Far From You by Tess Sharpe
Style by Chelsea M. Cameron
Under the Lights by Dahlia Adler
Cherry by Lindsey Rosin
Her Name in the Sky by Kelly Quindlen
Bonus: Coming in 2017, Our Own Private Universe by Robin Talley and How to Make a Wish by Ashley Herring Blake
Continuing on with the theme of helping you find solid LGBTQIAP+ lit on a budget, check out these ten books with trans MCs that are under five bucks:
Endless Forever by E.M. Lindsey ($0.99)
Eitan’s Chord by Shira Glassman ($0.99)
Portside by Elyan Smith ($0.99)
Long Macchiatos and Monsters by Alison Evans ($1.99)
A Matter of Disagreement by E.E. Ottoman ($2.99)
Defying Convention by Cecil Wilde ($2.99)
Roller Girl by Vanessa North ($3.99)
Coffee Boy by Austin Chant ($3.99)*
Bumbling into Body Hair: Tales of an Accident-Prone Transsexual by Everett Maroon ($4.00)
Documenting Light by E.E. Ottoman ($4.99)
The Queer and the Restless by Kris Ripper ($4.99)*
Finding Your Feet by Cass Lennox ($4.99)*
The Unintentional Time Traveler by Everett Maroon ($5.00)
Bonus (Trans LI): The City War by Sam Starbuck ($2.99)
Bonus (LGBT and Two-Spirit Anthology): Love Beyond, Body, Space, and Time ed. by Hope Nicholson ($5.00)
*Priced for preorder; links are to publisher’s site
Hello and welcome to The Colorful Catalog, which focuses on authors who’ve got at least five published LGBTQIAP+ books (including novellas) and gives you an overview of everything they’ve got, as provided by the authors themselves! Hopefully you can find at least one book that screams “I NEED THAT!” from any given catalog, and from there, if you love it, ta da! Instant access to info on where to go next.
I’m delighted to showcase the colorful catalog of Shira Glassman, queer indie rec-er extraordinaire and seriously prolific authoress of all things LGBTQAP. As a bonus, you get to stock up on a whole bunch of Jewish queer lit right before Rosh Hashana! Everybody wins!
Hi! I’m Shira Glassman, and today I’m going to play for you the first movement of the sonata for unaccompanied violin by Arthur Honegger—
Wait, sorry, wrong opening line! I’m sure most of you know me, if you know me at all, from my fantasy series, but since this is a backlist guide: did you know I’ve written two contemporary romance novellas, too? The theme of both is borrowed from my orchestral life. Fearless is about a band mom who falls for an orchestra teacher while everyone is snowed in at All-State, a cute butch lady who might just get her to pick up the violin again after a twenty-year lapse. Lioness in Blue is about the bi girl who sits second oboe, whose flirtation with the hot, beardy older man who sits first oboe finally leads to affirming, mildly femdom-y sex.
Now that I’ve satisfied the people who aren’t interested in SFF: on to The Mangoverse! My series originally started as a combination of three needs: a way to cope with the unexpected loss of my father, a lifelong hunger for f/f princess fairytales (when I was A Tiny we didn’t have K.S. Trenten’s Fairest or Audrey Colthurst’s Of Fire and Stars), and wanting to see love instead of conflict between The Hero and The Dragon—which is relatively easy to find nowadays, but not so much in the 80’s. Every book in the series was written to stand alone, and just be separate but sequential adventures about the same characters, but I have no idea if I succeeded at that so you may want to read reviews.
Another important note is that the main character has problems digesting gluten and some of the proteins found in poultry, and her chief romance is with a palace cook who becomes her personal chef as well as her partner.
The first in the series is The Second Mango (hey, kids, never put the word “second” in the first book in a series. Whoops!) in which a nerdy lesbian named Shulamit inherits her father’s throne suddenly at a far too young and sheltered age to know How to Queen. By the end of the book she’s started to figure her shit out, and has acquired a nice solid Found Family to cherish, including a bi girlfriend. The focus of the book is on solidifying her friendship with her new hetero demi bodyguard Rivka while they ride around having adventures. Rivka’s got a significant romantic arc in the book, too, if you’re looking for demi m/f.
