LGBTQIAP+ Reads

If you'd like personalized book recommendations, check out our Tailored Titles services for both fiction and nonfiction books. 
 
Call Me by Your Name
by André Aciman

The sudden and powerful attraction between a teenage boy and a summer guest at his parents' house on the Italian Riviera has a profound and lasting influence that will mark them both for a lifetime.

Days Without End
by Sebastian Barry

Entering the U.S. army after fleeing the Great Famine in Ireland, seventeen-year-old Thomas McNulty and his brother-in-arms, John Cole, experience the harrowing realities of the Indian wars and the American Civil War between the Wyoming plains and Tennessee.
Our Wives Under the Sea
by Julia Armfield

Miri thinks she has got her wife back, when Leah finally returns after a deep sea mission that ended in catastrophe. It soon becomes clear, though, that Leah may have come back wrong. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were stranded on the ocean floor, Leah has carried part of it with her, onto dry land and into their home. To have the woman she loves back should mean a return to normal life, but Miri can feel Leah slipping from her grasp. Memories of what they had before - the jokes they shared, the films they watched, all the small things that made Leah hers - only remind Miri of what she stands to lose. Living in the same space but suddenly separate, Miri comes to realize that the life that they had might be gone.
Courting Mr. Lincoln
by Louis Bayard

Reimagines the early adulthood of the future sixteenth president from the alternating views of the two people who knew and loved him best, spirited debutante Mary Todd and Lincoln's intimate confidante, Joshua Speed.
Fun Home: a Family Tragicomic
by Alison Bechdel

An unusual memoir done in the form of a graphic novel by a cult favorite comic artist offers a darkly funny family portrait that details her relationship with her father, a historic preservation expert dedicated to restoring the family's Victorian home, funeral home director, high-school English teacher, and closeted homosexual.
Written in the Stars
by Alexandria Bellefleur

A lighthearted holiday romance inspired by Pride and Prejudice depicts the experiences of a free-spirited social media astrologer who agrees to a fake relationship with a no-nonsense actuary to appease their respective families.
Trans-sister Radio
by Christopher A. Bohjalian

With her daughter about to leave for college, fortysomething Alison Banks enrolls in a local college course to take her mind off things and finds herself falling for her instructor, Dana, a man who later confides that he wants to have a sex-change operation. Reader's Guide available. Reprint. 75,000 first printing.
The Heart's Invisible Furies
by John Boyne

Adopted by a well-to-do, if eccentric, Dublin couple that remind him that he is not a real member of their family, Cyril embarks on a journey to find himself and where he came from, discovering his identity, a home, a country and much more throughout a long lifetime.
Tell the Wolves I'm Home
by Carol Rifka Brunt

Her world upended by the death of a beloved artist uncle who was the only person who understood her, fourteen-year-old June is mailed a teapot by her uncle's grieving friend, with whom June forges a poignant relationship
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
by Michael Chabon

In 1939 New York City, Joe Kavalier, a refugee from Hitler's Prague, joins forces with his Brooklyn-born cousin, Sammy Clay, to create comic-book superheroes inspired by their own fantasies, fears, and dreams.
In at the Deep End
by Kate Davies

Enduring a dead-end job and three-year romantic dry spell, Julia accepts an invitation to a trendy warehouse party and rediscovers her sexuality as a lesbian before her new lover reveals a darker nature
The Danish Girl
by David Ebershoff

A novel set in Copenhagen, Paris and Dresden in the 1920s introduces a man who discovers he is a woman, and the woman who will do anything for him, in a tale of love and marriage in the midst of fundamental crisis. Soon to be a major motion picture starring Academy Award-winner Eddie Redmayne. Reissue. Movie tie-in.
You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty
by Akwaeke Emezi

Learning how to feel joy while healing from loss, Feyi Adekola starts dating the perfect guy, but discovers she has feelings for someone else who is off limits and must decide just how far she is willing to go for a second chance at love.
Girl, Woman, Other
by Bernardine Evaristo

Girl, Woman, Other is a celebration of the diversity of Black British experience. Moving, hopeful, and inventive, this extraordinary novel is a vivid portrait of the state of contemporary Britain and the legacy of Britain's colonial history in Africa and the Caribbean. The twelve central characters of this multi-voiced novel lead vastly different lives: Amma is a newly acclaimed playwright whose work often explores her black lesbian identity; her old friend Shirley is a teacher, jaded after decades of work in London's funding-deprived schools; Carole, one of Shirley's former students, works hard to earn a degree from Oxford and becomes an investment banker; Carole's mother Bummi works as a cleaner and worries about her daughter's lack of rootedness despite her obvious achievements. From a nonbinary social media influencer to a 93-year-old woman living on a farm in Northern England, these unforgettable characters also intersect in shared aspects of their identities, from age to race to sexuality to class. Sparklingly witty and filled with emotion, centering voices we often see othered, and written in an innovative and fast-moving form that borrows from poetry, Girl, Woman, Other is a polyphonic and richly textured social novel that reminds us of everything that connects us to our neighbors, even in times when we are encouraged to be split apart.
Fried Green Tomatoes at the
Whistle Stop Cafe
by Fannie Flagg

Mrs. Threadgoode's tale of two high-spirited women of the 1930s, Idgie and Ruth, helps Evelyn, a 1980s woman in a sad slump of middle age, to begin to rejuvenate her own life.
This is How it Always Is
by Laurie Frankel

