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by Shaun David Hutchinson: Hardcover; 368 pages / English

[S&S Books for Young Readers] “[P]rofound…a triumph—a full-throated howl to the moon to remind us why we choose to survive and thrive.” —Brendan Kiely, New York Times bestselling author of Tradition “Razor-sharp, deeply revealing, and brutally honest…emotionally raw and deeply insightful.” —Booklist (starred review) The critically acclaimed author of We Are the Ants opens up about what led to an attempted suicide in his teens, and his path back from the experience. “I wasn’t depressed because I was gay. I was depressed and gay.” Shaun David Hutchinson was nineteen. Confused. Struggling to find the vocabulary to understand and accept who he was and how he fit into a community in which he couldn’t see himself. The voice of depression told him that he would never be loved or wanted, while powerful and hurtful messages from society told him that being gay meant love and happiness weren’t for him. A million moments large and small over the years all came together to co

By: Buddy Shay (Author), 2022, Paperback

Brighton of the former glorified nation, Aerodom, is on the brink of collapse as the savage races conspire to enslave its inhabitants under the orcish kingdom. This tale weaves together the intimate lives of humans, elves and dwarves as they urgently fight for their freedom against all odds. Drawing the battlelines, Brighton Under Siege asks the question: where lies the three-faced god, Maot, when greedy city-states turn their back on the fallen. In bursts, we see the sheer determination of individuals who refuse to let themselves lapse into defeatism and find prevailing strength through unexpected fellowships. By the end, we come to terms with Rolf's reckoning that, "There'll be time. When Maot blesses it, it will be."

What do you do when you find out your childhood friend is a mermaid?

When Gemma and Mariana reunite after a decade, it is world changing in more ways than one for the vivacious teen. Gemma and her brother Sebastian are shown the hidden magical world that surrounds them, while at the same time learning of a pending planet-destroying danger.

They embark on a search for the powerful Conch, racing to find it before the demigod Triton who would use it to annihilate everything they know and love. They unlock powers, discover mysterious artifacts, and meet with other mythical beings during their quest.

With their eyes now opened, Gemma and Sebastian are constantly amazed to learn more about the magical world along the way, but will all their new friends and skills be enough to help them get there first?

By: Emma Carlson Berne (Author), Emma Bernay (Author), Geraldine Rodriguez (Illustrator), 2018, Paperback, Children's Book (Holidays in Rhythm and Rhyme)

Cinco de Mayo, or the Fifth of May, honors an important battle fought by the Mexican army in 1862. On this day, people celebrate with Mexican food, music, and dancing. Sing along as you explore Holidays in Rhythm and Rhyme! Includes online music access.

Take your movie night to a whole new level with Cinemantics (R)—the raunchy card game that transforms any film into a wild, hilarious, and unforgettable drinking game!

What’s Inside the Box?

• 275 cards packed with dirty movie tropes and twisted fun
• For ages 17 and up (because some things are meant for mature audiences only)
• No player limit—invite your friends, or just go solo (if you're brave enough!)
• The game lasts as long as the movie or show you’re watching—usually 30 minutes or more.
• How to Play: Get ready for a movie night like no other! Draft your cards and twist them to fit the scene—play for drinks, points, or even truths, dares, and favors. The more creative your wordplay and movie knowledge, the wilder the fun!

Think you can handle it alone? Try the solo mode—but remember, the drinking game version is for groups only—playing solo is just sad. WARNING: We’ll get you drunk, but if you’re trying to seal the deal... that’s on you! Grab Cinemantics (R) and let the chaos begin!

By: Markus Harwood-Jones (Author), 2021, Paperback

Full of colourful, authentic characters and set in Toronto, Confessions of a Teenage Drag Kinghighlights diversity of race, gender, sexual orientation, and identity. Seventeen-year-old Lauren tries to navigate the tricky waters of teen romance that brings high school to the drag show and back, all while Lauren must keep up their two personas — Ren, a drag king, and Lauri, a typical student — and come to terms with their feelings both for mixed-race student Clover and for their own identity as an LGBTQ+ teen. Confessions of a Teenage Drag King is a realistic but light-hearted exploration of gender and identity, making it a fun and topical read for today's teen readers.

A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE FINALIST
A LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FINALIST

“Quite simply one of the best books of the decade.” —Los Angeles Review of Books * “The mother of intersectional Latinx identity.” —Cosmopolitan * “Brilliant…a hopeful book…rooted in the steadfast belief other worlds are possible.” —The New York Observer * “Witty, confident, and effortlessly provocative.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer * “The most fearless writer in America.” —Luis Alberto Urrea, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Good Night, Irene

A ruthless and razor-sharp essay collection that tackles the pervasive, creeping oppression and toxicity that has wormed its way into society—in our books, schools, and homes, as well as the systems that perpetuate them—from one of our fiercest, foremost explorers of intersectional Latinx identity.

A creep can be a single figure, a villain who makes things go bump in the night. Yet creep is also what the fog does—it lurks into place to do its dirty work, muffling screams, obscuring the truth, and providing cover for those prowling within it.

