Archives de catégorie : LGBTQ+

THE RULES OF ROYALTY de Cale Dietrich

The Princess Diaries meets Red, White & Royal Blue in this delightful queer romance about two princes of neighboring nations who fall in love.

THE RULES OF ROYALTY
by Cale Dietrich
Wednesday Books/St. Martin’s Press, December 2024

American-raised Jamie has just found out that he’s the prince of a small country, and now he’s being thrown head first into the world of royalty with no idea how to navigate it. Erik, the reluctant “spare” prince of the country next door, who’s dealing with family drama of his own, agrees to show him the royal ropes after they meet at an event. In the following months, between archery lessons, balls, a ski trip, and even a royal wedding, they must find out what they each want from their future as royals, and if that future can include the two of them together.

Cale Dietrich is a YA devotee, lifelong gamer, and tragic pop punk enthusiast. He was born in Perth, grew up on the Gold Coast, and now lives in Brisbane, Australia. His debut novel, The Love Interest, is his first novel.

MAKE SURE YOU DIE SCREAMING de Zee Carlstrom

A loud, fast-paced debut that punches the road-trip novel right in the face.

MAKE SURE YOU DIE SCREAMING
by Zee Carlstrom
Flatiron, Spring 2025
(via Neon Literary)

The newly nameless narrator of MAKE SURE YOU DIE SCREAMING has rejected the gender binary, flamed out with a vengeance at their corporate job, is most likely brain damaged from a major tussle with their now ex-boyfriend, and is drinking enough booze for two people.

A call from their mother with the news that their conspiracy-theorist father has gone missing, launches the narrator from Chicago to Deep Red Arkansas in a stolen car and their new bestie in tow a self-proclaimed « garbage goth » with her own emotional baggage (and someone on her tail). Along the way. they unpack the narrator’s childhood, one ruled by the whims of their father’s anger and paranoia, and a recent personal loss they would rather eat glass than face.

An unflinching interrogation of class rage, economic (im)mobility, the liberal/conservative divide, toxic masculinity, and the rot at the heart of capitalism, Make Sure You Die Screaming is the loud, funny, tragic, fucked-up enby road-trip novel of our times.

Zee Carlstrom is a creative director and writer from Illinois. They live in Brooklyn.

THE DISCO WITCHES OF FIRE ISLAND de R. B. Fell

THE DISCO WITCHES OF FIRE ISLAND is a smart, sexy story of love, romance, magic, and the power of community, sure to captivate readers of Alexis Hall, Casey McQuiston, and Madeline Miller.

THE DISCO WITCHES OF FIRE ISLAND
by R. B. Fell
Alcove Press, May 2025

It’s 1989, the height of the HIV/AIDScrisis, and Joe Agabian has hopped on the ferry to spend his first summer in Fire Island Pines, a popular beach destination for young gay men. Joe is grieving the death of his boyfriend Elliot, who died two years earlier from AIDS. Though Joe is HIV negative, he remains lost – in nearly every sense – and hopes spending the summer away from NYC will help him find his way.

He quickly finds himself enmeshed with a group of long-time locals, including an older couple – Howie and Lenny – who may or may not have mystical powers, and a gorgeous ferryman – Fergal – who can’t keep his eyes off Joe. When Joe begins seeing a mysterious figure – whom he refers to as Gladiator Man – around the island, Howie and Lenny grow fearful, certain Gladiator Man’s presence, which somehow only Joe can sense, is a harbinger of terrible things to come.

Howie and Lenny are longtime protectors of the island and its inhabitants, and that protection has never been more needed. But now that one member of their coven has fallen ill with AIDS, they aren’t strong enough to use their powers to full effect, and Joe is the one caught in the metaphorical crossfire.

Blair Fell, writing as R.B. Fell, writes and lives in New York City, where he has been an ASL interpreter for the Deaf since 1993. His acclaimed debut novel The Sign for Home was published by Simon & Schuster in 2022. Fell’s television work includes Queer as Folk and the Emmy Award-winning California Connected. He’s written dozens of plays, including the award-winning plays Naked Will, The Tragic and Horrible Life of the Singing Nun, and the downtown cult miniseries Burning Habits. His personal essays have appeared in HuffPost, Out, Daily News, and more.

WORK NIGHTS d’Erica Peplin

A wry, warm, and irresistible debut following a young queer woman who finds herself in a love triangle with an unobtainable intern and a quick-tempered musician, set between the sterile office of a newspaper and the intoxicating night scene of New York City, and pitched as Sally Rooney meets The Devil Wears Prada.

WORK NIGHTS
by Erica Peplin
Gallery, June 2025
(via Frances Goldin Literary Agency)

It’s 2015 and Jane Grabowski, a self-described “dumpy dyke,” is living in Bushwick and working in advertising at the nation’s most storied newspaper. By day, she is reluctantly dragged into a glamorous, precarious, and changing industry, and into the lives of a motley crew of office workers, who alternately horrify and delight her. By night, she goes out with the cool and flighty Madeline Navarro, an ostensibly straight, staggeringly pretty Guatemalan intern with an expensive lifestyle. Despite many signs to the contrary, it feels like Madeline might be the one—except her visa is about to run out.

