Pride Month Staff Picks!
What is Pride Month?
Happy Pride Month, book friends! Pride Month started as a way to honor the 1969 Stone Wall Riots, a historic tipping point for the gay liberation movement. With the rise in discriminatory legislation, like anti-trans bills and book bannings in schools and libraries (and possibly bookstores!) across the country, this month goes beyond rainbows. Show your support by reading books by LGBTQIA+ writers and consider donating to organizations doing important work, like The Trevor Project, Lambda Literary, and Casa Ruby.
We compiled some of our favorite books that feature queer and trans characters and their experiences. Our staff reads widely - from romance to memoirs to kids literature - so there’s something for everyone here to keep celebrating pride all year long!
Shop our pride staff picks here or if you’re an audiobook lover, you can support us by shopping through Libro.fm!
Ally’s Picks
Tenderness by poet Derrick Austin: His poems are so intimate, real, and often optimistic. I find their compassion for the world (and the self) refreshing. Here you'll find poems about friendship, identity, place, art, nature... it's a beautiful and uplifting collection.
Bathe the Cat by Alice B. McGinty, illustrated by David Roberts. These two dads have their hands full getting ready for a visit from grandma. It’s a colorful romp that any young family could relate to - chaos regins, bathe the cat! I love this adorable picture book.
My other staff pick is the contemporary classic Her Body and Other Parties by Lambda Literary Award winner Carmen Maria Machado. These stories are weird and wonderful - I love the playful, unconventional form, and how they celebrate desire and queer identity. Her new story collection was announced this January. A Brief and Fearful Star, her latest collection, seems to be forthcoming in 2024.
aNGIE’S PICKS
You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi: A luscious summer read that tackles romance and love and how we can grow from grief. Emotional foreplay! Bisexual excellence! As Emezi said, messy girls deserve happily ever afters too!
Elatsoe by Darcy Little Bader: A murder mystery fillled with magic and monsters, I was instantly charmed by Ellie and her dead dog ghost sidekick. Blending Lipan Apache myths with the fantastical in a unique story unlike anything I've read before, including asexual rep in a YA book!
The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson: A multiverse adventure with incredible-world building, wicked smart commentary on gender, sexuality, and class, and a badass protagonist you're rooting for from start to finish. Everything adding up to make this a perfect.
rachel’s Picks
Delilah Green Doesn’t Care by Ashley Herring Blake: Delilah Green says she doesn’t care, but as you read this one, you start to question if that’s really the truth. The first standalone setting up a series of sapphic love stories featuring a fantastically wonderful girl gang you’ll want to be a part of, with laughs, emotions and some heat along the way.
I Kissed Shara Wheeler by Casey McQuiston (we have signed copies!): Author Casey McQuiston wrote a wonderful book for any person (young or old) searching for how they fit into the world. The book features a cast of characters you’ll grow to love and want to hold close to your heart. Set in the final weeks of the protagonist’s Senior Year this book is part mystery, part self-discovery journey and part manifesto for anyone who has ever felt they’re not able to change the world around them.
The Charm Offensive by Alison Cochrun: Alison Cochrun has written a wonderful masterpiece that depicts "whatever love you want, you should have it, whatever form it is" (to quote the author herself). Fans of the Bachelor, fairy tales, diverse representation in romance and happy ever afters will swoon for this one.
Hannah’s Picks
Yerba Buena by Nina LaCour: A devastating and moving novel about two women whose connection is instant but whose own journeys to heal and find themselves must first unfold before they can be who they need to be for each other.
Skye Falling by Mia McKenzie: Perhaps I relate too much to this messy protagonist who finds herself far away from the stable lives and permanent attachments that most of her peers seem to have found, but I loved this book a lot. It was charming and emotionally resonant, full of complex characters, and the premise was exactly the right amount of juicy (a woman who sold her eggs in her twenties meets the now twelve-year-old child who was born from that decision). It is the story of accepting the relationships you thought you could do without and of forging the life that works for you.
Burn the Page by Danica Roem: Hilarious, charming, and incredibly vulnerable, this memoir from VA State Rep Danica Roem made me laugh, cry, and get ready to knock some doors.
I also enthusiastically second Ally’s recommendation for Her Body and Other Parties, and I will add that I love love love In the Dream House, a memoir by the same author that depicts domestic violence in a lesbian relationship.
Jen’s Picks
The Siren Queen by Nghi Vo: For the fans of the Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, The Siren Queen is set in the golden age of Hollywood where a young Chinese American Girl chases her destiny to be a star on the silver screen. She has to make a deal with the monsters (which are very real) , overcome heartbreak, find her own family and her path to see that dream come true. This story was deliciously dark and fun, and I loved it.
The First Sister by Linden A. Lewis: For fans of Red Rising, The Fist Sister is an epic space opera featuring a chaotic bisexual preistess that is set up as a spy for the Sisterhood on her new captain to test their loyalty and a soldier on a mission to hunt their former partner down who have betrayed their government. This book is gorgeous storytelling of epic space battles and political intrigue. The first in a trilogy!
