{"id":312051,"date":"2026-06-05T07:10:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T11:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/electricliterature.com\/?p=312051"},"modified":"2026-06-05T17:39:03","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T21:39:03","slug":"the-most-anticipated-queer-books-for-summer-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/electricliterature.com\/the-most-anticipated-queer-books-for-summer-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"The Most Anticipated Queer Books for Summer 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Like many of you, I wake up each morning with the feeling that they\u2019re coming for us. But then I think, they have always come for the queers. And we have always, throughout human history, stood watch all night over the fire. We have always taken care of each other, and we will keep on doing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I\u2019ve been joking lately that I\u2019m just going to get gayer. I\u2019m going to make up new pronouns. I\u2019m going to keep going out, dancing with my friends\u2014which we call Church\u2014and I\u2019ll go on gay marrying my loved ones as an ordained minister with the highest of internet credentials, and I\u2019ll watch&nbsp;<em>Queer Ultimatum<\/em>&nbsp;if I have to and&nbsp;<em>Heated Rivalry<\/em>&nbsp;because I want to, and I will honor the memories of our BIPOC queer and trans ancestors. I will fight for trans youth, and I will keep writing and sharing our stories no matter how much they try to silence or censor us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Electric Lit\u2019s Most Anticipated Queer Books List was launched by Michelle Hart, who centered and uplifted LGBTQ+ writers and the queer stories that \u201cdeserve not only to be included but centered\u201d in literary discourse. Michelle tells us, \u201cLet these new books be a reminder: Even in the face of despair and erasure, we\u2019re still here\u2014reading, writing, and refusing to disappear.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It\u2019s an honor to continue the work Michelle started in 2022. She reminds me\u2014these books remind me\u2014that queer is the future: It has always been the future.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This summer, to celebrate Pride, I invite you to save a queer, read a book. We<strong> <\/strong>keep the fires lit &#8217;till morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>With thanks to Amulya Tadimety, Annie O\u2019Brien, Lennie Roeber-Tsiongas, and Shandela Contreras for their assistance with this list.&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9780593241530\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780593241530\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Mother Tongue<\/a><\/em> by Sara Novi\u0107 (May 5)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Following Novi\u0107\u2019s novel <em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780593241523\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">True Biz<\/a><\/em>, this crip-queer memoir reads as a Deaf manifesto on motherhood. At age 12, Sara Novi\u0107 began to lose her hearing, but almost no one noticed\u2014not at home, not at school. For much of her adolescence, Novi\u0107 masked both her disability and her queerness, until an experience of spiritual humility led her to claim not only her deafness, but Deafness: the political act, the community. The book\u2019s raison d\u2019etre seems to be about honoring that experience, resisting erasure, and changing the sociopolitical landscape to be one that celebrates difference, rather than trying to stamp it out. As Novi\u0107 tells us, no one is a villain in their own story, and in <em>Mother Tongue<\/em> she sets out to expose the oralist frameworks and audist lobbies that continue to disenfranchise disabled people. Initially conceived as letters to her sons, the work is also a tender examination of family. Novi\u0107 touches on the challenges of pregnancy, those sleepless nights when her first child S was inconsolable and she\u2019d have to belt out her own rendition of \u201cTake Me Home, Country Roads.\u201d It ends, movingly, on her adoption of her second son, K, a deaf child in Thailand living in an orphanage, and who lights up when he finally learns to sign.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9781324065876\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9781324065876\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">One Leg on Earth<\/a><\/em> by \u2018Pemi Aguda (May 5)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIs it possible to be aware and not feel dread<em>?\u201d<\/em> asks \u2018Pemi Aguda. In <em>One Leg on Earth<\/em>, Aguda\u2019s debut novel, pregnant women in Nigeria are jumping off of bridges and walking into water to drown themselves\u2014and no one knows why. Yosoye, a recent graduate, relocates to Lagos (\u201ca city looking forward only, hustling forward\u201d) to complete her compulsory NYSC internship; she finds herself working for an architecture firm set to develop the new Omi City out of reclaimed land. Dazed by freedom, Yosoye wanders the dark streets of the city. Following a spontaneous encounter, she discovers that she, too, is pregnant. Amid judgments from coworkers and friends and forces that would seek to mysticize her for having one foot in heaven, Yosoye falls in with the dangerously seductive Beloved. There is a touch of body horror, as there is with all of Aguda\u2019s work\u2014including unforgettable stories of madness in pregnancy\u2014but when the surrounding sand and water start to take on an ominous glare, both Yosoye and the reader find themselves haunted by the dead women. The novel draws on Aguda\u2019s own research with members of the displaced Otodo Gbame community whose waterfront homes were demolished by the Lagos state government. For fans of Samanta Schweblin, Helen Oyeyemi, Rachel Heng; for lovers of <em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9781400033430\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Sula<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9780802167194\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780802167194\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">John of John<\/a><\/em> by Douglas Stuart (May 5)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Departing Glasgow for Scotland\u2019s Hebrides islands, Douglas Stuart\u2019s third novel asks a question quintessential to queerness: <em>Can you ever go back home?<\/em> This is the tender, sore storytelling we\u2019ve come to expect from Stuart, with some pages reading like a summer shower, others like a squall. Having graduated from art school, John-Calum Macleod (Cal) is called back from Edinburgh to take care of his loving, mischievous grandmother Ella, and to work the family croft and sheep farm in bone-cold winter. Cal\u2019s father\u2014also a John, also running from himself\u2014is embattled in a spiritual reckoning few know about. A leader in the local Presbyterian church that gleefully chains down swing sets on Sundays, John pushes his faith and way of life on Cal, at one point telling him, \u201cYou look like a cross-dresser that\u2019s thrown on a coat because he\u2019s run out of milk.\u201d Stuart\u2019s secondary characters are outrageously memorable, as with the set of brothers who live together but refuse to speak, demanding a translator even when they\u2019re at the same kitchen table. The novel, a flurry of domestic violence, is also one of warmth and color (literally: To make ends meet, the men work a loom, following a cultural tradition that has not changed very much since the industrial revolution, and one scene includes an erection knit into cloth). Tensions spike when the son, seeking closeness, reaches for his father\u2019s best friend. In <em>John of John<\/em>, we witness what it means to live side by side, each inside a lonely secret: the very definition of family.