We’re lucky to be living in a rich time for propulsive fiction featuring real-feeling queer characters and for enthralling memoirs and histories on significant, timely LGBTQ topics. Celebrate Pride Month with one or all of the reads below. It was hard to choose, but what can we say? We’re Booklist. Book lists are our love language.
Fiction
The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye.
By Briony Cameron.
2024. Atria.
This novel begins in 1665 with infamous pirate captain Jacquotte Delahaye in prison, then goes back to tell her story as a poor, young shipwright who dreamed of leaving her stifling life in Yáquimo, Santo Domingo. An absolute treasure for fans of LGBTQ+ historical fiction and tales of notorious figures from the past.
Experienced.
By Kate Young.
2024. Penguin.
Bette is blissed out in bed when her girlfriend, Mei, drops the bomb. She wants them to take a three-month break so Bette can see other women. Delightful through and through, Experienced brings together a winning cast and a series of romcom-worthy setups for a love story as heartfelt as it is fun.
Hammajang Luck.
By Makana Yamamoto.
2025. Harper Voyager.
Newly out of prison, Edie has to decide if they’ll do one last job that should get them more money than they’ll know what to do with. Hammajang Luck features all the best sf has to offer, from sick body modifications to a dystopian magnification of wealth inequality.
Murder in the Dressing Room. By Holly Stars. 2025. Berkley.
After drag queen Misty Divine discovers the body of her drag mother, rumors abound that she’s the prime suspect. The first book by drag performer Stars combines fabulous details and a puzzling mystery, a thrill for fans of the emerging genre of queer cozies.
The Night of Baba Yaga.
By Akira Otani. Translated by Sam Bett. 2024. Soho.
Shindo lives an anonymous existence in Tokyo, indulging her violent compulsions with street brawls, until she’s hired to guard a Yakuza boss’ daughter, or else. Evoking the Grimm’s Brothers’ warning tales, this literary genre-bender will appeal to readers who favor fairy-tale adaptations and vigilante-justice thrillers.
Notes from a Regicide.
By Isaac Fellman.
2025. Tor.com.
Upon their deaths, Griffon learns he did not know much about the lives of his adoptive, trans parents. He uncovers the story of two young artists, individuals beaten by their government who loved each other and the family they created. Set in a distant (but eerily recognizable) future, this is a triumphant and blistering chronicle of love and resistance.
Some Strange Music Draws Me In.
By Griffin Hansbury.
2024. Norton.
In a dual narrative, alternating between 2019 and 1984, a trans man on probation from his teaching job clears out his family home and looks back on the summer when he began to discover himself. This is a touchstone LGBTQIA+ coming-of-age novel that constantly seeks to complicate simplistic narratives around gender, sexuality, and class.
Nonfiction
Glitter and Concrete: A Cultural History of Drag in New York City.
By Elyssa Maxx Goodman.
2023. Hanover Square.
Goodman parlays her ardor for drag into a uniquely comprehensive, vibrant, and eye-opening history of the art form in New York City, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century. As Goodman charts the ways drag became more mainstream, including the launching of drag story hours, she sets the current anti-drag and anti-LGBTQ+ backlash within a historical context.
He/She/They: How We Talk about Gender and Why It Matters.
By Schuyler Bailar.
2023. Hachette Go.
The first openly trans NCAA Division 1 swimmer, Bailar helps readers understand why antitrans rhetoric and violence have reached disturbingly high levels. A wonderful resource for readers who want to know more on these topics but aren’t sure where to start and for trans folks looking how to navigate coming out, dating, mental health, and more.
A Renaissance of Our Own: A Memoir, Manifesto, and Reimagining.
By Rachel E. Cargle.
2023. Ballantine.
Cargle shares how she transformed her life through reimagining. Once a small-town Christian wife, Cargle is now an activist and innovator in the feminist and queer movements. She shares her manifesto, a blueprint that readers can utilize to map out their own dreams, as well as her knowledge, empathy, and action (KEA) framework for forming allyships.
The Secret Public: How Music Moved Queer Culture from the Margins to the Mainstream.
By Jon Savage.
2025. Norton/Liveright.
In Savage’s masterful exploration of the LGBTQ+ cultural world, he discusses gay liberation, glam, camp, and disco, Brian Epstein and Lou Reed, the New York Dolls, Harvey Milk, the Village People, and more, all within the framework of how a minority subculture went mainstream.
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