Witches of Ash and Ruin by E. Latimer (YA Bisexual Fantasy)
Spellbook of the Lost and Found by Moïra Fowley-Doyle (YA Bi/Lesbian Fantasy)
At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O’Neill (Gay Historical Fiction)
Stir-Fry by Emma Donoghue (Contemporary Lesbian Fiction)
The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne (Gay Historical Fiction)
Bonus: Coming up in 2020, The Falling in Love Montage by Ciara Smyth (Romantic Lesbian Contemporary YA) and The Henna Wars by Adiba Jaigirdar (Lesbian Contemporary YA Romance)!
Jonathan doesn’t want to like brooding Web, who has secrets all his own. Jonathan wants nothing more than to be “fixed” once and for all. But he’s drawn to Web anyway. Web is the first person in the real world to see Jonathan completely and think he’s perfect. Web is a kind of escape Jonathan has never known. For the first time in his life, he may finally feel free enough to love and accept himself as he is.
A poignant coming-of-age tale, Ziggy, Stardust and Me heralds the arrival of a stunning and important new voice in YA.
Buy it: Amazon | B&N | Indiebound | Book Depository
Targeted by a murderous cult.
Labeled a cyber-terrorist by the media.
Irritated texts from his best friend.
Eye contact with a nice-looking guy on the train.
Aidan has a lot to deal with, and he’s not quite sure which takes top priority.
Finding himself alone in a posh New York City hotel room for the night, Aidan does what any red-blooded seventeen-year-old would do—he tries to hook up with someone new. But that lapse in judgement leads to him waking up next to a dead guy, which sparks an epic case of mistaken identity that puts Aidan on the run from everyone—faceless federal agents, his eccentric family, and, naturally, a cyber-terrorist group who will stop at nothing to find him.
He soon realizes the only way to stop the chase is to deliver the object everyone wants, before he gets caught or killed. But for Aidan, the hardest part is knowing who he can trust not to betray him—including himself.
Buy it: Amazon | B&N | Indiebound | Book Depository
There are many ways the world could end. A fire. A catastrophic flood. A super eruption that spews lakes of lava. Ellis Kimball has made note of all possible scenarios, and she is prepared for each one.
What she doesn’t expect is meeting Hannah Marks in her therapist’s waiting room. Hannah calls their meeting fate. After all, Ellis is scared about the end of the world; Hannah knows when it’s going to happen.
Despite Ellis’s anxiety—about what others think of her, about what she’s doing wrong, about the safety of her loved ones—the two girls become friends. But time is ticking down, and as Ellis tries to help Hannah decipher the details of her doomsday premonition, their search for answers only raises more questions.
When does it happen? Who will believe them? And how do you prepare for the end of the world when it feels like your life is just getting started?
Buy it: Amazon | B&N | Indiebound | Book Depository
Lady’s maid Molly Wilkins is done with thieving—and cheating and stabbing and all the rest of it. She’s determined to keep her hands to herself, so she really shouldn’t be tempted to seduce her employer’s prim and proper companion, Alice. But how can she resist when Alice can’t seem to keep her eyes off Molly?
Finds her own heart
For the first time in her life, Alice Stapleton has absolutely nothing to do. The only thing that seems to occupy her thoughts is a lady’s maid with a sharp tongue and a beautiful mouth. Her determination to know Molly’s secrets has her behaving in ways she never imagined as she begins to fall for the impertinent woman.
Has been stolen
When an unwelcome specter from Alice’s past shows up unexpectedly at a house party, Molly volunteers to help the only way she knows how: with a little bit of mischief.
Letting it end there would be tragic. So, with the help of his best friends, the comfort of his haikus and lists, and even strange, surreal appearances by his hero, Oscar Wilde, Ken will find that love is worth more than the price of heartbreak.
Buy it: B&N | Amazon | IndieBound | Book Depository
Princesses Denna and Mare are in love and together at last—only to face a new set of dangers.