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9780593595848\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780593595848\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Turn (W)here<\/a><\/em> by Chet\u2019la Sebree (May 5)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If what you seek is belonging, go to the poets. Following the gorgeous <em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9781963108460\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Blue Opening<\/a><\/em>, Sebree\u2019s most recent collection, <em>Turn (W)here <\/em>is not a mere travelogue but a \u201ctravel song,\u201d a panoramic love letter to the poet\u2019s own itinerant spirit. With this project, Sebree takes to the road and searches for home across 16 countries and 38 states, alert to the threat of Black people\u2019s modern day sundown encounters in small towns. Along for the ride, we travel from Jackson, Mississippi, to Dante\u2019s tomb, to the French streets Baldwin walked. Sebree also returns to those places that birthed her people, a father she calls her \u201cguy,\u201d a mother who put herself through law school so that her children might know a different America. She traces her matrilineal line of free Black women in Maryland and asks what owning property means for her family; while the news of the police murder of Philando Castile plays through her radio, she grapples with what it means to be a citizen of a racist nation. Sebree asks: What is required to bring a Black child into this world, this country, of rootlessness? But also, there are table gatherings, and food rituals, and visits with friends\u2014unforgettably, that one luxurious, intimate afternoon spent in Wisconsin when, in a surprising act of kinship, she and her friend do up their hair. In the words of Tina Campt, whom Sebree invokes, <em>Turn (W)here<\/em> \u201cshifts the optics of \u2018looking at\u2019 to a politics of <em>looking with, through, and alongside another.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9781558613898\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9781558613898\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Again, Harder<\/a><\/em> by Alice Stoehr (May 12)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One of Stoehr\u2019s devoted readers describes this book as \u201ca lightning bolt into my brain . . . I want to hug and run away from every woman [the writer] creates.\u201d <em>Again, Harder<\/em> chronicles a sisterhood of trans women living in a large Midwestern town. In the linked short story collection, attractions flare and fizzle, polycules rise and fall, texts come hot and heavy until the fetishism starts, nights end in ass slapping. Money is always an issue, girls are continuously honing their emotional maturity. Harsh, sexy, tender, these stories remind us what we love about queer community, even when the closeness is suffocating (e.g. \u201cI love that girl, but she is a stress.\u201d). The dialogue is delicious, as are the hook-ups. One character laments, \u201cSomething\u2019s going to break,\u201d another replies, \u201cBreakage comes with transition,\u201d and still another reminds us, \u201cNothing is bad, everything is dangerous.\u201d Stoehr, beloved cult author, plays with point-of-view and form. She flirts with the epistolary and the confessional but always makes it funny\u2014an allusion to the <em>Brave Little Toaster<\/em> is foreplay\u2014and keeps to a razor\u2019s edge the pain, regret, loss. Again, harder, please.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9798217059829\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9798217059829\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Mighty Real<\/a> <\/em>by Barry Walters (May 12)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Storied journalist Barry Walters\u2019s extensive history of LGBTQ music from 1969 to 2000 spans genres, regions, and movements to trace a throughline of a revolutionary queer ethos. The chapters of <em>Mighty Real <\/em>explore artists whose music and impact have bent boundaries and expectations for gender and sexuality, from the Velvet Underground to Whitney Houston to the Indigo Girls. Walters, a longtime writer for outlets like the <em>Village Voice<\/em>, <em>Rolling Stone<\/em>, and the <em>Advocate<\/em>, also weaves in his own stories throughout; as a music journalist and columnist for decades in San Francisco and New York, including during the AIDS epidemic, he captures for us those memories that stay with him. Walters encyclopedically archives moments of queer and trans joy, expression, and resistance, and even spotlights LGBTQ pioneers who have been overlooked in music history. This is the perfect book to read before stepping out onto the light-up queer dancefloor this summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9780593851494\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780593851494\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Take Me with You<\/a> <\/em>by Steven Rowley (May 19)&nbsp;<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What do you do when your husband of 30 years literally disappears into thin air and you&#8217;re the only witness? Steven Rowley takes this deliciously bizarre premise and spins it into something all-too real: a meditation on how we never fully know the people we love, even after decades of shared life. Jesse del Ruth, left behind in their Joshua Tree home, must navigate not just grief but the maddening ambiguity of abandonment without closure, the not-knowing that&#8217;s somehow worse than any definitive answer. Rowley, who gave us <em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780525542308\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Guncle<\/a>&#8216;s<\/em> perfect blend of humor and heartbreak, returns with his sharpest work yet, a novel that lays bare the essential unknowability at the heart of even our most intimate bonds. It&#8217;s speculative fiction as emotional excavation, and it&#8217;ll wreck you in the best way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9798217047147\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9798217047147\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Maidenheads<\/a><\/em> by Benny B. Peterson (May 26)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you think texting your ex is toxic behavior, Jamie and Mari take it to a whole new level in <em>The<\/em> <em>Maidenheads. <\/em>A debut novel, Peterson sets their story of tragic teenage passion to the soundtrack of early 2000s grunge, pop punk, and indie rock music, appealing to fans of romance and music fanatics.<em> <\/em>As lonely teenagers in DC, Jamie and Mari start a punk rock band together. Just as the band is about to get its big break, a messy romantic breakup between the young musicians ruins their chance at fame and leaves Jamie emotionally paralyzed. A decade later, an opportunity for Mari and Jamie to reconnect presents itself. Jamie, feeling stuck in her life as a copyeditor in Baltimore, jumps at the chance to sing alongside her first love again. Ensue romantic chaos draped in bold vocals and angsty melodies. <em>The Maidenheads<\/em> is a balm for anyone who yearns for the recklessness of the teenage years without the soul-wrecking consequences of adulthood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9781250376244\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9781250376244\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Inspiration Porn<\/a> <\/em>by Ryan O&#8217;Connell (May 26)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After years of candid introspection that fueled a popular blog, a memoir, and the Netflix series <em>Special, <\/em>writer Ryan O\u2019Connell found himself embarking on self-reflection for an entirely new reason. He and his long-term boyfriend had opened their relationship, thrusting him into unfamiliar terrain: What would sex with strangers look like for him as a disabled gay man? This life-altering moment and more are chronicled in his debut essay collection, which seamlessly swings from discussing growing up with cerebral palsy and an alcoholic mother to chronicling wild sexual awakenings and misadventures. O\u2019Connell approaches each of these stories\u2014about social media, sex, disability, and addiction\u2014with a trademark breezy, witty style honed through early internet and television writing. Unabashedly raunchy and hilarious, O\u2019Connell\u2019s essays normalize the messy, beautiful, and complicated intersections of his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9780374620158\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780374620158\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Mad Eden<\/a><\/em> by Morgan Thomas (June 2)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Publishing too often uses the word groundbreaking, but in the case of <em>Mad Eden<\/em>, something about this rings true. <em>Mad Eden<\/em>, a debut, is nearly impossible to categorize yet joyful to inhabit. Ro, a trans, autie patient advocate, lives in Florida with their oh-so patient partner Liam in a partnership that is built on mutuality. Thomas writes, \u201cThere was joy, somehow, in our surviving this place that intended to be inhospitable to us.