertise (food & wine, fashion, grooming, home decor, and culture), touching on topics like wellness, entertaining, and defining your personal brand, and complete with bite-sized Hip Tips for your everyday quandaries. Above all else, Queer Eye aims to help you create a happy and healthy life, rooted in self-love and authenticity.

By: Dan Jones (Author), 2023, Hardback

Featuring 50 profiles and select B&W illustrated portraits, Heroes of Queer Myth & Legend is a celebration of gay gods and goddesses, sapphic sirens, misunderstood mermen, and lesbians of legend.

Hidden in the margins of history books, classical literature, and thousands of years of stories, myths and legends, through to contemporary literature, TV and film, there is a diverse and other-worldly super community of queer heroes to discover, learn from, and celebrate.

Be captivated by stories of forbidden love like Patroclus & Achilles (explored in Madeleine Miller's bestseller Song of Achilles), join the cult of Antinous (inspiration for Oscar Wilde), get down with pansexual god Set in Egyptian myth, and fall for Zimbabwe's trans God Mawi. And from modern pop-culture, through Dan Jones's witty, upbeat style, learn more about 90s fan obsessions Xena: Warrior Princess and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Neil Gaiman's American Gods and the BBC 's Doctor Who.

Heroes of Queer Myth & Legend brings to life characters who are romantic, brave, mysterious, and always fantastical. It is a magnificent celebration of queerness through the ages in all its legendary glory.

By: Orit Avishai (Author), 2023, Paperback

Offers a compelling look at how Orthodox Jewish LGBT persons in Israel became more accepted in their communities.

Until fairly recently, Orthodox people in Israel could not imagine embracing their LGBT sexual or gender identity and staying within the Orthodox fold. But within the span of about a decade and a half, Orthodox LGBT people have forged social circles and communities and become much more visible. This has been a remarkable shift in a relatively short time span. Queer Judaism offers the compelling story of how Jewish LGBT persons in Israel created an effective social movement.

Drawing on more than 120 interviews, Orit Avishai illustrates how LGBT Jews accomplished this radical change. She makes the case that it has taken multiple approaches to achieve recognition within the community, ranging from political activism to more personal interactions with religious leaders and community members, to simply creating spaces to go about their everyday lives. Orthodox LGBT Jews have drawn from their lived experiences as well as Jewish traditions, symbols, and mythologies to build this movement, motivated to embrace their sexual identity not in spite of, but rather because of, their commitment to Jewish scripture, tradition, and way of life. Unique and timely, Queer Judaism challenges popular conceptions of how LGBT people interact and identify with conservative communities of faith.

By: Tomas Prower, 2018, Paperback

Queer Magic and Mysticism in History and Today

Queer Magic provides nourishment for LGBTQ+ souls and their allies who are interested in learning about the significant presence and influence of queer folks throughout history. Explore fascinating insights into queer relationships and spiritual practices from different regions of the world. Learn about deities, heroes, and historical figures who embody the power of the queer spirit. Discover inspiring contributions from contemporary LGBT+ Pagans, Catholics, Buddhists, Muslims, and others as they share personal stories of their experiences as well as spells, prayers, and meditations from their own practices. With practical suggestions and enlightening perspectives, this book is a unique resource for LGBT+ spiritual seekers who want to experience the sustaining energy and strength of the worldwide queer community.

By: Teresa Theophano (Author), 2005, Paperback

Queer Quotes is a compendium of wit and wisdom from well-known historical and contemporary cultural figures. Often amusing, the quotes are also thought-provoking and have an impressive scope. Subjects range from love and gay marriage to HIV/AIDS, from gender identity to religion, and everything in between. Featuring more than 350 quotes as well as short biographies of all the individuals quoted, Queer Quotes is an essential resource and an ideal gift book.

Select list of Contributors:

Paula Gunn Allen, Dorothy Allison, Pedro Almodóvar, James Baldwin, Tallulah Bankhead, Simone de Beauvoir, Sandra Bernhard, Chastity Bono, Susie Bright, Truman Capote, Kate Clinton, Ellen DeGeneres, Melissa Etheridge, Leslie Feinberg, Harvey Fierstein, Barney Frank, Jewelle Gomez, Larry Kramer, Liberace, Greg Louganis, Audre Lorde, Sir Ian McKellen, Isaac Mizrahi, Boy George, Armistead Maupin, Martina Navratilova, Adrienne Rich, Marlon Riggs, Eleanor Roosevelt, Urvashi Vaid, Gore Vidal, John Waters, Edmund White, Oscar Wilde-and many, many more.

By: Alexis Macaluso (Author), Haley Steinhilber (Author), Dan Low (Author), 2024, Paperback

In Queer Seeking Queer: A Colorful History, we journey back in time covering real personal ads from throughout the 20th century. We have imagined what these ad authors might look like - you get to color them in. No stamps necessary.

By: Juno Roche, 2018, Paperback

'Queer Sex is simply phenomenal' - Bitch Media

'A gift to anyone looking to open their minds and fall in love' - CN Lester

In this frank, funny and poignant book, transgender activist Juno Roche discusses sex, desire and dating with leading figures from the trans and non-binary community.

Calling out prejudices and inspiring readers to explore their own concepts of intimacy and sexuality, the first-hand accounts celebrate the wonder and potential of trans bodies and push at the boundaries of how society views gender, sexuality and relationships.

Empowering and necessary, this collection shows all trans people deserve to feel brave, beautiful and sexy.

By: Roberto Strongman (Author), 2019, Paperback, Illustrated

In Queering Black Atlantic Religions Roberto Strongman examines Haitian Vodou, Cuban Lucumí/Santería, and Brazilian Candomblé to demonstrate how religious rituals of trance possession allow humans to understand themselves as embodiments of the divine. In these rituals, the commingling of humans and the divine produces gender identities that are independent of biological sex. As opposed to the Cartesian view of the spirit as locked within the body, the body in Afro-diasporic religions is an open receptacle. Showing how trance possession is a primary aspect of almost all Afro-diasporic cultural production, Strongman articulates transcorporeality as a black, trans-Atlantic understanding of the human psyche, soul, and gender as multiple, removable, and external to the body.

By: Pamela VanHaitsma (Author), 2019, Hardcover

Romantic letters are central to understanding same-sex romantic relationships from the past, with debates about so-called romantic friendship turning on conflicting interpretations of letters. Too often, however, these letters are treated simply as unstudied expressions of heartfelt feeling. In Queering Romantic Engagement in the Postal Age: A Rhetorical Education, Pamela VanHaitsma nuances such approaches to reading letters, showing how the genre should be understood instead as a learned form of epistolary rhetoric.

Through archival study of instruction in the romantic letter genre, VanHaitsma challenges the normative scholarly focus on rhetorical education as preparing citizen subjects for civic engagement. She theorizes a new concept of rhetorical education for romantic engagement―defined as instruction in language practices for composing romantic relations―to prompt histories that account for the significant yet unrealized role that rhetorical training plays in inventing both civic and romantic life.

VanHaitsma's history of epistolary instruction in the nineteenth-century United States is grounded in examining popular manuals that taught the romantic letter genre; romantic correspondence of Addie Brown and Rebecca Primus, both freeborn African American women; and multigenre epistolary rhetoric by Yale student Albert Dodd. These case studies span rhetors who are diverse by gender, race, class, and educational background but who all developed creative ways of queering cultural norms and generic conventions in developing their same-sex romantic relationships. Ultimately, Queering Romantic Engagement in the Postal Age argues that such rhetorical training shaped citizens as romantic subjects in predictably heteronormative ways and simultaneously opened up possibilities for their queer rhetorical practices.