Climbing the Date Palm picks up three years later, where Kaveh, a “bi prince from next door” begs Queen Shulamit for help rescuing his labor activist boyfriend Farzin from a trumped-up treason charge. Apparently King Jahandar didn’t like it when his son fell in love with the guy who stood up to him about wage theft. Oops! Shulamit is determined to find a way to help that won’t involve war, even though Rivka is chomping at the bit. This one includes a poly aromantic cat-shifter and is based on real local events in my home county, in which activist friends of mine fought to establish an ordinance that since its inception (around the time I wrote the book) has recovered around 45 thousand dollars in stolen wages from employers.
A Harvest of Ripe Figs shows Shulamit solving mysteries in her capital city as part of her royal obligation toward justice, while she and her partner Aviva raise the baby princess. A celebrity violinist’s instrument is stolen just after her performance, and it quickly turns into a more general security problem as Shulamit comes to realize illegal magic may have been used to disguise the theft.
The Olive Conspiracy just came out this summer. Shulamit uncovers an international plot to tank her country’s economy by sabotaging their agriculture, their main source of strength. What’s worse, the beautiful straight foreign princess she crushed on as a teenager might be behind it. This one features a new lesbian couple—some farmers she helps when they’re about to lose everything—and a heroic elderly trans woman. I had a good time contrasting Shulamit’s healthy, loving relationship with her partner as an adult with the intensity and one-sided torture of her crush at sixteen. The book has adventure, lots of dragon screen-time, three bi characters, three lesbians, and a rescue kitten.
There are also short stories! If you buy Figs and Olives in paperback, you’ll get all the short stories included, but if you buy the eBooks, the short stories are included separately in a volume called Tales from Perach. There are seven of them all together, and they give some of the supporting characters (like the lesbian farmers or the trans woman chef) an opportunity to take center stage, or recount one of Rivka’s adventures on the road with only her dragon companion before Shulamit hired her. (Rivka’s story features her rescuing an aro ace “damsel in distress”, so if that’s special to you, don’t miss “Rivka in Port Saltspray.”)
As a final note at the end, veering away from Mangoverse again, I do have some erotic shorts available online. “Eitan’s Chord” is a Chanukah fairy threesome, about magic to bless a young, impoverished trans m/cis f couple one winter. “Wet Nails“—ignore the cover; it was part of an anthology and I can’t control that for now—is paranormal sex between two bi women, a lonely grad student and the ghost of her favorite glamorous 1950’s Hollywood actress. “Treasure Hunt” is about two guards who get sent into a dragon’s cave to steal treasure. They doubt the dragon’s existence and use the opportunity to eat lunch and fool around, but the dragon…. is watching.
All of the above focus on Jewish characters and often have holidays and other rituals woven into the text. Mine are worlds where religion and the queer soul are completely compatible—with a note to my non-religious readers that with the exception of some of the Tales from Perach shorts, the Jewishness is more focused on the secular culture than the religion itself. My warrior woman Rivka’s native language is Yiddish, for example.
My one published work so far that doesn’t include anything Jewish is my anti-biphobia short “The Artist and the Devil,” about an art teacher who becomes increasingly suspicious that his businessman crush is actually Satan. I’ll leave it up to you to read and figure out if it counts as contemporary romance or paranormal, because categorizing it under those conditions would be a spoiler! 😉
Shira Glassman is a violinist living in Florida with a very good human and a very bad cat. She is best known for writing fluffy queer fantasy that draws inspiration from her tropical upbringing, Jewish heritage and present life, and French and German operas. She believes that we need infinite princess, dragon, and superhero stories for all the demographics who never got to play those roles when she was little; some of the ones she’s written have made it to the finals of the Bi Book Awards and Golden Crown Literary Society awards. Her latest is The Olive Conspiracy, about a queen and her found-family saving their country’s agriculture from a foreign plot.
In the last two Shopper’s Delight posts, the accessibility focus was on finances. Today’s post is on a different form of accessibility – those who require (or even simply prefer) audiobooks. To that end, here are a whole bunch of LGBTQIAP+ YA books available in audio! (Please note that Adult books have their own Gay & Lesbian category, which is why I’m not doing a post on that here. YA does not.)
