Fiction
Matt Cain
Ted Ainsworth has always worked at his family's ice cream business in the quiet Lancashire town of St Luke's-on-Sea. He doesn't even like ice cream, though he's never told his parents that. When Ted's husband suddenly leaves him, the bottom falls out of his world. But what if this could be an opportunity to put what he wants first? This could be the chance to finally follow his secret dream - something Ted has never told anyone.
Lucy Caldwell
Following the lives of sisters Emma and Audrey - one engaged to be married, the other in a secret relationship with another woman - as they try to survive the horrors of the four nights of bombing which were the Belfast Blitz, 'These Days' is a timeless and heart-breaking novel about living under duress, about family, and about how we try to stay true to ourselves.
Tom Crewe
John Addington is married to Catherine but desires men. Henry Ellis is married to Edith, but she has fallen in love with Angelica, who wants Edith all for herself. These two Victorian marriages, are stalked by guilt and shame. But they are also in the vanguard of new ideas for social equality, women's rights and relationships which break convention. The New Life explores the possibilities of love and life, set against the riveting backdrop of the Oscar Wilde trial.
Henry Fry
Danny Scudd is absolutely fine. At twenty-seven, he's finally moved to London and escaped his parents' tiny fish and chip shop; every Monday evening he has a date night with his boyfriend, Tobbs. But discovering that Tobbs might be cheating on him throws Danny’s life into chaos when he is unceremoniously evicted from his London flat. Forced to move in with his childhood friend Jacob, a non-binary artiste, and with the help of his inscrutable therapist and colourful new flatmates, Danny realises how little he knows about himself - and slowly starts to question whether he is fine, after all.
T J Klune
From New York Times bestselling author TJ Klune, In the Lives of Puppets is a queer retelling of the Pinocchio tale, inviting you deep into the heart of a peculiar forest and on the extraordinary journey of a family assembled from spare parts.
Celia Laskey
Robin and Ellie have been best friends since childhood. They've been through everything together, from Robin coming out to the death of Ellie's dad. But when Ellie asks Robin to be her maid of honour, Robin is reluctant. It's not that Robin isn't happy for Ellie, she just hates everything about weddings and marriage - plus the guy Ellie's engaged to.
Val McDermid
It's 1989 and Allie Burns is back. Older, perhaps wiser, she's running the northern news operation of the Sunday Globe. There's plenty to keep her occupied. The year begins with the memorial service to the victims of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, but Allie has barely filed her copy when she stumbles over a story about HIV/AIDS that shocks her into a major change of direction. The world of newspapers is undergoing a revolution, there's skulduggery in the medical research labs and there are seismic rumblings behind the Iron Curtain. When kidnap and murder are added to this potent mix, Allie is forced to question all her old certainties.
One Last Stop
Casey McQuiston
For cynical twenty-three-year-old August, moving to New York City is supposed to prove her right: that things like magic and cinematic love stories don't exist, and the only smart way to go through life is alone. But then, there's this gorgeous girl on the train. Jane. Dazzling, charming, mysterious, impossible Jane. Jane with her rough edges and swoopy hair and soft smile, showing up in a leather jacket to save August's day when she needed it most.
Matt Cain
Danny arrives at Manchester University determined not to hide from the world any longer. This is the year his life will begin. He locks eyes with a handsome stranger across the hall at the Fresher's Fair. It starts with a wink and soon Danny and Guy are best friends. 2022. Now, both single for the first time in years, Danny and Guy return to the confetti-covered streets of the Gay Village for Manchester Pride. After years of shared adventures and lost dreams, Danny plans to share the secret he has been keeping for two decades: he has always been in love with Guy. Could this weekend be the end of a twenty-year friendship - or the start of something new and even more beautiful?
June Dawson
Despite thinking they've thwarted the prophecy, the witches are still reeling from the events of the past few months. Ciara now occupies her twin sister's body as she prepares to take on the role of High Priestess. But why are the sinister government agents of the Shadow Cabinet so invested in her coronation? And then there's the small matter of Dabney Hale: freshly escaped from Grierlings prison, he's on the hunt for a mythical object that will give him unimaginable power. Leonie's brother is on the trail, but doesn't know the danger he now faces, and so she sets off to bring him home and bring Hale to justice. Meanwhile, Theo and Holly are left to their own devices. Theo to work out how her miraculous transformation took place and Holly to discover what's going on with her mum and dad. Elle's Instagram-perfect world is about to come crashing down in the most terrifying way.
Florence Given
Meet Eartha, it's 2030, and she has just started her life afresh as an openly bisexual woman whilst also becoming a viral sensation on Wonderland, a social media app which most of the human race is plugged into. But Eartha's new existence begins to spiral dangerously out of control as her online and offline selves grow further and further apart. Until she is forced to make a choice: which version of herself should she kill off? Can one Eartha stay alive without the other.
