Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction by Lee Mandelo

Speculative fiction is the literature of questions, of challenges and imagination, and what better to question than the ways in which gender and sexuality have been rigidly defined, partitioned off, put in little boxes? These seventeen stories explore the ways in which identity can go beyond binary from space colonies to small college towns, from angels to androids, and from a magical past to other worlds entirely, the authors in this collection have brought to life wonderful tales starring people who proudly define (and redefine) their own genders, sexualities, identities, and so much else in between.

Beyond Gay or Straight: Understanding Sexual Orientation by Jan Clausen

Is sexual orientation an inborn trait, or does it somehow develop in the unfolding personality? In this remarkably candid work, author Jan Clausen explores the intense and often emotional debate surrounding these questions. Moving from historical and cross-cultural surveys to scientific studies of modern sexual identity, from the political and social ramifications of “being different” to distinctly personal analysis, Clausen examines the spectrum of variations in sexual orientation, allowing the reader to formulate his or her own idea of what constitutes “the mystery of desire” and how it informs individual identity. 

Bi: Bisexual, Pansexual, Fluid, and Nonbinary Youth by Ritch C. Savin-Williams

In Bi, Ritch C. Savin-Williams brings bisexuality out of the shadows, particularly as Gen Z and millennial youth and young adults increasingly reject traditional sexual labels altogether. Drawing on interviews with bisexual youth from a range of racial, ethnic, and social class groups, he reveals to us how bisexuals define their own sexual orientation and experiences—in their own words. Savin-Williams shows how and why people might identify as bisexual as a result of their biology or upbringing; as a bridge or transition to something else; as a consequence of their curiosity; or for a range of other equally valid reasons.

The Book of Joan by Lidia Yuknavitch

In the near future, world wars have transformed the earth into a battleground. Fleeing the unending violence and the planet’s now-radioactive surface, humans have regrouped to a mysterious platform known as CIEL, hovering over their erstwhile home. The changed world has turned evolution on its head: the surviving humans have become sexless, hairless pale-white creatures floating in isolation, inscribing stories upon their skin.

Out of the ranks of the endless wars rises Jean de Men, a charismatic and bloodthirsty cult leader who turns CIEL into a quasi-corporate police state. A group of rebels unite to dismantle his iron rule—galvanized by the heroic song of Joan, a child-warrior who possesses a mysterious force that lives within her and communes with the earth. When de Men and his armies turn Joan into a martyr, the consequences are astonishing. And no one—not the rebels, Jean de Men, or even Joan herself—can foresee the way her story and unique gift will forge the destiny of an entire world for generations.

Can Everyone Please Calm Down?: A Guide to 21st Century Sexuality by Mae Martin

Comedian Mae Martin investigates in this hilarious and intelligent guide to 21st century sexuality. Covering everything from the pros and cons of labels, to coming out and the joys of sexual fluidity, Mae ponders all the stuff we get hung up about – and then a bit more. Mae’s mission is to ensure that in a world that’s full of things to worry about, who we choose to kiss should not be one of them. And when it comes to sexuality, she asks: CAN EVERYONE PLEASE CALM DOWN?

Cook As You Are: Recipes for Real Life, Hungry Cooks and Messy Kitchens by Ruby Tandoh

Ruby Tandoh wants us all to cook, and this is her cookbook for all of us – the real home cooks, juggling babies or long commutes, who might have limited resources and limited time. From last-minute inspiration to delicious meals for one, easy one-pot dinners to no-chop recipes for when life keeps your hands full, Ruby brings us 100 delicious, affordable and achievable recipes, including salted malted magic ice cream, one-tin smashed potatoes with lemony sardines and pesto and an easy dinner of plantain, black beans and eden rice.

This is a new kind of cookbook for our times: an accessible, inclusive and inspirational addition to any and every kitchen. You don’t have to be an aspiring chef for your food to be delectable or for cooking to be a delight. Cook as you are.

Dar: A Super Girly Top Secret Comic Diary (Volume 2) by Erika Moen

DAR! Vol 2 chronicles the six year long autobiographical story of Erika Moen, a lost 20-year-old lesbian artist-wannabe in college who falls in love with a boy in England and the evolution that her sexual identity undergoes before winding up marrying him as a queer 26-year-old full-time cartoonist. Along the way there are many vignettes about sex, farts, the queer community, the Brits, vibrators and figuring out sexual identity.

