Books

This 20th anniversary edition of transsexual trailblazer Kate Bornstein’s unconventional guide to staying alive for teens, freaks and gender outlaws features 20 NEW Alternatives and a new foreword by the author.

"A don't-hurt guide for anyone who's been tempted to give in to despair." --Time Out New York

"You'll want to keep extra copies of this one on the shelf to give away to friends in need." --Bitch magazine

Now updated and with new material Hello, Cruel World features a catalog of 121 alternatives to suicide that range from the playful (moisturize!), to the irreverent (shatter some family values), to the controversial, fun, challenging and easy. Encouraging readers to unleash their hearts' harmless desires, the book has only one directive: "Don't be mean." It is this guiding principle that brings the reader on a self-validating journey and toward a resounding decision to embrace life.
Using graphics and checklists, and with great humor and gutsiness, Kate Bornstein dares readers to re-envision the gender system as we know it. She offers stories and insights that are tenderly intimate and unapologetically edgy. Hello, Cruel World also includes:

* an Introduction by Sara Quin of Tegan and Sara
* The Hello Cruel Scale of Feelings
* an Index of Alternatives with safety and effectiveness scales

Suicide rates among lgbtq+ teens are much higher than for their cis peers; with love and humor and confession and insight, Bornstein hopes to keep every freak out there alive. She is a radical role model, an affectionate best friend, and a guiding mentor all in one. This one-of-a-kind guide to staying alive is a much-needed, sometimes unorthodox approach to life for those who want to stay on the edge, and alive.
Finalist, LGBT Nonfiction Lambda Literary Award, 2009Honor Book, Stonewall Children’s and Young Adult Literature Award, 2009

"Bratton’s electric debut novel transforms Shakespeare into a modern, queer drama that’s as bawdy as it’s sharp." —THE NEW YORK TIMES 

LAUGH NOW. CRY LATER.

It’s London, 2014, and Hal Lancaster, son and heir of Henry, Duke of Lancaster, is in a holding pattern: his mother is dead, his father is dying or remarrying or both, his siblings are fighting, his internship is pointless, and nobody will leave him alone. 

Everything is as it should be and yet nothing is right. Over the course of a year of partying, drinking, and flirting to dubious consequence, Hal is tested by brutal family legacies, Catholic guilt, and the terrifying possibility of being loved. All of which is complicated by a pattern of abuse that threatens to chase Hal into adulthood. The House of Lancaster will never be the same. 

Crackling with intelligence and wit, Henry Henry is a brilliant recasting of the Henriad in which Hal Lancaster is a queer protagonist for a new era. Allen Bratton arrives as a successor to Waugh and St. Aubyn with this lush, stylish novel of family, legacy, and what it means to be alive today.

Finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction

“[These stories] vibrate with originality, queerness, sensuality and the strange.”―Roxane Gay

“In these formally brilliant and emotionally charged tales, Machado gives literal shape to women’s memories and hunger and desire. I couldn’t put it down.”―Karen Russell

In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women’s lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.

A wife refuses her husband’s entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store’s prom dresses. One woman’s surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in the bravura novella “Especially Heinous,” Machado reimagines every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show we naïvely assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgängers, ghosts, and girls with bells for eyes.

Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious, Her Body and Other Parties swings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment. In their explosive originality, these stories enlarge the possibilities of contemporary fiction.

In this queer retelling of Nathaniel Hawthorne classic gothic story, Rappaccini’s Daughter, a young woman is lured to a lush estate owned by a botanist who might be hiding dark secrets.

Cordelia Beecher is on the run. In search of her missing brother Edward, she has fled the oppressive charity school she was raised in, desperate to find the only family she knows. Using clues from his past letters, she sets off for the sleepy town of Farrow but everyone there claims to have never heard of Edward—not even the man he was supposedly working for as an apprentice.

With nowhere to go, Cordi turns to Lady Evangeline, a local botanist who owns the magnificent Edenfield estate. The benevolent lady of the manor has made it her mission to take young, often traumatized, women into her employ and protect them from man’s world of wicked desires and deceits. Hired as a maid and companion to her enigmatic daughters, Prim and Briar, Cordi quickly settles into Edenfield. Even as her relationship with Briar blossoms, Cordi can’t help but suspect that there are secrets in the estate…and when she stumbles across evidence that Edward was once there, she’s determined to find answers.

Atmospheric, eerie, and thoroughly original, Her Wicked Roots will establish Tanya Pell as a “wickedly creepy” (Josh Winning, author of Heads Will Roll) and vital voice in horror.