Meg Howrey
Carlisle Martin dreams of becoming a professional ballet dancer like her mother Isabel. She only gets to see her father Robert, and his brilliant but troubled partner James, for a few precious weeks a year when she visits their enchanted apartment in Greenwich Village. James educates her in all that he holds dear in life: literature, music, and most of all, dance. As the years go by, Carlisle is desperate to be asked to stay permanently, even as AIDS brings devastation to their community. Instead, a passionate love affair creates a rift between them, with devastating consequences that reverberate for decades to come. Nineteen years later, Carlisle receives a phone call which unravels the fateful events of her life.
God's Children are Little Broken Things
Arinze Ifeakandu
A man revisits the university campus where he lost his first love, aware now of what he couldn't understand then. A young musician rises to fame at the price of pieces of himself, and the man who loves him. Arinze Ifeakandu explores with tenderness and grace the fundamental question of the heart: can deep love and hope be sustained in spite of the dominant expectations of society, and great adversity.
Freya Marske
In 'A Power Unbound', it's a race against time as the magicians try to solve the Last Contract before their enemies. But to succeed, Lord Hawthorn must accept help from reluctant ally Alan Ross.
Kate Mosse
The Barbary Coast, 1621. A mysterious vessel floats silently on the water. It is known only as the Ghost Ship. For months it has hunted pirates to liberate those enslaved by corsairs, manned by a courageous crew of mariners from Italy and France, Holland and the Canary Islands. But the bravest among them are not who they seem. The stakes could not be higher. If arrested, they will be hanged for their crimes. Can they survive the journey and escape their fate?
Julie Owen Moylan
In an apartment on the Lower East Side, school teachers Dovie and Gillian live as lodgers. Dancing behind closed curtains, mixing cocktails for two, they guard their private lives fiercely. Until someone guesses the truth. 1975. Twenty years later in the same apartment, Ava Winters is keeping her own secret. Her mother has become erratic, haunted by something Ava doesn't understand - until one sweltering July morning, she disappears. Soon after her mother's departure, Ava receives a parcel. Addressed simply to 'Apartment 3B', it contains a photo of a woman with the word 'LIAR' scrawled across it. Ava does not know what it means or who sent it. But if she can find out then perhaps she'll discover the answers she is seeking - and meet the woman at the heart of it all.
O'Donoghue Caroline
When Rachel falls in love with her married professor, Dr Byrne, her best friend James helps her devise a plan to seduce him. But what begins as a harmless crush soon pushes their friendship to its limits. Over the course of a year they will find their lives ever more entwined with the Byrnes' and be faced with impossible choices and a lie that can't be taken back.
Torrey Peters
Reese nearly had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York, a job she didn't hate. She'd scraped together a life previous generations of trans women could only dream of; the only thing missing was a child. Then everything fell apart and three years on Reese is still in self-destruct mode, avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men. When her ex calls to ask if she wants to be a mother, Reese finds herself intrigued. After being attacked in the street, Amy de-transitioned to become Ames, changed jobs and, thinking he was infertile, started an affair with his boss Katrina. Now Katrina's pregnant. Could the three of them form an unconventional family - and raise the baby together?
Douglas Stuart
Born under different stars, Protestant Mungo and Catholic James live in a hyper-masculine world. They are caught between two of Glasgow's housing estates where young working-class men divide themselves along sectarian lines, and fight territorial battles for the sake of reputation. They should be sworn enemies if they're to be seen as men at all, and yet they become best friends as they find a sanctuary in the doocot that James has built for his prize racing pigeons. As they begin to fall in love, they dream of escaping the grey city, and Mungo must work hard to hide his true self from all those around him, especially from his elder brother Hamish, a local gang leader with a brutal reputation to uphold. But the threat of discovery is constant and the punishment unspeakable.
The Second Cut
Louise Welsh
Auctioneer Rilke has been trying to stay out of trouble, keeping his life more or less respectable. Business has been slow at Bowery Auctions, so when an old friend, Jojo, gives Rilke a tip-off for a house clearance, life seems to be looking up. The next day Jojo washes up dead. Jojo liked Grindr hook-ups and recreational drugs - is that the reason the police won't investigate? And if Rilke doesn't find out what happened to Jojo, who will?
Non-Fiction
Travis Alabanza
In 'None of the Above', Travis Alabanza examines seven phrases people have directed at them about their gender identity. These phrases have stayed with them over the years. Some are deceptively innocuous, some deliberately loaded or offensive, some celebratory; sentences that have impacted them for better and for worse; sentences that speak to the broader issues raised by a world that insists that gender must be a binary. Through these seven phrases, which include some of their most transformative experiences as a Black, mixed race, non binary person, Travis Alabanza turns a mirror back on society, giving us reason to question the very framework in which we live and the ways we treat each other.
