Young Adult Books

By: Ashley Mardell, 2016, Paperback

“Ash Hardell's The ABC's of LGBT+ serves as a powerful tool for those that might be questioning their own identity, as well as for those seeking a deeper knowledge….” ―Everyone Is Gay

#1 Best Seller in Transgender Studies, Bisexuality, and Sexuality & Pregnancy

The ABCs of LGBT+ is a #1 Bestselling LGBT book and is essential reading for questioning teens, teachers or parents looking for advice, or anyone who wants to learn how to talk about gender identity.

Ash Hardell (formerly Ashley Mardell), a beloved blogger and YouTube star, answers your questions about:

• LGBT and LGBT+
• Gender identity
• Gender dysphoria
• Teens in a binary world
• The LGBT family
• And more

Understanding gender identity and gender dysphoria. The 21st Century has seen very positive movement for LGBT+ rights. The overturning of DOMA, the SCOTUS ruling in favor of the Marriage Equality Act, American transgender politicians elected to office, and landmark moments such as Apple becoming the most valuable company in the world under the leadership of an openly gay CEO have advanced LGBT awareness and understanding.

The trusted voice of Ash Hardell. We are living in a post-binary world where gender fluency and awareness of gender identity and a real understanding of our LGBT family is essential. Ash Hardell, one of the most trusted voices on YouTube, presents a detailed look at all things LGBT+ in this remarkable book. Along with in-depth definitions, personal anecdotes, helpful infographics, resources, and more; Hardell’s LGBT book is proof it does get better every day in a world where people are empowered by information and understanding.

If you have liked books such as Queer, 2nd Edition; You and Your Gender Identity; This Book is Gay; or This Is a Book for Parents of Gay Kids, you will love The ABC's of LGBT+ by Ash Hardell.

By: Karen Callender, 2021, Paperback

A Stonewall Honor Book * A Time Magazine Best YA Book of All Time

From Stonewall and Lambda Award–winning author Kacen Callender comes a revelatory YA novel about a transgender teen grappling with identity and self-discovery while falling in love for the first time.

Felix Love has never been in love—and, yes, he’s painfully aware of the irony. He desperately wants to know what it’s like and why it seems so easy for everyone but him to find someone. What’s worse is that, even though he is proud of his identity, Felix also secretly fears that he’s one marginalization too many—Black, queer, and transgender—to ever get his own happily-ever-after.

When an anonymous student begins sending him transphobic messages—after publicly posting Felix’s deadname alongside images of him before he transitioned—Felix comes up with a plan for revenge. What he didn’t count on: his catfish scenario landing him in a quasi–love triangle....

But as he navigates his complicated feelings, Felix begins a journey of questioning and self-discovery that helps redefine his most important relationship: how he feels about himself.

Felix Ever After is an honest and layered story about identity, falling in love, and recognizing the love you deserve.

"Felix is attending an ultracompetitive arts summer program to have a better shot at a full scholarship to Brown when someone posts Felix’s dead name beside photos of him, pre-transition, in the school’s lobby. Felix’s plot to get revenge throws him onto the path of love and self-discovery." (Publishers Weekly, "An Anti-Racist Children's and YA Reading List")

By: Arabelle Sicardi (Author), Sarah Tanat-Jones (Illustrator),2019, Hardcover, Illustrated

* 2019 EUREKA! Honor Award *

This beautiful, bold book celebrates the achievements of LGBTQ+ people through history and from around the world—featuring dynamic full-color portraits of a diverse selection of 53 inspirational role models accompanied by short biographies that focus on their incredible successes.

From Freddie Mercury’s contribution to music and Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa to James Baldwin’s best-selling essays and more, discover tales of courage, triumph, and determination. Published to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, this extraordinary book shows children that anything is possible.

Discover the inspiring stories of these LGBT artists, writers, innovators, athletes, and activists who have made great contributions to culture, from ancient times to present day. This is the perfect book for anyone who wants to learn more about a collection of inspiring figures in LGBTQ+ history:

Freddie Mercury, Sappho, Audre Lorde, Manvendra Singh Gohil, Frida Kahlo, Emma Gonzalez, James Baldwin, Leonardo da Vinci, Alexander Wang, Subhi Nahas, Tove Jansson, Alan Turing, Michelangelo, Martina Navratilova, Sia, Tim Cook, Pedro Almodovar, Virginia Woolf, Tchaikovsky, Vikram Seth, Yotam Ottolenghi, Johanna Sigurðardóttir, Marsha Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, David Bowie, Kasha Nabagsera, Lili Elbe, Matthew Bourne, Alvin Ailey, Harvey Milk, Willem Arondeus, Nergis Mavalvala, Rufus Wainwright, Marlene Dietrich, Larry Kramer, Didier Lestrade, Nabuko Yoshiya, Bayard Rustin, Claire Harvey, Barbara Jordan, Josephine Baker, k.d. lang, Kristen Stewart, Jazz Jennings, Elio di Rupo, Oscar Wilde, Harish Iyer, Khalid Abdel-Hadi, Lana and Lilly Wachowski, Ellen DeGeneres, and Portia de Rossi.