Mare just wants to settle down with the girl she loves, which would be easier if Denna weren’t gifted with forbidden and volatile fire magic. Denna must learn to control her powers, which means traveling in secret to the kingdom of Zumorda, where she can seek training without fear of persecution. Determined to help, Mare has agreed to serve as an ambassador as a cover for their journey.
But just after Mare and Denna arrive in Zumorda, an attack on a border town changes everything. Mare’s diplomatic mission is now urgent: She must quickly broker an alliance with the Zumordan queen to protect her homeland. However, the queen has no interest in allying with other kingdoms—it’s Denna’s untamed but powerful magic that catches her eye. The queen offers to teach Denna herself, and both girls know it would be dangerous to refuse.
As Denna’s powers grow stronger, Mare does her best to be the ambassador her kingdom needs. Her knowledge of Zumorda and its people grows, and so too do her suspicions about the queen’s intentions. With rising tensions and unexpected betrayals putting Mare and Denna in jeopardy and dangerous enemies emerging on all sides, can they protect their love and save their kingdoms?
Buy it: Amazon | B&N | Indiebound | Book Depository
When Deena’s wild older sister Mandy goes missing, presumed dead, Deena refuses to believe it’s true. Especially when letters start arriving–letters from Mandy–which proclaim that their family’s blighted history is not just bad luck or bad decisions but a curse, handed down to women from generation to generation. Mandy’s gone to find the root of the curse before it’s too late for Deena. But is the curse even real? And is Mandy still alive? Deena’s desperate, cross-country search for her beloved sister–guided only by the notes that mysteriously appear at each destination, leading her to former Magdalene laundry sites and more–is a love letter to women and a heartbreaking cathartic journey.
I’m so excited about this month’s featured new release, the Proud anthology edited by Juno Dawson! Yes, this is UK YA, but thanks to Book Depository, you can buy it in the US as well! Not only are the stories in this collection wonderful and adorable and full of glorious representation all over the LGBTQ spectrum, but it’s also got stunning illustrations created especially for each story.
The authors have been kind enough to share a little more information on their stories, so read on to learn more about the book and it’s awesome contents!
A celebration of LGBTQ+ talent, PROUD is a thought-provoking, funny, emotional read.
Contributors: Steve Antony, Dean Atta, Kate Alizadeh, Fox Benwell, Alex Bertie, Caroline Bird, Fatti Burke, Tanya Byrne, Moïra Fowley-Doyle, Frank Duffy, Simon James Green, Leo Greenfield, Saffa Khan, Karen Lawler, David Levithan, Priyanka Meenakshi, Alice Oseman, Michael Lee Richardson, David Roberts, Cynthia So, Kay Staples, Jessica Vallance, Kristen Van Dam and Kameron White.
Buy it: Amazon UK | Waterstones | Book Depository
“The Courage of Dragons” by Fox Benwell
The Courage of Dragons was born out of necessity, in that sometimes being proud is a process: a constant, political, active thing, and sometimes being brave enough for that is hard. Figuring yourself out, fighting archaic and terrible systems and virulent media, and finding somewhere you belong: all hard. The trials of proper swords-and-honour heroes.
We all know what it’s like to wish we were those heroes, that we could go around righting awful wrongs and saving hapless princes in our own everyday lives, and that got me to thinking: what if you could borrow some of that spirit and – together with a band of faithful friends – fix some of the stuff society has broken?
Dragons is that story. It’s a tribute to the power of legend and imagination and belief, and friendship (because honestly, without my own D&D party and the friends within it I’d be lost and lonely somewhere in the mines).
My story is a chorus of voices from LGBTQ+ teens. When I set out to write it, I knew that it was going to involve a young member of a gay men’s chorus…but many different voices tell their stories – all louder together than apart. Stylistically, the typesetting (especially indentation) is VERY important here. Imagine a crescendo of perspectives all clamouring to be heard.
“Dive Bar” by Caroline Bird
The poem is all about finding the pride to come out. So many old gay clubs had to be underground, down steep flights of stairs into windowless cellars. The gateways club in Euston for example: (The club was described as having a green door with a steep staircase leading down to a windowless cellar bar) And this secrecy has a sexiness to it and an exciting clandestine feeling to it… but it’s also a trap, we were literally driven underground… swallowed under the city.