\u201d The two look after their \u201cadoptive son\u201d Quentin, a minor who is looking to transition but, like countless others, is thwarted. Danger comes in the form of constrictive state laws, false allies, and anti-trans legislation. When a TERF influencer targets the medical facility Ro works for, their tiny queer utopia is threatened. The book feels less like a novel and more like genre spilling into other genres. A work of meaningful intertextuality, <em>Mad Eden<\/em> weaves together an online fantasy series that builds its lexicon from an essay on autism. There are also dragons, alligators, talk of homemade T, and elegant treatises on time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9781250406149\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9781250406149\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">There\u2019s Only One Sin in Hollywood<\/a><\/em> by Rasheed Newson (June 2)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Old-school Hollywood glamour meets the razor-sharp wit of the HBO dramedy <em>Hacks<\/em> in Newson\u2019s searing industry takedown. It\u2019s 1958 in Hollywood, and Aaron Touissant knows where all of the bodies are buried. A backlot fixer for Skyline Pictures, Aaron conceals the secrets of the production company\u2019s most renowned actors\u2014whether it be a star\u2019s queerness or a torrid affair with a mobster\u2019s young daughter. He\u2019s good at his job; a closeted Black gay man himself, Aaron has fine-tuned his muscles for secret-keeping. Aaron, however, meets his match in Xavier C. Barlow, Hollywood\u2019s latest dashing Black movie star, who doesn\u2019t care to hide his queerness (and, perhaps, someone that Aaron has known <em>carnally<\/em> once . . . or twice). When Xavier\u2019s activism has dire consequences, Aaron picks up his pen to tell the real story of Xavier C. Barlow. Pulling tidbits from candid memoirs by Black stars of Hollywood\u2019s Golden Age as well as archival material, Newson\u2019s novel\u2014like most Hollywood stories\u2014is an irresistible blend of fact and fiction.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9781644453940\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9781644453940\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Earth 7<\/a><\/em> by Deb Olin Unferth (June 9)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Too many of us queer earthlings have been eagerly awaiting <em>Earth 7<\/em> since Deb Olin Unferth&#8217;s groundbreaking heist novel <em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9781644450154\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Barn 8<\/a><\/em>. The newest work is sci-fi\/cli-fi\/homosapien criticism in a way only Unferth could write\u2014entirely within and outside of genre. Each sentence introduces us to a vibrant and inescapable future just outside of our imagining, with some of the most moving passages on sand ever written. In a distant (but not too distant) future, after we have completely ruined the planet, two women meet on a fake beach. Dylan, who grew up in a pod at the bottom of the ocean of our de-pop(ulated) world can\u2019t help but be drawn to Melanie, a person so full of plastic and enhanced DNA sequences that people believe she\u2019s a robot. Both Dylan and Melanie are, in their own way, \u201csidling so far from human that humans didn\u2019t recognize [them] as one of their own,\u201d finding each other, and then coming apart. Meanwhile, Dylan\u2019s researcher mother uploads her consciousness onto a chip hurtling through space. Dylan\u2019s final creative act is one that Unferth, too, seems compelled by: to capture life before it\u2019s too late. Earth 7 is an adventurous, wry, utterly human novel (that \u201coriginal root of sadness and wildness\u201d), and it will be here long after we\u2019re gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9781668200476\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9781668200476\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Nymph<\/a> <\/em>by Sofia Montrone (June 9)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Set in a crumbling hotel in the Italian countryside, <em>Nymph<\/em> is written for those whose idea of a perfect summer vacation consists of long, slow walks in a rustic setting rather than sunburning at a beach club. Our protagonist, Leo, lives in Manhattan but spends every summer cleaning the guests\u2019 rooms in her family\u2019s agriturismo alongside her rapidly aging grandmother. The summer before Leo leaves for college, her grandmother hires Dolores, a sun-tanned California girl who came to Italy to study violin making. Romance, of course, ensues between Leo and Dolores, an inevitable response to the nutty aroma of freshly-brewed espresso, sprawling orchards, and winding alleys of an old-school village. While the romance brings the cat to the cream\u2014or the tourist to the vineyard\u2014the complex family dynamics keep the pages turning. Smuggled between teenage longing and retellings of <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780393356250\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>The<\/em> <em>Odyssey<\/em><\/a>, Montrone asks what happens to a family that would rather wipe snot from a stranger\u2019s headboard than clean their own dirty laundry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9781646223411\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9781646223411\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">What I Made for Dinner<\/a><\/em> by Krys Malcom Belc (June 9)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the early pages of his memoir, Krys laments, \u201cWhat was the adulthood I imagined? I hoped it wouldn\u2019t be this, this middle-aged drudgery my mother was in.\u201d Belc, a transgender man, performs most of the domestic labor for his wife, two sons, and daughter. His memoir, following his family during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, structures the narrative around his favorite internet chefs. He cycles through a seemingly endless loop of Claire Saffitz recipes, Ree Drummond\u2019s <em>The Pioneer Woman<\/em> reruns, and Stella Park\u2019s YouTube oeuvre. When pandemic restrictions loosen their grip, Belc, perhaps desiring to stay in domestic bliss, decides to have another baby. Filled with relatable frustrations about parenthood, as well as well-researched tidbits of food TV history, come hungry to <em>What I Made for Dinner<\/em>. You\u2019ll leave inspired to try your own hand at making the gorgeous cinnamon bun recipes that look anything but simple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9780385551977\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780385551977\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Villa Coco<\/a><\/em> by Andrew Sean Greer (June 9)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you take one book to the beach with you this summer, let it be <em>Villa Coco<\/em>. Fresh from undergrad, fumbling through life as if tasked to do \u201csomeone else\u2019s shopping,\u201d a young man takes up residence in the Italian countryside after answering an ad for an adjutant. Instead of cataloging Picassos and priceless artifacts as he\u2019s been hired to do, he becomes an assistant to the Baronessa (known to her friends as Coco), is promptly nicknamed Gioved\u00ec, and is tasked with pruning roses, fixing septic tanks, and responding to his employer\u2019s every whim. After many bad choices in love, our young gay protagonist has taken a vow of no more men for a while, has yet to learn that wherever you go, there you are. He enters into an affair with a married man and must choose between want and freedom. The novel, as charming as Greer\u2019s Pulitzer-prize winning <em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780316316132\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Less<\/a><\/em>, is full of witty aphorisms, tall tales, and superstitions: At one point, Gioved\u00ec, mistakenly setting a hat on a bed, is ordered to touch a man\u2019s testicles <em>so that nobody dies<\/em>. In Greer\u2019s world, servants and guests never speak the same language, villains seduce diamonds from Sicilian prices, someone is always related to the queen, and every conversation becomes a delightful conundrum. Each passage is a flirtation with food, or light playing on water beneath a bridge, or the Baronessa\u2019s Italian cousin. Or the Baronessa herself, who holds together her world (the <em>only<\/em> world) by sheer will and scheming. Villa Coco, laced with wistful, playful nostalgia, reads like youth itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9780374620332\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780374620332\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">As If<\/a><\/em> by Isabel Waidner (June 16)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If your doppelg\u00e4nger came along, would you be tempted to switch lives? What if the people who love you end up liking them just a bit more? What if you found yourself taking their sadness for your own? In this surrealist work reminiscent of Rivka Galchen\u2019s fiction, two desperate men who appear to be identical are mistaken for one another and decide to swap lives. Lewis is a failed actor and grieving widower, Korine is a failed father and husband; each covets the illusory freedom the other seems to have. After the swap, Korine spends nights beneath an overpass studying to be an actor, while Lewis cares for Korine&#8217;s child, who isn&#8217;t fooled by the dupe, but still teaches Lewis how to behave like his father. Amid double-bluffs and suspicions, pretense and envy, this is spy versus spy on an existential level\u2014and simmering beneath, a restlessness that has to do with class, grief, and dreams deferred. Queer literature always wants to know if we are brave enough to imagine a life outside of the one we\u2019re contained by. <em>As If<\/em> is a book that asks: What keeps us alive?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9780593243534\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780593243534\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Sourland<\/a><\/em> by Ariel Delgado Dixon (June 23)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Trust a lesbian to tell you everything you need to know about sex, cows, and weed. It\u2019s 2010, and Sapphire, the purveyor of an illegal cannabis farm and a pansexual known for her trysts with much younger lovers, goes missing. In her absence, her ex-girlfriend Frankie, a former ballet dancer, faces off against Fizz, the current male lover, for control of the property. <em>Sourland<\/em> is a lush, hidden land tended by bands of drifters, some with professorial knowledge of weed: It has the potential to pull in millions. It\u2019s also overrun by rats, runaway bulls, runaway tractors, and wild pigs, all of them out for blood. Additionally out for blood are the rippers who target the outlaw farm, locking Frankie in a barrel. But the story really heats up when JJ, Fizz\u2019s ex-partner, returns for revenge. <em>Sourland<\/em>, which Delgado Dixon dedicates to \u201cthe farm,\u201d is full of sinewy desire, deception, shootouts and chases, and characters you might meet in a Delillo novel. Atmospheric, with an eye for people, it reads like no other crime novel.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9780593733677\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780593733677\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Perverts<\/a><\/em> by Mac Crane (July 7)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&nbsp;\u201cWe were in love, and we were perverts, and for a while we didn\u2019t have to think about anything else,\u201d Crane writes in their title story. They go on to say that actually, they were not perverts at all, but \u201chuman proof of boldness, of desire, of terror.&#8221; In 2026, this reads like queer manifesto. These 17 stories are not about perverts, but <em>perversion<\/em>\u2014resisting boundaries. \u201cSmear the Queers\u201d\u2014told in the sly, wounded voice familiar to queers everywhere\u2014is about a boutique service that allows straight people to hunt queers in role-playing scenarios that become all too real. Other titles include \u201cAlex Adams, the Dyke Who Wouldn\u2019t Grow Up,\u201d \u201cTopping is Not for the Grief Stricken,\u201d and \u201cHave No Records of Your Ass.\u201d There are failed messiahs, sex parties, seashell porn, blackmail, wealth gaps, hatchlings, rebellious Futurewives\u2122, excellent descriptions of hugs and how we fail each other, and so, so much disappointment. Parenthood resembles nothing you\u2019ve thought up before. Even as these stories demand <em>more, more, more<\/em>, they point to an absence, and everything is distraction from \u201cspooky\u201d pain. <em>Perverts<\/em> is in conversation with writers like Allegra Hyde and Lydi Conklin; everyone is on their worst behavior. We know we\u2019re at the right party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9780063485709\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780063485709\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Chosen Family<\/a><\/em> by Madeleine Gray (July 14)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Coming hot off of her debut novel, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9781250890573\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Green Dot<\/a><\/em>, Madeleine Gray offers up a witty and delicious lesbian coming-of-age story. Two best friends who have known each other since high school and do not in any way feel a thing for each other (wink wink) decide to have a baby together in the spirit of queer utopianism. Eve and Nell first meet at an all-girls school in Sydney in 2007, where they are plagued by mean girls, <em>The OC<\/em>, and having to mask queerness in adolescence. As their families of origins having woefully failed them, they are propelled towards both queer interdependence and emotional isolationism. After a painful falling out, one that asks us how any of us made it through high school, the two reconnect in college, where they find selfhood, art, and chosen family. Plenty of U-Haul lesbian jokes abound in these pages, plus a toying with gay male stereotypes that hints at being in-crowd while reckoning with heteronormativity. (\u201cStraight people raw dog while queers have to actively family plan.\u201d) The book is so funny (and fun!), the quips finally for us, not at us. Gray shows us that chosen family is really about the connections that carry us through our lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9780807021293\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780807021293\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Living, Together: Reimagining Community in the Age of Disconnection<\/a><\/em> by Samantha Paige Rosen (July 14)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In an era when what we mean by <em>home<\/em> is constantly shifting\u2014thanks to Covid, ongoing economic crises that make house ownership untenable, private catastrophes\u2014<em>Living, Together<\/em> celebrates every queer expression of cohabitation. At age 29, Samantha Paige Rosen moved in with her parents, found she <em>loved<\/em> being part of an intergenerational household, and got her curious about all of the other joyful, creative ways people live in community. In<em> Living, Together<\/em>, more than 20 writers and activists share how they make new, collaborative spaces. Contributors range from their twenties to their nineties, in varying genders, races, classes, mobilities. The work is structured in three thematic sections spanning from biological and chosen families, to collectives arising from shared ideologies, to radical departures from communal living. Debutiful\u2019s Adam Vitcavage writes about living with his sister as adults\u2014watching <em>Drag Race<\/em>, arguing over which Thai spot is best\u2014and departing as friends. Sarah Thankam Matthews, relaying the mutual-aid organization she initiated during the pandemic, talks about \u201cthe <em>we<\/em> of Bed-Stuy Strong.