Category Archives: Queer Lit

Vengeful by V.E. Schwab

Vengeful by V.E. Schwab

Magneto and Professor X. Superman and Lex Luthor. Victor Vale and Eli Ever. Sydney and Serena Clarke. Great partnerships, now soured on the vine. But Marcella Riggins needs no one. Flush from her brush with death, she’s finally gained the control she’s always sought—and will use her newfound power to bring the city of Merit to its knees. She’ll do whatever it takes, collecting her own sidekicks, and leveraging the two most infamous EOs, Victor Vale and Eli Ever, against each other. With Marcella’s rise, new enmities create opportunity–and the stage of Merit City will once again be set for a final, terrible reckoning.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Attempted sexual assault
  • Child abuse
  • Suicide
  • Alcoholism, alcohol consumption & abuse
  • Drug abuse
  • Vivisection
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Graphic torture
  • Fire
  • Drowning

A Gathering of Shadows by V.E. Schwab

A Gathering of Shadows by V.E. Schwab

It has been four months since a mysterious obsidian stone fell into Kell’s possession. Four months since his path crossed with Delilah Bard. Four months since Prince Rhy was wounded, and since the nefarious Dane twins of White London fell, and four months since the stone was cast with Holland’s dying body through the rift–back into Black London.

Now, restless after having given up his smuggling habit, Kell is visited by dreams of ominous magical events, waking only to think of Lila, who disappeared from the docks as she always meant to do. As Red London finalizes preparations for the Element Games–an extravagant international competition of magic meant to entertain and keep healthy the ties between neighbouring countries–a certain pirate ship draws closer, carrying old friends back into port… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Self-harm
  • Torture

A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab

A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab

Kell is one of the last Antari—magicians with a rare, coveted ability to travel between parallel Londons; Red, Grey, White, and, once upon a time, Black.

Kell was raised in Arnes—Red London—and officially serves the Maresh Empire as an ambassador, travelling between the frequent bloody regime changes in White London and the court of George III in the dullest of Londons, the one without any magic left to see.

Unofficially, Kell is a smuggler, servicing people willing to pay for even the smallest glimpses of a world they’ll never see. It’s a defiant hobby with dangerous consequences, which Kell is now seeing firsthand… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Slavery
  • Attempted rape
  • Attempted prostitution of a child, recounted
  • Parental abuse discussed
  • Self mutilation for use in magic
  • Torture

A Conjuring of Light by V.E. Schwab

A Conjuring of Light by V.E. Schwab

The precarious equilibrium among four Londons has reached its breaking point. Once brimming with the red vivacity of magic, darkness casts a shadow over the Maresh Empire, leaving a space for another London to rise.

Kell – once assumed to be the last surviving Antari – begins to waver under the pressure of competing loyalties. And in the wake of tragedy, can Arnes survive?

Lila Bard, once a commonplace – but never common – thief, has survived and flourished through a series of magical trials. But now she must learn to control the magic, before it bleeds her dry. Meanwhile, the disgraced Captain Alucard Emery of the Night Spire collects his crew, attempting a race against time to acquire the impossible. And an ancient enemy returns to claim a crown while a fallen hero tries to save a world in decay.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Slavery
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Murder
  • Torture
  • Kidnapping & captivity

Less by Andrew Sean Greer

Less by Andrew Sean Greer

Problem: You are a failed novelist about to turn fifty. A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: your boyfriend of the past nine years now engaged to someone else. You can’t say yes–it would all be too awkward–and you can’t say no–it would look like defeat. On your desk are a series of half-baked literary invitations you’ve received from around the world.

Question: How do you arrange to skip town? Answer: You accept them all. If you are Arthur Less.

Thus begins an around-the-world-in-eighty-days fantasia that will take Arthur Less to Mexico, Italy, Germany, Morocco, India and Japan and put thousands of miles between him… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Cheating
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Drug use
  • Terminal illness
  • Stroke

The Witch’s Heart by Genevieve Gornichec

The Witch’s Heart by Genevieve Gornichec

The Witch's Heart by Genevieve Gornichec

Angrboda’s story begins where most witches’ tales end: with a burning. A punishment from Odin for refusing to provide him with knowledge of the future, the fire leaves Angrboda injured and powerless, and she flees into the farthest reaches of a remote forest. There she is found by a man who reveals himself to be Loki, and her initial distrust of him transforms into a deep and abiding love.

Their union produces three unusual children, each with a secret destiny, who Angrboda is keen to raise at the edge of the world, safely hidden from Odin’s all-seeing eye. But as Angrboda slowly recovers her prophetic powers, she learns that her blissful life—and possibly all of existence—is in danger.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Family separation
  • Toxic relationship
  • Child birth
  • Near-pregnancy
  • Miscarriage
  • Medical procedure, specifically sutures
  • Death of a child
  • Burning alive
  • Torture
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Fire
  • Animal death

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food.

As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band–and meeting the man who would become her husband–her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother’s diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Addiction
  • Alcoholism
  • Abortion
  • Cancer
  • Death of a parent
  • Depiction of grief

The Shape of Thunder by Jasmine Warga

The Shape of Thunder by Jasmine Warga

Cora hasn’t spoken to her best friend, Quinn, in a year. Despite living next door to each other, they exist in separate worlds of grief. Cora is still grappling with the death of her beloved sister in a school shooting, and Quinn is carrying the guilt of what her brother did.

On the day of Cora’s twelfth birthday, Quinn leaves a box on her doorstep with a note. She has decided that the only way to fix things is to go back in time to the moment before her brother changed all their lives forever—and stop him.

In spite of herself, Cora wants to believe. And so the two former friends begin working together to open a wormhole in the fabric of the universe… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a sister in a school shooting recounted

The Helheim Princess by Tiana Warner

The Helheim Princess by Tiana Warner

For as long as Sigrid could remember, she’s wanted to become a mighty, fearless valkyrie. But without a winged mare, she’s a mere stable hand, left wondering who her parents were and why she’s so different. So when the Eye shows her a vision where she’s leading a valkyrie charge on the legendary eight-legged horse Sleipnir, she grabs the possibility of this greater destiny with both hands, refusing to let go.

Too bad that the only one who can help her get there is Mariam, an enemy valkyrie who begrudgingly agrees to lead her to Helheim but who certainly can’t be trusted―even if she does make Sigrid more than a little flustered. As they cross the nine worlds, battling night elves, riding sea serpents, and hurtling into fire… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Parental abandonment
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Blood depiction
  • Fire
  • Bullying
  • Animal death

Ice Massacre by Tiana Warner

Ice Massacre by Tiana Warner

The Massacre is supposed to bring peace to Eriana Kwai. Every year, the island sends its warriors to battle these hostile sea demons. Every year, the warriors fail to return. Desperate for survival, the island must decide on a new strategy. Now, the fate of Eriana Kwai lies in the hands of twenty battle-trained girls and their resistance to a mermaid’s allure.

Eighteen-year-old Meela has already lost her brother to the Massacre, and she has lived with a secret that’s haunted her since childhood. For any hope of survival, she must overcome the demons of her past and become a ruthless mermaid killer.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Ableism & ableist language
  • Blood & gore depiction