February House: The Story of W. H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Jane and Paul Bowles, Benjamin Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee, Under One Roof in Brooklyn by Sherill Tippins

February House is the uncovered story of an extraordinary experiment in communal living, one involving young but already iconic writers — and the country’s best-known burlesque performer — in a house at 7 Middagh Street in Brooklyn during 1940 and 1941. It was a fevered yearlong party fueled by the appetites of youth and by the shared sense of urgency to take action as artists in the months before America entered the war.

In spite of the sheer intensity of life at 7 Middagh, the house was for its residents a creative crucible. Carson McCullers’s two masterpieces, The Member of the Wedding and The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, were born, bibulously, in Brooklyn. Gypsy Rose Lee, workmanlike by day, party girl by night, wrote her book The G-String Murders in her Middagh Street bedroom. Auden — who along with Britten was being excoriated at home in England for absenting himself from the war — presided over the house like a peevish auntie, collecting rent money and dispensing romantic advice. And yet all the while he was composing some of the most important work of his career.

Give it to Me by Ana Castillo

Recently divorced, Palma, a forty-three-year-old Latina, takes stock of her life when she reconnects with her gangster younger cousin recently released from prison. Her sexual obsession with him flares as she checks out her other options, but their family secrets bring them together in unexpected ways. In this wildly entertaining and sexy novel, Castillo creates a memorable character with a flare for fashion, a longing for family, and a penchant for adventure. Give It to Me is “Sex in the City” for a Chicana babe who’s looking for love in all the wrong places.

Greedy: Notes from a Bisexual Who Wants Too Much by Jen Winston

If Jen Winston knows one thing for sure, it’s that she’s bisexual. Or wait—maybe she isn’t? Actually, she definitely is. Unless…she’s not? Jen’s provocative debut takes us inside her journey of self-discovery, leading us through stories of a childhood “girl crush,” an onerous quest to have a threesome, and an enduring fear of being bad at sex. Greedy follows Jen’s attempts to make sense of herself as she explores the role of the male gaze, what it means to be “queer enough,” and how to overcome bi stereotypes when you’re the posterchild for all of them: greedy, slutty, and constantly confused.

Greedy shows us that being bisexual is about so much more than who you’re sleeping with—it’s about finding stability in a state of flux and defining yourself on your own terms. This book inspires us to rethink the world as we know it, reminding us that Greedy was a superpower all along.

Grrrls on the Side by Carrie Pack

The year is 1994 and alternative is in. But not for alternative girl Tabitha Denton; she hates her life. She is uninterested in boys, lonely, and sidelined by former friends at her suburban high school. When she picks up a zine at a punk concert, she finds an escape—an advertisement for a Riot Grrrl meet-up.

At the meeting, Tabitha finds girls who are more like her and a place to belong. But just as Tabitha is settling in with her new friends and beginning to think she understands herself, eighteen-year-old Jackie Hardwick walks into a meeting and changes her world forever. The out-and-proud Jackie is unlike anyone Tabitha has ever known. As her feelings for Jackie grow, Tabitha begins to learn more about herself and the racial injustices of the punk scene, but to be with Jackie, she must also come to grips with her own privilege and stand up for what’s right. 

I Ask the Impossible: Poems by Ana Castillo

With the poems in I Ask the Impossible, Castillo celebrates the strength that “is a woman?buried deep in [her] heart.” Whether memorializing real-life heroines who have risked their lives for humanity, spinning a lighthearted tale for her young son, or penning odes to mortals, gods, goddesses, Castillo?s poems are eloquent and rich with insight. She shares over twelve years of poetic inspiration, from her days as a writer who ?once wrote poems in a basement with no heat,” through the tenderness of motherhood and bitterness of loss, to the strength of love itself, which can ?make the impossible a simple act.” Radiant with keen perception, wit, and urgency, sometimes erotic, often funny, this inspiring collection sounds the unmistakable voice of a “woman on fire? / and more worthy than stone.”

It Goes Like This by Miel Moreland

Eva, Celeste, Gina, and Steph used to think their friendship was unbreakable. After all, they’ve been though a lot together, including the astronomical rise of Moonlight Overthrow, the world-famous queer pop band they formed in middle school, never expecting to headline anything bigger than the county fair.

But after a sudden falling out leads to the dissolution of the teens’ band, their friendship, and Eva and Celeste’s starry-eyed romance, nothing is the same. Gina and Celeste step further into the spotlight, Steph disappears completely, and Eva, heartbroken, takes refuge as a songwriter and secret online fangirl…of her own band. That is, until a storm devastates their hometown, bringing the four ex-best-friends back together. As they prepare for one last show, they’ll discover whether growing up always means growing apart.