One of the Most Anticipated Books of 2025
Debutiful • LitHub • CrimeReads • LGBTQ Reads

A “paranoid, self-annihilating” (Gretchen Felker-Martin, author of Manhunt and Cuckoo) horror debut following a woman who seeks refuge at an all-trans girl commune only to discover that demons haunt her fellow comrades—and she's their next prey!

Herculine’s narrator has demons. Sure, her life includes several hallmarks of the typical trans girl sob story—conversion therapy, a string of shitty low-paying jobs, and even shittier exes—but she also regularly debates sleep paralysis demons that turn to mist soon after she wakes and carries vials of holy oil in her purse. Nothing, though, prepares her for the new malevolent force stalking her through the streets of New York City, more powerful than any she’s ever encountered. Desperate to escape this ancient evil, she flees to rural Indiana, where her ex-girlfriend started an all-trans girl commune in the middle of the woods.

The secluded camp, named after 19th-century intersex memoirist Herculine Barbin, is a scrappy operation, but the shared sense of community among the girls is a welcome balm to the narrator’s growing isolation and paranoia. Still, something isn’t quite right at Herculine. Girls stop talking as soon as she enters the room, everyone seems to share a common secret, and the books lining the walls of the library harbor strange cryptograms. Soon what once looked like an escape becomes a trap all its own.

While trying to untangle the commune’s many mysteries, the narrator contends with disemboweled pigs, cultlike psychosexual rituals, and the horrors of communal breakfast. And before long, she discovers that her demons have followed her. And this time, they won’t be letting her go.

The author of the “sexy, insightful, and utterly charming” (BuzzFeed) Kiss Her Once for Me returns with a new queer rom-com following once childhood best friends forced together to drive their former teacher across the country.

A long time ago, Logan Maletis and Rosemary Hale used to be friends. They spent their childhood summers running through the woods, rebelling against their conservative small town, and dreaming of escaping. But then an incident the summer before high school turned them into bitter rivals. After graduation, they went ten years without speaking.

Now in their thirties, Logan and Rosemary find they aren’t quite living the lives of adventure they imagined for themselves. Still in their small town and working as teachers at their alma mater, they’re both stuck in old patterns. Uptight Rosemary chooses security and stability over all else, working constantly, and her most stable relationship is with her label maker. Chaotic and impulsive Logan has a long list of misguided ex-lovers and an apathetic shrug she uses to protect herself from anything real. And as hard as they try to avoid each other—and their complicated past—they keep crashing into each other. Including with their cars.

But when their beloved former English teacher and lifelong mentor tells them he has only a few months to live, they’re forced together once and for all to fulfill his last wish: a cross-country road trip. Stuffed into the gayest van west of the Mississippi, the three embark on a life-changing summer trip—from Washington state to the Grand Canyon, from the Gulf Coast to coastal Maine—that will chart a new future and perhaps lead them back to one another.

By: Sarah Macklin (Author), 2024, Paperback

War threatens to consume the Egan empire. Emperor Bakari marches his army northward to Wiluru, ready to make the rebelling kingdom come to heel and bring his traitorous second wife back to her proper place. His will, his commands are to be followed without question and Wiluru will burn for their disobedience. Far to the South, the city-state of Nsongo struggles to choose a new Great Dara before the title is stolen by one of its sister cities with more influence. High Priest Erenemo feels it should be him who ascends to the golden stool and throw out the Egan occupiers. However, his son may be his biggest obstacle. Conflict even brews in the capital of Metkara as the emperor's first wife and his brother the chancellor struggle over who will run the empire is Bakari's absence. Uprisings are starting up in the western hold of the empire, adding to the chancellor's already long list of concerns. But an unlikely ally is sent to him who may set him on the path to reforging the Egan hold on its empire. In the midst of it all, other forces may be at play, forces of a divine nature that may see opposing paths for the future of this land. There is more at stake in this war than even its players understand.

A queer hijabi Muslim immigrant survives her coming-of-age by drawing strength and hope from stories in the Quran in this “raw and relatable memoir that challenges societal norms and expectations” (Linah Mohammad, NPR).

“A masterful, must-read contribution to conversations on power, justice, healing, and devotion from a singular voice I now trust with my whole heart.”—Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Untamed

THEM’S HONOREE IN LITERATURE • AN AUDACIOUS BOOK CLUB PICK • WINNER: The Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize, the Stonewall Book Award, the Israel Fishman Nonfiction Award • Lambda Literary Award Finalist

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, Autostraddle, Book Riot, BookPage, Harper’s Bazaar, Electric Lit, She Reads

When fourteen-year-old Lamya H realizes she has a crush on her teacher—her female teacher—she covers up her attraction, an attraction she can’t yet name, by playing up her roles as overachiever and class clown. Born in South Asia, she moved to the Middle East at a young age and has spent years feeling out of place, like her own desires and dreams don’t matter, and it’s easier to hide in plain sight. To disappear. But one day in Quran class, she reads a passage about Maryam that changes everything: When Maryam learned that she was pregnant, she insisted no man had touched her. Could Maryam, uninterested in men, be . . . like Lamya?
 