The poem is a process of being driven deeper and deeper underground both in society and inside yourself – Your Secret’s Safe with me/ your secret’s in a safe/ your secret is yourself – and then suddenly realising you can’t breathe, you can’t be illicit, you can’t be forbidden you have to overcome these ‘dead laws’ and run up the stairs out into the open … into the sunlight…
Pride is difficult. It’s scary. Especially when you’re young. That is why I didn’t want to patronise the reader by pretending like it’s easy to be yourself… often the process of finding yourself is preceded by a long stint of self-denial and burial and suppression until you’re finally so suffocated, so ‘windowless’ that you need to break down those walls in yourself and escape…
Dive Bar is a celebration of self-exploration, of the kinds of dim lit bars that are the places where the Pride movement was dreamt up in.
“Almost Certain” by Tanya Byrne
When Juno approached me to write something for PROUD, I knew that I wanted to set it in Brighton. People travel from all over the country for Brighton Pride because they know that they will be safe – and welcome – here. ALMOST CERTAIN was supposed to be a celebration of that, but as I began to write it, I couldn’t help but reminisce on my own experiences as a teenager. I didn’t come out until I was 40 and I’ve often wondered if I would have come out sooner if I had lived somewhere like Brighton, but what if I didn’t? What if all those reasons I didn’t come out – fear that it was just a phase and I’d change my mind, fear that my friends and family wouldn’t accept me, fear that someone would hurt me – were still there despite living in a town that is so accepting of the LGBTQ community. That’s how Orla’s story came about, because I know there are teenagers like her, not just in Brighton, but around the world, who are scared and confused and need to know that it’s okay to not know who they are yet. ALMOST CERTAIN is the story I needed to read when I was sixteen and if a teenager like Orla finds it, I hope it makes them feel less alone.
“Penguins” by Simon James Green
I felt like everywhere I looked, I was seeing gay penguins. There were some at an aquarium in Sydney; a pair from a Danish zoo who ‘kidnapped’ a chick from a neglectful straight couple, and, of course, Roy and Silo at Central Park Zoo, who famously inspired the picture book, AND TANGO MAKES THREE. In each case, there was a serious amount of media attention – people were fascinated. Two things occurred to me. First, what must it be like if you’re a teen, all set to come out, only to find everyone’s more interested in some gay penguins who have beaten you to it? Second, boys going to Prom in their black and white tuxes look a bit like penguins. Combining the two was irresistible.
“Love Poems to the City” by Moïra Fowley-Doyle
In the patchwork of any story, a couple of scraps are always taken from your own life. Sometimes you put them there on purpose, sometimes they kind of just get stitched in by accident and you only realise it once the quilt is made. Love Poems to the City ended up being a patchwork heavily influenced by a particular time in my life.
When I was asked to write a story on the theme of pride, two very specific things were happening in my life side by side. I was campaigning for the referendum to repeal the 8th amendment, so everything was posters and placards lashed to lampposts, handing out fliers and YES badges. And my marriage was ending, so I was having a lot of feelings about love and marriage. I didn’t set out to write a story about two teen girls with divorced parents campaigning for the 2015 equal marriage referendum, but it’s what my subconscious came up with.
During the marriage referendum my old secondary school (which was the first school in Ireland to set up an LGBT group for students) made the news because, in answer to the scores of NO posters on the road outside, students painted a rainbow across the main gates. I don’t know who painted it or what their stories were, but that rainbow got stitched into my patchwork. I wanted to write about pride in community and pride in activism. I wanted to write about love for a city and a city that speaks back. And I wanted to write about that rainbow.
“I Hate Darcy Pemberley” by Karen Lawler
I’ve always loved retellings – Clueless and 10 Things I Hate About You are two of my absolute favourites – and I’m a HUGE sucker for a lesbian romcom. So when I saw the prompt for Proud, which asked for a response to the theme of pride, the first thing that popped into my head was Pride and Prejudice. It’s always struck me that today the surname Darcy is commonly used as a girls first name, especially in the States, so I was off.
