Author: Danika Ellis

Brandon J. Wolf is an LGBTQ+ activist who is also a survivor of the Pulse Nightclub terror attack. In this memoir, he talks about his journey growing up in a racist and homophobic small town in rural Oregon to finding his community in Orlando — and how that safe space was ripped away. This experience inspired him to become the activist he is today, and A Place for Us reminds us that the fight is not over: “With our backs against the wall,” he writes, “we find a way out together.”

The U.S. may have paused most of its releases for the Fourth of July, but the UK didn’t! This UK YA release is about Roman, a nonbinary teen in a small town where they feel isolated, especially in terms of dating. When they start getting anonymous postcards in their locker, they think they know who their secret admirer is — but will they be brave enough to act?

This one is by Book Riot’s own Tirzah Price! Manslaughter Park is the third book in the Jane Austen Murder Mysteries series, and it’s the first one with a queer main character. There’s a love story between Fanny Price and Mary Crawford! It’s Jane Austen, but queer and with murder. What’s not to like?

This is the sequel to The Name-Bearer. The Name-Bearer was raised to receive the name of the next royal from Flowers of Prophecy. When that prophecy doesn’t play out as planned, the Name-Bearer hides with a group of warrior women, preparing to find the Unnamed Prince and embrace her true destiny.

In the Downworld Sequence, AI gods rule. Khuon Mo is one robotic god who turned against creations, striking down a whole city. But before it died, it brought back its favorite child, Sunai. In the 17 years since, Sunai has been running away from his destiny, escaping with drugs and men. But one of the men he sleeps with leads him right back to the dangerous politics of AI gods. This is described as a “sci-fi series where AI deities and brutal police states clash, wielding giant robots steered by pilot-priests with corrupted bodies”!

In 2017, Emerson was divorcing their dominatrix wife that they called Daddy, and was feeling completely lost. They dive into storm chasing, and along the way, they remember the father figures in their life, trying to put together their own relationship to masculinity as an adult. Emerson explains, “We often look to our gender roles as a sort of map for aging. I wanted to know what the process looked like without that: not man-ness, not-woman-ness.”

The Red Scholar’s Wake by Aliette de Bodard, narrated by Aoife Hinds (Sapphic Fantasy) (Audiobook Rerelease)

Hearts Forged in Dragon Fire by Erica Hollis (Lesbian F/F YA Fantasy)

Girl Made of Stars by Ashley Herring Blake, narrated by Krystal Hammond (Sapphic YA Contemporary) (Audiobook Rerelease)

Negative Money by Lillian-Yvonne Bertram (Nonbinary Poetry)

If you loved the Netflix adaptation of Fear Street, you’re going to need to pick this up. Kalynn Bayron is the author of Cinderella is Dead and the This Poison Heart series, and this is her first horror novel. It follows Charity, who is playing the “final girl” in a slasher-themed summer camp. But when people start turning up dead for real, she’ll have to find a way to get her and her girlfriend out alive.

It’s the summer before senior year, and Claire can’t keep hiding the fact that she’s bisexual and has feelings for her lifelong best friend, Sophia. To pay for repairs on her car, she takes a summer job at a nursing home, and becomes close with Lena, an 88-year-old lesbian. Spending time with her makes Claire more confident in her identity — but then a new girl, Pen, walks into her life, and Claire is torn between a new crush and the feelings for Sophia she’s been repressing for so long.

Ask any bisexual woman, and she probably has her own horror story about being “unicorn hunted.” The Spare Room takes this to another level: Kelly has just been dumped by her fiancé when her friend Sabrina and his husband Nathan offer her the spare bedroom in their remote mansion. During her stay, she finds herself falling for them both — and they open up their marriage for her. But she soon realizes she’s not the first woman they’ve done this to, and the previous one has gone missing…

I can’t resist a sapphic friends to lovers romance. Peaches and Jamie are friends who both have feelings for each other, but is this the right time to see if romance is in the cards? Jamie is planning to move away for college and is not yet sure where she’ll be next year. Peaches is taking care of her whole family after her mother passed away, along with managing her own business, which has her stretched thin. Even if the timing is not ideal, though, they can’t deny the chemistry between them.

Lucky Red is a queer, feminist take on the Western genre. It’s 1877, and Bridget is a 16-year-old orphan struggling to survive. When she joins Buffalo Queen, a women-run brothel, she finds community with the other women there as well as financial stability. When a notorious female gunslinger comes to town, Bridget falls for her, but other new arrivals threaten to upend the fragile peace of Dodge City. She’ll have to defend her found family — or lose everything, again.

Mrs. S by K. Patrick (Sapphic Fiction)

Gods of Want: Stories by K-Ming Chang (Queer Short Stories) (Paperback Rerelease)

Through the Groves by Anne Hull (Lesbian Memoir)

The LGBT Cuban Revolution by Wilfred W. Labiosa (LGBT Nonfiction)