Author: Danika Ellis

In this horror novel, Devon has sacrificed everything for her son. He was born a mind eater, not a book eater like her. Now, she’s on the run from the family who wants to make him into a weapon, looking for a cure. But in the meantime, she must gruesomely feed people to him to keep him alive, and he retains their memories. This is an unsettling dark fantasy with a sapphic main character.

Melanie is a foundling in a world of magic, but she has a unique talent: the ability to open any lock. One day, an automaton called the Traveler arrives at the orphanage, recruiting her to be a witch’s assistant. This begins a new adventure for Melanie, and she will found out new things about this world, the Traveler, and herself — including her queer awakening. This is recommended for fans of Howl’s Moving Castle!

In this YA graphic memoir, Lewis revisits his teenage self as he grew up a closeted trans guy in 2000s UK. While he tries to tell his past self why she (the pronouns used for his past self) is having such a hard time and what comes next, his teen self isn’t yet ready to hear the truth. Content warnings for transphobia and homophobia.

Vivek Shraya, author of I’m Afraid of Men, The Subtweet, and more, discusses in this graphic memoir the disturbing transphobic hate mail she began receiving in 2017. This is only 60 pages, but this surreal and satirical slim book packs a punch. Content warning for violent transphobia.

Imari left her would-be husband at the alter, and now it’s all anyone can talk about. She decides to move to the small town Appeley for a fresh start. Instead, she finds a familiar face at the fall apple festival: Cassidy, her childhood best friend. And she’s grown up to be a beautiful woman. This book promises positive fat representation, an autumnal atmosphere, coffeeshops, butch and stud representation, and more.

Many of your favorite romance authors, even if they’re typically published by the Big Five publishers, have some self-published books, too! Talia Hibbet is known for her Brown Sisters series, including Take a Hint, Dani Brown, which has a bisexual main character. Work for It is an angsty M/M romance with an ice king love interest. I don’t think I can improve on the description: “When the prettiest man I’ve ever hated shows up at my job…I’m not sure if I want to strangle him or drag him into bed.”

Another well-known romance author with an indie queer book is Alyssa Cole’s historical F/F romance That Could Be Enough.

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I somehow missed this one coming out last month! It looks like the perfect match for Legends & Lattes fans. Rhoren is a bloodmage who has finally retired. Now, using a book of drink recipes he inherited from his father, he’s starting his own tavern for a change of pace. There’s also a sweet M/M slowburn romance.

This one has some action in the plot, but it still is a very cozy YA fantasy graphic novel. Nova is a witch whose childhood crush, Tam, has just reappeared in her life. They are a werewolf on the run from a dark force trying to steal their magic. Together, they have to uncover the mystery behind the forces chasing Tam before it’s too late. Did I mention that Nova works for a bookstore owned by her grandmothers? Adorable.

This is a retelling of “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe with a nonbinary main character. Alex’s childhood friend Madeline Usher is dying, so they visit the remote House of Usher to visit her. There, Alex finds the house overtaken by fungi and surrounded by strange wildlife. Madeline and her brother both exhibit unsettling symptoms. Along with a doctor and a mycologist, Alex searches for answers.

Of course, you can’t talk about queer haunted house stories without mentioning The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, and I’m always looking for a book to scratch that same itch. While it’s unfair to compare any writing to Shirley Jackson’s, Gnarled Hollow is the first book I’ve read that I think captures the same vibes as The Haunting of Hill House — but with an explicitly queer main character instead of a subtextual one.

If you like your horror on the weird side, you have to pick up White is for Witching, about three generations of women and the house the binds them together and holds its own secrets. This is a surreal, unsettling read that includes chapters from the point of view of the house itself! And, of course, one of the main characters is sapphic.

In case you somehow missed this book taking over the bestseller list, it’s a YA novel that’s pitched as Pacific Rim meets The Handmaid’s Tale. Zetian has signed up to be a concubine-pilot of a mecha, but she has no plans of being drained and discarded like most of the women co-pilots. Instead, she’s out for revenge for the male pilot responsible for her sister’s death — and after that, she’s ready to tear this whole misogynistic system down. This has a queer and polyamorous main character!

Giant robots have invaded Earth, and Gus Kitko plans to go out playing piano. Instead, he’s saved by a traitor Vanguard and becomes one of the pilots in a last stand. This has gay and nonbinary main characters. Author Annalee Newitz describes it as a “beautifully-orchestrated disco space battle.”

Yes, I snuck a third example in here. Eris is a Gearbreaker: she dismantles the Windups that enforce the Godolia’s tyrannical reign over the Badlands. When she’s captured, she meets Sona, a cybernetically enhanced Windup pilot. They should be enemies, but Sona reveals she’s infiltrated the Windup program to take down the system from the inside. Can Eris trust her? And what happens when their relationship turns from dangerous allies to something more?

This anthology of speculative short stories and poetry celebrates platonic relationships, from a queerplatonic relationship between shopkeepers in a fantasy world to the community formed by a group of demon hunters and lots more, this collection reminds us that platonic relationships are some of the most meaningful and important connections in our lives.

In this retelling of the Hindu epic the Ramayana, Kaikeyi is an ignored, inconsequential princess who leverages found magic to become an unforgettable leader. But defying her destiny pits her against the gods, and she will have to decide if the life she’s worked so hard to build is worth what might come next. Kaikeyi is aromantic and asexual.

Sarah Costello, who is asexual and aromantic, and Kayla Kaszyca, who is demisexual and biromantic, are the hosts of the aromantic and asexual podcast Sounds Fake But Okay, and in this book, they ask readers to put on aspec spectacles and “rethink everything you thought you knew about society, friendship, sex, romance and more.”

Elatsoe is an asexual, aromantic Lipan Apache teenage girl who sees ghosts. So when her deceased cousin comes to visit, it’s not his ghost that surprises her; it’s his message. He didn’t die from a car crash. He was murdered. Now she, her friends, and her family have to track down the killer, or no one else will. This is part fantasy, part horror, part murder mystery.

If you haven’t read manga before, a) I highly recommend giving it a try, and b) I think this is a great series to start with. It follows Miwa and Saeko, two queer college students who, after bemoaning the difficulty of finding other queer women, decide to start dating each other in a relationship of convenience. There are some fascinating conversations about romance and sex in this series, and in subsequent volumes, it goes in a direction I wasn’t expecting. It’s a little messy, but always interesting.

There’s a good chance you haven’t read a comic like this before, because it’s basically a documentary in comic form. Rhea Ewing interviews a ton of different people about their relationship to gender, and along the way, they discuss their own journey to coming out as nonbinary.

D’Vaughn and Kris are strangers on a reality show with the chance to win $100,000. All they have to do is plan their wedding in six weeks and convince their friends and family that their relationship is real. Oh, and the fake wedding will double as D’Vaughn’s coming out to her mom. There’s no way this could get complicated, right?

Mercy is Eliza Hamilton’s maid, and she has written off the idea of love and romance in her life: it’s not worth the heartbreak. When Andromeda, a dressmaker, shows up in Hamilton Grange, there are immediate sparks. As they get to know each other, they’ll both have to accept the vulnerability that comes with unexpectedly falling in love.

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