Middle Grade
Juana Fanta Needs a Hero by Kyle Casey Chu
Derrick Chan is shooting for a once-in-a-lifetime high-school basketball scholarship with his childhood best friend, JJ, by his side. But Derrick’s life is about more than just free throws since embracing his queer identity and love for drag (even if he’s not ready to share either with the whole world quite yet)!
Right now, he’s just trying to take his dad’s advice: don’t sweat the small stuff. This weekend, however, Derrick’s two worlds are colliding in a big way. At a career-defining basketball tournament, where scouts from elite schools are watching his every move, Derrick secretly plans to meet his drag idol, the magnificent Juana Fanta, at the Comic Con held in the very same hotel.
As the stakes skyrocket, team tensions bubble to the surface, including Derrick’s own growing feelings for JJ. But when Juana Fanta disappears from the con, Derrick and JJ must team up to find her before she misses her show-stopping live performance.
Can Derrick find a community that celebrates slam dunks on the court and dazzling drag in the spotlight? Can he really save Juana Fanta’s future—and his own—in one weekend?
Young Adult
The Unpoetic Life of August Grey by Max Fischer
You can only hold your breath underwater for three minutes before you go unconscious. For seventeen-year-old August Grey, life in his small Nebraska town has felt like that endless third minute ever since his best friend Waylon died.
When August earns a coveted spot at a prestigious summer writing program in New York, he believes it’s his one chance to heal – and to keep the promise made to Waylon to pursue his dream. But New York brings its own challenges: a strained reunion with an estranged father, the weight of trying to write without Waylon there, and the unexpected arrival of Levi, August’s old crush who knows nothing of his failed coming out.
As August wrestles with grief, secrets, and the tentative spark of new love, he must decide if he can finally surface – embracing his queer identity and the joy of being himself before the past threatens to drown his future.
Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon | B&N
You’re No Better by Andrew Joseph White
Morgan Slaughter, a seventeen-year-old trans boy with autism, put his serial killer father in prison years ago. Despite that, everyone thinks Morgan will grow up to be just like his dad: including his volatile mother, the documentary crew following their family, and maybe himself.
Desperately, Morgan latches onto his father’s final victim—the only one who was never identified—hoping that if he unravels the mystery, he’ll finally prove he’s better than the man who hurt him. But this puts Morgan in the crosshairs of classmate Felicity Keating, who knows the truth about Morgan’s childhood—that he wasn’t just a witness to his father’s brutality, he was an accomplice. And if he doesn’t let them help with his investigation? They’ll tell everyone.
Forced to confront his past, Morgan’s ugly but carefully controlled world unravels. The film crew is manipulative. His mother’s temper spirals into malice, then violence. And Morgan and Felicity may be more tightly intertwined than either of them can stomach . . .
Adult Fiction
Chef’s Kiss Again by Jarrett Melendez, Irene Flores, Gabriela Sinopoli, and Crank
This is the sequel to Chef’s Kiss
So you’ve landed the dream job and the dream boyfriend. Everything should be perfect . . . right?
Ben Cook seems to have it all. An awesome new cooking job at Cochon Doré, a steady writing gig, amazing roommates, and—best of all—super-dreamy boyfriend, Liam. Even better, reservations at the restaurant have skyrocketed thanks to Ben’s recent viral article, and the staff is buzzing with excitement. But between the pressures of the growing restaurant, looming writing deadlines, and nosy parents, Ben is worried about making sure everything is perfect in his new relationship with Liam. When Ben can’t quite figure out the perfect Halloween couples costume or the perfect Christmas plans, and Liam gets more and more overwhelmed with all the new responsibilities at Cochon, the new couple starts to grow distant rather than rely on each other. When pressure mounts and signals get crossed, will Ben and Liam be able to overcome their anxieties and learn that striving for love is better than striving for perfection?
