Like Other Girls by Britta Lundin (YA)
Home Field Advantage by Dahlia Adler (YA)
Rush by Nyrae Dawn (NA)
The Team by Tal Bauer (m/m series)
The Yards Between Us by R.K. Russell (memoir)
Bonus: Coming in May, check out One of the Boys by Victoria Zeller (YA)
Today on the site we’re headed inside Why On Earth, a YA sci-fi anthology edited by Vania Stoyanova and Rosiee Thor that just released from Page Street on Tuesday! Here’s the story:
What starts as a simple rescue mission for a crew of teen aliens to recover one of their own soon becomes an interstellar encounter no one will forget.
Captain Iona is organizing an impromptu retrieval for her brother, an undercover alien posing as a movie star. But her efforts go awry when a technical malfunction turns her heroic rescue into an unintentional invasion. With tales of disguised extraterrestrials stuck in theme parks, starship engineers hitchhiking to get home, and myth-inspired intergalactic sibling reunions, each story in this multi-author anthology explores the universal desire to be loved and understood, no matter where you come from. After all…aliens are just like us.
Edited by beloved YA author Rosiee Thor and YA talk show host Vania Stoyanova, the anthology crosses genre bounds to bring in tropes from romance and contemporary adventure with stories from Alex Brown, Beth Revis, Emily Lloyd-Jones, Eric Smith, Julian Winters, Laura Pohl, Maya Gittelman, M. K. England, Rebecca Kim Wells, and S. J. Whitby.
And here’s a peek inside its queer stories from some of the contributors!
Continue reading Inside an Anthology: Why on Earth ed. by Rosiee Thor and Vania Stoyanova
Happy National Girls and Women in Sports Day! In celebration, here are a whole bunch of books that center queer girls and women in sports! (For even more recs, check out these past posts!)
All these months of staring at the wall?
All these months of feeling weak?
It’s ending—
I’m going back to fencing.
And then it’ll be
like nothing ever happened.
No one knows hard work and dedication like Valentina Camacho. And Vale’s thing is fencing. She’s the top athlete at her fencing gym. Or she was . . . until the accident.
After months away, Vale is finally cleared to fence again, but it’s much harder than before. Her body doesn’t move the way it used to, and worst of all is the new number one: Myrka. When she sweeps Vale aside with her perfect form and easy smile, Vale just can’t accept that. But the harder Vale fights to catch up, the more she realizes her injury isn’t the only thing holding her back. If she can’t leave her accident in the past, then what does she have to look forward to?
Continue reading Happy National Girls and Women in Sports Day 2025!
This post is sponsored by Dana Hawkins and So Not My Type! Click on the graphic for more info!
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Covid lockdown is over, but A’s world feels smaller than ever. Coming out as trans didn’t exactly go well, and most days, he barely leaves his bedroom, let alone the house. But the low point of A’s life isn’t online school, missing his bar mitzvah, or the fact that his parents monitor his phone like hawks—it’s the weekly Save Our Sons and Daughters meetings his parents all but drag him to.
At SOSAD, A and his friends Sal and Yarrow sit by while their parents deadname them and wring their hands over a nonexistent “transgender craze.” After all, sitting in suffocating silence has to be better than getting sent away for “advanced treatment,” never to be heard from again.
When Yarrow vanishes after a particularly confrontational meeting, A discovers that SOSAD doesn’t just feel soul-sucking…it’s run by an actual demon who feeds off the pain and misery of kids like him. And it’s not just SOSAD—the entire world is beset by demons dining on what seems like an endless buffet of pain and bigotry.
But how is one trans kid who hasn’t even chosen a name supposed to save his friend, let alone the world? And is a world that seems hellbent on rejecting him even worth saving at all?
Happy Black History Month! Like the other eleven months, it’s an excellent time to buy queer books by Black authors! For even more recs, check out previous years’ posts!
Eleven-year-old Naomi loves all things outdoors—birds and beetles, bats and bunnies—in theory. She explores nature in the best possible way: the cold, hard facts in books. So when her parents’ announcement of their impending divorce comes hand in hand with sending Naomi and her younger twin brothers to summer camp while they figure things out, it’s salt in the wound for Naomi and her avoidance of hands-on experience.
Camp Twisted Pine could be worse. The counselors are nice, and Naomi likes her cabinmates, especially Jackie, whose blunt personality and frank dislike of the camp draws Naomi in quickly. Jackie is also hard of hearing and uses a hearing aid, and the girls quickly develop a routine of sign language lessons in their free time, which Naomi sees as a welcome break when all the s’mores-making and nature walks get to be a bit much.