Male Protags
Female Protags
Male and Female Protags
Non-Binary Protags
If you shop for f/f Romance a decent amount, you’ve probably noticed that it tends to be waaaay pricier than m/m or m/f, so, in yet another round of helping you queer up your shelves (or your Kindle) on a budget, here are ten f/f Romances (NA and up; you can find YA here) that are all under five bucks (with thanks to Vanessa North for the help and the inspiration!):
The Belle vs. the BDOC by Amy Jo Cousins ($2.99)
Roller Girl by Vanessa North ($3.99)
The Final Rose by Eliza Lentzki ($3.99)
Out on Good Behavior by Dahlia Adler ($3.99)
The Gravity Between Us by Kristen Zimmer ($3.99)
Something True by Karelia Stetz-Waters ($3.99)
Treasure by Rebekah Weatherspoon ($4.99)
The Butch and the Beautiful by Kris Ripper ($4.99)
Such a Pretty Face by Gabrielle Goldsby ($4.99)
Top to Bottom by Delphine Dryden ($4.99)
The Abyss Surrounds Us by Emily Skrutskie
The Scorpion Rules by Erin Bow
Adaptation and Inheritance by Malinda Lo
Sound by Alexandra Duncan
Not Your Sidekick by C.B. Lee
Bonus: Coming in 2017, 27 Hours by Tristina Wright
Today is a huuuuge day in LGBTQ YA releases, so get your wallets and library cards ready and check out what’s now out in the world! (And congrats to all the authors!)
Maria Lyon and Lily Boiten are their school’s ultimate power couple—even if no one knows it but them.
Only one thing stands between them and their perfect future: campus superstar Delilah Dufrey.
Golden child Delilah is a legend at the exclusive Acheron Academy, and the presumptive winner of the distinguished Cawdor Kingsley Prize. She runs the school, and if she chose, she could blow up Maria and Lily’s whole world with a pointed look, or a carefully placed word.
But what Delilah doesn’t know is that Lily and Maria are willing to do anything—absolutely anything—to make their dreams come true. And the first step is unseating Delilah for the Kingsley Prize. The full scholarship, awarded to Maria, will lock in her attendance at Stanford―and four more years in a shared dorm room with Lily.
Maria and Lily will stop at nothing to ensure their victory—including harnessing the dark power long rumored to be present on the former plantation that houses their school.
But when feuds turn to fatalities, and madness begins to blur the distinction between what’s real and what is imagined, the girls must decide where they draw the line.
Buy it: Amazon * B&N * Indiebound
All Pen wants is to be the kind of girl she’s always been. So why does everyone have a problem with it? They think the way she looks and acts means she’s trying to be a boy—that she should quit trying to be something she’s not. If she dresses like a girl, and does what her folks want, it will show respect. If she takes orders and does what her friend Colby wants, it will show her loyalty. But respect and loyalty, Pen discovers, are empty words. Old-world parents, disintegrating friendships, and strong feelings for other girls drive Pen to see the truth–that in order to be who she truly wants to be, she’ll have to man up.
Buy it: Amazon * B&N * Indiebound
Welcome to Andover… where superpowers are common, but internships are complicated. Just ask high school nobody, Jessica Tran. Despite her heroic lineage, Jess is resigned to a life without superpowers and is merely looking to beef-up her college applications when she stumbles upon the perfect (paid!) internship—only it turns out to be for the town’s most heinous supervillain. On the upside, she gets to work with her longtime secret crush, Abby, who Jess thinks may have a secret of her own. Then there’s the budding attraction to her fellow intern, the mysterious “M,” who never seems to be in the same place as Abby. But what starts as a fun way to spite her superhero parents takes a sudden and dangerous turn when she uncovers a plot larger than heroes and villains altogether.
Nothing says Happy Birthday like summoning the spirits of your dead relatives.
Alex is a bruja, the most powerful witch in a generation…and she hates magic. At her Deathday celebration, Alex performs a spell to rid herself of her power. But it backfires. Her whole family vanishes into thin air, leaving her alone with Nova, a brujo boy she can’t trust. A boy whose intentions are as dark as the strange marks on his skin.
The only way to get her family back is to travel with Nova to Los Lagos, a land in-between, as dark as Limbo and as strange as Wonderland…
Buy it: Amazon * B&N * Books of Wonder
A new state, a new city, a new high school. Mike’s father has already found a new evangelical church for the family to attend, even if Mike and his plainspoken little sister, Toby, don’t want to go. Dad wants Mike to ditch art for sports, to toughen up, but there’s something uneasy behind his demands.