From that moment on, Lamya makes sense of her struggles and triumphs by comparing her experiences with some of the most famous stories in the Quran. She juxtaposes her coming out with Musa liberating his people from the pharoah; asks if Allah, who is neither male nor female, might instead be nonbinary; and, drawing on the faith and hope Nuh needed to construct his ark, begins to build a life of her own—ultimately finding that the answer to her lifelong quest for community and belonging lies in owning her identity as a queer, devout Muslim immigrant.
 
This searingly intimate memoir in essays, spanning Lamya’s childhood to her arrival in the United States for college through early-adult life in New York City, tells a universal story of courage, trust, and love, celebrating what it means to be a seeker and an architect of one’s own life.

Novella. London, 1979: a young gay man seeks mentorship from a classmate's flamboyant uncle.

23k, rated M, Gen. Mortimer Jones, a young gay man, comes from Tewkesbury to London where he meets Percival Campbell and, in short order, Percival's beloved uncle - the flamboyant and loquacious Queen B. Uncle B soon takes Mortimer, shy and as-yet uncertain of his place in the world and in the gay community, under his wing, and serves as mentor.

Focus on queer community in the 1970s, discussions of monastic history, science fiction, comedy, art and architecture, pop culture, connection, and cross-age friendship. Lots of body positivity for Mort and B, both fat men, in the aftermath of fatphobic bullying and homophobic isolation; lots of flirtation as a confidence and identity-building exercise even whilst B sets clear boundaries between them in terms of actual sexual activity; references to and discussion of historic and period homophobia throughout, but the tone is generally warm and companionable.

From a Newbery Medal-winning author and a bestselling illustrator, the powerhouse duo behind the #1 New York Times bestseller Love, comes a deeply moving ode to the places we feel safe, loved, and true to ourselves—wherever they might be.

*”Beckons readers from the first page . . . Simply divine.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

Home is a tired lullaby
and a late-night traffic that mumbles in
through a crack in your curtains.

Home is the faint trumpet of a distant barge
as your grandfather casts his line
from the edge of his houseboat.

So begins this stirring celebration of home in its many forms. For home is an idea more profound than the walls we build up around ourselves. It’s the family that shows its love through small gestures every day. It’s the community that sees one another through hard times. And it’s the wonder of the natural world, a refuge we share with every living thing on Earth.

With lyrical text and expressive artwork, Matt de la Peña and Loren Long’s meditation on the universal pull of home, whatever its form, is destined to become a new classic that will be cherished by readers of every age.

Don't miss the Spanish-language edition of this book, Hogar.

"[A] sharp, charming and passionate debut." —New York Times Book Review

A Most Anticipated Book of 2023 by Elle, USA Today, Bustle, Ebony, Harper’s Bazaar, PopSugar, New York Post, The Skimm, and The Millions.

A Best Book of 2023 by Marie Claire, Esquire, Vogue, them, Autostraddle, Betches, Gay Times,and Cosmopolitan.

An insightful, propulsive, and deeply sexy debut novel about a young Black writer whose world is turned upside down when she loses her coveted job in media and pens a searing manifesto about racism in the industry.

Mickey Hayward dreams of writing stories that matter, but, for now, her days are filled with listicles about lip gloss and click-bait articles about celebrity haircare. Still, the job is flashy and her girlfriend is steady and supportive. The path may be long, but Mickey’s well on her way, and it’s far from the messy life she left behind in Maryland. Everything finally seems to be falling into place—until she finds out she’s being replaced.

Distraught and enraged, Mickey fires back with a detailed letter outlining the racism she’s endured as a Black woman in media, certain it will change the world for the better. But when her letter is met with overwhelming silence, even from her usually-encouraging girlfriend, Mickey is sent into a tailspin of self-doubt. Forced to reckon with just how fragile her life is, she flees to the last place she ever dreamed she would run: her hometown.

Back home, Mickey is seduced by the simplicity of her hometown—and the flirtation of a former flame—but she soon learns that you can’t outrun your past. In the newfound quiet, she is forced to reflect on the sacrifices she’d made for an industry that never loved her back and pick up the pieces of the life she thought she’d left behind for good. After all, when the walls of success you’ve carefully built around yourself come crumbling down, what—and who—are you left with?