\u201d Kristen Arnett gets married and, touchingly reflecting on the power of chosen family, realizes she doesn\u2019t have to do it all on her own.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9780811240451\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780811240451\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Dooneen<\/a><\/em> by Keith Ridgway (July 21)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Go down the rabbit hole, wind up in Dublin. In this alternate near-future Ireland, the sidewalks move. There are spinners and clickers . . . whatever that is . . . and the city is hot with protest. The government stalks the streets in shadow, and everywhere is \u201cthe fucking noise of the fucking progress.\u201d Mew steps through a portal that connects London to home, where he is to speak at a literary conference\u2014but nothing goes straight in Ridgway\u2019s imagination. Mew writes to his beloved, whom he aches to see again, and the novel becomes an unrequited epistolary love story. One black night, he gets (eagerly) claimed by the insurgency. <em>Dooneen<\/em> is full of absurdist tautologies, counterfactuals, mysterious figures, mysterious horses, songs sung, parents disappointed, gay soldiers, ripped trousers, boy ghosts, and clandestine missions through city tunnels. Ridgway draws on The Troubles without ever quite naming them, and speaks to ones we have yet to face. To Americans, the book will read all too close, with extrajudicial killings and housing disparities, but it is also very funny, spry, reminding us that the Irish are the best at getting through periods of absolute intolerance. For fans of Mohsin Hamid\u2019s <em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780735212206\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Exit West<\/a><\/em>, Anna Burn\u2019s <em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9781644450000\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Milkman<\/a><\/em>, John Kennedy Toole\u2019s <em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780802130204\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">A Confederacy of Dunces<\/a><\/em>, and resistance even when it\u2019s futile.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\">The Most Anticipated Queer Books of Spring 2026<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em><em>Don&#8217;t forget to check out the following titles, published January through April 2026!<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9798889842798\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9798889842798\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>Genderqueer Menopause<\/em><\/a> by Lasara Firefox Allen (Jan 13)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This groundbreaking handbook, written by a genderqueer doula and accredited menopause coach, offers tools, insights, and solidarity for queer individuals going through menopause. Author Lasara Firefox Allen foregrounds perspectives that have been sidelined and systemically erased in mainstream medical care. They identify resources that are both genderqueer and binary-gender-oriented, integrate quotes from real people they have surveyed, and include an appendix for health practitioners.&nbsp;Firefox Allen centers queer experience, affirming care, and community support, moving beyond heteronormative conceptions of menopause to empower, relieve, and demystify.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9780316588195\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780316588195\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Hemlock<\/a><\/em> by Melissa Faliveno (Jan 20)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In this gothic novel dedicated to Faliveno\u2019s parents, a woman fleeing her own life escapes New York for her family\u2019s cabin in rural Wisconsin, leaving behind a boyfriend, an apartment in Brooklyn, and a job as an editor. After almost a year of sobriety, Sam, grappling with her family\u2019s history with alcoholism\u2014and her mother\u2019s disappearance into the nearby woods\u2014begins to drink again. The book is full of shadows and longing, a prolonged sense of uncertainty about where the danger lies. There are poison plants, conversations with a doe, and flirtations with a cute local named Gina. Faliveno\u2019s crisp prose evokes an ambiguous haunting that will be instantly familiar to anyone who has been <em>through it<\/em>: \u201cIt\u2019s like I\u2019m turning into something else . . . like something is opening up, or making its way out.\u201d This \u201cbutch Black Swan\u201d captivated Austin Carter at Pocket Books Shop, the queer-feminist indie bookstore owned by three best friends (with a new second Lancaster, PA location!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9780063473362\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780063473362\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Two Women Living Together<\/a><\/em> by Kim Hana &amp; Hwang Sunwoo, translated by Gene Png (Jan 20)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Two Women Living Together <\/em>is not a queer book\u2014technically. Kim Hana and Hwang Sunwoo use the language \u201ccohabitants\u201d to define their relationship, and the best-selling Korean memoir clearly casts the two as women who value their independence. After turning forty and being confronted by the loneliness of living alone, the two move in together. Still, there is undeniable intimacy in these pages: their four beloved cats, shared playlists and guilty pleasures, the little noticings of habits. During a hospital stay, Hana stays by Sunwoo\u2019s side. One section is titled: \u201cIf We Broke Up.\u201d In switchback chapters, Hana and Sunwoo create a new domestic sphere that is undefined by patriarchy and social expectation. Sly, subtly subversive, a wonderful companion, <em>Two Women Living Together<\/em> is anything but straight.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9781668091180\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9781668091180\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Just Watch Me<\/a><\/em> by Lior Torenberg (Jan 20)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For seven days, across seven chapters, Dell Danvers live-streams her life for the internet, eating hotter and hotter peppers for cash donations. This self-exploitation might sound all too familiar, and at best, Dell is \u201ca morally gray heroine\u201d who would undoubtedly be played by Natasha Lyonne. (Even Torenberg admits she probably wouldn\u2019t like her protagonist in real life!) Nevertheless, like her followers on Live Cast, we readers are eager to know if Dell will do it: will she eat the ghost pepper. Like Dell, we anxiously count every coin that passes through her hands\u2014we\u2019ve seen her paycheck ($0) and her apartment (formerly a closet, no bathroom); most of all, Dell has allowed us a glimpse into her pain, how she is grieving for her comatose sister and reaching for the impossible. Funny, chatty, weird, and at times unexpectedly poignant. You can devour <em>Just Watch Me<\/em> in one gulp, but, like a habanero, it\u2019ll be sitting with you for hours.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9780802167118\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780802167118\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">One Aladdin Two Lamps<\/a><\/em> by Jeanette Winterson (Jan 20)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cStories are there to change what is into what if,\u201d Winterson tells us. This is feminist manifesto, literary criticism, personal narrative, oral storytelling\u2014a book that refuses to be categorized, much like its author. Fans of Winterson know she grew up as a lesbian adopted by ultra-religious Evangelical parents: That is, she was told one story about who she was, and the only way she could be saved was to go out into the world and tell another. Many others. Calling on <em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780307948991\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">One Thousand and One Nights<\/a>\u2019<\/em> Shahrazad, who tempts and tricks her would-be executioner, the Sultan Shahryar, Winterson tells us tales to keep us on the hook, all while confronting issues like capitalism and consumerism, climate change, and \u201ceverything-bagel liberalism.