The Two Wills by Blair Fell
It’s the late sixteenth century, and eighteen-year-old Willy Hughes is still heartbroken over the loss of his first great love, Barnaby Stubb. He’s also desperate to escape his impoverished existence. To survive, beyond mucking out the toilets for pennies, he cons drunken men into believing he’s a beautiful young woman—then robs them of their purses.
Willy’s hope for a brighter future appears doomed until a newly famous poet (also named William) spots Willy in an alehouse and asks him to join his acting company. Willy is instantly smitten and determines to see if the poet’s heart might be open to a love that dares not speak its name.
Alas, the poet Will has a wife and a mistress and says he’s only interested in Willy as an actor. But why does he look at Willy that way?
Despite being untrained and illiterate, Willy quickly rises to fame on the stage, creating the roles of Juliet, Rosalind, and Cleopatra. Soon, the private love sonnets arrive, and Will’s romantic ambiguity is driving Willy mad. Is he made differently than Willy thought? Or is it that mistress who’s blocking Willy’s quest to possess the poet? Or the poet’s wife? And what happens when a sexy rival poet by the name of Christopher Marlowe comes knocking on Willy’s door?
Stellar Smoke by Tanaïs
Qamar is a musician hustling in a near-future metropolitan city. Struggling to pay rent and heartbroken after a breakup, she decides to return to the island ashram of her childhood. It’s time to finally settle the rift she has with her estranged mother, Veda—a brilliant scientist, actress, and one of the leaders of a now-dissolved cult called the Endless Temple.
But when Qamar arrives, the land is verdant yet neglected, and, most troubling, there are no signs of her mother or sister, Palo. Behind a retina scan–locked door, Qamar encounters her mother’s last opus, a machine consciousness called VEDA (Virtual Experiences, Dreams and Afterlife), designed to reveal the story of Veda’s life. The descent into VEDA’s technoscape forces Qamar to confront the taboos and tragedies of their past, while bracing herself for the wild, unexpected possibilities that await.
Lethal Kiss by Taylor Grothe
Something ravenous lurks below the marble floors of Preston University…
Marcella might be a monster, but she’s careful. After getting hired at Preston University, she intends to lay low and keep her meals discreet.
Trapped in the rat race of academia, all Lacie wants is to make tenure. This will be her year, and nothing is going to stand in her way.
That is, until bodies start dropping.
Marcella swears it isn’t her doing―as if she’d be that sloppy. Whatever’s killing their coworkers is older, and far less restrained. Lacie doesn’t know who to trust, but better the monster you know…
The deeper they dig, the more they’re drawn to each other… and the more something else is drawn to them.
After all, desire has teeth of its own.
Monster in the Mirror by Janasha Prabhu
Her uncle was a serial killer. The town whispers, could she be a killer too?
On the night Jiah Rai was found cradling her girlfriend Georgia’s dead body at the bottom of Wailing Cliff, everyone suspected her. There wasn’t enough evidence to charge her, but the town refuses to forget. Murder must run in the family. Jiah’s uncle was a convicted serial killer, and while he died behind bars, his legacy lives on in Jiah and her sister. It doesn’t matter that they’ve lived in Dumont their whole lives―they have never fit into the insular white community, and perhaps they never will
But legacy isn’t done with Jiah just yet. A few years later, a threat from Georgia’s brother threatens to crumble the shaky peace Jiah has rebuilt. Desperate to feel safe again, Jiah decides to take matters into her own hands and seeks support from her best friend, Estrella. After all, Estrella has been there for Jiah ever since they met after Georgia’s death. But when Estrella never shows up to a dinner party, a series of texts lead Jiah to the beach below, where she finds a body positioned exactly how her uncle displayed his victims over a decade ago. The killer mocks Jiah, hinting they know about her secrets, too. But is Jiah really the monster Dumont thinks she is? As Jiah hunts the killer, she begins to realize she might be unable to save the next victim…and that she may not want to.
Goblin Market by A.J. Hackwith
Being a changeling is hard enough, but Toast was older than most changeling children when her goblin parents stole her back from her human family and returned her to the harsh, bustling world of the Goblin Market, where anything from your fondest dream to your strongest talent can be bought—or sold.
