Celebrate Pride Month by diving into one (or a few) of these outstanding LGBTQ+ titles. From uplifting tales of chosen family to atmospheric and experimental novels, these books are uniquely original and impossible to put down. Happy Pride and happy reading!

 

Stories Celebrating Queer Joy and Community:

Moving fiction where love, chosen family, and belonging take center stage.

Mr. Loverman by Bernadine Evaristo

From Booker Prize-winning author of Girl, Woman, Other, a ground-breaking and hilarious novel set in London about two older Caribbean men—childhood friends and secret lovers—who must reckon with being closeted in a rapidly changing world.

“Brokeback Mountain with ackee and saltfish and old people.”—Dawn French

 

 

Frighten the Horses by Oliver Radclyffe

An unforgettable memoir of a trans man’s journey to self-acceptance in middle age. With growing courage and support from his community, Radclyffe navigates parenting, marriage, and gender identity to become the man he is supposed to be.

“This hopeful retelling of one life, from the post-transition perspective, makes transness a more viable possibility.”—Sarah Schulman, author of Let the Record Show

 

City of Laughter by Temim Fruchter

Part fantastical queer family history and part folktale, City of Laughter braids together four generations of women in one family grappling with hidden secrets. Infused with joy, desire, and spirituality, this dazzling debut asks how far we can travel from the stories that raised us without leaving them behind.

“A book full of belly laughs, intergenerational wonder, queer beauty, Jewish history, and storytelling that reshapes worlds.”—BookPage (starred review)

 

Queer Enlightenments by Anthony Delaney

A BookRiot Best Book of 2025

A ground-breaking history tracing the extraordinary lives of eleven Enlightenment-era queer people. From the taverns of 18th century England to 1830’s New York, Delaney offers an illuminating romp through history, one filled with resistance and joy.

“Moving and revelatory . . . Delaney gives a voice to women and men whose lives have been written out of history.”—Hallie Rubenhold, bestselling author of The Five and Story of a Murder

 

Queer Books Perfect for Your Next Book Club:

Reads sure to spark endless discussion at your next book club meeting.

The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (And His Mother) by Rabih Alameddine

Winner of the National Book Award, Alameddine’s newest novel is a wildly unique celebration of love. Set in Lebanon, and dancing across six decades, the story follows Raja “the neighborhood homosexual” and his octogenarian mother in an unforgettable tale of self-discovery, trauma, and forgiveness.

“Feels like sitting down with an old friend who is a brilliant storyteller.”—All Things Considered, NPR

 

And Then He Sang a Lullaby by Ani Kayode Somtochukwu

A powerful, luminous debut about two queer men in Nigeria who must find a way for their love to survive when a new anti-gay law is passed, reckoning with the true cost of love and freedom in a society steeped in homophobia.

“A remarkably beautiful and intimate story . . . from a new voice we are sure to treasure for years to come.”—Michael Welch, Chicago Review of Books

 

Medusa of the Roses by Navid Sinaki

A queer literary noir full of sex and betrayal. Set in modern-day Tehran, the novel follows Anjir, a morbid romantic and petty thief whose boyfriend disappears just as they’re planning to leave their hometown for good.

“A hypnotic fever dream of a novel that stokes the horrors of longing, loss, and aesthetic decay.”—Ulrich Baer, Electric Literature

 

 

John of John by Douglas Stuart

An Instant New York Times Bestseller and Oprah Book Club Pick

When Cal returns to his Hebridean island home, he is reunited with his sheep-farming, tweed-weaving, Calvinist father and his profanity-loving maternal grandmother. What unfolds a moving novel about duty, passion, and the transformative power of truth.

“John of John is one of 2026’s literary triumphs.”—Hamilton Caine, Boston Globe

 

Books Featuring Queer Voices, But with a Speculative Twist:

Looking for a bit of escapism? These uncanny queer stories are sure to deliver.

Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson

An audacious love story exploring transhumanism, artificial intelligence, and queer love. Told across multiple timelines and disparate lives—from Mary Shelley to a transgender doctor called Ry—Frankissstein is a bold and fiercely funny love story about life itself.

“A brainy, batty story—an unholy amalgamation of scholarship and comedy.”—Ron Charles, Washington Post

 

 

Night Beast by Ruth Joffre

A stunning collection of surreal love stories and twisted fairytales that explore the lives of queer women and mothers to reveal the monsters lurking in their daily lives. Filled with worlds both strange and familiar, this is perfect for fans of David Lynch and Carmen Maria Machado.

“What pure pleasure to recommend to you the debut collection of Ruth Joffre, whose stories are nimble, audacious, and far seeing.”—Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble

 

Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi

Ada is “born with one foot on the other side” and as a child, develops separate selves within her. When she travels from Nigeria to the US for college, these selves grow power and agency, leading to her life spiraling out of control. Based on the author’s realities, Freshwater is a dazzling exploration of identity, mental health, and the mystery of being.

“A witchy, electrifying story of danger and compulsion.”—Wall Street Journal

 

Prophet by Sin Blaché and Helen Macdonald

A tantalizing adventure fusing noir, sci-fi, and a slow burn queer romance. Set in a near future world perilously close to our own, an unlikely spy duo investigates a mysterious substance called Prophet that weaponizes people’s fondest memories against them.

