Books

This bright book by the creator of Love Makes a Family celebrates acts of kindness big and small.

Kindness is a friendly hello. A roaring cheer. A quick boost. Kindness is what makes us strong! This joyful board book shows various children as they extend kindness in all kinds of situations: on the playground, at lunchtime, on a bike path, and on a neighborhood street. This sweet preschool read-aloud shows the way kindness helps build friendship and community.

Selected by The Atlantic as one of THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVELS.  ("You have to read them.")

From the New York Times bestselling author of Parable of the Sower and MacArthur “Genius” Grant, Nebula, and Hugo award winner

The visionary time-travel classic whose Black female hero is pulled through time to face the horrors of American slavery and explores the impacts of racism, sexism, and white supremacy then and now.

“I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm.”

Dana’s torment begins when she suddenly vanishes on her 26th birthday from California, 1976, and is dragged through time to antebellum Maryland to rescue a boy named Rufus, heir to a slaveowner’s plantation. She soon realizes the purpose of her summons to the past: protect Rufus to ensure his assault of her Black ancestor so that she may one day be born. As she endures the traumas of slavery and the soul-crushing normalization of savagery, Dana fights to keep her autonomy and return to the present.

Blazing the trail for neo-slavery narratives like Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s The Water Dancer, Butler takes one of speculative fiction’s oldest tropes and infuses it with lasting depth and power. Dana not only experiences the cruelties of slavery on her skin but also grimly learns to accept it as a condition of her own existence in the present. “Where stories about American slavery are often gratuitous, reducing its horror to explicit violence and brutality, Kindred is controlled and precise” (New York Times).

“Reading Octavia Butler taught me to dream big, and I think it’s absolutely necessary that everybody have that freedom and that willingness to dream.” 
—N. K. Jemisin 

Developed for television by writer/executive producer Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Watchmen), executive producers also include Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields (The Americans, The Patient), and Darren Aronofsky (The Whale). Janicza Bravo (Zola) is director and an executive producer of the pilot. Kindred stars Mallori Johnson, Micah Stock, Ryan Kwanten, and Gayle Rankin.

By Baker A. Rogers, 2021, Paperback

While drag subcultures have gained mainstream media attention in recent years, the main focus has been on female impersonators. Equally lively, however, is the community of drag kings: cis women, trans men, and non-binary people who perform exaggerated masculine personas onstage under such names as Adonis Black, Papi Chulo, and Oliver Clothesoff.  
 
King of Hearts shows how drag king performers are thriving in an unlikely location: Southern Bible Belt states like Tennessee, Georgia, and South Carolina. Based on observations and interviews with sixty Southern drag kings, this study reveals how they are challenging the region’s gender norms while creating a unique community with its own distinctive Southern flair. Reflecting the region’s racial diversity, it profiles not only white drag kings, but also those who are African American, multiracial, and Hispanic. 
 
Queer scholar Baker A. Rogers—who has also performed as drag king Macon Love—takes you on an insider’s tour of Southern drag king culture, exploring its history, the communal bonds that unite it, and the controversies that have divided it. King of Hearts offers a groundbreaking look at a subculture that presents a subversion of gender norms while also providing a vital lifeline for non-gender-conforming Southerners.

Listen up! Humans are kinky!

Kink has been around as long as humans have existed, but comes with an astonishing amount of myths and misunderstandings. This is a sex-positive, shame-free guide to kink for everyone from curious beginners to seasoned kinksters.

This book delves deep in every corner of the kink sphere. It jumps headfirst into the foundations of powerplay, at the differences between kink and fetish, and gives you the low-down on all kinds of bondage and impact play styles, while putting mental and physical health at the forefront. Whether you want a 101 in flogging safely, to plan a roadmap for experimenting with different kinds of niche play, or to learn how to explore what your desires and boundaries are in a fun, consensual and trauma-informed way - this is the guide for you.

With kink exercises, journal prompts, worksheets and agony aunt letters, this has all the practical tools you'll need for a spicy, shame-free kink journey.

Winner of Lambda Literary Award for Best LGBTQ+ Romance
A Best New Holiday Romance by PopSugar, BuzzFeed, Refinery29, and more!