Nearly a decade later, Toast has grudgingly cobbled together a life there as the Market’s guide for mortal visitors. But when the next arrival is her long-lost sister and the ancient beast whose magic the Market depends on disappears under strange circumstances, everything starts falling apart.
Now the Market itself is dying. With the Summer Court of noble fey plotting to claim the weakened Market for themselves, Toast, her friends, and an infuriatingly charming fey knight with an agenda of her own must negotiate their differences to make the trade of a lifetime and win back the Market’s future. To do so, Toast will have to decide what home–and the flawed community within–is ultimately worth.
Scorpio Season by Maisie Bell
A steamy sapphic romance about music, second chances, and falling for the one person you shouldn’t—your new bandmate.
Ever since she can remember, Florence Gibson has had one goal: to tour the world as a musician, and outshine her absentee rockstar father. When her all-women, all-queer rock band Scorpio Season gets booked as the opening act for her idol’s European tour, Florence can’t believe their luck. There is only one problem: the band needs a drummer.
Luca Walsh has no idea where she’s going. Ever since she dropped out of university, her days have been a blur of shifts at the coffee shop, trying to remember if she took her ADHD medication, and lying in bed questioning her existence. When she stumbles upon a flyer searching for drummers in the area, she jumps at the chance to have a distraction.
Their first band meeting devolves into chaos when Florence realizes that Luca isn’t any stranger—she’s the woman Florence went home with not even twenty-four-hours earlier to have a reckless, mind-blowing, life-altering one-night-stand. But the show must go on. Through four weeks of performing together, hour-long car rides across Europe, and nights sharing beds in seedy hotel rooms, they try to hide their growing attraction—for the sake of the band that’s starting to feel more like a family, and all the dreams that suddenly seem within reach. As their music rises in the charts, so does the tension between them. With every new song feeling more like an emotional confession, how long can they keep their distance?
Paradise Burns by Pol Guasch
In a rapidly deteriorating world, two best friends pursue a future worth believing in.
When Rita and Líton meet at a party, they quickly form a bond that will indelibly shape their lives. Theirs is not an easy world: most wildlife is extinct and the earth is tormented by drought and floods; the last vestiges of natural life are kept under lock and key in a mysterious greenhouse a day’s travel away. Like the other young men of the Service, Líton is frequently enlisted to put out the seemingly never-ending fires that tear through the valley; Rita lives perched on a hill in the Colony, where other men, including her father, empty an almost barren mine. Yet their bond grounds them. They navigate the love affairs, setbacks, and thwarted idealism of their twenties together, finding in each other a vital reprieve for their disillusionment―that is, until Líton, like other gay men, falls deathly sick.
Queerphoria
The inaugural collection in the new VERVE Voices series, Queerphoria is a joyful and defiant queer-authored anthology proudly supporting Switchboard, the UK’s national LGBTQIA+ support line.
Four housemates welcome the reader into their home for a birthday party. An elderly widow visits her first queer bar, beneath the flat she shared with her husband. A couple invite a shipwrecked sailor into their isolated lighthouse on the stormy night of their thirtieth anniversary. A single woman embarks on a romantic relationship with a sex robot. A married couple secretly prepare for their baby’s arrival in a world where procreation is controlled by the Establishment.
Through prose, poetry, essays, illustrations and more, twenty-one writers bring their visions of euphoria to life. These pages celebrate, subvert, expand and reimagine what joy can look like, even in uncertain times.
Switchboard will receive a £1 donation from every copy sold.
Includes contributions from: Amil (translated by Joheun Lee) Santanu Bhattacharya Maame Blue James Cahill Jenny Chamarette Gerardo Sámano Córdova Soula Emmanuel Selali Fiamanya Eve Gleichman Remi Graves Dylin Hardcastle Chloe Michelle Howarth William Rayfet Hunter Seth Insua Joshua Jones Laura Kay Carrie Marshall Peo Michie Elle Nash Peter Scalpello Joelle Taylor