Also, Jane keeps running into Addy, a temperamental, deeply moral, slightly uncool singer-songwriter. Something shifts, and Jane finds herself spiraling, terrifyingly, towards love. But Madeline’s feelings are shifting too, and it feels truly impossible—and maybe unnecessary—to choose. As small betrayals pile up, alongside the soulless dramas of work, Jane finds herself stuck and desperately unhappy. She’s determined to grow up, quit her job, and change her life. But the comforts of the known, and the thrill of the chase, keep pulling her back, until all her unmade decisions collide.

Wry, tender, and acutely attuned to the spiky intimacies of love, work, and friendship, Work Nights delves deep into the existential conundrums of finding your way in a cold, capitalist world—a world that is also occasionally alight with beauty and strangeness. It joins the small but growing cannon of novels examining the casualties of modern offices, from Joshua Ferris’s Then We Came to the End to Halle Butler’s The New Me and Sarah Thankam Mathews’ All This Could Be Different, and writers like Kristen Arnett, Rachel Khong, Elif Batuman, and Sally Rooney, whose smart, offbeat protagonists are alert to the delusions of the world around them, though not always to their own.

Erica Peplin is a writer from Detroit, Michigan, now based in Brooklyn. Her short stories and essays have appeared in n+1, Joyland, The Millions, McSweeney’s, Autostraddle, The Brooklyn Rail, The Village Voice, Cosmonauts Avenue, Another Gaze, and Hobart. From 2015-16, she worked in the advertising department of the New York Times. Since then, she’s worked as a shipping clerk, a high school custodian, and a restaurant server.

DON’T TELL ME WHAT HAPPENS de Raphael Simon et Philip De Léon

Two queer love stories. Two time periods. One mystery.

DON’T TELL ME WHAT HAPPENS
by Raphael Simon and Philip De Léon
TBD
(via The Gernert Company)

Fifteen-year-old Noah lives with his father in New York but is spending the summer with his mother in Venice, CA. An indoor, city sort of person, a RuPaul fanatic, he’s miserable in the sun – until he meets Tomo, a surfer who works in his father’s vintage store. Tomo hands Noah an old composition-style notebook, filled with steamy diary entries by its teenaged owner, Diego, in addition to ephemera from the 1980s. Noah reads about Diego playing footsie in history class with closeted surfer (another surfer!) Casey until one day after school it becomes something more. Noah is enthralled. And there’s one more notebook at the store, but that’s it – Noah and Tomo have no idea what happened to Diego and Casey. And as they set off to find the much older surfer, the two boys find romance of their own…but can Noah keep from sabotaging the first good thing in his life?

Not quite a graphic novel, not quite a traditional prose novel, DON’T TELL ME WHAT HAPPENS is an enchanting story and story-within-a-story in the form of two sequential scrapbook-style diaries that include drawings, photos, concert tickets, flyers, and other memorabilia from the late 80s – a fantastically fulfilling romance, mystery, and coming-of-age novel.

Better known as Pseudonymous Bosch, Raphael Simon is the not-so-secret author of two bestselling middle-grade series, the Secret Series and the Bad Books, as well as the ALA Rainbow-Listed Unbelievable Oliver chapter-book mysteries. Most recently, Raphael published The Anti-Book, the first novel to appear under his own name (“a surprisingly powerful, formula-breaking coming of age story” per the New York Times).

Prior to writing books, Raphael wrote screenplays for film, television, and video games, and was a staff writer on Nickelodeon’s Rocket Power. In recent years, he has contributed essays and reviews to the New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Harper’s Bazaar.

As a visiting author, Raphael has shared his work with students at schools all across the country, as well as at bookstores and book festivals, theaters and museums, universities, summer camps, and once, memorably, trapped in a cage. More formally, he has taught creative writing at Occidental College and a queer mystery class (“Closet Cases”) at CalArts.

A graduate of Yale, Raphael holds an MA in Comparative Literature from UC Irvine. An LA native, he lives in Pasadena with his husband, two daughters, and two dogs.

Textile designer and illustrator Phillip De León began drawing as soon as he could hold a pencil.

First working as a creative in the advertising world, Phillip joined forces with his design partner and sister Nicole and their father Marcus to form the De León Design Group, and to direct the Los Angeles-based textile house, Alexander Henry Fabrics, Inc. A queer artist who spent his childhood dancing to disco and foraging the pages of GQ, Phillip has long incorporated a gay sensibility into his artwork.

A native Los Angeleno, Phillip De León grew up in the San Fernando Valley, earning his BA degree in Comparative Literature from UCLA. Designer and illustrator by day and jazz singer by night, Phillip now lives with his husband and their twin daughters in Pasadena.