There’s no one-size-fits-all way to celebrate Pride Month. While many don rainbow gear and wave pride flags at parades or events, there are plenty of ways to educate yourself and celebrate Pride on a more individual level.
For many LGBTQ+ folks, reading provides comfort and representation that may be missing otherwise. It may even serve as an important catalyst for coming out to loved ones. Still, these titles continue to end up on banned books lists – seven of the top 10 most challenged books in 2023 contained LGBTQ+ themes or characters, the American Library Association found.
Here are 11 books featuring LGBTQ+ storylines to check out this June and beyond.
This list includes a little something for everyone, from contemporary reads to sci-fi to cozy mystery. There are thousands of LGBTQ+ books to choose from – this list is just a starting point.
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“Last Night at the Telegraph Club” is a young adult historical fiction novel set in San Francisco’s Chinatown during the Red Scare. This queer romance follows 17-year-old Lily Hu who befriends – and quickly falls for – classmate Kathleen “Kath” Miller after she stumbles upon the underground Telegraph Club.
In “Last Night at the Telegraph Club,” you’ll find a coming-of-age story about underground lesbian bars, drag, found families, Chinese American identities, racism, duty, love and so much more.
“Bellies” follows a young couple, Tom and Ming, as they move in and out of each other’s lives in early adulthood. Tom has recently come out as gay and is quickly drawn to Ming, a magnetic playwright. But shortly after they move in together, Ming announces her intention to transition. It changes the dynamics of both their relationship and their broader friendship circle. Together and apart, Ming and Tom must navigate new questions around identity, gender, relationships, intimacy and heartbreak.
“Bellies” is a raw, vulnerable read of love and loss – it’s like Sally Rooney’s “Normal People” if the protagonists were queer and also went to therapy.
An incredibly dynamic read, “Chain-Gang All-Stars” is “The Hunger Games” meets the private prison industrial complex. In this chilling, satirical, dystopian work, two incarcerated women gladiators and their peers must fight to the death for their freedom through the profit-raising Criminal Action Penal Entertainment program.
Thurwar and Staxx, the program’s top fighters, are both lovers and teammates in a system that commodifies the killing of Black prisoners as “hard-action sports.” The action is striking and precise, unfolding cinematically as you read. With interwoven points of view, near-future technology and moving prose, “Chain-Gang All-Stars” is a haunting look at a broken justice system.
With elements of historical fiction and magical realism, this read bends both genre and gender. “Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl” follows Paul Polydoris, a gay college student in 1993 with a secret – he’s a shapeshifter. Paul can transform his body and gender at will.
“Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl” is a coming-of-age story that chronicles Paul's individual story through queer history, across the country in the '90s. Read it for a dizzying and complicated love letter to friendship, gender, fluidity and queer community.
“Body Grammar” is a gut punch of a queer love story. It follows Lou, an 18-year-old thrust into the world of international modeling after a tragic accident. Deep in the throes of trauma and guilt, Lou plunges further into fame, leaving behind her small-town Pacific Northwest life, her friends and the girl she loves. But with each viral photoshoot and editorial campaign, she finds herself slipping further and further from her identity.
In “Body Grammar,” growing up means looking in a mirror – at gender, at passion, at anxiety, at how we heal and how we love.
“Old Enough” is a contemporary campus novel about sophomore Sav, recently out as bisexual, as she straddles who she’s been and who she wants to become. When a childhood friend announces she’s getting married, Sav is forced to confront trauma from her past and a friendship that she may be outgrowing. Jakobson’s book grapples with trauma from sexual assault in an impactful, survivor-centered way.
“Old Enough” is a love letter to bisexuality that will tug on your heartstrings and make you want to hug your younger self.
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"On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous" is structured as a son's confessional to his mother who cannot read. With a nonlinear style, narrator Little Dog chronicles his family's history, from his grandmother in Vietnam, who escaped an arranged marriage and turned to sex work during the Vietnam War, to his mother's life as a single parent in Hartford, Connecticut to his relationship with a young man he meets while working on a tobacco farm.
"On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous" is raw and honest in its exploration of race, class, masculinity, addiction and trauma. This stunning novel reads like poetry with heartbreaking prose you can't help but lap up.
If time travel is your preferred trope in a romance novel, you’ll love “One Last Stop” by Casey McQuiston. This story picks up just after 23-year-old August moves to New York City. She’s a witty cynic and fiercely independent because she believes that’s the only way to be. But, when she meets Jane, a charming, leather-jacket-wearing girl on the train, that notion starts to crumble.
However, things aren’t what they seem. Jane isn’t what she seems. She’s been stuck on the subway beyond rational explanation since the 1970s, caught in a rip in space and time. August is a realist. She doesn’t believe in magic. But she just might have to in order to save the girl of her dreams. “One Last Stop” is a sweet story of a once-in-a-lifetime love.
“The House in the Cerulean Sea” is one of the coziest queer fantasy books out there. Linus Baker, a caseworker at the Department in Charge Of Magical Youth, is assigned to oversee the status of children in government-sanctioned orphanages. He’s a certified grump – he lives alone and likes it that way. But his life turns upside down when he gets sent on a highly classified mission to an island to determine whether six magical children are going to end the world as we know it.
When he arrives, he realizes the six children aren’t what their files indicate. Neither is Arthur Parnassus, their charming caretaker. This sweet and magical story is chock-full of love, found family and unlikely heroes.
Set against the backdrop of the recession and Occupy Wall Street movement, “Sirens & Muses” follows four artists from an elite college campus to the streets of New York City.
At Wrynn College of Art, we meet Louisa Arceneaux, a talented scholarship student who feels out of place among elite, upper-class students. She’s both wary of and drawn to her roommate Karina Piontek, an equally gifted daughter of wealthy art collectors. There’s also Preston Utley, a privileged anti-capitalist provocateur who is feuding with his professor, political painter Robert Berger.
“Sirens & Muses” is a gripping four-part perspective with a love triangle that forces the protagonists to confront their desires, fears, expectations and privileges.
A cozy mystery served with a side of magical realism, “Magic, Lies, and Deadly Pies” is about a pie-maker with a deadly business – she bakes murder into her crust. Daisy Ellery comes from a long line of magical women and she’s using her calling to avenge wronged women by killing off the men who hurt them.
But she’s got rules for her magic, lines she won’t cross. Not until she starts getting blackmailed, that is. Can she keep her abilities a secret and continue saving women with someone praying on her downfall? Come for the magic and stay for the bisexual romance subplot and mouth-watering pie imagery.
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