The author of the “swoon-worthy debut” (Harper’s Bazaar) The Charm Offensive returns with a festive romantic comedy about a woman who fakes an engagement with her landlord…only to fall for his sister.

One year ago, recent Portland transplant Ellie Oliver had her dream job in animation and a Christmas Eve meet-cute with a woman at a bookstore that led her to fall in love over the course of a single night. But after a betrayal the next morning and the loss of her job soon after, she finds herself adrift, alone, and desperate for money.

Finding work at a local coffee shop, she’s just getting through the days—until Andrew, the shop’s landlord, proposes a shocking, drunken plan: a marriage of convenience that will give him his recent inheritance and alleviate Ellie’s financial woes and isolation. They make a plan to spend the holidays together at his family cabin to keep up the ruse. But when Andrew introduces his new fiancée to his sister, Ellie is shocked to discover it’s Jack—the mysterious woman she fell for over the course of one magical Christmas Eve the year before. Now, Ellie must choose between the safety of a fake relationship and the risk of something real.

Perfect for fans of Written in the Stars and One Day in December, Kiss Her Once for Me is the queer holiday rom-com that you’ll want to cozy up with next to the fire.

When a late bloomer goes viral for coming out, she decides to use her newfound fame to get her first kiss—with the help of a sexy bartender.

Librarian Angela Gutierrez has never been kissed. But after posting a video about her late bloomer status and ace identity, she's finally ready to get some firsts out of the way. Using her new influencer status to come up with a scavenger hunt idea in which the winner earns her first kiss, Angela realizes she may need some help to pull off the event. Enter Krystal Ramirez, hot bartender and Angela’s unrequited crush of five years. Despite vowing that romantic love isn’t for her, Krystal seems awfully determined to help Angela pull off the scavenger hunt and find true love.

There’s just one problem: the connection between Angela and Krystal is getting stronger and stronger the more they hang out, until Angela isn’t sure she wants to go through with the scavenger hunt after all. But Krystal is convinced that she isn’t capable of love and before long, Angela realizes she's falling head over heels for a woman who may never love her back.

by Hannah Eliot: Board Books

[Little Simon] Learn all about the traditions of Kwanzaa in this board book from the Celebrate the World series, which highlights special occasions and holidays across the globe. Joyous Kwanzaa! On December 26th of each year, the celebration of Kwanzaa begins. Kwanzaa is an African American and pan-African holiday that honors history, family, values, community, and culture. During this time, families gather, songs are sung, and dances and stories and poetry are performed! This festive board book helps teach even the youngest of readers about the celebration and importance of Kwanzaa.

By: M.A. Carrick, 2023, Paperback

“Lush, engrossing and full of mystery and dark magic" (BookPage), Labyrinth's Heart is the thrilling conclusion to M. A. Carrick's Rook & Rose trilogy, in which a con artist, a vigilante, and a crime lord become reluctant allies in the quest to save their city from a dangerous ancient magic.

May you see the face and not the mask.

Ren came to Nadežra with a plan. She would pose as the long-lost daughter of the noble house Traementis. She would secure a fortune for herself and her sister. And she would vanish without a backward glance. She ought to have known that in the city of dreams, nothing is ever so simple.

Now, she is Ren, con-artist and thief. But she is also Renata, the celebrated Traementis heir. She is Arenza, the mysterious pattern-reader and political rebel. And she is the Black Rose, a vigilante who fights alongside the legendary Rook. 

Even with the help of Grey Serrado and Derossi Vargo, it is too many masks for one person to wear. And as the dark magic the three of them helped unleash builds to storm that could tear the very fabric of the city apart, it's only a matter of time before one of the masks slips—and everything comes crashing down around them.


The Rook & Rose trilogy
The Mask of Mirrors
The Liar's Knot
Labyrinth's Heart

An undeniably fierce, unforgettably funny, unapologetically queer feminist romp through the England of medieval legend. Bestselling and acclaimed authors Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner bring readers along on an epic quest for valor, freedom, and, above all, love. A Knight’s Tale meets the Lady Jane series, with a dash of The Great!

Gwen is sick of hiding—hiding the fact that she’s taken over her father’s blacksmithing duties, hiding her attraction to girls, hiding her yearning for glory as a knight.

