The slip : a novel

Schaefer, Lucas, 2025

Austin, Texas: It’s the summer of 1998, and Nathaniel Rothstein has vanished without a trace. His uncle Bob Alexander, who was supposed to be looking after him for the summer, had long thought the boy a bit odd, but Nathaniel appeared to be maturing in his sixteenth year-taking up boxing at Terry Tucker’s Boxing Gym and volunteering at the local assisted living center. Until he disappeared, Nathaniel had seemed happier, more confident-tanner, even…More than a decade later, after Bob Alexander receives a shocking tip, he becomes determined to solve the mystery of his missing nephew. Bobbing and weaving across the ever-shifting canvas of a changing country, The Slip is an audacious, daring look at sex and race in America that builds to an unforgettable collision in the center of the ring

Queer as folklore : the hidden queer history of myths and monsters

Coward, Sacha, 2025

A celebration of queer history like you’ve never seen it before. Queer as folklore travels across centuries and continents to reveal the unsung heroes and villains of storytelling, magic and fantasy. Featuring images from archives, galleries and museums around the world, each chapter investigates the queer history of different mythic and folkloric characters, both old and new. Leaving no headstone unturned, Sacha Coward takes you on a wild ride through the night from ancient Greece to the main stage of RuPaul’s Drag Race, visiting cross-dressing pirates, radical fairies and the graves of the ‘queerly departed’ along the way.

The secret public : how music moved queer culture from the margins to the mainstream

Savage, Jon, 2025

A monumental history of the gay influence on popular culture, from the rise of Little Richard to the collapse of disco in 1979: award-winning author Jon Savage takes us on a fast and captivating journey through the history of pop music as seen through the eyes of queer artists. 

Canto contigo : a novel

Garza Villa, Jonny, 2024

When a mariachi star transfers schools, he expects to be handed his new group’s lead vocalist spot — what he gets instead is a tenacious current lead with a very familiar, very kissable face. In a twenty-four-hour span, Rafael Alvarez led North Amistad High School’s Mariachi Alma de la Frontera to their eleventh consecutive first-place win in the Mariachi Extravaganza de Nacional; and met, made out with, and almost hooked up with one of the cutest guys he’s ever met. Now eight months later, Rafie’s ready for one final win. What he didn’t plan for is his family moving to San Antonio before his senior year, forcing him to leave behind his group while dealing with the loss of the most important person in his life–his beloved abuelo…

Reclaiming two-spirits : sexuality, spiritual renewal, & sovereignty in Native America

Smithers, Gregory D.; Heavy Runner, Raven E., 2022

Before 1492, hundreds of Indigenous communities across North America included people who identified as neither male nor female, but both. They went by aakíí’skassi, miati, okitcitakwe or one of hundreds of other tribally specific identities. After European colonizers invaded Indian Country, centuries of violence and systematic persecution followed, imperiling the existence of people who today call themselves Two-Spirits, an umbrella term denoting feminine and masculine qualities in one person…But as Gregory Smithers shows, the colonizers failed–and Indigenous resistance is core to this story. Reclaiming Two-Spirits amplifies their voices, reconnecting their history to Native nations in the 21st century.

Gender queer : a memoir

Kobabe, Maia, author, 2020

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 and fundamental violation of pap smears. Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity–what it means and how to think about it–for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere

We have always been here : a queer Muslim memoir

Habib, Samra, 2019

A queer Muslim searches for the language to express her truest self, making peace with her sexuality, her family, and Islam…So begins a journey of self-discovery that takes her to Tokyo, where she comes to terms with her sexuality, and to a queer-friendly mosque in Toronto, where she returns to her faith in the same neighborhood where she attended her first drag show. Along the way, she learns that the facets of her identity aren’t as incompatible as she was led to believe, and that her people had always been there–the world just wasn’t ready for them yet.

Becoming visible : an illustrated history of lesbian and gay life in twentieth-century America

McGarry, Molly.; Wasserman, Fred., 1998

Traces one hundred years of same-sex social worlds and political life in the United States: from the extensive gay worlds that took shape in city streets, bars, and tenements beginning in the early twentieth century through a national coming-out during World War II; the repression of the McCarthy era to the liberating forces of the 1969 Stonewall Riots and the gay liberation and lesbian feminist movements; the AIDS crisis, renewed activism in the 1990s; and much more.

The lavender palette : gay culture and the art of Washington state

Martin, David F. (David Francis); Chapman, David L., 2020

The first study of how gay and lesbian artists influenced and established a regional cultural identity in the first half of the twentieth century, this groundbreaking publication chronicles and contextualizes pioneering gay and lesbian artists from the pre-Stonewall era. Looking back as far as the 1910s, museum curator David F. Martin has unearthed astonishing works by both lesser-known and internationally famous artists.

