Archives de catégorie : LGBT+

NATE PLUS ONE de Kevin van Whye

A fun new, gay rom-com from the author of Date Me, Bryson Keller!

NATE PLUS ONE
by Kevin van Whye
Random House Children’s, May 2022

Seventeen-year-old Nathan Hargreaves has done the bravest thing a gay teen can do: he’s come out to all those around him. But when he and his Mom are invited to his extremely wealthy paternal Aunt’s wedding retreat in South Africa, he’s filled with dread because he knows that all eyes will be on him— the gay boy. Disaster strikes when his Mom can’t make it and Nate will be forced to brave his extended family alone. Enter Jai Patel. Jai is an indie musician whose band is hoping to get their big break through a talent competition. When Jai’s band loses their lead singer weeks before the big competition, Nate steps up to help his friend out. The truth is, Nate is starting to feel more than friendship for the other boy and he’s pretty sure that Jai feels the same way. So, when Jai volunteers to be his plus one to the wedding, Nate’s looking forward to what will be the most perfect first date ever. That is, until Nate’s secret ex-boyfriend enters the picture.

Kevin van Whye is a gay writer of color born and raised in South Africa, where his love for storytelling started at a very young age. At four years old, he quit preschool because his teacher couldn’t tell a story. Kevin’s love affair with stories led him to film school, where he studied scriptwriting. Date Me, Bryson Keller is his first novel. Kevin lives in Johannesburg, and when he’s not reading, he’s writing books that give his characters the happy rom-com endings they deserve.

THE GRIMROSE GIRLS SERIES de Laura Pohl

Once Upon a Time meets Pretty Little Liars in this queer, dark academia story about four reimagined fairy tale heroines who must uncover their ancient curses before it’s too late.

THE GRIMROSE GIRLS SERIES
by Laura Pohl
Sourcebooks Fire
(via KT Literary)

Book 1: THE GRIMROSE GIRLS (October 2021)
Four troubled friends, one murdered girl… and a dark fate that may leave them all doomed. After the mysterious death of their best friend, Ella, Yuki, and Rory are the talk of their elite school, Grimrose Académie. The police ruled Ariane’s death as a suicide, but the trio are determined to find out what really happened.
When Nani Eszes arrives as their newest roommate, it sets into motion a series of events that no one could have predicted. As the girls retrace their friend’s final days, they discover a dark secret about Grimrose―Ariane wasn’t the first dead girl.
They soon learn that all the past murders are connected to ancient fairytale curses…and that their own fates are tied to the stories, dooming the girls to brutal and gruesome endings unless they can break the cycle for good.

Book 2: THE WICKED REMAIN (November 2022)
At Grimrose Académie, the fairy-tale deaths continue. And unless the curse is broken, one of the girls could be next. Nani, Yuki, Ella, and Rory have discovered the truth about the curse that’s left a trail of dead bodies at Grimrose. But the four still know nothing of its origins, or how to stop the cycle of doomed fates. And each girl harbors her own secret. One is learning why she was brought to the school. One struggles to keep her new and deadly power under control. One knows exactly how much time she has left. And one, trying to escape her dark destiny, will come even closer to fulfilling it. Can the girls change their own stories and break the curse? Or must one of them die to end it forever?

« Enthralling… Fans of empowering feminist fairy-tale retellings will love this. » ― Kirkus, starred review

Laura Pohl is a Brazilian writer who lives in São Paulo. She likes writing messages in caps lock, quoting Hamilton, and obsessing about Star Wars. When not taking pictures of her dog, she can be found discussing alien conspiracy theories. She is the author of The Last 8 duology.

TRESPASS AGAINST US de Leon Kemp

Perfect for fans of Ace of Spades and The Taking of Jake Livingston, this young adult horror debut is told in dual timelines: following a group of teens as they visit an abandoned school for troubled youth and then return two years later to confront the supernatural evil they awoke there.

TRESPASS AGAINST US
by Leon Kemp
HarperTeen, June 2024

Two years ago, Riley visited the abandoned and allegedly haunted religious reform school Dominic House with his boyfriend Ethan, and his best friends Colton and Vee. Ethan never came out. Colton’s leg will never quite heal, Vee is branded as hysterical, and Riley has horrific scars as a reminder of that night. Now at eighteen, Riley hasn’t exactly moved on, but he’s kept away from all things paranormal. Until legendary ghost chaser Jordan Jones shows up with an offer: return to Dominic House with her to film an episode of her Spirit Seekers tv show. Riley may have vowed never to return, but he has unfinished business at Dominic House. With a reluctant Colton and Vee at his side, Riley is determined to find out what happened to Ethan once and for all. But as the night wears on, Riley realizes he isn’t just revisiting the most terrifying night of his life he’s reliving it.