But the campers aren’t the only ones who roam the grounds of Camp Twisted Pine. When people start to go missing, including Jackie, Naomi has to find a way to save everyone—and herself. Her practical knowledge of the outdoors may still be rudimentary at best, but she has years of studying and the scientific method to fall back on. Can Naomi identify and stop the dangerous predator before it’s too late?
Today on the site I’m delighted to welcome Alison Cochrun, author ofsome of my personal favorite queer Romances, to reveal the cover of Learning Curves , her next f/f Romance, which releases September 2, 2025 from Atria Books! Here’s the story:
Thirty-five-year-old Seattleite Sadie Wells needs an escape. She’s desperate to escape her monotonous routines, the family business that has consumed her entire life, and the unexpected gay panic that has her questioning everything she thought she knew about herself. So when her injured sister offers Sadie her place on a tour along Portugal’s Camino de Santiago, she decides this is the perfect chance to get away from it all.
After three glasses of wine on the plane and some turbulence convince Sadie she won’t even survive the flight, she confesses all her secrets to her seatmate, Mal. The problem: the plane doesn’t crash, and it turns out Mal is on her Camino tour. Worst of all, Sadie learns that she is on a tour specifically for queer women, and that her two-hundred-mile trek will be a journey of self-discovery, whether she wants it to be or not.
Fascinated by the woman who drunkenly came out to her on the plane, Mal offers to help Sadie relive the queer adolescence she missed out on as they walk the Camino. As Sadie develops her newfound confidence, Mal grapples with a complicated loss and unexpected inheritance. But as their relationship blurs the lines between reality and practice, they both must decide if they will forever part at the end of the tour or chart a new course together.
And here’s the gorgeous cover, designed and illustrated by Sarah Horgan!
Alison Cochrun is a former high school English teacher and a current writer of queer love stories, including The Charm Offensive, Here We Go Again, Kiss Her Once for Me, and Learning Curves. She lives outside of Portland, Oregon, with her wife, her son, and two very needy dogs. You can find her online at AlisonCochrun.com or on Instagram as @AlisonCochrun.
‘s (AT THE) FREAK SHOW, a literary speculative novel exploring the fluidity of gender identity by telling the life story of a non-binary rock star who was the lone survivor of an operation to separate conjoined twins at birth, to University of Calgary Press (world English).
The Doctor’s Discretion by EE Ottoman (m/m)
A Shore Thing by Joanna Lowell (m/f)
A Gentleman’s Gentleman by TJ Alexander (m/m)
The Companion by EE Ottoman (t4t4t f/f/m)
A Bloomy Head by J. Winifred Butterworth (m/f)
Indivisible by Daniel Aleman
Ander and Santi Were Here by Jonny Garza Villa
We Set the Dark on Fire by Tehlor Kay Mejia
Kween by Vichet Chum
The Grief Keeper by Alexandra Villasante
Bonus: These are all YA, but for a New Adult Romance, check out The Broposal by Sonora Reyes
Today on the site I’m delighted to share in giving readers a peek into Dudes Rock, a recently released adult anthology edited by Jay Kang Romanus “celebrating queer masculinity in speculative fiction.” Here’s the story:
What does masculinity mean to you?
Whether the answer is “toxic” or something more aspirational, speculative fiction can help you find the language to talk about it. The stories in this anthology visualize all the different ways masculinity might look in a world different than our own, for better or worse.
Imagine living in a universe where you’d feel safe telling your best friend you’ve always loved him, or where smoking hot demons exist to indulge all your worst impulses. From buff aliens to gender-affirming werewolf bites, Dudes Rock is about celebrating everything that queer masculinity can become beyond the confines of a single world, and we want you to rock with us.
Featuring stories by Chase Anderson, Johannes T. Evans, Oliver Fosten, Jonathan Freeman, Rick Hollon, Sam Inverts, S. C. Mills, Franklyn S. Newton, Jay Kang Romanus, Aubrey Shaw, Simo Srinivas, Candy Tan, and Scott Vaughn.
“Pick up this anthology for a satisfying and imaginative journey through universes of magic and super-science, with queer masculinity—in all its glorious complexity—as your guiding star.” — Trip Galey, author of A Market of Dreams and Destiny
And here’s a look at some of the individual contributions, thanks to their authors!
Continue reading Inside an Anthology: Dudes Rock ed. by Jay Kang Romanus
