New Releases: November 2025

Chris Makes a Friend by Alex Gino (4th)

This is not the summer Chris has planned…

Chris does not want to be spending the summer with her grandparents and her little sister. Her grandparents aren’t bad — they just don’t let Chris do what she wants to do, which is sit around and read all day. And her sister, Becca, is the opposite, never sitting still and never being quiet.

The good part is that Chris’s grandparents are always telling her to go outside and “get some air” — so she can escape into the woods with a book and get some alone time. Or at least it’s alone time until Mia comes along. Mia is also in town for the summer, and she understands Chris in a way that Chris’s family just can’t.

Soon Chris is sneaking off to spend as much time with her friend as possible. But is there more to Mia than Mia is saying?

Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon

Continue reading New Releases: November 2025

Happy Native American Heritage Month 2025!

Happy Native American Heritage and Indigenous History Month! We’re celebrating, as we do, with books by Indigenous authors, starring Indigenous characters. (Note: Despite the title of the post, these books include indigenous characters from all over.) While the usual affiliate links are included, you’re strongly encouraged to order from the Native-owned Birchbark Books where available!

Picture Books

Phoenix Ani’ Gichichi-I’ / Phoenix Gets Greater by Marty Wilson-Trudeau with  Phoenix Wilson (text) and Megan Kyak-Monteith (illustration), translated by Kelvin Morrison

Phoenix loves to play with dolls and marvel at pretty fabrics. Most of all, he loves to dance―ballet, Pow Wow dancing, or just swirling and twirling around his house. Sometimes Phoenix gets picked on and he struggles with feeling different, but his mom and brother are proud of him. With their help, Phoenix learns about Two Spirit/Niizh Manidoowag people in Anishinaabe culture and just how special he is.

Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon | Birchbark Books

Continue reading Happy Native American Heritage Month 2025!

October 2025 Deal Announcements

Adult Fiction

Lin Darrow‘s Flicker City Phantoms series, pitched as a queer and cozy combination of the plucky mystery-solving of Pushing Daisies, the death-defying romance of Hadestown, and the technological world-building of THE MINISTRY OF TIME, in which an underemployed ghost at a boarding house for the holographically resurrected dead must team up with her eccentric spectral housemates to stop a mysterious headless kidnapper, to Chelsea Villareal at Podium Publishing, in a two-book deal, by Lucienne Diver at The Knight Agency (world English).

Continue reading October 2025 Deal Announcements

New Releases: October 28, 2025

Young Adult

Stars in the Daylight Sky by Maya MacGregor

Version 1.0.0

Eighteen-year-old Cam bounces between houses in Texas and Scotland and has always thought that’s why they don’t feel at home in either place. A recent Autism diagnosis followed by a fight with their Mothers add an extra layer of real-life stress, only amplifying their struggle to belong. However, things take an unexpected turn when they cross paths with members of the fae deep in a Scottish forest. With the Gaelic wisdom from their Granaidh (Grandma), Cam understands that they have been noticed by the fae, and that this means that their life is suddenly in grave danger.

Cam must make a choice: face the danger or join the fae and never see their family again. With their human ties fraying even further, the allure of the fae’s acceptance tugs at Cam’s heart, but are they ready to say goodbye to their family forever?

Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon

Continue reading New Releases: October 28, 2025

Fave Five: New Queer Adult Romantasy, 2025 Edition

As Many Souls as Stars by Natasha Siegel

The Isle in the Silver Sea by Tasha Suri

When the Tides Held the Moon by Venessa Vida Kelley

Son of the Morning by Akwaeke Emezi

Warrior Princess Assassin by Bridgid Kemmerer

Happy (Upcoming) Intersex Awareness Day 2025!

Intersex Awareness Day is October 26th, and we’re celebrating as we do with books that have intersex rep! All of these titles either have intersex MCs, or have intersex secondary characters but are also by intersex authors. 

Middle Grade Fiction

Cattywampus by Ash Van Otterloo

In the town of Howler’s Hollow, conjuring magic is strictly off-limits. Only nothing makes Delpha McGill’s skin crawl more than rules. So when she finds her family’s secret book of hexes, she’s itching to use it to banish her mama’s money troubles. She just has to keep it quieter than a church mouse — not exactly Delpha’s specialty.

Trouble is, Katybird Hearn is hankering to get her hands on the spell book, too. The daughter of a rival witching family, Katy has reasons of her own for wanting to learn forbidden magic, and she’s not going to let an age-old feud or Delpha’s contrary ways stop her. But their quarrel accidentally unleashes a hex so heinous it resurrects a graveyard full of angry Hearn and McGill ancestors bent on total destruction. If Delpha and Katy want to reverse the spell in time to save everyone in the Hollow from rampaging zombies, they’ll need to mend fences and work together.

Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon | B&N

Continue reading Happy (Upcoming) Intersex Awareness Day 2025!

Exclusive Cover Reveal: We Were Never Here by Sophia Hannan

Today on the site I’m delighted to welcome Sophia Hannan to reveal the cover of her debut, We Were Never Here, a lesbian YA Horror releasing July 28, 2026 from Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers! Here’s the story:

In July, Georgia Perry and Jules Park—secret girlfriends, covert art thieves, and cohosts of a popular YouTube ghost hunting show—step into a haunted house to steal a priceless painting. A few short hours later, there’s a knife in Jules’s chest and Georgia is waking up in a pool of blood with no memory of how she got there.

Now it’s October, and Georgia is underwater. She hasn’t been to class in weeks, she’s avoiding her old crew and only friends like the plague. But when the three remaining thieves get a call from the man who paid a hefty sum to keep them out of jail, demanding that they return to finish the job, Georgia has no choice but to return to her old life.

As the estranged friends scramble to steal the painting with no cover story and no leader, they quickly realize that something is very, very wrong, and it’s not just the suffocating memory of Jules or the prying eyes of their viewers. Between the strange shadows that begin to trail them and the nightmares plaguing Georgia’s sleep, only one thing is certain: Something followed them home from De Lys manor, and it will do anything to keep them from going back.

And here’s the gorgeously chilling cover, designed by Laura Eckes with art by Elizabeth Wakou!

A painting with a golden frame of a girl sitting in front of old teal wallpaper. Half of her face is blank and dead, with black hair and a black dress, and the other half is alive with dyed green hair, a white sweater, and a scared expression. She holds a bouquet of half-dead flowers.

Buy it: Bookshop | B&N | Amazon | Indigo | S&S

Jackie Hall Photography

Sophia Hannan is a Canadian author of YA fiction. When she’s not writing about ghosts and the girls they haunt, she can be found studying English literature and forcing her friends to watch horror movies with her. We Were Never Here is her debut novel.

Fave Five: Graphic Novel YA Reimaginings

Tragic by Dana Mele and Valentina Pinti (Hamlet)

Northranger by Rey Terciero and Bre Indigo (Northanger Abbey)

Mismatched by Anne Camlin and Isadora Zeferino (Emma)

Dan in Green Gables by Rey Terciero and Claudia Aguirre (Anne of Green Gables)

Angelica and the Bear Prince by Trung Le Nguyen (“East of the Sun and West of the Moon”)

Bonus: These all reimagine single works, but for a series reimagining multiple Shakespearean works, check out Arden High by Molly Horton Booth, Stephanie Kate Strohm, and Jamie Green (Shakespeare)

Exclusive Cover Reveal: Buried Feelings by Kit Rosewater

Today on the site I’m delighted to welcome back Kit Rosewater to reveal the cover of her second YA novel, Buried Feelings, releasing July 7, 2026 from Delacorte Romance! Here’s the story:

Cam was the one who discovered the hunt…

He brought it to Ivy like an offering, took her hand as they combed through San Francisco, searching for treasure and conspiring against the heteronormative agenda. But that was back then. Now juniors, they’re both out and proud—Cam as a trans man and Ivy as gay—but their friendship isn’t as assured. Problem is, Ivy can’t reveal Cam’s past betrayal without airing closely guarded secrets of her own.

…But Ivy will be the one to finish it.

As Ivy comes across the missing link in the treasure hunt from their childhood, she’s certain she can put the clues together and finally come out on top in the cat-and-mouse game Cam’s been playing with her ever since their friendship ended.  Once Cam gets wind of Ivy’s renewed interest in the hunt, the ex-best friends go head-to-head in their search for gold. But as they get digging, they uncover more things buried between them than they bargained for.

And here’s the delightful cover designed by Carol Ly and illustrated by Sarah Maxwell!

Buy it (and take advantage of the preorder campaign!): Bookshop | Amazon | PRH

Kit Rosewater lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico with her partner and two small children who are bent on destroying the universe. She is the author of the YA sapphic romance All’s Fair in Love and Field Hockey, as well as Books 1-3 of The Derby Daredevils, a middle grade series illustrated by Sophie Escabasse. Kit has been a theater and English teacher, a bookseller, a children’s literature academic, and a certified ‘boots-on-the-ground’ treasure hunter. Her sophomore romance, Buried Feelings, is forthcoming from Delacorte Romance in July 2026.

Queering up your shelf, one rec at a time!