There’s Always Next Year by George M. Johnson and Leah Johnson (2nd)
Andy was supposed to shed her too-serious student journalist persona and reinvent herself on New Year’s Eve. Instead, she puked on her crush, dropped her phone in a fish tank, and managed to get her car stolen. Now, she only has the first day of the year to stop the gentrification that’s threatening her family’s business, right her wrongs from the night before, and figure out why she feels so drawn to the electric new-girl-next-door. How can Andy find her voice when everything’s being turned upside down?
Dominique is an influencer on the verge of securing a major brand deal that will ensure his future and family legacy. But when he runs into his former best friend, unresolved feelings emerge — and in a small town, there’s nowhere to hide. Not from his cousin, Andy, who has always seen him for his true self, not from his busybody manager, Kim, whose favorite color is money green, and certainly not from himself. When all the world’s a stage, can Dominique rise to superstardom without leaving behind the ones he loves?
There’s Always Next Year is a dual POV, double love story about what it means to nearly blow your life up, and race to put it back together before your time runs out. And if Andy and Dominique fail? Well, there’s always next year.
The Light Years Between Us by Shannon K. English (2nd)
Seventeen-year-old noble Will Arrex and her classmate Paige Tarrant were destined to be bitter rivals. Where Will is ice cold and painfully poised–everything an Arrex should be–Tarrant is a firecracker, unafraid to speak her mind. Every twenty-five years, students aboard the Eden Space Station are chosen by lottery to pilot the Laikas–a fleet of ships sent on exploratory missions, humanity’s last hope to find a habitable world. As the only daughter of a powerful politician, Will was not supposed to be one of them.When Will and Tarrant wind up piloting Laika 15 together, their mutual hatred begins to thaw. But all seems lost when they discover the Eden’s darkest secret…Laika 15 was never meant to come home.Trapped in the vastness of space on an impossible mission, Will and Paige must bridge the lightyears keeping them apart if they want to survive.
The Book of Luke by Lovell Holder (2nd)
Following the car accident that ended his football career and left his body scarred, 22-year-old Luke Griffin joins the cast of Endeavor, a new competition-based reality show that pits the tabloids’ darlings against one another in tasks of endurance and problem solving. At first, he thrives, effortlessly forming friendships and even a romantic relationship that he thinks will last a lifetime. But Luke has aspirations far bigger than the show’s million-dollar prize, and soon a series of betrayals leads to irreversible tragedy, changing the course of his and his fellow contestants’ lives forever.
Ten years later, Luke’s world looks very different: he is now a father of two and the stay-at-home husband to America’s only openly gay senator. When his husband’s serial cheating is exposed, Luke impulsively joins the cast of Endeavor‘s latest season in a desperate bid to earn some fast cash. Back on set, he is confronted with everything he tried to leave in the past: bitter rivalries, shattered friendships, and crushing guilt, all of which threaten to tear down the walls he’s spent a decade building. As Season 20 of Endeavor kicks off, Luke must give everything to the game, even as he finally learns what it means––and what it costs––to face the truth.
Sparks Fly by Zakiya N. Jamal (2nd)
This is bi4bi.
When Stella Renee Johnson’s roommate invites her to a sex club party but bails at the last minute, Stella decides to use the opportunity to finally cash in her V-card. But just when things are heating up between Stella and a sexy stranger, they realize they don’t have protection and Stella, taking it as a sign this wasn’t meant to be, flees.
Frustrated in more ways than one, Stella is shocked to learn that the digital media website where she works is partnering with an AI company. She’s even more shocked when the alluring man from the previous night walks in. Max Williams is the CEO’s brother and the creator of the AI program now threatening her job.
Despite the conflict of interest, Stella and Max can’t resist their magnetic attraction toward each other, and agree to keep their personal lives separate from what’s happening at work. But the more similarities they discover at home—both Black, book smart, and bisexual—the more they butt heads at work. Stella and Max must decide whether to think with their heads and walk away from their budding relationship, or follow their hearts and take a chance on love, no matter the cost.
Casanova 20: Or, Hot World by Davey Davis (2nd)
Cursed by an extreme and unrelenting beauty, Adrian has drawn the frenzied attention of adoring strangers since childhood. As a twenty-nine-year-old in New York City, he spends his days drifting between affairs with women (and occasionally men) who provide him with everything he needs, from spending money to luxurious vacations to even, once, a mini yacht. With this generosity comes a dangerous possessiveness that often puts him at risk of much worse than heartbreak. But as people begin removing their masks in the spring of 2021, Adrian’s aimless sexual availability is interrupted by a shocking discovery: He is no longer beautiful.
Across the country, Adrian’s best friend and companion, Mark, a world-famous painter, has returned to the family home in rural Northern California. He’s faced with his own horrible revelation: He’s dying from the same mysterious disease that will soon take his mother and sister.