A meditation on identity, self-worth and the toll of corporate racism, Homebodies is a portrait of modern Black womanhood with a protagonist you won’t soon forget.

YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award Finalist

In their comics debut, Theo Parish masterfully weaves an intimate and defiantly hopeful memoir about the journey one nonbinary person takes to find a home within themself. Combining traditional comics with organic journal-like interludes, Theo takes us through their experiences with the hundred arbitrary and unspoken gender binary rules of high school, from harrowing haircuts and finally the right haircut to the intersection of gender identity and sexuality—and through tiny everyday moments that all led up to Theo finding the term “nonbinary,” which finally struck a chord. 

“Have you ever had one of those moments when all of a sudden things become clear…like someone just turned on a light?”

A whole spectrum of people will be drawn to Theo’s storytelling, from trans or questioning teens and adults, to folks who devoured Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe or The Fire Never Goes Out by ND Stevenson, to any person looking to dive a little deeper into the way gender can shape identity. Throughout the book, Theo’s crystal-clear voice reminds the reader that it’s okay not to know, it’s okay to change your mind, and it’s okay to take your time finding your way home.

“We are all just trying to find a place to call our own. We are all deserving of comfort and safety, a place to call home.”

A father and his daughters may not be able to return home . . . but they can celebrate stories of their homeland!

As bedtime approaches, three young girls eagerly await the return of their father who tells them stories of a faraway homeland—Palestine. Through their father's memories, the Old City of Jerusalem comes to life: the sounds of juice vendors beating rhythms with brass cups, the smell of argileh drifting through windows, and the sight of doves flapping their wings toward home. These daughters of the diaspora feel love for a place they have never been, a home they cannot visit. But, as their father’s story comes to an end, they know that through his memories, they will always return.
 
A Palestinian family celebrates the stories of their homeland in this moving autobiographical picture book debut by Hannah Moushabeck. With heartfelt illustrations by Reem Madooh, this story is a love letter to home, to family, and to the persisting hope of people that transcends borders.
 

UNIVERSAL MESSAGE: There are so many people who long to return to their homelands but are unable to. This story will resonate with immigrant families and refugees of all ethnicities and origins, as well as anyone who yearns for home. 

INTERGENERATIONAL STORIES: This sweet father-daughter story celebrates the bedtime ritual of storytelling, promoting intergenerational sharing and modeling learning about family trees and family histories. A perfect read-aloud for Father's Day!

PRAISE: 
"Hannah Moushabeck has written a marvelous, utterly transporting story describing the gentle power of precious transmitted memory and the wistfulness of immigrants, particularly those in exile from an occupied or altered place. Homeland does what decades of sad news stories have repeatedly failed to do for Palestine—humanize a beautiful people and place. I wish my father were alive so I could give him this book."—Naomi Shihab Nye, award-winning author of Habibi and Sitti's Secrets

"Like many picture books about immigration, Homeland creates a tapestry of both love and loss reinvented in a story by a granddaughter. This one, in particular, rings with truth while the drum's heartbeat holds a family and its history together."—Jane Yolen, author of Owl Moon, Eeny Up Above, and others

“Homeland brings a rich, beautiful, intimate picture of Palestine to life that is rarely seen in American media. The details are absolutely delectable, and the storytelling is playful, yet deeply moving perfection.” —Phoebe Wahl, author, and illustrator of Little Witch Hazel 

Perfect for:
* Anyone looking for Palestinian or Arab books for kids
* Readers seeking immigrant or refugee stories or diverse picture books
* Father's Day gift giving to dads, grandparents, uncles, and friends with a heartfelt connection to their homelands
* Readers with a passion for memoirs and stories that illustrate the immigrant experience

In this joyous picture book exploration of gender euphoria, celebrated Queer Kid Stuff and The Rainbow Parenting podcast host Lindz Amer teaches kids about all the ways pronouns can be joyful, defining, and empowering.

Everyone has a pronoun. There are hes. There are shes. There are theys. There are zes and hirs and faes and pers and more! What’s yours?

Finding the right pronoun for you feels like a warm hug and helps you be your most wonderful self. This gentle and whimsical guide to pronoun language encourages self-discovery and celebrates the gender euphoria of feeling like you!

"Hooray for World Down Syndrome Day!", explains the genetic condition in child-friendly terms and shines light on why we celebrate this population globally every year on March 21st. This book helps shift conversations on disability in homes, classrooms, and communities at large.