\u201d In <em>One Aladdin Two Lamps<\/em>, Winterson reminds us that stories are a way to reshape our world, by which she means: our future.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9781668091210\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9781668091210\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">On Sundays She Picked Flowers<\/a><\/em> by Yah Yah Scholfield (Jan 27)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yah Yah Scholfield\u2019s simmering debut is arriving hot off the heels of her selection for <em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780063399808\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Best American Short Stories 2025<\/a><\/em>. The book follows Jude, who flees her childhood home and abusive mother, finding solace in a house whose dark history is immediately familiar to her. Developing a solidarity with the spirits of the house, Jude becomes a healer, although the darkness of her past continues to lurk in the shadows. When a mysterious, alluring woman arrives at the house, Jude must come to terms with her desire, demons, and the legacy of violence within herself and the walls of the house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9781668214619\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9781668214619\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Murder Bimbo<\/a><\/em> by Rebecca Novack (Feb 10)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The incomparable Catherine Lacey calls <em>Murder Bimbo<\/em> \u201c<em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780307588371\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Gone Girl<\/a><\/em> for the Luigi Mangioni era.\u201d A sex worker is recruited to become an assassin at the hands of the US government\u2014and on page one, she\u2019s running for her life. We are seduced by this unreliable queer narrator, caught up in her ex and writing late-night emails about justice and a man named Meat Neck! Propulsive, electric, <em>Murder Bimbo<\/em> conceals and reveals and conceals again, as any disruptive queer act must. The political assassination at the heart of the book is eerily resonant, though the novel was written before Charlie Kirk was killed. Rebecca Novack, who has a master\u2019s degree in theological studies from Harvard divinity school, plays with our readerly expectations about motive, audience, authorship, and the genre of true crime.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9798217061037\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9798217061037\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Last Seen<\/a><\/em> by Christopher Castellani (Feb 17)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Last Seen, <\/em>a speculative literary thriller, follows four young men\u2014Caleb, Steven, Matthew, and Leo\u2014each of whom disappeared between 2007 and 2020, and whose bodies were later found in icy rivers across the United States. The book alludes to the true-crime theory proposed by retired NYPD detectives, suggesting the series of deaths might be linked murders rather than accidental drownings. Many people are convinced the boys are victims of the Smiley Face Killers, an insidious group targeting white, college-aged men who have been drinking. Castellani\u2019s writing tenderly captures the voice of the four boys, and all they\u2019ve lost, as they watch over their loved ones in death: \u201cI am one of those boys they keep finding in the river . . . Caleb Aldrich who was too beautiful to live.\u201d An exploration of grief, masculinity, and homecoming, Victor LaValle calls it \u201ca ghost story, an elegy, a love letter to young men who go missing without a trace.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9781668051771\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9781668051771\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">So Old, So Young<\/a><\/em> by Grant Ginder (Feb 17)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What\u2019s more queer than following a group of friends to five parties over twenty years? In this tragicomedy full of wit, wisdom, and sizzling dialogue, Ginder shows us how tender and complicated chosen family can be. Six friends try to find each other as they drift apart.&nbsp;Pick the hard adult thing:&nbsp;unrequited love, bad taste in men, job loss, infidelity, binges, unrealized potential.&nbsp;\u201cWhile this is a distinctly millennial set of characters, their stories of heartache and searching is a universal one,\u201d says Claire Benedict of Bear Pond Books, Montpelier, VT.&nbsp;Ginder\u2019s fourth book, follows <em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9781250143143\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Honestly, We Meant Well<\/a><\/em> and <em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9781250095220\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The People We Hate at the Wedding<\/a><\/em>, which was adapted into a major motion picture starring Allison Janney and Kristen Bell.&nbsp;Reading it, one realizes that nostalgia is a decidedly queer emotion. At heart, it\u2019s about the little fights between friends that become great distances to travel, and the ways we find our way back to one another.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9780063466487\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780063466487\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Evil Genius<\/a><\/em> by Claire Oshetsky (Feb 17)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It\u2019s 1970s San Francisco, and nineteen-year-old Celia Dent demands her freedom from her domineering husband.&nbsp;After Vivienne Bianco is murdered at the phone company where Celia works \u201cthe elephant graveyard of jobs,\u201d she begins to seek \u201crevolutionary changes . . . violent changes, even.\u201d&nbsp;Celia buys a knife, she fires a gun, she seeks real love.&nbsp;\u201cWe can take forever to arrive at the most obvious truths about ourselves, because the will to conform is mighty in us, and the fear of somebody find out we\u2019re not normal is a mighty fear.\u201d&nbsp;This dark, unconventional comedy is quirky, surprising, and sharp!<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/dalkeyarchive.store\/products\/ladies-almanack-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"663\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/electricliterature.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/9781628975581_FC_baca7cc2-26d7-4bcb-9ced-ad6e322336ef_1024x1024@2x-663x1024.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-306340\" style=\"width:250px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/electricliterature.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/9781628975581_FC_baca7cc2-26d7-4bcb-9ced-ad6e322336ef_1024x1024@2x-663x1024.webp 663w, https:\/\/electricliterature.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/9781628975581_FC_baca7cc2-26d7-4bcb-9ced-ad6e322336ef_1024x1024@2x-194x300.webp 194w, https:\/\/electricliterature.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/9781628975581_FC_baca7cc2-26d7-4bcb-9ced-ad6e322336ef_1024x1024@2x-768x1187.webp 768w, https:\/\/electricliterature.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/9781628975581_FC_baca7cc2-26d7-4bcb-9ced-ad6e322336ef_1024x1024@2x-994x1536.webp 994w, https:\/\/electricliterature.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/9781628975581_FC_baca7cc2-26d7-4bcb-9ced-ad6e322336ef_1024x1024@2x-600x927.webp 600w, https:\/\/electricliterature.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/9781628975581_FC_baca7cc2-26d7-4bcb-9ced-ad6e322336ef_1024x1024@2x.webp 1325w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 663px) 100vw, 663px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/dalkeyarchive.store\/products\/ladies-almanack-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Ladies Almanack<\/a><\/em> by Djuna Barnes (Feb 17)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In her introduction to this new edition of <em>Ladies Almanack<\/em>, Sarah Schulman tells us, \u201cNo one loves the lesbians as much as a lesbian in love.\u201d&nbsp;<em>The Ladies Almanack<\/em> proves that lesbians have always been sly, pissed off, underpaid, but also funny and innovative.