Despite the depth of their platonic romance, neither man reveals his fate to the other. Feeling as if he’s disappearing from sight, Adrian searches for answers among his thousands of lovers. In a race against his failing body, Mark becomes obsessed with watching fifty-two VHS tapes of unknown origin, left to him by his sister, before it’s too late.
The Curse of the Cole Women by Marielle Thompson (2nd)
Three generations of women struggle with a curse unfairly placed on their ancestor in this gothic story of magic, queer love, and mother-daughter relationships
The Cole women are cursed. Each generation will birth a daughter, lose their love, and, as surely as the tide beats against the rocky shore, take her own life by giving herself to the sea. For generations, the Cole women have lived as outcasts, maintaining a lighthouse on a small island off the coast of New Hampshire. Ever since their ancestor was accused of witchcraft and cast into the sea hundreds of years prior, the islanders have ostracized the Coles, distrusting their rumored magic and their control of the lighthouse.
Despite their mistreatment, the Cole women are compelled to remain on the island because they know that if a Cole woman does not light the beacon on Juniper Island, anyone who is out at sea will be drowned. Out of guilt and obligation, the Cole women live out their solitary lives on the island, knowing someday their recompense for protecting the people from the sea will be to die in the sea themselves.
Told in three interwoven timelines in the late twentieth century, The Curse of the Cole Women unravels the lives of three women who struggle with their relationships with each other as they contend with the reality of their fates—is it truly a curse, or is it generational madness that drives Cole women to the sea?
Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon | Under the Umbrella Bookstore
The Six Loves of the James I by Gareth Russell (2nd)
From the assassination of his father to the explosive political and personal intrigues of his reign, this fresh biography reveals as never before the passions that drove King James I.
Gareth Russell’s “rollicking, gossipy” (Dan Jones, author of The Plantagenets), and scholarly voice invites us into James’s world, revealing a monarch whose reign was defined by both his public power and personal vulnerabilities. For too long, historians have shied away from or condemned the exploration of his sexuality. Now, Russell offers a candid narrative that not only reveals James’s relationships with five prominent men but also challenges the historical standards applied to the examination of royal intimacies.
This biography stands as a significant contribution to the understanding of royal history, illuminating the personal experiences that shaped James’s political decisions and his philosophical views on masculinity and sexuality.
Galapagos by Fátima Vélez, trans. by Hannah Kauders (2nd)
From NYC-based Colombian writer Fátima Vélez comes debut novel Galapagos, following a group of bohemian artists who are dying of AIDS as they embark on a surreal final voyage through the Galapagos Islands, their bodies cloaked in the skins of the dead.
Lorenzo is a painter who doesn’t paint. He spends his days watching Jeanne Moreau films, luxuriating in his partner Juan B’s bed, and swapping letters with his lovers. Then, one day, his nail falls off. Then another nail, then all of them. Thus begins a journey of decomposition that carries him from Colombia to Paris, from Paris to the French countryside, and on a final journey to the Galápagos Archipelago.
As they cruise the islands on a custom-made ship, Lorenzo and his friends and lovers drink, swap stories, and feast gluttonously, even as their bodies succumb to an unspeakable disease. In this contemporary plague novel, rife with pathos and humor, ailing bodies are torn between desire and decay, lust and friendship, creativity and destruction. Vélez revolutionizes the novel form, pushing language to its extreme as she tests the limits of how we understand illness, sexuality, the body, and what it means to make art in the face of our own mortality.
Reclamation by Kristen Zimmer (9th)
This is your future.
The United States of America has been gone for over a century.
In its place, The Unified American Territories—a nation divided, the impoverished and the wealthy are separated by a looming steel wall. In the Northern Territories—The Vault, as it is known by its inhabitants—the government rules with an iron fist: All citizens are tested for intelligence and aptitude, thrust into compulsory higher education and saddled with insurmountable debt. All student loans are granted and controlled by a branch of the regime called The Federal Bureau of Education. Failure to repay their debt consigns borrowers to the Knowledge Reclamation Process, a mysterious government-sanctioned brainwashing program that strips them of their education with dire mental and physical side effects.
Fletcher Daniels is a recent college graduate struggling to stay ahead of her arrears. After a visit from Reclamation Agents, she knows her life is about to change for the worse. Enter Youth Opposed to Reclamation, a scrappy band of rebels who try in their own small way to bring some relief to the people of The Vault by smuggling as many potential Reclaimees to safety as possible. When Fletcher meets and falls for fellow female YOR member, Sparrow, her world is twisted away from the one she once knew even more radically. The group offers Fletcher a chance to escape her fate, but through them, she sees the promise of bringing real change to The Vault. History has taught her that even the smallest rebellions can trigger revolutions. It’s time for history to repeat itself.
Audrey Lane Stirs the Pot by Alexis Hall (9th)
Audrey Lane is perfectly fine. Really. So what if she left her high-powered job as a Very Important Journalist―and her even higher-powered long-term girlfriend―to live a quiet life as a reporter for the second-biggest newspaper in Shropshire? And so what if she keeps hearing that same higher-powered long-term now-ex-girlfriend in her head night and day, constantly judging just how small Audrey’s allowed her life to become?