Then Mike meets Sean, the new kid, and “hey” becomes games of basketball, partnering on a French project, hanging out after school. A night at the beach. The fierce colors of sunrise. But Mike’s father is always watching. And so is Victor from school, cell phone in hand.
Buy it: Amazon * B&N * Indiebound
And yesterday marked the release of yet another YA and an m/m Romance!
Kindra’s moral compass has never pointed north, but that’s what happens when you’re raised as an assassin and a thief. At sixteen, she’s fantastic with a blade, an expert at slipping through the world unnoticed, and trapped in a life she didn’t chose. But nothing in her training prepares her for what happens when her father misses a target.
In the week-long aftermath, Kindra breaks rank for the first time in her life. She steals documents, starts questioning who their client is and why the target needs to die, botches a second hit on her father’s target, and is nearly killed. And that’s before she’s kidnapped by a green-eyed stranger connected to a part of her childhood she’d almost forgotten.
Kindra has to decide who to trust and which side of the battle to fight for. She has to do it fast and she has to be right, because the wrong choice will kill her just when she’s finally found something worth living for.
Buy it: Amazon * B&N * Riptide
Grey Jean-Marcelin wants to die. He thought painting his passion—vivid portrayals of Haitian life and vodou faith—would be enough to anchor him to this world. But it isn’t. And when the mysterious man known only as Saint saves Grey from a suicide attempt, it’s more curse than blessing—until Grey discovers that Saint isn’t just an EMT. He’s a banished fae, and can only survive by draining the lives of those he loves.
All Saint needed was a simple bargain: one life willingly given for another. But as Saint’s feelings for Grey grow deeper, centuries of guilt leave him desperate to save a man who doesn’t want salvation, even if Grey’s life means Saint’s death.
When Grey’s depression consumes him, only he can decide if living is worth the struggle. Yet his choice may come too late to save his life . . . or Saint’s soul. And whatever choice he makes, it may shatter them both.
Obviously one of the toughest things with regard to LGBTQIAP+ YA is accessibility, which manifests in a whole bunch of different ways. It’s tough to afford, it’s tough to find, it’s tough sometimes to know what’s queer, it’s tough to buy or borrow the stuff that is queer when you aren’t in a safe environment… it’s a lot.
To help with the “What is queer?” part, especially books you can safely buy/borrow without anyone being the wiser, make sure you check out the Under the Gaydar feature.
To help find some stuff that’s more affordable than your average $10+ book, check out the below (all links go to Amazon Affiliates link):
Complementary and Acute by Ella Lyons ($0.99)
Dating Sarah Cooper by Siera Maley ($2.99)
Taking Flight by Siera Maley ($2.99)
Colorblind by Siera Maley ($2.99)
Style by Chelsea M. Cameron ($3.99)
Forgive Me if I’ve Told You This Before by Karelia Stetz-Waters ($3.99)
Keeping Her Secret by Sarah Nicolas ($3.99)
Under the Lights by Dahlia Adler ($4.49)
Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley ($4.74)
Unspeakable by Abbie Rushton ($4.99)
Two things that are seriously rare in LGBTQIAP+ YA are intersectionally diverse books and lighter contemporary with happy endings, especially for queer girls. In her sophomore novel, the awesome Sara Farizan brings both, making this a Must Read of the highest order.
High-school junior Leila has made it most of the way through Armstead Academy without having a crush on anyone, which is something of a relief. Her Persian heritage already makes her different from her classmates; if word got out that she liked girls, life would be twice as hard. But when a sophisticated, beautiful new girl, Saskia, shows up, Leila starts to take risks she never thought she would, especially when it looks as if the attraction between them is mutual. Struggling to sort out her growing feelings and Saskia’s confusing signals, Leila confides in her old friend, Lisa, and grows closer to her fellow drama tech-crew members, especially Tomas, whose comments about his own sexuality are frank, funny, wise, and sometimes painful. Gradually, Leila begins to see that almost all her classmates are more complicated than they first appear to be, and many are keeping fascinating secrets of their own.
Buy it: Amazon * Barnes & Noble * Powell’s * IndieBound * Workman
Not Your Sidekick by C.B. Lee (B, Vietnamese-Chinese)
When the Moon Was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore (T, Pakistani)
Vanished and Avenged by E.E. Cooper (B, Indian)
A Love That Disturbs by Medeia Sharif (L, Pakistani)
Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld (Q, Indian)
