This month we are celebrating LGBTQIA+ community, writers and stories. Stop by the Library for more displays and recommended reading lists.

SCIENCE FICTION BLACK
The atlas six / Olivie Blake
The Alexandrian Society, caretakers of lost knowledge from the greatest civilizations of antiquity, are the foremost secret society of magical academicians in the world. Those who earn a place among the Alexandrians will secure a life of wealth, power, and prestige beyond their wildest dreams, and each decade, only the six most uniquely talented magicians are selected to be considered for initiation.  (Also available in Large Print and as an ebook and downloadable audio from Libby/OverDrive.)

FICTION GUNS
Your driver is waiting : a novel / Priya Guns
For the first time ever, Damani, who drives for an app, starts dating a white girl with money, but when their romance intensifies and she finally lets her guard down, her girlfriend does something unforgivable, setting off an explosive chain of events.

FICTION CASTELLANI
Leading men / Christopher Castellani
A life-changing encounter among Tennessee Williams, his lover Frank Merlo, and a taciturn Swedish beauty at a 1953 Truman Capote party culminates in deathbed revelations about Williams’s final play a decade later.

FICTION HARGRAVE
The mercies : a novel / Kiran Millwood Hargrave
In Finnmark, Norway, 1617, after 40 fishermen are drowned in the sea, the women of the tiny Arctic town of Vardo must fend for themselves especially when a sinister figure arrives, bringing with him a mighty evil that threatens their very existence. (Also available in downloadable audio from Libby/OverDrive.)

FICTION KLUNE
In the lives of puppets / TJ Klune
When an unwitting act of betrayal leads to the capture of his android Gio, who once hunted humans, Victor Lawson and his assembled family must journey across an unforgiving and otherworldly country to the City of Electric Dreams to rescue Gio from decommission, or worse, reprogramming.

FICTION PETERS
Detransition, baby / Torrey Peters
A trans woman, her detransitioned ex, and his cisgender lover build an unconventional family together in the wake of heartbreak and an unplanned pregnancy. (Also available in downloadable audio from Libby/OverDrive.)

FICTION TAYLOR
Filthy animals / Brandon Taylor
In the series of linked stories at the heart of Filthy Animals, set among young creatives in the American Midwest, a young man treads delicate emotional waters as he navigates a series of sexually fraught encounters with two dancers in an open relationship, forcing him to weigh his vulnerabilities against his loneliness. In other stories, a young woman battles with the cancers draining her body and her family; menacing undercurrents among a group of teenagers explode in violence on a winter night; a little girl tears through a house like a tornado, driving her babysitter to the brink; and couples feel out the jagged edges of connection, comfort, and cruelty.

FICTION VUONG
On earth we’re briefly gorgeous: a novel / Ocean Vuong
A letter from a son to a mother who cannot read reveals the impact of the Vietnam War on their family history and provides a view into parts of the son’s life that his mother has never known. (Also available in Large Print and as an ebook and downloadable audio from Libby/OverDrive.)

TEEN FICTION COLE
Dear Medusa : (a novel in verse) / Olivia A. Cole
This intense and intimate novel-in-verse follows 16-year-old Alicia, who feels isolated and alone after being sexually abused by a teacher then cast as the slut who asked for it, until she receives mysterious letters hinting at another victim, forcing her to face her trauma and fight back.

811.6 BRO
The tradition / Jericho Brown
The Tradition explores cultural threats on black bodies, resistance, and the interplay of desire and privilege in a dangerous era. WINNER OF THE 2020 PULITZER PRIZE FOR POETRY.

BIO ARCENEAUX
I can’t date Jesus / Michael Arceneaux
This collection of humorous and contemplative essays from one of today’s boldest writers on social issues discusses coming out to his mother, growing up in Houston, fire ants, fleas and being approached to join the priesthood.

BIO BRAMMER
Hola Papi! : how to come out in a Walmart parking lot and other life lessons / John Paul Brammer
The popular LGBTQ columnist and writer presents a memoir though a series of essays that chronicle his life growing up as queer, mixed race kid and offers advice for young people facing the same journey.

BIO ROYSTER
Choosing family : a memoir of queer motherhood and Black resistance / Francesca T. Royster
A professor of English literature presents a memoir of family, identity and acceptance that examines the messiness and complexity of adoption and parenthood from a black, queer and feminist perspective.

GRAPHIC NOVEL BIO BECHDEL
Fun home : a family tragicomic / Alison Bechdel
A 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 funeral home director, high school English teacher, and closeted homosexual.

BH: June 2023