Queer and Fearless: Poems Celebrating the Lives of LGBTQ+ Heroes by Rob Sanders and Harry Woodgate

Learn about the lives of some of the most important LGBTQ+ heroes in this unique picture book that combines poetry and biographical information to honor those at the forefront of LGBTQ+ history.

Young readers will learn about the lives and legacies of seventeen heroes of the queer community from both past and present. Marsha P. Johnson, Harvey Milk, Cleve Jones, Pauline Park, Richard Blanco, and Pete Buttigieg are just a few of the iconic figures represented in this wonderfully designed and colorful picture book with illustrations by Harry Woodgate. A perfect introduction to the people who have stood up for what they believed in, lived lives according to their own ideals, and their partners, friends, and allies, the poetry in this book provides great read-aloud potential sure to entertain and inform readers of all ages.Beloved children’s book author Rob Sanders makes the lives of the most prominent LGBTQ+ heroes jump off of the page through his beautiful poems and detailed biographies. This title includes a glossary as well as a description of each poetry style, making it an ideal choice for home and classroom.

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Batcat: Sink or Swim by Meggie Ramm

Batcat is back in an original graphic novel about facing your fears and making new friends along the way.

Batcat and Al the Ghost are great roommates—Batcat even shares their eye scream occasionally—but sometimes Batcat still craves solo them time. When Batcat visits the Mermaid Lagoon for a relaxing day of reading all by themself, they discover the local mermaids in hysterics all over the beach—so much for quiet day on the sand!

It appears that something has drained the color from all the mermaid’s tails, and they won’t leave Batcat alone until the half-bat, half-cat reluctantly agrees to help find out what happened. With a bag of the mermaid’s famous fish tacos on the line, Batcat will meet more zany inhabitants of Spooky Island and overcome their greatest anxiety in order to solve this colorful mystery!

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Paige Not Found by Jen Wilde

A week ago, if someone had told Paige she’d be stuck in traffic with three total strangers on a mission to stop a global organization from controlling their minds, she would have laughed. But somehow this is real life. She adjusts her noise cancelling headphones, trying to drown out more of the car horns and music blaring from a neighboring sedan. Her fists clench and unclench. Inside her shoes, her toes wiggle, trying to let out some of her nervous energy.

As much as Paige hates the word normal, it’s a pretty good word to describe her life, and the kind of night she was having just before a single email turned her world upside down.

In an effort to better understand and communicate with their autistic daughter, Paige’s parents enrolled her in a study without her consent. Without her knowledge they had a chip implanted in her brain that keeps track of her location and brain activity. It can boost the chemicals that affect her mood. Suddenly, Paige isn’t sure who she can trust. Can she even trust her own mind anymore?

Now the company that created her chip is days away from merging with the most popular social network in the world, that has a reputation for selling people’s private information to the highest bidder.

Paige feels betrayed and like she’s been robbed of her free will. But there is one thing she can do. The email includes the names and addresses of the other kids involved in the study. She can track them down and show them what’s been done to them.

Maybe altogether they can put a stop to this merger and figure out how to get their chips removed for good.

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Dear Wendy by Ann Zhao

Sophie Chi is in her first year at Wellesley College (despite her parents’ wishes that she attends a “real” university) and has long accepted her aromantic and asexual identities. Despite knowing she’ll never fall in love, she enjoys learning about relationships and putting that research to use to help people. And what better way to do that than by running an Instagram account that offers advice to the students at her college, somewhere in between classes, morning runs, and extracurriculars? No one except her roommate knows that she’s behind the incredibly popular “Dear Wendy” account.

Meanwhile, Joanna “Jo” Ephron is also a first-year student at Wellesley but when they create the account “Sincerely Wanda” to show one of their roommates why she needs to dump her boyfriend, they don’t expect it to amount to anything more. After all, Jo’s account isn’t meant to be serious—not like Dear Wendy’s. But it seems more and more students appreciate her humorous answers to followers’ dilemmas, and she may end up encroaching on Wendy’s territory a little. And now the two accounts might have a rivalry of sorts? Oops. As if Jo’s not busy enough having existential crises over the fact that she’ll never truly be loved or be enough, gender, and her few friends finding The One and forgetting her!

Tensions are rising online, but Sophie and Jo start getting closer in real life, especially after they realize their shared aroace identity. As their friendship develops and they work together to start a campus organization for other a-spec students, can their growing bond survive if they learn just who’s behind the Wendy and Wanda accounts?

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Merciless Saviors by H.E. Edgmon

This is the sequel to Godly Heathens

That day at the First Church of Gracie changed everything for Gem Echols, and not just because Marian and Poppy betrayed them. Forced to use the Ouroboros knife on Zephyr, who had kidnapped their parents, Gem now has the power of the God of Air.

While for any other god things might work out okay, the Magician―whose role within the pantheon is to keep the balance―having the power of another god has thrown everything into chaos. The Goddess of Death can now reanimate corpses; the God of Art’s powers are now corrupted and twisted, giving life to his macabre creations; and, while the God of Land has always been able to communicate with creatures of the Earth, now everyone can hear their cries.

