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2SLGBTQI+ Topics February 2026 |
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Fire Sword and Sea
by Vanessa Riley
From Vanessa Riley, acclaimed author of Queen of Exiles, comes a sweeping, immersive saga based on the life of the legendary seventeenth-century pirate Jacquotte Delehaye.The Caribbean Sea, 1675. Jacquotte Delahaye is the mixed-race daughter of a wealthy tavern owner on the island of Tortuga. Instead of marriage, Jacquotte dreams of joining the seafarers and smugglers whose tall-masted ships cluster in the turquoise waters around Tortuga. She falls in love with a pirate, but when he returns to the sea, Jacquotte decides to make her own way. In Haiti she becomes Jacques, a dockworker, earning the respect of those around her while hiding her gender.Jacquotte discovers that secret identities are fairly common in the chaotic world of seafaring, which is full of outsiders and misfits. She forms a deep bond with Bahati, an African-born woman who has escaped slavery and also disguises herself as a man to navigate the world. They join forces with Dirkje De Wulf, a fearless adventurer who also lives as a man at sea. As Jacques, Jacquotte falls in love with Lizzôa d'Erville, a beautiful courtesan who deals in secrets and sex. While others see their work clothes as a disguise, Lizzôa's true self is as a woman.For the next twenty years, Jacquotte raids the Caribbean, making enemies and amassing a fortune in stolen gold. When her fellow pirates decide to increase their profits by entering the slave trade, Jacquotte turns away from piracy and the pursuit of riches. Risking her life in one deadly skirmish after another, she instead begins to plot a war of liberation.
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Heap Earth Upon It
by Chloe Michelle Howarth
Chloe Michelle Howarth of the bestselling novel, Sunburn, offers a new take on sapphic obsession, for fans of All Our Wives Under the Sea, Mrs. S, Biography of X, and Organ Meats. With additional, exclusive content inside. In this follow up to the award winning Sunburn, a claustrophobic tale of obsession, family, and identity... In January, 1965, the growing town of Ballycrea has four new residents. The O'Leary siblings arrive in their new village under suspicious circumstances. Desperate to make a new start and leave their troubled life behind, the O'Learys offer few, contradicting details about their past. As they slowly settle in to town, the siblings are taken under the wing of Betty and Bill Nevan, a wealthy couple in their forties who have always wanted children. However, as one O'Leary sister grows close to Betty, lines are crossed and their intense relationship becomes difficult to define. All the while, the O'Leary's buried secrets keep bubbling up, threatening to ruin their new future. Gothic, lush, and suspenseful, Chloe Michelle Howarth spins a tangled web that leaves you wondering who to trust until the very last page
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George Falls Through Time
by Ryan Collett
Newly laid off George's internet bill is in his ex-boyfriend's name. He's got a spider-infested apartment, and two of the six dogs he's walking in London have just escaped. It's pure undiluted stress that sends him into a spiral, all the way to the year 1300. When he comes to, George recognizes the same rolling hills of Greenwich Park. But the luxuries and phone service of modernity are nowhere. In their place are locals with a bizarre, slanted speech in awe of his foreign clothes, who swiftly toss him in a dungeon. Despite the barbarity of a medieval world, a servant named Simon helps George acclimate to a simpler, easier existence--until a summons from the King threatens to send his life up in flames. George Falls Through Time is as much an inward journey as an outward one: an immersive exploration of identity and dislocation that pits present-day sensibilities against a raw and alien backdrop, a strangely perfect canvas for the absurd anxieties of our modern lives.
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Missing Sam
by Thrity Umrigar
A tense and twisty story of a woman who goes missing on a morning run and her wife's determination to both find her and clear her own name--from the bestselling author of Honor. One night after a party, old grievances surface between married couple Aliya and Sam and the night ends badly with a heated argument. Sam goes for a run early the next morning to clear her head--and doesn't come back. Aliya reports her wife missing, but as a gay, Muslim daughter of immigrants, she can't escape the scrutiny and suspicion of those around her. Scared and furious and feeling isolated as strangers and acquaintances alike doubt her innocence, Aliya makes one wrong choice after another. She must fight to prove her innocence in the public eye even as she is torn between her fear that Sam is dead and her desire to find and save her wife. But is safety ever truly possible for them? A provocative examination of suburban mores, Missing Sam captures the terror manifested in today's political climate, and the real dangers, both physical and psychological, of being brown and queer in America.
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Missing summer? Escape the cold with these beach reads
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Hammajang Luck
by Makana Yamamoto
Edie is done with crime. Eight years in prison changes a person. Particularly when you're only there because your partner, your best friend, your all-but-sister, sold you down the river. Even getting Edie out on early parole doesn't earn Angel any forgiveness. That's why Edie knows they'll turn down Angel's offer of a job. One last, big score. A chance to take down the man who put them away: Joyce Atlas. But Edie's lost too much time with their family. A heavily pregnant sister, a seriously ill niece, and a nephew who wasn't born before they went to prison. There's not a question. Edie's going straight. Or trying to - but Atlas has had them blacklisted from every employer on the station. Edie really doesn't want to work with Angel. It's far too complicated, they're far too angry, and Angel is bringing up a lot of confusing feelings. But they don't have any other choice . . . And if they pull it off, the 1.25 billion payout might just soothe some old wounds--
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Disco Witches of Fire Island
by Blair Fell
Heartfelt.--The New York Times Hit the dance floor with a coven of queer witches on 1980s Fire Island in this gay fantasy romance about finding magic, love, and family in the face of tragedy. A heartwarming LGBTQ+ novel for fans of steamy romance, loathe-at-first-sight, and Red, White, and Royal Blue. The paperback edition will have sprayed teal edges and foil on the cover! It's 1989, and Joe Agabian and his best friend Ronnie set out to spend their first summer working in the hedonistic gay paradise of Fire Island Pines. Joe is desperate to let loose and finally move beyond the heartbreak of having lost his boyfriend to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The two friends are quickly taken in by a pair of quirky, older house cleaners. But something seems off, and Joe starts to suspect the two older men of being up to something otherworldly. In truth, Howie and Lenny are members of a secret disco witch coven tasked with protecting the island--and young men like Joe--from the relentless tragedies ravaging their community. The only problem is, having lost too many of their fellow witches to the epidemic, the coven's protective powers have been seriously damaged. Unaware of all the mystical shenanigans going on, Joe starts to fall for the super-cute bisexual ferryman who just happens to have webbed feet and an unusual ability to hold his breath underwater. But Joe's longing to find love is tripped up by his own troublesome past as well as the lure of a mysterious hunk he keeps seeing around the island--a man Howie and Lenny warn may be a harbinger of impending doom. The Disco Witches need to find help--fast--if they're to save Joe and the island from the Great Darkness. But how? Fans of spicy queer romances with a dash of fantasy will fall in love with this stunning novel of community, love, sex, magic, and hope in desperate times.
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Summer Girls
by Jennifer Dugan
A teen girl whose beachside town is being gentrified by wealthy vacationers falls in love with the daughter of a real estate developer--
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I leave it up to you : a novel
by Jinwoo Chong
Jack Jr. awakens from a coma to an unfamiliar world, so he returns to Korean American enclave Fort Lee, New Jersey, to work at his parents' restaurant Ioja, spar with alcoholic brother James, connect with the male nurse who cared for him, and become underqualified sage to his teenage nephew.
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