Meanwhile, Lady Isobelle of Avington, queen bee of the castle, has never once considered hiding who she is—until now. She’s been chosen as the grand prize in the Tournament of Dragonslayers, to be given to whichever knight can claim her hand. And for the first time in her life, she can’t talk her way out of trouble.

When Isobelle discovers Gwen’s knightly ambitions, they hatch a scheme together—Gwen will joust in the tournament, disguised as Sir Gawain. Winning means freedom for Isobelle, and glory for Gwen. Losing means… well, let’s not go there.

One thing’s for sure: Falling in love was never the plan.

But the best laid plans…are often trampled all over by dragons.

"A sapphic delight, full of jousts, jaunts, and courtly love. Lady's Knight sparkles with wit and charm and has lady knights to swoon over. Kaufman and Spooner will leave you breathless." —C. S. Pacat, New York Times bestselling author of Dark Rise

“Kaufman and Spooner are auto-buy authors for me, always guaranteed to get my heart pumping with their page-turning romance and high-stakes adventure.” —New York Times bestselling author Susan Dennard

"There are a lot of damsels in Lady's Knight, but none of them need a man to fix their problems. (Men seem to be the source of the problems, in fact.) Wholesome, heartfelt, and more fun than cheesecake on a stick, Kaufman and Spooner's latest book is all about women's work. You know, jousting, dragonslaying, and saving the kingdom—all while looking fabulous." —Jodi Meadows, coauthor of the New York Times bestselling novels My Lady Jane and My Plain Jane

“Clever, funny, thrilling, and romantic—Lady’s Knight will inspire readers to take up their swords to fight dragons and the patriarchy. Perfect for fans of A Knight’s Tale and anyone who loves a romantasy with wit, charm, and the occasional comedic fourth wall break.” —F. T. Lukens, New York Times bestselling author of So This Is Ever After

"You'll laugh, you'll cry, and you'll be ready to fight any dragon after reading this delightful tale full of swoony romance, heart-racing action, and the very best banter in the realm!" —Beth Revis, New York Times bestselling coauthor of Night of the Witch

"Writing that is above all else marvelously warm and at the same time witty, adventure and romance that will sweep you off your feet—a double sweep, and a triumph!" —Sarah Rees Brennan, #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of Long Live Evil

"Sparkles with wit and romance! So many quotable lines. Not to mention the sexiest gown-lacing scene in modern literature. Like its characters, Lady's Knight is endlessly clever and resourceful." —Ellen Kushner, award-winning author of Swordspoint

"...a love letter to a friend, a community, a youthfulness gone, a sweet song to relationship in all its joy and heartbreak."—Eleanor Anstruther, author of In Judgement of Others

"Lamb struck me as only rare books do: I found myself haunted equally by its joyous celebrations of identity, and the elusive nature of loss we all carry with us."—Kathleen Clare Waller, author of An Interpreter in Vienna

D is shaken when his mercurial friend Lamb vanishes just before they're set to move in together. The news of his death three years later shadows him like a ghost.

Sifting through Lamb's journals decades later, D uncovers a raw, intimate portrait of a sensitive misfit navigating a world that never understood him.

From their first meeting at an elite all-boys school to the chaos of 1990s San Francisco, Lamb's story unfolds in a tangle of tenderness and rebellion, anguish and adventure. Through journal entries, letters, poetry, and stories, Lamb is a coming-of-age in snapshots that captures the dazed spirit of young men searching for belonging in the aftermath of the AIDS crisis.

A Tales of the City for Generation X—a dark afterparty of gay awakening both aching and unforgettable.

Nobel Laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Beloved, Toni Morrison, investigates Black characters in the American literary canon and the way they shaped the nation’s collective unconscious

In a dazzling series of lectures from her tenure as a professor at Princeton University, Toni Morrison interrogates America’s most famous works and authors, drawing a direct line from the Black bodies that built the nation to the Black characters that many of the country’s canonical white writers imagined in their work. Morrison sees these fictions as a form of creation and projection, arguing that they helped manufacture American racial identity – these “Africanist” presences are “the shadow that makes light possible,” as Morrison writes, and the reflections of the authors’ own deepest fears, insecurities, and longings.

