Best lgbtq books 2024
It’s that time of year again! Behold, my beloved list of the optimal queer books of 2024. There are so many damn good queer books being published these days. We are so lucky! I thought I’d disseminate a little bit on my rationale for choosing the five books per category (six for lit fic, since it’s the most competitive). This year especially I’ve striven to put the spotlight on books that haven’t gotten a lot of mainstream attention. For example, I didn’t include The Pairing by Casey McQuiston or All Fours by Miranda July (which I personally loved!) because the latter was nominated for a National Book Award and McQuiston is such a high profile queer love affair author that their first book has been made into a movie, with an apparent sequel on the way. Got it? Let’s get into the books!
Comics/Graphic Novels and Memoirs
Firebugs by Nino Bulling
This slice-of-life graphic novel of lgbtq+ millennial ennui — the English-language debut of German cartoonist Nino Bulling — is a knock-out. It follows 30-year-old queer Berliner, Ingken, trying to figure out where they country in their own transness and navigating a long-term relationship wit
Peregrine Seas by R.C. Ballad (July 1st)
Prince Peregrine couldn’t be happier to be kidnapped by pirates.
Peregrine wasn’t cut out for the restrictive life of a nobleman – he’s empty for adventure, prone to duelling, and his family refuse to believe he’s any kind of bloke at all. Despite his royal origins, he has more in common with the outcasts and rebels aboard the Cygnus that anyone onshore.
He just needs to convince the captain of that before his ransom’s paid.
Captain Alastar Macdara knows better than to trust an English prince. He has his hands full keeping his ragged crew together, and the last thing he needs is to be burdened with some foppish dandy—however charming. This particular hostage is more trouble than Alastar planned for: used to getting his retain way, as stubborn as Alastar and not frightened to tell him when he’s wrong. But Alastar knows a thing or two about being an outcast, and his honourable streak refuses to enable him send Peregrine support to a life of misery.
The ransom might be off, but that doesn’t mean Peregrine is part of the crew. Now he must prove he’s courageous and quick-witted enough to earn his place on the Cygnus before Alastar d
The 16 Best Queer Books for Pride Month and Beyond
Grief and first like run alongside one another in poet Ordorica’s debut novel, which tells the story of a college freshman named Daniel coming into his queerness for the first time. Split between Daniel’s burgeoning adoration with a classmate during his first year at school and a summer spent unearthing family secrets at his grandfather’s residence in Chihuahua, Mexico, How We Named the Stars is a sweet, sensitive coming-of-age tale.
Now 52% Off
In the wake of their little brother’s death, twenty-year-old Canadian Akúa decides to visit her estranged sister Tamika in their native Jamaica—a visit that only highlights Akúa’s alienation from her home culture. As Akúa desperately seeks connection with Tamika, she instead finds it in a Kingston stripper named Jayda, prompting Akúa to reckon with what it means to be both queer and Jamaican.
Advertisement - Sustain Reading Below
Haters may state that it’s unrealistic for two of a make-believe family’s three siblings to be gay—to which it would be fair to respond by chucking a Tegan and Sara CD at that hater’s brain. In Reilly’s delightful, laugh-out-loud funny
13 New Queer Novels We Can’t Delay to Read in 2024
Like Happiness is a stunning coming-of-age debut novel that delves into gender, sexual orientation, racial identity, and the charged power dynamics of fame. In the novel, writer Ursula Villarreal-Moura uses dual timelines to tell the story of Tatum Vega, a woman who years ago distributed a destructive connection with a celebrated author named M. Domínguez. In the present timeline of 2015, Tatum lives in Chile with her partner Vera and works at a museum in a job that she loves. Her fraught days in New York with M. Domínguez are long behind her. That is, until she gets a call from a reporter asking for an interview, as Domínguez has been accused of sexual assault. In an instant, Tatum’s former life comes flashing back, along with a series of pointed questions: What really happened between her and Domínguez all those years ago? As Tatum grapples with complex truths in the present, the second timeline, told through a letter Tatum writes to Domínguez, takes us endorse to the decade she spent in New York Metropolis and the complex, destructive relationship she had with the famed author. Villarreal-Moura’s “emotionally astute novel offers a
A confession: I very nearly quit putting this list together.
Throughout the year I keep a running list, adding recent names whenever I learn about an upcoming queer book—from Tweets, publicist pitches, endless NetGalley scrolls—and I usually launch writing the blurbs for each publication a few months before the list is due. Enable me also include that, because I am a novelist myself, someone who works very difficult to put words on the page in a good-enough order for someone to respond to them, I endeavor and read at least a brief of each manual featured. And here’s an incredible authenticity that’s both deeply satisfying and makes my job surprisingly difficult: there are more and more queer books published every year. There was a second when I could complete a list like this in an afternoon; I was lucky to find a dozen explicitly queer titles. Now there’s a pretty solid chance I miss a good number of them.
In mid-December—at the half-way point, and a couple days after my birthday—I looked at the list, halfway done then, and reflection, “There’s no way I can undertake this. There’s no way I can finish putting together this list in a way that does each guide justice.” Partly it was the volume, yes, and partly it was the amb