Category Archives: Queer Lit

Nestlings by Nat Cassidy

Ana and Reid needed a lucky break. The horrifically complicated birth of their first child has left Ana paralyzed, bitter, and struggling: with mobility, with her relationship with Reid, with resentment for her baby. That’s about to change with the words any New Yorker would love to hear―affordable housing lottery. They’ve won an apartment in the Deptford, one of Manhattan’s most revered buildings with beautiful vistas of Central Park and stunning architecture. Reid dismisses disturbing events and Ana’s deep unease and paranoia as the price of living in New York―people are odd―but he can’t explain the needle-like bite marks on the baby.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Racism
  • Sexism
  • Antisemitism
  • Homomisic slurs
  • Gaslighting
  • Post-partum depression
  • Claustrophobia
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Death of a parent
  • Infanticide mentioned
  • COVID-19 pandemic

Starling House by Alix E. Harrow

Eden, Kentucky, is just another dying, bad-luck town, known only for the legend of E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth-century author and illustrator who wrote The Underland–and disappeared. Before she vanished, Starling House appeared. But everyone agrees that it’s best to let the uncanny house―and its last lonely heir, Arthur Starling―go to rot. Opal knows better than to mess with haunted houses or brooding men, but an unexpected job offer might be a chance to get her brother out of Eden. Too quickly, though, Starling House starts to feel dangerously like something… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Classism
  • Homomisia
  • Racism
  • Slavery mentioned
  • Attempted incest mentioned (secondary characters)
  • Depressive episode
  • Alcohol abuse
  • Drugging
  • Blood & injury depiction
  • Death of a parent
  • Murder
  • Car accident

Fresh by Margot Wood

Some students enter their freshman year of college knowing exactly what they want to do with their lives. Elliot McHugh is not one of those people. But picking a major is the last thing on Elliot’s mind when she’s too busy experiencing all that college has to offer—from dancing all night at off-campus parties, to testing her RA Rose’s patience, to making new friends, to having the best sex one can have on a twin-sized dorm room bed. But she may not be ready for the fallout when reality hits. When the sex she’s having isn’t that great. When finals creep up and smack her right in the face. Or when her roommate’s boyfriend turns out to be the biggest a-hole… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Slut-shaming
  • Sexual assault
  • Cheating

Among the Innocent by Mary Alford

When Leah Miller’s entire Amish family was murdered ten years ago, the person believed responsible took his own life. Since then, Leah left the Amish and joined the police force. Now, after another Amish woman is found murdered with the same MO, it becomes clear that the wrong man may have been blamed for her family’s deaths.
As Leah and the new police chief, Dalton Cooper, work long hours struggling to fit the pieces together in order to catch the killer, they can’t help but grow closer. When secrets from both of their pasts begin to surface, an unexpected connection between them is revealed… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape, implied
  • Recreational drug use mentioned
  • Blood depiction
  • Murder by cutting their throats with a knife
  • Gun & knife violence

Alice Isn’t Dead by Joseph Fink

Keisha Taylor lived a quiet life with her wife, Alice, until the day that Alice disappeared. After months of searching, presuming she was dead, Keisha held a funeral, mourned, and gradually tried to get on with her life. But that was before Keisha started to see her wife, again and again, in the background of news reports from all over America. Alice isn’t dead, and she is showing up at every major tragedy and accident in the country… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Antisemitism
  • Physical assault

Things We Do in the Dark by Jennifer Hillier

When Paris Peralta is arrested in her own bathroom—covered in blood, holding a straight razor, her celebrity husband dead in the bathtub behind her—she knows she’ll be charged with murder. But as bad as this looks, it’s not what worries her the most. With the unwanted media attention now surrounding her, it’s only a matter of time before someone from her long hidden past recognizes her and destroys the new life she’s worked so hard to build, along with any chance of a future… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Statutory rape
  • Child abuse
  • Drug abuse
  • Murder

Out on a Limb by Hannah Bonam-Young

Winnifred “Win” McNulty has always been wildly independent. Not one to be coddled for her limb difference, Win has spent most of her life trying to prove that she can do it all on her own. And, with some minor adjustments, she’s done just fine. That is until she has a one-night stand with the incredibly charming Bo, a perfect stranger. And that one night changes everything. While Bo is surprisingly elated to step up to the plate, Win finds herself unsure of whether she can handle this new challenge on her own or if she’ll need a helping hand… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism
  • Depression
  • Suicidal ideation recounted
  • Unplanned pregnancy
  • Amputation & loss of limb (leg)
  • Cancer (remission)
  • Death of a parent from suicide recounted, off-page

Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe

In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Now, Gender Queer is here. Maia’s intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma of pap smears… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Dysphoria
  • Coming out themes
  • Misgendering
  • Emesis
  • Graphic blood depiction

Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space by Amanda Leduc

In fairy tales, happy endings are the norm—as long as you’re beautiful and walk on two legs. After all, the ogre never gets the princess. And since fairy tales are the foundational myths of our culture, how can a girl with a disability ever think she’ll have a happy ending?

By examining the ways that fairy tales have shaped our expectations of disability, Disfigured will point the way toward a new world where disability is no longer a punishment or impediment but operates, instead, as a way of centering a protagonist and helping them to cement their own place in a story, and from there, the world… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism (theme)
  • Sexual assault
  • Depression
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Stillbirth
  • Chronic illness
  • Bullying

Half-Blown Rose by Leesa Cross-Smith

Vincent, having grown up as the privileged daughter of artists, has a lovely life in many ways. At forty-four, she enjoys strolling the streets of Paris and teaching at the modern art museum; she has a vibrant group of friends; and she’s even caught the eye of a young, charismatic man named Loup. But Vincent is also in Paris to escape a painful betrayal: her husband, Cillian, has published a bestselling book divulging secrets about their marriage and his own past, hinting that when he was a teenager, he may have had a child with a young woman back in Dublin—before he moved to California and never returned… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Cheating