The Disaster Gay Detective Agency by Lev A.C. Rosen

Brandon is a hopeless romantic. So when a handsome stranger named Jon checks in at the hotel he works at and invites Brandon to his room, Brandon ignores the advice of his crew—a group of loveable and messy queer twenty—somethings—and accepts. What follows is a tale as old as time: they hook up, Jon promises to text, Brandon falls in love, and Jon ghosts. Case closed—or is it? When Jon checks out early, leaving behind a bag of belongings and his cellphone, Brandon takes the phone and sets out to find him, thinking that this must at last be his Cinderella story. But he gets more… Read more.

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Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Murder
  • Stalking by an ex-partner
  • Homophobic cyberbullying

Radiant Star by Ann Leckie

The Temporal Location of the Radiant Star has always been a source of both conflict and hope for the people of Ooioiaa. However, the imperial Radch see it only as an inconvenience, an antiquated religious site soon to be absorbed into their own, superior culture. But local politics is complicated, and the Radch have made one last concession: One last man will be allowed to join the mummified bodies in the temporal location to become a “living saint”. But this one decision will ripple out to affect every part of the city. Amidst a slowly worsening food shortage, riots, and a communication… Read more.

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Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse
  • Colonisation
  • Starvation

Make Me Better by Sarah Gailey

Celia is so tired of being alone. All she wants is to have a family―to belong to someone. That’s why she’s going to Kindred Cove for the annual Salt Festival held by the secluded community that lives there. They promise that healing is possible. They promise that transformation is inevitable. There is no grief at Kindred Cove, because there is no suffering. Nothing is ever lost. Celia knows that, at that mysterious island surrounded by that impossible, ever-growing reef — she will find herself. She’s ready to be healed. She’s ready to be transformed. She’s ready to believe.

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Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infertility & miscarriage (protagonist)
  • Cults

Puck by Samantha Allen

Meet Puck: the nonbinary, thirty-year-old mastermind behind “Homewreckers”, a dating show that puts troubled couples through hell—with a little help from their exes. Used to being the one pulling the strings, it shocks Puck when their life undergoes a plot twist of its own and their college roommate Mia announces her engagement to her ex’s best friend, Damon. Having only recently broken up with longtime-boyfriend Zander, and never having had much in common with Damon (who lovesick Lena has always pined after), Mia’s news leaves her friend group reeling—and Puck’s mind whirling. When they arrive for a week… Read more.

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Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Anxiety & Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

Somebody Worth Killing by Jessica Payne

Nadia Davis is living the dream as a successful working mom with a career she loves, two adorable little girls, and a devoted husband who has no idea that she’s secretly a hired assassin and psychopath who kills certified bad guys. So when Nadia finds out she’s been “mommy tracked” by her assassin’s agency and is no longer getting the bigger, more exciting jobs, she demands an important mark…somebody worth killing. But it turns out that big kill is the last person she expects—her husband. How is the sweet, kind, teller-of-dad jokes she’s promised her life to an… Read more.

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Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Grandparent with dementia
  • Murder discussed

The Maidenheads by Benny B. Peterson

Jamie is bad at endings, which is why she’s stuck at a dead-end Baltimore newspaper job, continuing to have break-up sex with her first-ever hetero partner, and haunted by the what-ifs of her ex-girlfriend Mari—a charismatic and brilliant musician—and their former band together, the Maidenheads. Since they (and their band) broke up a decade ago, Jamie hasn’t been able to sing. Then an unexpected opportunity to perform in DC with Mari’s successful new band arises, and Jamie jumps at it. What begins as a return to music becomes a reckoning—with the weight of unfinished… Read more.

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Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity
  • Pregnancy
  • Murder
  • Stalking & blackmail

Breaking His Ice by Klastella

I have one rule: I don’t do relationships. Hookups? Sure. Love? Hell no. Love doesn’t fix anything—it just screws you up. I know. I watched it ruin my family. As captain of the Ridgewater Warriors, my game plan is simple: keep it casual, stay focused, win games. Repeat. And it’s been working just fine—until Samantha Westbrook showed up. My best friend’s pesky little sister. The girl who’s had a crush on me since she was ten. Now she’s a freshman at Ridgewater U, and she’s everywhere I go, cockblocking every girl who so much as breathes near me. I spent years brushing her off, telling her to stay… Read more.

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Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment & neglect
  • Parental infidelity
  • Parent with alcoholism, gambling issues & depression
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Alcohol consumption & abuse
  • Drug use & smoking
  • Sports injury
  • Death of a parent from cancer (acute myeloid leukemia)
  • Animal death mentioned (pet)

Some of Us Are Brave by Saadia Faruqi

It’s a humid summer in Houston, Texas, and Yasir is dreaming of being soccer team captain—if only he could get the team bully, Cody, off his back, and maybe impress his sort-of-crush, Mona. Meanwhile, Mona is turning her nightmares into art, and Cody’s home life feels as tense as the storm literally brewing down the coast. When Hurricane Harvey makes landfall, the three kids could hardly be called friends. But as their regular lives fall apart and rising floodwaters pull them together, Mona, Cody, and Yasir will need to work as a team if they want to survive. The… Read more.

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Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Classism & racism
  • Parental abandonment, child abuse & domestic violence
  • Night terrors
  • Parent with anger management issues after being injured during military service
  • Death of a father recounted
  • Death of a grandmother mentioned
  • Hurricane Harvey & floods (theme)
  • Near-drowning incident recounted
  • Bullying

The Lions’ Run by Sara Pennypacker

Petit éclair. That’s what the other boys at the orphanage call Lucas DuBois. Lucas is tired of his cowardly reputation, just as he’s tired of the war and the Nazi occupation of his French village. He longs to show how brave he can be. He gets the chance when he saves a litter of kittens from cruel boys and brings them to an abandoned stable to care for them. There he comes upon a stranger who is none too happy to see Alice, the daughter of a horse trainer, who is hiding her filly from German soldiers. Soon Lucas begins to… Read more.

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Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Discussions of Lebensborn hospitals (where unmarried pregnant women were forced to adopt out their children as part of a Nazi-German eugenics program)
  • Death of parents recounted
  • World War II (theme)
  • Bullying
  • Animal cruelty & death mentioned (bullies attempt to drowning a litter of kittens but the protagonist is able to save the majority of them)

All in Her Hands by Audrey Blake

Dr. Nora Gibson is the only female surgeon in London. In all of England, even. After earning her medical degree and overcoming the prejudice of those who wished to see her fail, she’s finally earned her place at the Great Queen Street Hospital alongside her newlywed husband and her eccentric but ailing adoptive father, the great Dr. Horace Croft. But peace is hard to come by as a physician, and for one like Nora, it’s almost impossible. When Nora takes up the fight to bring midwives into the medical field, her already fragile reputa… Read more.

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Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical misogyny
  • Physical injury & illness and medical treatment (theme), including a cholera outbreak
  • Unplanned pregnancy (protagonist)