With profound erudition and wit, Morrison breaks wide open the American conception of race with energetic, enlivening readings of the nation’s canon, revealing that our liberation from these diminishing notions comes through language. “How,” Morrison wonders, “could one speak of profit, of economy, of labor, or progress, of suffragism, or Christianity, of the frontier, of the formation of new states, the acquisition of new lands … of practically anything a new nation concerns itself with – without having as a referent, at the heart of the discourse or defining its edges, the presence of Africans and/or their descendants?”

To read these lectures, collected here for the first time, is to encounter Morrison, not just the writer but also the teacher, in the most profound and subversive way yet. With a foreword from her son, Ford Morrison, and an introduction from her Princeton comparative literature colleague, Claudia Brodsky, Language as Liberation is a revelatory collection that promises to redefine the American canon.

From National Book Award winner Kacen Callender, a contemporary YA that follows Lark’s journey to speak the truth and discover how their own self-love can be a revolution

Lark Winters wants to be a writer, and for now that means posting on their social media accounts––anything to build their platform. When former best friend Kasim accidentally posts a thread on Lark’s X declaring his love for a secret, unrequited crush, Lark’s tweets are suddenly the talk of the school—and beyond.

To protect Kasim, Lark decides to take the fall, pretending they accidentally posted the thread in reference to another classmate. It seems like a great idea: Lark gets closer to their crush, Kasim keeps his privacy, and Lark’s social media stats explode. But living a lie takes a toll—as does the judgment of thousands of strangers on the internet.

Lark tries their best to be perfect at all costs, but nothing seems good enough for the anonymous hordes––or for Kasim, who is growing closer to Lark, just like it used to be between them . . .

In the end, Lark must embrace their right to their messy emotions and learn how to be in love.

Sparks fly in this second chance m/m rom com when an unlucky-in-love event planner realizes the man-of-honor at the high profile wedding he's planning is the same man who broke his heart.

They say you never forget your first kiss. But Jordan Carter wishes he could forget the one he shared with Jamie Peters as teens. And the one they almost shared again last year before Jamie made it clear he wasn’t the “right” man for Jordan to be with while he’s figuring himself out.

Now, Jordan’s fully focused on his career at 24 Carter Gold, his family’s event planning company, and ready to move on - until his boss assigns him to plan a new client’s high-profile wedding. The bride’s man-of-honor? None other than Jamie.

As things ramp up the closer they get to the wedding, so does Jordan’s relationship with Jamie, with sarcastic asides turning into steamy hook-ups. But can Jordan afford to pursue Jamie if he’s still unsure who he is? Or is knowing who he loves enough? Venue shopping, cake-tastings, and dress fittings with the man he can’t forget just might change the man Jordan Carter is meant to become.

Last First Kiss by Julian Winters is a second chance romance about finding yourself–and the love of your life.

Winner of the National Book Award
A New York Times Bestseller

"The queer romance we’ve been waiting for.”—Ms. Magazine

Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can't remember exactly when the feeling took root—that desire to look, to move closer, to touch. Whenever it started growing, it definitely bloomed the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club. Suddenly everything seemed possible. 

But America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father—despite his hard-won citizenship—Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day.

(Cover image may vary.)

By E.L. Deards: Paperback; 344 pages / English

[She Writes Press] For readers who loved New York Times bestseller Gideon the Ninth, Deards delivers a queer speculative fiction novel about what happens when a con artist exorcist becomes possessed for real. A pair of con artist demon exorcists scam the nation's wealthiest . . . until one of them is possessed for real Colton and Lucian make a living conning the desperate with fake exorcisms—Lucian is the charm, Colton the trick, and together, they’ve turned deception into survival. Their work is dangerous, their romance even riskier, but they’ve always found a way to stay ahead. Until Lucian is truly possessed. A powerful demon takes hold, twisting his body into something unnatural, horrific, wrong—and no priest, no con, no desperate lie can fix it. With time running out and Lucian slipping further away, Colton has no choice but to learn real magic, break every rule, and attempt the impossible. Because if he fails, Lucian won’t just be lost. He’ll be something el