By:  Jadzia Axelrod (Author), Brandt & Stein (Author), Ivan Cohen (Author), Kevin Conroy (Author) & Dani Fernandez (Author), 2023, Hardcover

The highly anticipated sequel to the Ringo Award-winning DC Pride 2021, DC Pride: The New Generation features more stories, more characters, and more pride than ever before! Spotlighting LGBTQIA+ fan-favorites new and old, including Superman (Jon Kent), Nubia, Tim Drake, Kid Quick, Connor Hawke, Aquaman (Jackson Hyde), Green Lantern (Jo Mullein), Alysia Yeoh, the Ray, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy and Batwoman - brought to life by a stellar lineup of queer and ally talent!

2023 Eisner Nominee - Best Short Story, "Finding Batman" by Kevin Conroy and J. Bone

This volume includes all five parts of Tim Drake's coming out journey, as well as Kevin Conroy's celebrated autobiographical comic "Finding Batman." DC Pride: The New Generation also includes a special Multiversity: Teen Justicekickoff story spotlighting Kid Quick.

DC Pride: The New Generation collects DC Pride 2022 #1 and DC Pride: Tim Drake Special #1, including the following stories:

• “Super Pride” by Devin Grayson, Nick Robles, Triona Farrell and Aditya Bidikar
• “Confessions” by Stephanie Williams, Meghan Hetrick, Marissa Louise and Ariana Maher
• “Special Delivery” by Travis G. Moore, Enrica Eren Angiolini and Ariana Maher
• “Are You Ready for This?” by Danny Lore & Ivan Cohen, Brittney Williams, Enrica Eren Angiolini and Ariana Maher
• “A World Kept Just For Me” by Alyssa Wong, W. Scott Forbes and Ariana Maher
• “The Gumshoe in Green” by Tini Howard, Evan Cagle and Lucas Gattoni
• “Think of Me” by Ted Brandt & Ro Stein and Frank Cvetkovic
• “Public Display of Electromagnetism” by Greg Lockard, Giulio Macaione and Aditya Bidikar
• “The Hunt” by Dani Fernandez, Zoe Thorogood, Jeremy Lawson and Aditya Bidikar
• “Bat’s in the Cradle” by Stephanie Philips, Samantha Dodge, Marissa Louise and Lucas Gattoni
• “Up at Bat” by Jadzia Axelrod, Lynne Yoshii, Tamra Bonvillain and Ariana Maher
• and “Finding Batman,” a personal story by Kevin Conroy with art by J.Bone and Aditya Bidikar

By:  Dom&Ink, 2023, Paperback, Anthology

An inspiring, expansive anthology that celebrates some of the LGBTQIA+ community’s trailblazers, champions, and icons from across the rainbow.

In a follow-up to Free to Be Me, DOM&INK returns with a collection of essays that highlight modern-day LGBTQIA+ pioneers who have changed the world -- from well-known public figures and allies to up-and-comers you'll wish you'd heard of earlier.
 
Covering topics including coming out, gender, mental health, and activism, this book is packed full of empowering quotes, inspiring life lessons, and helpful advice that will encourage you to embrace your story and find your power.

By:  Xiuhtezcatl Martinez (Author), Ashley Lukashevsky, 2020, Paperback, Pocket Change Collective

In this personal, moving essay, environmental activist and hip-hop artist Xiuhtezcatl Martinez uses his art and his activism to show that climate change is a human issue that can't be ignored.

Pocket Change Collective is a series of small books with big ideas from today's leading activists and artists. In this installment, Earth Guardians Youth Director and hip-hop artist Xiuhtezcatl Martinez shows us how his music feeds his environmental activism and vice versa. Martinez visualizes a future that allows us to direct our anger, fear, and passion toward creating change. Because, at the end of the day, we all have a part to play.