Edward Enniful
A Visible Man traces an astonishing journey into one of the world's most exclusive industries. Edward Enninful candidly shares how as a Black, gay, working-class refugee, he found in fashion not only a home, but the freedom to share with people the world as he saw it. Written with style, grace and heart, this is the story of a visionary who changed not only an industry, but how we understand beauty.
Boy George
'Karma' is the definitive autobiography from music icon, Boy George - the fabulous Grammy, Brit and Ivor Novello award-winning lead singer of Culture Club. Told in his inimitable style, 'Karma' reflects on Boy George's life as a kid growing up in sixties London, through the hedonism of the seventies and the glam rock and punk rock revolution that birthed Culture Club, and the heydays of the nineties meeting musical legends like David Bowie, Madonna and Prince - as well as addressing all those rumours. The book reveals the highs and lows of love, loss, addiction, recovery, prison, and celebrity on Boy George's journey through fame to finally embracing the man and artist that he is today.
All the things she said: everything I know about the modern culture of queer women
Daisy Jones
'All the Things She Said' explores the nature of queerness and queer culture from the dingy basement clubs of east London to the realms of TikTok and award-winning films like 'Carol', showing the multifaceted nature of 'being a lesbian' in all its glory. Here journalist Daisy Jones unpicks outdated stereotypes and shows how, over the past few years, lesbian culture has emerged into the mainstream.
Queer Heroes of Myth and Legend
Dan Jones
Hidden in the margins of history books, classical literature, and thousands of years of stories, myths and legends, through to contemporary literature, TV and film, there is a diverse and other-worldly super community of queer heroes to discover, learn from and celebrate. 'Queer Heroes of Myth & Legend' brings to life characters who are romantic, brave, mysterious and always fantastical. It is a magnificent celebration of queerness through the ages in all its legendary glory.
Kirsty Loehr
From Anne Bonny and Mary Read who sailed the seas together disguised as pirates, to US football captain Megan Rapinoe declaring 'You can't win a championship without gays on your team', via countless literary salons and tuxedos, 'A Short History of Queer Women' sets the record straight on women who have loved other women through the ages. Who says lesbians can't be funny?
Chelsea Manning
In 2010, Chelsea Manning, working as an intelligence analyst in the U.S. Army in Iraq, disclosed 720,000 classified military documents that she had smuggled out via the memory card of her digital camera. In March 2011, the United States Army sentenced Manning to 35 years in military prison, charging her with 22 counts relating to the unauthorised possession and distribution of classified military documents. The day after her conviction, Manning declared her gender identity as a woman and began to transition. In 2017, President Barack Obama commuted her sentence and she was released from prison. In her memoir, Manning recounts how her pleas for increased institutional transparency and government accountability took place alongside a fight to defend her rights as a trans woman.
Eliot Page
It was two months before the world premiere of 'Juno', and Elliot Page was in his first ever queer bar. The hot summer air hung heavy around him as he looked at her. And then it happened. In front of everyone. A previously unfathomable experience. Here he was on the precipice of discovering himself as a queer person, as a trans person. Getting closer to his desires, his dreams, himself, without the repression he'd carried for so long. But for Elliot, two steps forward had always come with one step back. With Juno's massive success, Elliot became one of the world's most beloved actors. His dreams were coming true, but the pressure to perform suffocated him. He was forced to play the part of the glossy young starlet, a role that made his skin crawl, on and off set. The career that had been an escape out of his reality and into a world of imagination was suddenly a nightmare.
Norman Scott
In October 1975 an assassin tried to murder Norman Scott on Exmoor but the trigger failed and he only succeeded in shooting Scott's beloved dog, Rinka. Scott subsequently found himself at the centre of a major political scandal and became an unlikely queer icon. But this was never his intention. He was born in 1940 into a poor, dysfunctional and abusive family. Aged 16 he began an equestrian career, animals having been the one source of comfort in his childhood. By the age of 20 he had run into debts and had suffered a nervous breakdown. In 1960 Scott began a sexual affair with Jeremy Thorpe. By the time of the attempted assassination of Scott, Thorpe was married, leader of the Liberal Party and a figure at the heart of the establishment. He was embarrassed by their former relationship and wanted to cover it up. But he failed. This is a story that is inspiring and jaw droppingly unbelievable.
One Boy, Two Bills and a Fry Up
Wes Streeting
Wes Streeting might have ended up in prison rather than in parliament. His maternal grandfather Bill, an unsuccessful armed robber, spent time behind bars, as did his grandmother, who was also a political campaigner. Brought up on a Stepney council estate, the young Streeting saw his teenage parents struggle to provide for him. In 'One Boy, Two Bills and a Fry Up' he brings to life the poverty, humiliation, and incredible struggle for them choosing whether to feed the meter and heat the flat, put carpet on the floor, or food on the table. Wes Streeting knows it was the help and inspiration he received from the great characters that surrounded him, especially his paternal grandfather (also called Bill), that ultimately set him on the way to Cambridge and then Parliament.