&nbsp;The work is a <em>roman \u00e0 clef<\/em>&nbsp;about&nbsp;the vibrant lesbian expatriate community in 1920s Paris, focusing on&nbsp;Natalie Clifford Barney&#8217;s salon.&nbsp;The mock almanac celebrates and only thinly veils the real people at the heart of the work, including Thelma Wood, Djuna Barnes\u2019s impossible, often drunk, charismatic lover (who apparently also seduced Edna St. Vincent Millay). This is all at once high queer court, social satire, love letter, and flirty literary gossip written in a pastiche of Restoration literature that asserts, \u201cWe don\u2019t feel about men the way they feel about themselves.\u201d Reissued by Dalkey Archive Press nearly a hundred years after it was re-written, the work now comes complete with Elizabethan-style woodcut illustrations. Shoshana Bockol at The Head &amp; The Hand bookstore in Philly put this one at the top of her list.&nbsp;She says, \u201cThis is the one I\u2019m most excited for!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9780593448007\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780593448007\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Night Night Fawn<\/a><\/em> by Jordy Rosenberg (March 3)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Night Night Fawn<\/em> is undoubtedly the Marxist, trans, comedic dystopia we need in 2026.&nbsp;Initially conceived as nonfiction, Jordy Rosenberg\u2019s second novel subverts form to become an inherently transgressive unauthorized fictional \u201cmemoir\u201d that reads as hysterical manifesto.&nbsp;Barbara Rosenberg, a character modeled loosely on Rosenberg\u2019s own mother, is a terminally ill Jewish \u201cyenta.\u201d&nbsp;High on opioids, looking back at her origins in post-war New York\u2014where she grew up with aspirations to be a wealthy Jew\u2014Barbara wonders where she went wrong with her estranged trans son and her ex best friend.&nbsp;As Barbara takes an \u201cunrepentant account of all her failures,\u201d she seeks to understand how her child ended up becoming her greatest fear\u2014queer, unrecognizable, anti-capitalist, manly.&nbsp;As with Rosenberg\u2019s first book <em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780399592287\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Confessions of the Fox<\/a><\/em>, the prose crackles.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9780063289680\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780063289680\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Whidbey<\/a><\/em> by T Kira Madden (March 10)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I\u2019ve been eagerly awaiting this title since I heard T Kira Madden read from her manuscript at the Disquiet International Literary Program in Lisbon.&nbsp;The book opens with Kira\u2019s letter to the reader, explaining that this revenge story is fiction but also revealing just how much she had to live through.&nbsp;<em>Whidbey<\/em>, in many ways, is unfinished business for Madden, who wrote about her assailant in \u201cFeels of Love\u201d in the memoir <em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9781635574760\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls<\/a><\/em>.&nbsp;Her debut novel begins on a boat to an island:&nbsp;A woman running from the man who abused her as a child, a chance meeting with a stranger who promises to kill him\u2014and then, days later, the murder.&nbsp;But in Madden&#8217;s hands, this is so much more than a noir story.&nbsp;The sentences are exquisite.&nbsp;The novel gives voice to survivors of sexual abuse and rape, claiming power not only from assailants, but from a broken justice system and the media.&nbsp;Madden, unflinching as ever, even drops us into the perspective of the mother of the convicted sex offender.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9798217007288\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9798217007288\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">A Lady for All Seasons<\/a><\/em> by TJ Alexander (March 10)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">From the Lambda Literary Award finalist&nbsp;comes the sequel to <em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780593686201\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">A Gentleman\u2019s Gentleman<\/a><\/em>, named one of&nbsp;<em>The New York Times\u2019&nbsp;<\/em>100 Best Books of 2025.&nbsp;It\u2019s 1820s London, and the cunning Verbena Montrose at the heart of this queer Regency romance tricks her newly rich best friend Etienne into marrying her.&nbsp;This is a comedy of errors full of yearning and hijinks and genderfluid lovers. You can expect scheming, gossip, a lavender wedding, genderplay, and even a cameo by Lord Byron. Just in time to pre-order from BookWoman for Valentine\u2019s Day, you fans of trans historical romances!&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9780385551595\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780385551595\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Spoiled Milk<\/a><\/em> by Avery Curran (March 10)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This lesbian gothic horror set in 1928 at the \u201cpash\u201d Briarley School for Girls is set in the long boarding-school tradition of young people being forced to rely on no one but themselves.&nbsp;The rules are different, the food is terrible, the mood is always brooding.&nbsp;Everybody is always watching, but nobody sees the two girls kissing on the grounds.&nbsp;Emily Locke, who is \u201cnot good at discerning the contours of what to be afraid of\u201d is in her final year when her best friend falls mysteriously to her death.&nbsp;Violet, a cunning beauty envied by students and teachers alike, is the first to die, but certainly not the last. This lesbian phantasmagoria has everything: silk gloves, sour milk, clandestine visits to mystics, potentially evil yet sexy French teachers.&nbsp;It brings to mind Meg Wolitzer\u2019s <em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780142426296\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Belzhar<\/a><\/em>, Tana French\u2019s <em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780143127512\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Secret Place<\/a><\/em>, and even the salty teen-girl quips of Christine Schutt\u2019s <em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780156033381\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">All Souls<\/a><\/em>.&nbsp;This one was a favorite of Emerson at The Head &amp; Hand bookstore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9781250394958\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9781250394958\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Hell&#8217;s Heart<\/a><\/em> by Alexis Hall (March 12)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Described by Sarah Gailey as \u201c<em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780142437247\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Moby Dick<\/a> <\/em>meets <em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9781476736402\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Treasure Planet<\/a><\/em> by way of <em>Fleabag,\u201d Hell&#8217;s Heart <\/em>is a sapphic journey through the depths of space and human desire. Earth is abandoned and its remaining inhabitants have taken to the stars, where they survive by harvesting spermaceti, a hallucinogenic fuel produced by massive whale-like creatures. Society has deteriorated into a desolate landscape of corporate accumulation and morally bankrupt religious institutions. With no other options, the narrator\u2014called \u201cI\u201d\u2014joins a voyage hunting for spermaceti, and quickly becomes infatuated with the ship&#8217;s female captain, \u201cA.\u201d As the hunt progresses and the captain\u2019s delusions mount, the narrator\u2019s grasp on reality and her sense of self is thrown into question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9780374620189\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780374620189\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">My Lover, the Rabbi<\/a><\/em> by Wayne Koestenbaum (March 17)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In this much anticipated novel, nearly two decades after he published his first, Wayne Koestenbaum performs for us the inexhaustible gaze of the lover.