Creep is “sharp, conversational cultural criticism” (Bustle), a blistering and slyly informal sociology of creeps (the individuals who deceive, exploit, and oppress) and creep culture (the systems, tacit rules, and institutions that feed them and allow them to grow and thrive). In eleven bold, electrifying pieces, Gurba mines her own life and the lives of others—some famous, some infamous, some you’ve never heard of but will likely never forget—to unearth the toxic traditions that have long plagued our culture and enabled the abusers who haunt our books, schools, and homes.

With her ruthless mind, wry humor, and adventurous style, Gurba implicates everyone from William Burroughs to her grandfather, from Joan Didion to her own abusive ex-partner; she takes aim at everything from public school administrations to the mainstream media, from Mexican stereotypes to the carceral state. Weaving her own history and identity throughout, she argues for a new way of conceptualizing oppression, and she does it with her signature blend of bravado and humility.

By: Laura R. Prieto (Editor), Stephen R. Berry (Editor), Stephen Berry (Editor), Sandra Slater (Foreword), 2020, Hardcover

A collection of essays detailing how individuals remapped race, gender, and sexuality through their lived experiences and in the cultural imagination

For centuries the Atlantic world has been a site of encounter and exchange, a rich point of transit where one could remake one's identity or find it transformed. Through this interdisciplinary collection of essays, Laura R. Prieto and Stephen R. Berry offer vivid new accounts of how individuals remapped race, gender, and sexuality through their lived experience and in the cultural imagination. Crossings and Encounters is the first single volume to address these three intersecting categories across the Atlantic world and beyond the colonial period.

The Atlantic world offered novel possibilities to and exposed vulnerabilities of many kinds of people, from travelers to urban dwellers, native Americans to refugees. European colonial officials tried to regulate relationships and impose rigid ideologies of gender, while perceived distinctions of culture, religion, and ethnicity gradually calcified into modern concepts of race. Amid the instabilities of colonial settlement and slave societies, people formed cross-racial sexual relationships, marriages, families, and households. These not only afforded some women and men with opportunities to achieve stability; they also furnished ways to redefine one's status.

Crossings and Encounters spans broadly from early contact zones in the seventeenth-century Americas to the postcolonial present, and it covers the full range of the Atlantic world, including the Caribbean, North America, and Latin America. The essays examine the historical intersections between race and gender to illuminate the fluid identities and the dynamic communities of the Atlantic world.

By: David Bowie (Author), 2016, Paperback

A revealing collection of interviews with the shape-shifting, genre-bending, wildly influential musician and song writer
 
David Bowie was an icon, not only his stunning musical output, but also his fascinating refusal to stay the same—the same as other trending artists, or even the same as himself.
 
In this remarkable collection, Bowie reveals the fierce intellectualism, artistry, and humor behind it all. From his very first interview—as a teenager on the BBC, before he was even a musician—to his last, Bowie takes on the most probing questions, candidly discussing his sexuality, his drug use, his sense of fashion, his method of composition, and more.
 
For fans still mourning his passing, as well as for those who know little about him, it’s a revealing, interesting, and inspiring look at one of the most influential artists of the last fifty years.

By: Laurie Greene (Author), 2020, Paperback

The Miss America pageant has been held in Atlantic City for the past hundred years, helping to promote the city as a tourist destination. But just a few streets away, the city hosts a smaller event that, in its own way, is equally vital to the local community: the Miss’d America drag pageant.
 
Drag Queens and Beauty Queens presents a vivid ethnography of the Miss’d America pageant and the gay neighborhood from which it emerged in the early 1990s as a moment of campy celebration in the midst of the AIDS crisis. It examines how the pageant strengthened community bonds and activism, as well as how it has changed now that Rupaul’s Drag Race has brought many of its practices into the cultural mainstream. Comparing the Miss’d America pageant with its glitzy cisgender big sister, anthropologist Laurie Greene discovers how the two pageants have influenced each other in unexpected ways. 
 
Drag Queens and Beauty Queens deepens our understanding of how femininity is performed at pageants, exploring the various ways that both the Miss’d America and Miss America pageants have negotiated between embracing and critiquing traditional gender roles. Ultimately, it celebrates the rich tradition of drag performance and the community it engenders.

My arch nemesis is my new fake boyfriend. Can you say drama?

I should be a glitter bomb of excitement about my college friends getting married. But all I can think about is running into my uber-successful ex and his new boyfriend at the wedding…while I’m flying painfully solo.

I need a plus one, stat. Enter Raleigh Marshall.

As luck (or misfortune) would have it, a picture of me and South Rock High’s too-blessed-to-be-stressed football coach accidentally finds its way on social media, making people believe we’re an item.

Raleigh is hot, charming, and one of South Rock’s most popular teachers. The problem is that he knows it. He also seems to derive a twisted pleasure from getting under my skin.

Yet once we stop bickering long enough to have a conversation, I have a hard time remembering what I hated about him.

Pretending to be in love with Raleigh Marshall will be my toughest role to date. But…am I still pretending?