She’s fine. She’s happy. She’s perfectly within her groove. Do not-in-their-groove people get weekday drunk and impulsively apply for the UK’s most beloved baking show?
All right, so maybe she’s not completely fine, but being on Bake Expectations is opening her world again in ways she never anticipated. First through fellow contestant Doris, whose personal story of queer love during WW2 captures Audrey’s heart, imagination and journalistic interest like nothing has in ages. Then through Jennifer Hallet, the most foul-tempered (and fouler-mouthed) producer, woman, and menace Audrey has ever met. Jennifer should be off-limits, but her fire lights something unexpected inside of Audrey, making her want to burn back a million times brighter. A million times hotter. A million times more herself than she’s been in a long, long time.
A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls by Adam Morgan (December 9th)
Already under fire for publishing the literary avant-garde into a world not ready for it, Margaret C. Anderson’s cutting-edge magazine The Little Review was a bastion of progressive politics and boundary-pushing writing from then-unknowns like T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, William Butler Yeats, and Djuna Barnes. And as its publisher, Anderson was a target. From Chicago to New York and Paris, this fearless agitator helmed a woman-led publication that pushed American culture forward and challenged the sensibilities of early 20th century Americans dismayed by its salacious writing and advocacy for supposed extremism like women’s suffrage, access to birth control, and LBGTQ rights.
But then it went too far. In 1921, Anderson found herself on trial and labeled “a danger to the minds of young girls” by a government seeking to shut her down. Guilty of having serialized James Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses in her magazine, Anderson was now not just a publisher but also a scapegoat for regressives seeking to impose their will on a world on the brink of modernization.
Author, journalist, and literary critic Adam Morgan brings Anderson and her journal to life anew in A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls, capturing a moment of cultural acceleration and backlash all too familiar today while shining light on an unsung heroine of American arts and letters. Bringing a fresh eye to a woman and a movement misunderstood in their time, this biography highlights a feminist counterculture that audaciously pushed for more during a time of extreme social conservatism and changed the face of American literature and culture forever.
The Great Popcorn Romance by Georgia Beers (16th)
How it starts: Her best friend Kyle suggests Riley take a job at Poptacular, his grandmother’s gourmet popcorn shop. Spending the summer mixing caramel and cheddar sounds like fun, right?
Spoiler alert: It’s not fun.
Enter Kyle’s little sister Hannah and her stubborn refusal to try any ideas that aren’t her own. Their working styles are completely different. In short, she is infuriating. And hot. Why does she have to be hot?
How it’s going: Years have passed, and Riley’s no longer a victim of her teenage hormones. She’s a high-powered consultant who travels from city to city, helping struggling businesses. Distance weakens a magnetic field, and Riley doesn’t think about Hannah Kramer. Not ever.
So, when Kyle calls to say Poptacular is in trouble and on the brink of closing its doors, her first thought definitely isn’t of Hannah. No, heading back to her hometown is not on her bingo card. But for Poptacular’s co-owner, popcorn is Hannah’s whole life, and Riley can’t stand to see her dream fail.
How it ends: With the Great (hot and buttery) Popcorn Romance, of course.
Three Blissful Days by Dena Blake (16th)
Kendall Jackson has supported her family her whole life, but when her girlfriend unceremoniously dumps her and takes all their clients with her, she’s floundering to find a new income stream and nurse her broken heart. Then her ex bids on the same outdoor renovation project that Kendall desperately needs, and she just loses her mind. That’s the only explanation she has for attempting to make her ex regret her decision by letting her think she’s dating beautiful park ranger Ivy Patterson.
Ivy is a romantic. She wants a real relationship, not a fake one. But her mother won’t stop matchmaking and constant blind dates are more tiring than fun. When Kendall is in trouble, surprisingly, Ivy jumps to her rescue by announcing they’re dating. Ivy doesn’t see the harm, especially if it keeps her mom satisfied. But there’s nothing fake about how attracted she is to Kendall. What happens when their feelings become all too real?
An Arcane Inheritance by Kamilah Cole (30th)
Warren University has stood amongst the ivy elite for centuries, built on the bones―and forbidden magic―of its most prized BIPOC students…hiding the rot of a secret society that will do anything to keep their own powers burning bright. No matter who they must sacrifice along the way.
Ellory Morgan is determined to prove that she belongs at Warren University, an ivy league school whose history is deeply linked to occult rumors and dark secrets. But as she settles into her Freshman year, something about the ornate buildings and shadowy paths feels strangely…familiar. And, with every passing day, that sense of déjà vu grows increasingly sinister.
Despite all logic, despite all reason, despite all the rules of reality, Ellory knows one thing to be true: she has been here before. And if she can’t convince brooding legacy student Hudson Graves to help her remember a past that seems determined to slip through her fingers as if by some insidious magic…this time, she may lose herself for good.