As Gem, Rory, and Enzo search for a way to restore the balance without sacrificing themselves, new horrors make them question how far they’re willing to go. In the end, Gem may be forced to fully embrace their merciless nature and kill off their own humanity―if it ever really existed in the first place.

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Girls Night by I.S. Belle

Gossip queen ALEX longs to be seen.

Cheerleader TULSI is sick of cutting people on her sharp heart.

New kid CLEMENTINE can’t escape the violence inside.

And wallflower SUNJU is tired of keeping quiet.

When a twist of fate brings this unlikely quartet together, sparks and punches fly.

They call it ‘Girls Night,’ an underground fight club that’s girls only.

Soon every girl at Sterling High is showing up to class with bruised knuckles and split lips.

Alex, Tulsi, Clementine, and Sun have never felt more alive. Until demonic head cheerleader, Quentin Scarhill, steps in the ring with her eyes on Alex.

As Quentin’s hold over Alex tightens, Girls Night spirals out of control.

Can they take back the reins before things turn deadly?

And if Girls Night ends will they throw in the towel their newfound friendships?

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Wide Awake Now by David Levithan

When David Levithan published Wide Awake in 2004, he set it in an imagined 2024, where a gay Jewish man had just been elected president of the United States, until a governor decides that some election results in his state are invalid, awarding crucial votes to the other candidate and his fellow party member. What follows is the story of teens Jimmy and Duncan as they explore their relationship, their politics, and their country.

In Wide Awake Now, David Levithan is flipping the script and rewriting Jimmy and Duncan’s story in the real 2024, rather than his imagined version. This is a protest novel for today.

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Late Bloomer by Mazey Eddings

Winning the lottery has ruined Opal Devlin’s life. After quitting her dead-end job where she’d earned minimum wage and even less respect, she’s bombarded by people knocking at her door for a handout the second they found out her bank account was overflowing with cash. And Opal can’t seem to stop saying yes.

With her tender heart thoroughly abused, Opal decides to protect herself by any means necessary, which to her translates to putting almost all her new money to buying a failing flower farm in Asheville, North Carolina to let the flowers live out their plant destiny while she uses the cabin on the property to start her painting business.

But her plans for isolation and self-preservation go hopelessly awry when an angry (albeit gorgeous) Pepper Boden is waiting for her at her new farm. Pepper states she’s the rightful owner of Thistle and Bloom Farms, and isn’t moving out. The unlikely pair strike up an agreement of co-habitation, and butt heads at every turn. Can these opposites both live out their dreams and plant roots? Or will their combustible arguing (and growing attraction) burn the whole place down?

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A Wolf Steps in Blood by Tamara Jerée

Yasmine is a red wolf girl stuck in rural Alabama. Her world is small: pick up shifts at the greasy late-night diner and endure her pack’s petty squabbles. She’s not good at being a wolf or being human, directionless in life and disconnected from her ancestors.

Blessed by a century-old enchantment, the local red wolves have escaped extinction by blending into the human world. But with the old witches’ blessing wearing thin, the wolves face an uncertain future.

An answer arrives in the form of an exiled blood witch whose magic is steeped in reckless grief. Kalta rides into town in her dead brother’s truck, prophecy following on her heels. Despite the danger Yasmine can smell swirling around the witch, a fated bond tangles their futures—and those of all the wolves.

After an accident threatens the wolves’ secret, Yasmine has no choice but to join Kalta on the road, carving a path through the South’s backroads and hoping the magic brewing between them is enough to overcome their bloody pasts.

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Henry Henry by Allen Bratton

It’s London, 2014, and Hal Lancaster, son and heir of Henry, Duke of Lancaster, is in a holding pattern: his mother is dead, his father is dying or remarrying or both, his siblings are fighting, his internship is pointless, and nobody will leave him alone.

Everything is as it should be and yet nothing is right. Over the course of a year of partying, drinking, and flirting to dubious consequence, Hal is tested by brutal family legacies, Catholic guilt, and the terrifying possibility of being loved. All of which is complicated by a pattern of abuse that threatens to chase Hal into adulthood. The House of Lancaster will never be the same.

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Paperback Release

I’m the Girl by Courtney Summers

When sixteen-year-old Georgia Avis discovers the dead body of thirteen-year-old Ashley James, she teams up with Ashley’s older sister, Nora, to find and bring the killer to justice before he strikes again. But their investigation throws Georgia into a world of unimaginable privilege and wealth, without conscience or consequence, and as Ashley’s killer closes in, Georgia will discover when money, power and beauty rule, it might not be a matter of who is guilty―but who is guiltiest.

A spiritual successor to the 2018 breakout hit, Sadie, I’m the Girl is a masterfully written, bold, and unflinching account of how one young woman feels in her body as she struggles to navigate a deadly and predatory power structure while asking readers one question: if this is the way the world is, do you accept it?

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