The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy

It is 1988 and Saul Adler, a narcissistic young historian, has been invited to Communist East Berlin to do research; in exchange, he must publish a favorable essay about the German Democratic Republic. As a gift for his translator’s sister, a Beatles fanatic who will be his host, Saul’s girlfriend will shoot a photograph of him standing in the crosswalk on Abbey Road, an homage to the famous album cover. As he waits for her to arrive, he is grazed by an oncoming car, which changes the trajectory of his life.

The New Bottoming Book by Janet W. Hardy and Dossie Easton

Almost a decade ago, the first Bottoming Book taught tens of thousands of people that bottoming – being a submissive, masochist, slave, ‘boy’ or ‘girl, ‘ or other BDSM recipient — is as much an art as topping. Since then, the growing popularity of BDSM, and the blossoming of the Internet as a source of information and connection, have created a whole new universe of possibilities for players. Now, the completely updated revised New Bottoming Book gives even more insights and ideas, updated for a new millennium, about how to be a successful, popular bottom!

The New Topping Book by Janet W. Hardy and Dossie Easton

Tens of thousands learned the emotional and ethical skills of BDSM topping from the first Topping Book. Now, in addition to the sage advice and good humor that made the first edition a classic, the authors tackle some of the issues that have come up for tops in the last six years: on-line domination, the challenges and rewards of ‘lifestyle’ relationships, ensuring our own and our partners` safety, and more.

Off the Record by Camryn Garrett

Ever since seventeen-year-old Josie Wright can remember, writing has been her identity, the thing that grounds her when everything else is a garbage fire. So when she wins a contest to write a celebrity profile for Deep Focus magazine, she’s equal parts excited and scared, but also ready. She’s got this.

Soon Josie is jetting off on a multi-city tour, rubbing elbows with sparkly celebrities, frenetic handlers, stone-faced producers, and eccentric stylists. She even finds herself catching feelings for the subject of her profile, dazzling young newcomer Marius Canet. Josie’s world is expanding so rapidly, she doesn’t know whether she’s flying or falling. But when a young actress lets her in on a terrible secret, the answer is clear: she’s in over her head.

One woman’s account leads to another and another. Josie wants to expose the man responsible, but she’s reluctant to speak up, unsure if this is her story to tell. What if she lets down the women who have entrusted her with their stories? What if this ends her writing career before it even begins? There are so many reasons not to go ahead, but if Josie doesn’t step up, who will?

On Top of Glass: My Stories as a Queer Girl in Figure Skating by Karina Manta

Karina Manta has had a busy few years: Not only did she capture the hearts of many with her fan-favorite performance at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, she also became the first female figure skater on Team USA to come out as queer. Her Modern Love essay I Can’t Hate My Body if I Love Hers was published in the New York Times, and then she joined the circus–Cirque du Soleil’s on-ice show, AXEL.

Karina’s memoir covers these experiences and much more. Attending a high school with 4,000 students, you’d expect to know more than two openly gay students, but Karina didn’t meet an out-lesbian until she was nearly seventeen–let alone any other kind of queer woman. But this isn’t just a story about her queerness. It’s also a story about her struggle with body image in a sport that prizes delicate femininity. It’s a story about panic attacks, and first crushes, and all the crushes that followed, and it’s a story about growing up, feeling different than everybody around her and then realizing that everyone else felt different too.

Our Revolution: A Mother and Daughter at Midcentury by Honor Moore

Our Revolution, vivid and rich, reads like a nineteenth-century novel as we follow the love story of a woman and her family through the twentieth-century civil rights, antiwar, and feminist movements. Born into Boston society in 1923, Jenny Moore rebelled by going to college and later emerged as a writer. At twenty-one, she married Paul Moore, a decorated war hero who became Bishop Paul Moore, and joined him in a socially radical ministry. Eventually, they had nine children. “Everything was just starting,” Jenny protested—meaning a new independent life inspired by the women’s rights movement—when she was diagnosed with cancer at fifty.

Jenny bequeathed her eldest daughter her unfinished writing, and there Honor Moore finds the mother whose loss had long haunted her. Our Revolution is a gripping account of two women navigating the twentieth century and a daughter’s story of the mother who shaped her life as an artist and a woman.