“A crackling, shape-shifting romp with big ideas and a bigger heart . . . A delight.”—C Pam Zhang

 

 

Compulsively Readable, Messy Queer Relationships:

For when reality TV isn’t cutting it anymore. These books are filled with fascinating relationship dynamics you just can’t look away from.

Lush Lives by J. Vanessa Lyon

An electrically charged love story set in the high-stakes world of art and auction in New York City following an artist and auction house appraiser as they navigate ambition, queer love, and forgotten histories.

“A vibrant, sexy, queer contemporary romance.”—Book Riot

 

 

 

Love In the Big City by Sang Young Park

An energetic and joyful novel depicting a young man’s search for love and happiness in the lonely city of Seoul. Engrossed in his friendships, lost loves, and millennial loneliness, he oscillates between the glittering nighttime world of the city and the bleary-eyed morning-after.

“Intoxicating . . . reads like an iPhone screen, vibrant and addictive.”—Bobby Finger, New York Times Book Review

 

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo

This Booker Prize-winning novel explores the intersecting lives of Black British women—from a nonbinary social media influencer to a 93-year-old woman living on a farm in Northern England—as they navigate the complexity of love, identity, and contemporary womanhood.

“Eminently readable and emotionally intense.”—New York Journal of Books

 

Difficult Women by Roxanne Gay

From the New York Times bestselling author, a haunting collection featuring an unforgettable chorus of women in modern America—from an underground girls’ fight club to a wealthy Florida suburb—as they become consumed with passionate love affairs, betrayal, and the raw search for true connection.

“The characters who inhabit Difficult Women . . . aren’t just characters. They are our mothers, sisters and partners. They are human. They are us.”—Jaleesa M. Jones, USA Today

 

Gay Classics to Brag About Reading at Pride Events:

Bonus points if you read your copy on a parade float!

Queer by William S. Burroughs

Set in 1950s Mexico City, the story of an American expatriate afflicted with heroin withdrawal who becomes dangerously enamored with a younger and emotionally distant ex-navy man.

“Burroughs’s voice is hard, derisive, inventive, free, funny, serious, poetic, indelibly American.”—Joan Didion

 

 

 

Closer by Dennis Cooper

A cult classic from “the most dangerous writer in America” (Village Voice), a haunting exploration of 1980s Middle America, alienation, and the very limits of experience, following the enigmatic George Miles. Now featuring an introduction by cultural critic Lynne Tillman.

“A story about how desire can persist to the brink of self-destruction and beyond . . . A work of considerable courage.”—Thomas R. Edwards, New York Review of Books

 

A Visitation of Spirits by Randall Kenan

The evocative coming of age story of a high-achieving sixteen-year-old boy who wrestles with the guilt of his same-sex attraction and desire to escape his rural North Carolina town. A fierce, powerful examination of Queer and Black identity in the American South.

“Kenan continues James Baldwin’s legendary tradition of ‘telling it on the mountain.’”—San Francisco Chronicle

 

 

City of Night by John Rechy

An unflinching novel about a hustling “youngman” and his search for self-knowledge within the neon-lit world of hustlers and drag queens. Scandalizing critics upon its 1963 publication, this novel ushered in a new era of American fiction.

“Both shocking and suffuse with longing, a combo that can make an adolescent boy circa 1966 lose his mind.”—Richard Price, Newsweek

 

 

Let’s Go, Lesbians!:

Truly excellent titles written by lesbians.

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson

A pioneering work of autofiction detailing a young girl’s coming-of-age in an evangelical household in Northern England as she grapples with her sexuality and impending adulthood.

“A striking, quirky, delicate, and intricate work . . . Winterson has mastered both comedy and tragedy.”—The Washington Post Book World

 

 

Report for Murder and Common Murder by Val McDermid

The first two propulsive mysteries in the acclaimed Lindsay Gordon series, which follow a “cynical socialist lesbian feminist journalist” as she investigates the vicious murder of the headliner at a fundraising gala who is found garroted with her own cello strings.

“A timeless mystery, well-plotted with crisp dialogue and solid characterization.”—Orlando Sun-Sentinel on Report for Murder

 

 

Afterglow by Eileen Myles

From literary trailblazer and queer activist Eileen Myles, the kaleidoscopic eulogy of their beloved pitbull Rosie. Told in unforgettable vignettes, including a section in which Rosie is interviewed by a childhood puppet, it explores the dichotomy between intimacy and spirituality, alcoholism and recovery, as well as the fantastic myths we spin to get to the heart of grief.

“Raw and affecting, and in its wild snuffling way, utterly original.”—Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air, NPR

 

Pussy, King of the Pirates by Kathy Acker

An experimental “grrrl pirate” novel, loosely based on Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, following a group of former prostitutes who hire an all-girl pirate crew to sail the high seas in a hallucinatory, surreal search for buried treasure.

“Acker discards, mangles, and rewrites literary conventions, using words as weapons to smash her way into modernity.”—Boston Sunday Herald