By Alice Oseman, 2022 Hardcover

For fans of Love, Simon and I Wish You All the Best, a funny, honest, messy, completely relatable story of a girl who realizes that love can be found in many ways that don't involve sex or romance.

From the marvelous author of Heartstopper comes an exceptional YA novel about discovering that it's okay if you don't have sexual or romantic feelings for anyone . . . since there are plenty of other ways to find love and connection.

This is the funny, honest, messy, completely relatable story of Georgia, who doesn't understand why she can't crush and kiss and make out like her friends do. She's surrounded by the narrative that dating + sex = love. It's not until she gets to college that she discovers the A range of the LGBTQIA+ spectrum -- coming to understand herself as asexual/aromantic. Disrupting the narrative that she's been told since birth isn't easy -- there are many mistakes along the way to inviting people into a newly found articulation of an always-known part of your identity. But Georgia's determined to get her life right, with the help of (and despite the major drama of) her friends.

By:  Greg Howard, 2021, Paperback

In this new novel from Greg Howard, an enterprising boy starts his own junior talent agency and signs a thirteen-year-old aspiring drag queen as his first client. Now in paperback.

Twelve-year-old Mikey Pruitt is a budding entrepreneur. Inspired by his grandfather Pap Pruitt, who successfully ran all sorts of businesses, Mikey is still looking for his million-dollar idea. Unfortunately, most of his ideas--from a roadside general store to croquet lessons--haven't taken off. It isn't until kid drag queen Coco Caliente, Mistress of Madness and Mayhem (aka eighth grader Julian Vasquez) walks into his office (aka his family's storage/laundry room) looking for a talent agent that Mikey thinks he's finally found a business that will put him on the map, and the Anything Talent and Pizzazz Agency is born!

Soon, Mikey has a whole roster of kid clients looking to hit it big or at least win the middle school talent show's hundred-dollar prize. As newly out Mikey prepares Julian for the gig of a lifetime, he realizes there's no rulebook for being gay--and if Julian can be openly gay at school, maybe Mikey can, too, and tell his crush, the dreamy Colton Sanford, how he feels.

Full of laughs, sass, and hijinks, this hilarious, heartfelt story shows that with a little effort and a lot of love, anything is possible.

By: Tash McAdam, 2023, Hardback

A trans teen is swept up in a whirlwind friendship with lethal consequences in this taut YA thriller, for fans of Sadie, Andrew Joseph White, and HBO's Euphoria.

BEFORE. Newly out trans guy Max is having a hard time in school. Things have been tough since his summer romance, Danny, turned into his bully. This year, Max's plan is to keep his head down and graduate. All that changes when new It Girl, Gloss, moves to town. No one understands why perfect, polished Gloss is so interested in an introverted skater kid, but Max blooms in the hothouse of her attention. Caught between romance and obsession, he’ll do whatever it takes to keep her on his side.

AFTER. Haircuts, makeovers, drugs, parties. It’s all fun and games until someone gets killed at a rager gone terribly wrong. Max refuses to believe that Gloss did it. But if not Gloss, who? Desperate to figure out truth in the wake of tragedy, Max veers dangerously close to being implicated—and his own memories of that awful night are fuzzy. Both sharp-edged thriller and moving coming of age, this gorgeously wrought novel is perfect for readers who want stories with trans characters front and center.

By: Ellen Hopkins (Author), 2017, Paperback

Five troubled teenagers fall into prostitution as they search for freedom, safety, community, family, and love in this #1 New York Times bestselling novel from Ellen Hopkins.

When all choice is taken from you, life becomes a game of survival.

Five teenagers from different parts of the country. Three girls. Two guys. Four straight. One gay. Some rich. Some poor. Some from great families. Some with no one at all. All living their lives as best they can, but all searching…for freedom, safety, community, family, love. What they don’t expect, though, is all that can happen when those powerful little words “I love you” are said for all the wrong reasons.

Five moving stories remain separate at first, then interweave to tell a larger, powerful story—a story about making choices, taking leaps of faith, falling down, and growing up. A story about kids figuring out what sex and love are all about, at all costs, while asking themselves, “Can I ever feel okay about myself?”

A brilliant achievement from New York Times bestselling author Ellen Hopkins—who has been called “the bestselling living poet in the country” by Mediabistro.com—Tricks is a book that turns you on and repels you at the same time. Just like so much of life.

By: Patricia McCormick (Author), 2008, Paperback

The powerful, poignant, bestselling National Book Award finalist gives voice to a young girl robbed of her childhood yet determined to find the strength to triumph.