The Ship We Built by Lexie Bean

Rowan has too many secrets to write down in the pages of a diary. And if he did, he wouldn’t want anyone he knows to discover them. He understands who he is and what he likes, but it’s not safe for others to know. Now, the kids at school say he’s too different to spend time with. He’s not the “right kind” of girl, and he’s not the “right kind” of boy. His mom ignores him. And at night, his dad hurts him in ways he’s not ready to talk about yet.

But Rowan discovers another way to share his secrets: letters. Letters he attaches to balloons and releases into the universe, hoping someone new will read them and understand. But when he befriends a classmate who knows what it’s like to be lonely and scared, even at home, Rowan realizes that there might already be a person he can trust right by his side.

The Small Backs of Children by Lidia Yuknavitch

In a war-torn village in Eastern Europe, an American photographer captures a heart-stopping image: a young girl flying toward the lens, fleeing a fiery explosion that has engulfed her home and family. The image wins acclaim and prizes, becoming an icon for millions—and a subject of obsession for one writer, the photographer’s best friend, who has suffered a devastating tragedy of her own.

As the writer plunges into a suicidal depression, her filmmaker husband enlists several friends, including a fearless bisexual poet and an ingenuous performance artist, to save her by rescuing the unknown girl and bringing her to the United States. And yet, as their plot unfolds, everything we know about the story comes into question: What does the writer really want? Who is controlling the action? And what will happen when these two worlds—east and west, real and virtual—collide?

Tommy’s Tale by Alan Cumming

Tommy is twenty-nine, lives and loves in London, and has a morbid fear of the c word — commitment, the b word — boyfriend, and the f word — forgetting to call his drug dealer before the weekend. But when he begins to feel the urge to become a father, he starts to wonder if his chosen lifestyle can ever make him happy. His flatmates, the eccentric, maternal Sadie and the stoic, supportive Bobby, encourage Tommy to tone down his lifestyle a wee bit and accept the fact that he’s got to grow up sometime. His boyfriend, Charlie (whose son, Finn, is the epitome of childhood charm), wishes that Tommy could make a real commitment to their relationship. But can he?

Faced with the choice of maintaining his hedonistic, drugged-out, and admittedly fabulous existence or chucking it all in favor of a far more sensitive, fulfilling, and — let’s face its — lightly staid lifestyle, Tommy finds himself in a true quandary. Through a series of adventures and misadventures that lead him from London nightspots to New York bedrooms and back, our boy Tommy manages to answer some of life’s most pressing questions — and even some he never thought to ask.

Vow of Celibacy by Erin Judge

Natalie has made a promise: a vow of celibacy, signed and witnessed by her best friend. After a string of sexual conquests, she is determined to figure out why the intense romantic connections she’s spent her life chasing have left her emotionally high and dry. As Natalie sifts through her past and her present, she confronts her complicated feelings about her plus-sized figure, her bisexuality, and her thwarted career in fashion design.

Piecing together toxic relationship patterns from her past, Natalie finds herself strutting down fashion runways and rekindling her passion for clothing design in the present. All the while, her best friend, Anastaze, struggles with her own secret—whether or not to reveal her true identity to the thousands of fans of her popular blog and her potential first sexual partner.

Watercolor Women / Opaque Men: A Novel in Verse by Ana Castillo

Watercolor Women / Opaque Men is a wild and raucous narrative of a single, working mother, the daughter of Chicano migrant workers, and her struggles for upward mobility. With a remarkable combination of tenderness, wicked humor, and biting satire, the main character, Ella-or “She”-moves toward establishing her sexual identity (she has affairs with both men and women) and finding her rightful place in the world while simultaneously raising her son to be independent and self-sufficient.

Reminiscent of the picaresque novel, Watercolor Women / Opaque Men contains episodes that range from the Mexican Revolution to modern-day Chicago and reflects a deep pride in Chicano culture and the hardships immigrants had to endure: “In my familia we don’t / pretend. / We’re not / Mixed blood. There are no buried / Spanish titles beneath /anyone’s tombstone.” Nor does Castillo tolerate the pretensions of others. Pomposity, arrogance, and narrow-mindedness are the targets of her satiric pen.

The White Blackbird: A Life of the Painter Margarett Sargent by Her Granddaughter by Honor Moore

Margarett Sargent was an icon of avant-garde art in the 1920s. In an evocative weave of biography and memoir, her granddaughter unearths for the first time the life of a spirited and gifted woman committed at all costs to self-expression.