Leon Kemp lives in Melbourne, where they achieved a Bachelor of Arts with a major in creative writing. They hope to continue weaving stories about queer kids surviving both the kindest and cruelest extremes the world has to offer. When not writing, Leon spends most of their time watching, playing, and reading all things horror. TRESPASS AGAINST US is their debut novel.

RULES FOR GHOSTING de Shelly Jay Shore

RULES FOR GHOSTING combines the humor, fraught-but-loving family dynamics, and obsession with death seen in books like Mostly Dead Things, One Last Stop, and Fun Home. It is the gay, Jewish, Six Feet Under we’ve all been waiting for.

RULES FOR GHOSTING
by Shelly Jay Shore
Ballantine, Summer 2024
(via Frances Goldin Literary)

Twenty-eight-year-old Ezra Friedman is only a little bit clairvoyant, but enough to make growing up in a funeral home miserable. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if his Zayde’s ghost didn’t keep giving him this look of betrayal and disapproval as he went through an HRT-induced second puberty, or if the dead’s hands weren’t so cold. But, it’s no wonder that Ezra would want to get as far away as possible from the family business.
With his parents’ marriage imploding, Ezra finds himself pulled back into the effort to help save the Friedman Family Memorial Chapel from financial ruin. That means long days of puzzling out his mom’s cryptic filing systems while surrounded by the ghosts no one else can see, while balancing his role as referee between the warring factions of his family. Add in his unfortunate crush on the cute funeral home volunteer who just happens to live downstairs from where Ezra and his ex are now living together as friends, and the new ghost who keeps breaking every spectral rule Ezra’s managed to figure out about the dead, and Ezra’s more than ready to make another run for the hills.
The more Ezra learns about the tangled web of secrets that haunt the Chapel’s halls, the harder it is to maintain the distance that (he thought) kept him sane. As the pressure mounts to figure out how to keep the funeral home from being snapped up by a corporate “body farm”, Ezra is forced to do something he never thought possible.

Shelly Jay Shore (she/they) is a writer, digital strategist, and nonprofit fundraiser. Their writing on queer Jewish identity has been published by Autostraddle, Alma, and the Bi Resource Center. RULES FOR GHOSTING is her debut novel.

SOME STRANGE MUSIC DRAWS ME IN de Griffin Hansbury

A poignant and provocative story of transgender awakening in a working-class American town.

SOME STRANGE MUSIC DRAWS ME IN
by Griffin Hansbury
W. W. Norton, March 2024
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

In the summer of 1984, teenage Mel becomes entranced with the trans woman who appears in her blue-collar American town. Through the world-expanding time she spends with the woman, Sylvia, and the changes of adolescence, Mel soon discovers she is not the girl she thought she was—in fact, she might not be a girl at all. In the wake of this revelation, Mel navigates gender, sexuality, and an intense friendship with her childhood best friend in a hostile time and place for both girls and queers.

Moving back and forth to 2019, Mel has become Max, a middle-aged trans man. He returns to his hometown in the wake of his mother’s death, still reeling from his own politically-incorrect, gender-related scandal at his workplace, and bearing the burden of guilt from that pivotal teenage summer. As he reunites with his wayward older sister, spends time with his preteen great-niece and reckons with his past, Max works to come to terms with what it means to be a flawed and forgivable human being amidst constantly changing social norms.

“This gorgeous, propulsive novel is filled with beauty and danger, youth and wisdom and the life-saving lifelines of counterculture. With writing so tense and honest and real, I recognized this place and these people deeply, and felt them all in my heart long after the book was finished.” ―Michelle Tea, author of Knocking Myself Up

Griffin Hansbury is the acclaimed author of Vanishing New York (Dey Street, 2017), based on the celebrated blog written under the pen name Jeremiah Moss. As Hansbury he is the author of The Nostalgist, a novel, and Day For Night, a collection of poems. A two-time NYFA fellow, his writing has appeared in n+1, The New York Times, The New York Daily News, and online for The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, The Village Voice, Salon, and The New York Review of Books.