Summer’s New LGBTQ Historical Fiction

In a coastal Texas town still reeling from a hurricane and the ravages of the Vietnam War, a closeted woman searches for answers when her surrogate mother is murdered. Lou was renovating Miss Kate’s old mansion and dreaming of a better future after losing her brother in the war when her beloved neighbor is found murdered. No one else seems interested in looking for the killer. Parson is a town full of sinister secrets, and Lou is determined to unearth them no matter the cost.

Shagun flees the grief of his family after the death of his twin sisters by enrolling in an all-boys boarding school in 1990s India. But it isn’t until he comes across a traveling theater troupe performing the Hindu myths of his childhood that he finally feels true belonging. He even finds love with a photographer. But shame and fear are keeping Shagun from the happiness just within his grasp. And until he can excise them, nowhere — and no one — will truly feel like home.

A pioneering computer programmer becomes determined to help a man still reeling from his separation from his mother during the Holocaust when she discovers that Hitler’s so-called “Final Solution” was organized with Hollerith punch-card computers. Told from the perspective of two women working in the pioneering field of computers in the ’40s and ’60s, Kim van Alkemade explores the lengths — and risks — people will go to in order to help the ones they love.