When monsters speak : a Susan Stryker reader

Stryker, Susan.; Wark, McKenzie, 2024

When Monsters Speak collects essays from across the career of Susan Stryker, a foundational scholar in trans studies. Editor McKenzie Wark pairs Stryker’s best-known articles with obscure texts, to ground her thought in its historical and geographical roots in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her introduction highlights Stryker’s debt to early queer theory, media studies, autotheory, and subcultural forms of knowledge production, as well as the innovative forms of scholarship she helped promote through the articulation of interdisciplinary transgender studies. 

The ABC’s of LGBT+

Hardell, Ash, 2016

Shares in-depth definitions of LGBT+ terms, and offers personal anecdotes from LGBT+ people.

Queer social work : cases for LGBTQ+ affirmative practice

Argüello, Tyler M., 2019

This collection of case studies that model LGBTQ+ affirmative social work practice offers real-life scenarios from a range of social work scholars, educators, and practitioners, representing diverse sexualities, genders, and intersectional identities. Together, they demonstrate contemporary, multi-level, queer-affirming social work practice with LGBTQ+ people and communities. These fourteen case studies follow social workers across the country on their quest for quality service provision for vulnerable populations.

Men like that : a southern queer history

Howard, John, 1999

A groundbreaking history of gay life in Mississippi from the 1940s through the 1970s. Drawing on oral histories, police records, newspapers, and personal accounts, Howard explores how working-class men who had sex with other men built social networks, navigated secrecy and stigma, and experienced both community and repression in a conservative Southern setting. The book challenges stereotypes that queer life only flourished in large urban centers, showing instead that rich, complex queer cultures existed in rural and small-town America, shaped by race, class, and regional identity.

Queering the gothic

Hughes, William; Smith, Andrew, 2009

This is the first multi-authored book concerned with the developing interface between Gothic criticism and queer theory. Considering a range of Gothic texts produced between the eighteenth century and the present, the contributors explore the relationship between reading Gothically and reading Queerly, making this collection both an important reassessment of the Gothic tradition and a significant contribution to scholarship on queer theory.

Lavender and red : liberation and solidarity in the gay and lesbian left

Hobson, Emily K., 2016

LGBT activism is often imagined as a self-contained struggle, inspired by but set apart from other social movements. Lavender and Red recounts a far different story: a history of queer radicals who understood their sexual liberation as intertwined with solidarity against imperialism, war, and racism…Bringing together archival research, oral histories, and vibrant images, Emily K. Hobson rediscovers the radical queer past for a generation of activists today

Courtly and queer : deconstruction, desire, and medieval French literature

Samuelson, Charlie, 2022

Focuses on high medieval verse romance, associated with Chrétien de Troyes, and late medieval dits, associated with the work of Guillaume de Machaut. Courtly and Queer considers these genres both alongside each other and in relation to deconstruction and queer theory

When Brooklyn was queer

Ryan, Hugh, 2019

The groundbreaking, never-before-told story of Brooklyn’s vibrant and forgotten queer history, from the mid-1850s up to the present day. When Brooklyn Was Queer is a groundbreaking exploration of the LGBT history of Brooklyn, from the early days of Walt Whitman in the 1850s up through the women who worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War II, and beyond. No other book, movie, or exhibition has ever told this sweeping story.

The jellyfish

Boum, Lang, 2024

Odette is a twenty-something year old with their own place, a steady job at a local bookstore, an adorable pet rabbit, and a budding crush on one of their customers. But Odette is haunted by something only they can see: a jellyfish that’s floating in their eye, blocking their vision. It’s a seemingly minor annoyance…until the jellyfish starts multiplying.

Shakesqueer : a queer companion to the complete works of Shakespeare

Menon, Madhavi, 2011

Shakesqueer puts the most exciting queer theorists in conversation with the complete works of William Shakespeare. Exploring what is odd, eccentric, and unexpected in the Bard’s plays and poems, these theorists highlight not only the many ways that Shakespeare can be queered but also the many ways that Shakespeare can enrich queer theory.

Some desperate glory

Tesh, Emily, 2023

Since she was born, Kyr has trained for the day she can avenge the murder of planet Earth. Raised in the bowels of Gaea Station alongside the last scraps of humanity, she readies herself to face the Wisdom, the powerful, reality-shaping weapon that gave the majoda their victory over humanity. Kyr is one of the best warriors of her generation, the sword of a dead planet. When Command assigns her brother to certain death and relegates her to Nursery to bear sons until she dies trying, she knows must take humanity’s revenge into her own hands. Alongside her brother’s brilliant but seditious friend and a lonely, captive alien, Kyr escapes from everything she’s known into a universe far more complicated than she was taught and far more wondrous than she could have imagined.