Lakshmi is a thirteen-year-old girl who lives with her family in a small hut on a mountain in Nepal. Though she is desperately poor, her life is full of simple pleasures, like playing hopscotch with her best friend from school, and having her mother brush her hair by the light of an oil lamp. But when the harsh Himalayan monsoons wash away all that remains of the family's crops, Lakshmi's stepfather says she must leave home and take a job to support her family.

He introduces her to a glamorous stranger who tells her she will find her a job as a maid in the city. Glad to be able to help, Lakshmi journeys to India and arrives at "Happiness House" full of hope. But she soon learns the unthinkable truth: she has been sold into prostitution.

An old woman named Mumtaz rules the brothel with cruelty and cunning. She tells Lakshmi that she is trapped there until she can pay off her family's debt-then cheats Lakshmi of her meager earnings so that she can never leave.

Lakshmi's life becomes a nightmare from which she cannot escape. Still, she lives by her mother's words-Simply to endure is to triumph-and gradually, she forms friendships with the other girls that enable her to survive in this terrifying new world. Then the day comes when she must make a decision-will she risk everything for a chance to reclaim her life?

Written in spare and evocative vignettes by the co-author of I Am Malala (Young Readers Edition), this powerful novel renders a world that is as unimaginable as it is real, and a girl who not only survives but triumphs.

By: Stephen Chbosky (Author), 2018, Paperback

standing on the fringes of life...
offers a unique perspective. But there comes a time to see
what it looks like from the dance floor.

This haunting novel about the dilemma of passivity vs. passion marks the stunning debut of a provocative new voice in contemporary fiction: The Perks of Being A WALLFLOWER

This is the story of what it's like to grow up in high school. More intimate than a diary, Charlie's letters are singular and unique, hilarious and devastating. We may not know where he lives. We may not know to whom he is writing. All we know is the world he shares. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it puts him on a strange course through uncharted territory. The world of first dates and mixed tapes, family dramas and new friends. The world of sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when all one requires is that the perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite.

Through Charlie, Stephen Chbosky has created a deeply affecting coming-of-age story, a powerful novel that will spirit you back to those wild and poignant roller coaster days known as growing up.

By: Jesse Andrews (Author), 2015, Paperback

The New York Times bestselling novel that inspired the hit film!

This is the funniest book you’ll ever read about death.

It is a universally acknowledged truth that high school sucks. But on the first day of his senior year, Greg Gaines thinks he’s figured it out. The answer to the basic existential question: How is it possible to exist in a place that sucks so bad? His strategy: remain at the periphery at all times. Keep an insanely low profile. Make mediocre films with the one person who is even sort of his friend, Earl.

This plan works for exactly eight hours. Then Greg’s mom forces him to become friends with a girl who has cancer. This brings about the destruction of Greg’s entire life.

Fiercely funny, honest, heart-breaking—this is an unforgettable novel from a bright talent, now also a film that critics are calling "a touchstone for its generation" and "an instant classic."

By: Leigh Finke (Author), Jennifer Knapp (Foreword), 2020, Paperback

Are you LGBTQ+? Not sure? Whether you're queer or questioning, understanding sexuality and gender identity can be confusing. And if you're a Christian, questions of identity can be even scarier. Is there something wrong with you? Will your friends accept you? When should you tell your family? What about church?

Queerfully and Wonderfully Made: A Guide for LGBTQ+ Christian Teens has answers to all these questions and more. You'll get insight and support from an amazing group of LGBTQ+ professionals, as well as testimonies from young adult queer Christians who've recently been exactly where you are. You'll walk away with a lot of answers, prepared with tools to help. But most importantly, you'll hear the good news: God loves you exactly as you are. No matter your identity or where in your journey of self-discovery you find yourself, you got this.

By: Lewis Laney (Author), 2020, Hardback

Celebrate the LGTBQ community with this small but perfectly formed guide to Pride.

What began as a protest for gay rights following the Stonewall riots of 1969 in New York has grown to become a global celebration of LGBTQ culture. In the 50-odd years since the original protest, and what is now widely accepted to be the first Pride march—Christopher Street Liberation Day, 1970—Pride events are now attended by millions each year, celebrating how far we’ve come, recognizing where we have to go, and highlighting important causes in the queer community.

The Little Book of Pride proves that size definitely doesn't matter by squeezing everything you need to know about Pride into 144 pages. Inside, you will find the history, the key people involved, the best Pride events around the world, inspirational quotes from famous queers, Pride facts, and a fun Pride survival guide.