The Priory of The Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon: This is a chonker of a book featuring magic, dragons, and great fantasy drama! The world building and character development is amazing and flows really well for an epic fantasy. I couldn’t put it down when I started reading it and want more books set in this universe.
Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao: This book was wild. Inspired by Chinese mythology with a touch of Pacific Rim featuring a young woman hell bent on revenge. This book is unapologetically angry at the misogynistic world and I loved everything about it.
Mr. Watson’s Chickens by Jarrett Dapier : Such a cute children’s picture book about how if you get one chicken, you might as well get 100 chickens. Also, I really like chickens.
Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert: My favorite of the Brown sisters book, but they are all great and you should read them. I loved Dani so much and her growth in this story is wonderful. Also it has fake dating which might be one of my favorite tropes ever, after one bed of course.
ABBY’S PICKS
She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker Chan: A historical retelling of Mulan is destined to play around with gender in the best way, and this book doesn’t disappoint. Featuring a protagonist who takes on her dead brother’s identity in order to survive, a mongol prince and the eunuch guard who loves him, and a whip-smart fiance to an emperor, this first part of a duology is a great read for fans of The Poppy War!
Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire: A beautiful novella, this is a gothic take on fairy tales and the children who go missing within them. It features a wide cast of characters including Nancy, our protagonist, who was my first foray into asexual characters. McGuire is pretty familiar with the world of fantasy but you can feel a special care taken with these characters and stories, not to mention the six other books in the series that will keep you busy all month long!
Ace by Angela Chen: This is a great read for anyone who wants to know a little more about asexuality, either for their own journey or for a loved one. Chen covers a wide-range of elements of the misunderstood orientation, from diving into her own journey to interviews with individuals who only came to terms with their sexuality after years of marriage and kids. I absolutely devoured this beautiful book and will definitely come back to it again and again.
The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott: I know, I know, all of those WWII/Cold War female-spy books seem to meld together into an incoherent blob. But this one is different I swear! Following the publication of Dr. Zhivago during the Cold War, an American secretary, Irina, is tasked with smuggling the text into the USSR where it’s banned for political reasons. Her mentor is a glamourous spy, Sally, who helps Irina not only through the newfound world of espionage but also some newfound realizations about herself. The atmosphere is great and smoky and sexy and I adored it!
Cherry Robbers by Sarai Walker: This is the perfect book for a hot summer afternoon! Featuring the 6 daughters of the Chapel firearm fortune, they seem to live a charmed life in New York until the eldest daughter, Aster, gets married. One after another, the girls die tragically within days of their wedding. Our protagonist is Iris, the second youngest, who is determined to figure out why her beloved sisters keep dying, all the while discovering secrets about her family, specifically her older sister Daphne who seems to be spending a lot of time in the woods with her friend Veronica… hmmm.
MELISSA’S PICKS
Mama and Mommy and Me in the Middle by Nina LaCour and Kaylani Juanita: An only child weathers a week-long absence of one of her mothers in this tender, joyful story that any child who has ever missed a parent will relish. The fact that it centers a biracial family with same-sex parents is icing on the cake. Plus, Kaylani Juanita’s lush artwork begs to be poured over! Ages 3-7
Melissa by Alex Gino: Alex Gino’s award-winning debut, originally published in 2014 as George and one of the first middle-grade novels with a trans protagonist—finally gets the makeover title it deserves! Melissa desperately wants to play the role of Charlotte in her class play, Charlotte’s Web, only she’s told she can’t because she’s a boy. With the help of her best friend, she launches a plan to let the world know who she is. Also one of my daughter's favorite books! Ages 8-12
Frankie and Bug by Gayle Forman: Against a backdrop of ‘80s tabloid murders, boy bands, and the seedy boardwalk of Venice Beach, Frankie and Bug is a delightful coming-of-age story about a surprising friendship that develops one summer between Beatrice—Bug for short—and her neighbor’s visiting nephew, Frankie, whose refusal to don swim trunks is the first clue to Frankie’s fiercely guarded secret. I love the way this story gently nudges at issues of racial and gender identity without ever feeling heavy-handed or compromising its authentic tween voice. Ages 8-12.
Answers in the Pages by David Levithan: Answers in the Pages is a timely, beautifully spun story about a classroom text that is challenged by parents for its potentially queer protagonists and the impact it has on the fifth grade class that's trying to read it. David Levithan has filled his prose with immensely helpful language for understanding the (misguided) love where book challenges can originate—and how to refute those challenges because they deny the world our children live in. Ages 8-12
In the Key of Us by Mariama J. Lockington: In this lyrical ode to summer camp, music, and first love, eighth-grade bunkmates Andi and Zora are initially convinced the only thing they have in common is their distinction as the only two Black girls at Harmony Music Camp. But, as the summer goes on, the two begin to share secrets about their complicated pasts—Andi is grieving the loss of her mother, while Zora is suffocated by hers—and find in one another a connection they’ve been yearning for. Ages 10-14