I had a lot of fun with little P&P Easter eggs – Pemberley is my Darcy’s surname because that was the name of Darcy’s estate in Austin’s book – and some elements of the book had to stay. Wickham is still the worst; Jane is still too nice for her own good. But I had a lot of fun reimagining other bits, especially Lydia, who I always felt got a bit of a short shrift in Austin’s novel, and for all her faults deserved better than to be married to Wickham. And of course the most important thing is still there: the hilarious, pride-filled romance between Lizzie and Darcy.
“The Other Team” by Michael Lee Richardson
My story ‘The Other Team’ is about a queer football team rallying around their trans star player.
When I was trying to come up with stories for Proud, I realised pretty quickly that I wanted to write something about friendship. There are lots of LGBTQI+ stories about love and romance and relationships, and those are great, but not as many about queer friendships, and those are really important to me.
I work with LGBTQI+ young people, and – despite knowing next to nothing about sport! – I’ve somehow found myself working for a sports organisation. I’ve taken lots of young people on day trips and weekends away to a play sport, and a lot of those experiences went into the story.
Working for a sports organisation, I realise how many issues there still are for LGBTQI+ people in sport, and I wanted to make sure the story stayed true to them.
I really wanted to get over the feeling of the pride you can feel, being part of a team – even when things aren’t going well! – and how important it is to feel like part of something.
“The Phoenix’s Fault” by Cynthia So
If you go to a Chinese wedding, you might see a picture of a dragon and a phoenix. It’s a popular symbol of a harmonious, heterosexual marriage—the dragon represents the man, and the phoenix the woman. Growing up in Hong Kong, even if I don’t really remember ever going to a wedding, I still saw this symbol around. Big Chinese restaurants there usually have a wall with a massive dragon and a massive phoenix on it to serve as the backdrop for wedding banquets.
When I was fifteen, I wrote a poem called “defying tradition” that ends “I will stand as a traitor, / not in between the phoenix and the dragon, / but next to a woman who, / like me, / seeks a phoenix to match her own”. I’ve always wanted to expand on the ideas that I touched on in that poem, about the heternormative expectations that these two mythical beasts represent in Chinese culture. So when I saw that the theme for this anthology was pride, the dragon and the phoenix immediately came to mind. They’re proud creatures, after all. I was thinking too of the pride that many parents feel when their children get married, and other ways someone might be able to make their family proud. So I wrote “The Phoenix’s Fault”, set in a world in which phoenixes and dragons are real, to see how a girl who has a pet phoenix might respond to these expectations that are placed upon her shoulders. What does she do when having a pet phoenix seems to destine her for marriage to the Emperor, but her heart wants something—someone—else?
“On The Run” by Kay Staples
‘On the Run’ is about two queer kids who have the chance to run away together and be themselves. It’s especially important for protagonist Nicky, who’s trying to figure out if he, or she, or they, are trans or not.
Uncertainty is what I really wanted to write about, since it’s something that marks adolescence for a lot of LGBTQ+ people. We take some time to work ourselves out, and all the while we’re being told that our orientation, gender, or gender presentation might be something shameful – and pride is the antithesis to that.
So, I came to this theme with the idea that you can be proud of who you are even if you aren’t sure who that is yet. Things will be okay whatever the answer is, just like they will be for Nicky and Dean.
“The Instructor” by Jess Vallance
When I was thinking about the theme of pride, I tried to work out what my own proudest achievement was and I realised it was probably passing my driving test! It took me two years and six tests. The idea of driving lessons as the backdrop of the story really appealed to me – I’ve always liked stories with small casts of characters with the bulk of the story covered as dialogue between them.
I also wanted to write something about the pain of relationships where the same-sex element is largely irrelevant to the confusion. The story is about the difficulties of working out what you mean to another person, when to speak up and what happens after you have – things that no one ever can be sure they’re getting right, whatever the gender of the people involved.