&nbsp;\u201cAll I ever wanted,\u201d our speaker says of the rabbi, \u201cwas to be smothered by his nakedness, to be walled off from the world by the sheer interfering magnitude of his flesh . . . between my body and the rest of existence.\u201d&nbsp;This is a gay, gay book, often told in poetic, staccato chapters, with some sentences going on for pages.&nbsp;One conversation about \u201cthe best dermatologist\u201d gets interrupted by \u201cquaint\u201d fellatio and an allusion to Odysseus, ending many lines later in a recommendation to go to Charlottesville.&nbsp;Fans of Garth Greenwell will delight in Koestenbaum\u2019s demonstration of the sublime against corporeal obsession, play, need, humiliation, grief, desire, camp, refusal to engage in any heteronormative norms.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9780811240215\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780811240215\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Ruins, Child<\/a><\/em> by Giada Scodellaro (April 7)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">From the incomparable New Directions comes a gorgeous work of collective witness set against an urban landscape.&nbsp;Giada Scodellaro, whose debut <em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9781948980159\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Some of Them Will Carry Me<\/a><\/em> was listed by&nbsp;<em>The New Yorker<\/em> as one of its best books in 2022, archives Black women\u2019s experiences in this poet\u2019s novel.&nbsp;Scodellaro writes, \u201cThe community is made up of predominantly black people . . . it\u2019s a place we\u2019ve created for ourselves, okay? Or a place we were forced into and have reimagined.\u201d Conjuring the spirit of Gloria Naylor\u2019s <em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780140066906\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Women of Brewster Place<\/a>,<\/em> Jeanette Winterson\u2019s <em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780679744474\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Written on the Body<\/a><\/em>, and Virginia Woolf\u2019s <em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780156949606\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Waves<\/a>,<\/em> <em>Ruins, Child<\/em> weaves&nbsp;folklore, botany and the body\u2014always the body.&nbsp;One chapter is entitled \u201cgroin,\u201d another, \u201csole of the foot.\u201d&nbsp;<em>Ruins, Child<\/em> is a surrealist, cinematic telling with an eye towards the future.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9781668202166\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9781668202166\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Honey in the Wound<\/a><\/em> by Jiyoung Han (April 7)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Set in the 20<sup>th<\/sup> century during the Japanese occupation of Korea, this multi-generational, historical novel follows a family of women with astonishing gifts: one who disappears and returns a tigress, one who can force a liar to speak the truth, one who can see into dreams.&nbsp;The work centers on Young-ja, who infuses food with her emotions, and ultimately uses that power to resist colonialism.&nbsp;In 1931, after Japanese soldiers crush her family\u2019s defiance against the Empire, Young-Ja is taken by a Korean resistance fighter to Manchuria, where she joins a clandestine world of teahouse spies.&nbsp;Han\u2019s writing is lush and moving, and the work is both inventive and deeply researched\u2014sometimes reading as fable, other times as historical account or ancestral narrative.&nbsp;Kirkus describes this stunning debut as \u201ca revelatory work of harrowing fiction . . . [that] validates the hidden powers of \u2018powerless\u2019 women.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9781953002716\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9781953002716\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Surrender<\/a><\/em> by Jennifer Acker (April 14)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Jennifer Acker\u2019s <em>Surrender <\/em>is a tale of reinvention, baby goats, and grown up teenage love. After decades of city life, 47-year-old Lucy returns to her childhood home in rural Massachusetts to take over her father\u2019s farm. Almost immediately, challenges arise: Lucy\u2019s lack of experience is compounded by loss and the worsening health of her husband. Lucy finds a light at the end of the tunnel in the form of Sandy, her childhood companion-turned-more-than-a-friend, but Sandy\u2019s presence at the farm also draws the attention of her employers, a solar energy company. Exploring grief, desire, and the second adolescence of middle age, <em>Surrender <\/em>is a must-read of 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9798217046065\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9798217046065\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Harmless<\/a><\/em> by Miranda Shulman (April 14)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Two years after the fact, Bea is still reeling from the death of her twin sister, Audrey. Where Bea is brusque, driven, and deeply lonely, Audrey was bright and extroverted, and her absence has become a ruling force. Now living in Brooklyn, Bea throws herself into an old dream she shared with Audrey: to start a dog kennel. When old friendships rekindle, desires spark, and the lingering weight of Audrey\u2019s death threatens to sink Bea\u2019s budding dream, she must come to terms not only with the loss, but with the secrets it has brought to the surface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"featured\" data-full-info=\"true\" data-affiliate-id=\"269\" data-sku=\"9780593242261\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/269\/9780593242261\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Fat Swim<\/a><\/em> by Emma Copley Eisenberg (April 28)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It\u2019s easy to see why the short story is Emma Copley Eisenberg\u2019s first love, even as <em>Fat Swim<\/em> follows the author\u2019s wildly successful debut novel and memoir.&nbsp;Eisenberg treats her characters with such tenderness, whether it\u2019s young Alice at the pool (or grown-up Alice at camp), or Jules, the trans assistant to the famous elderly gay writer, or Mama, trying hard to migrate to her queer child\u2019s elastic definition of love.&nbsp;Or, for that matter, any minor character that, in Eisenberg\u2019s loving gaze, is celebrated in all their fulness.&nbsp;The collection resists the erasure of fat bodies in American letters, mostly by giving us all too rare portraits of pleasure and desire.&nbsp;Grace Paley is in these pages, as is summer, and ice cream, and Ray\u2019s Birthday Bar, and refusing to be defined in binary terms.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Like many of you, I wake up each morning with the feeling that they\u2019re coming for us. But then I think, they have always come for the queers. And we have always, throughout human history, stood watch all night over the fire. We have always taken care of each other, and we will keep on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1807,"featured_media":312078,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5647],"tags":[82],"class_list":["post-312051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reading-list","tag-lgbtq"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Most Anticipated Queer Books for Summer 2026 - Electric Literature<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Celebrate Pride with new and debut titles from Douglas Stuart, \u2018Pemi Aguda, Deb Olin Unferth, and more\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/electricliterature.com\/the-most-anticipated-queer-books-for-summer-2026\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Most Anticipated Queer Books for Summer 2026 - Electric Literature\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Celebrate Pride with new and debut titles from Douglas Stuart, \u2018Pemi Aguda, Deb Olin Unferth, and more\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/electricliterature.com\/the-most-anticipated-queer-books-for-summer-2026\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Electric Literature\" \/>\n<meta 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