A family reshapes their ideas about family, love, and loyalty when youngest son Claude reveals increasingly determined preferences for girls' clothing and accessories and refuses to stay silent.
Three Junes
by Julia Glass

The interconnected lives, loves, and relationships of different generations of the McLeod family are revealed over the course of three crucial summers, in a debut novel about love, death, and birth in a Scottish family.
Less
by Andrew Sean Greer

Receiving an invitation to his ex-boyfriend's wedding, Arthur, a failed novelist on the eve of his fiftieth birthday, embarks on an international journey that finds him falling in love, risking his life, reinventing himself, and making connections with the past
Carol
by Patricia Highsmith

Trapped in a dead-end day job in a department store, stage designer Therese Belivet finds her life forever changed when she encounters--and falls in love with--Carol Aird, a suburban housewife in the midst of a divorce.
Stray City
by Chelsey Johnson

Building a home for herself in the thriving but insular lesbian underground of Portland away from her Midwestern Catholic childhood, a young artist becomes unexpectedly pregnant after a reckless night and is forced to come to terms with her past a decade later when her precocious daughter asks about her father.
The House in the Cerulean Sea
by TJ Klune

Given a curious classified assignment to evaluate the potential risks posed by six supernatural orphans, a case worker at the Department in Charge of Magical Youth bonds with an enigmatic caregiver who hides dangerous secrets.
These Things Happen
by Richard Kramer

Wesley, a 10th grader, tries to navigate through life, despite having divorced parents, a father who has come out as gay and a popular friend who also comes out as gay, right after winning a school election.
Her Body and Other Parties
by Carmen Maria Machado

Contains short stories about the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.
The Great Believers
by Rebecca Makkai

A dazzling new novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris, by the acclaimed and award-winning author Rebecca Makkai. In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico's funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico's little sister. Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago crisis, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways AIDS affected her life and her relationship with her daughter. The two intertwining stories take us through the heartbreak of the eighties and the chaos of the modern world, as both Yale and Fiona struggle to find goodness in the midst of disaster.
One Last Stop
by Casey McQuiston

Cynical August starts to believe in the impossible when meets Jane on the subway, a mysterious punk rocker she forms a crush on, who is literally displaced in time from the 1970s and is trying to find her way back.
Outlawed
by Anna North

The day of her wedding, 17 year old Ada's life looks good; she loves her husband, and she loves working as an apprentice to her mother, a respected midwife. But after a year of marriage and no pregnancy, in a town where barren women are routinely hanged as witches, her survival depends on leaving behind everything she knows. She joins up with the notorious Hole in the Wall Gang, a band of outlaws led by a preacher-turned-robber known to all as the Kid. Charismatic, grandiose, and mercurial, the Kid is determined to create a safe haven for outcast women. But to make this dream a reality, the Gang hatches a treacherous plan that may get them all killed. And Ada must decide whether she's willing to risk her life for the possibility of a new kind of future for them all.
The Guncle
by Steven Rowley

When Patrick, or Gay Uncle Patrick (GUP) for short, takes on the role of primary guardian for his young niece and nephew, he sets "Guncle Rules," but soon learns that parenting is not solved with treats or jokes as his eyes are opened to a new sense of responsibility.
When Katie Met Cassidy
by Camille Perri

A romantic comedy about gender and sexuality follows the experiences of a traditionally minded Midwesterner who, in the aftermath of an ended engagement, finds herself in a transformative relationship with a self-assured New York businesswoman.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
by Victoria Schwab

This stunning new collectorÂ’s edition chronicles the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, who, in a moment of desperation, makes a Faustian bargain to live forever, and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets, until 300 years pass, and a young man remembers her name.
Home After Dark
by David Small

A long-awaited graphic novel by the Caldecott Medal-winning creator of Stitches uses evocative, spliced imagery to convey the story of an abandoned youth struggling to survive in a dilapidated, racially torn and chronically violent 1950s California community.
Fortune Favors the Dead
by Stephen Spotswood

A detective novel set in 1945, about two female private investigators trying to solve the locked-room murder of a society widow.
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
by Ocean Vuong

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born--a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam--and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity.
Lot: Stories
by Bryan Washington

Coming of age in his family's Houston restaurant, a mixed-heritage teen navigates bullying, his newly discovered sexual orientation, and the ripple effects of a disadvantaged community.
The Paying Guests
by Sarah Waters

Forced to take in lodgers in economically challenged 1922 South London, widow Mrs. Wray and her spinster daughter find their lives profoundly and disturbingly changed by the arrival of a modern young couple.
Mrs. Dalloway
by Virginia Woolf

In the wake of World War I and the 1918 flu pandemic, Clarissa Dalloway, elegant and vivacious, is preparing for a party and remembering those she once loved. In another part of London, Septimus Smith is suffering from shell- shock and on the brink of madness. Their days interweave and their lives converge as the party reaches its glittering climax. In this engulfing portrait of one day in a woman's life, in which she perfects the interior monologue and recapitulates the life cycle in the hours of the day, from first light to the dark of night, Woolf achieves an uncanny simulacrum of consciousness, bringing past, present, and future together, and recording, impression by impression, minute by minute, the feel of life itself.
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