Celebrate Queer Voices & Stories!
Looking for some great reads this Pride Month? These LGBTQ+ books offer powerful stories about love, identity, and community. Perfect for celebrating Pride all year long!
The definitive, comprehensive biography of Brian Epstein—the man who built the Beatles—by eminent Beatles biographer Philip Norman
There will never be another pop manager like Brian Epstein, the young record retailer from Liverpool behind the 20th century’s greatest romance. Having achieved his much-derided aim of making the Beatles “bigger than Elvis,” Brian went on to make them bigger than any earthly instrument could measure. Only a handful of years older, he nonetheless referred them as “The Boys,” protecting and pampering them like the children he could never hope to have.
Brian’s achievement in a profession in which he had no experience, and for which nor rulebook existed, remains jaw-dropping. A devout classical music fan, he was nonetheless solely responsible for a new genre of pop that was to change its course, and Britain’s international image, forever—yet, disgracefully, earn him no public honor nor even thanks.
Mr. Moonlight draws on a cache of exclusive interviews with those closest to Brain, including his mother, Queenie, and brother, Clive, to tell the story of this hugely complex, self-contradictory, and ultimately tragic character. This revelatory narrative explores the unplumbed depths of Brian’s many trials and tribulations—how he almost lost the Beatles to organized crime, the antisemitism and homophobia he had to face even at the height of his success, his complex relationship with John Lennon that led to their reckless “Spanish Honeymoon”—and sheds new light on Brian’s mysterious, lonely death in the throes of the so-called Summer of Love.
Growing up in the 90s in a small town in Indiana, Kevin James Thornton had little notion he would one day make a career as a comedian. Like most kids in his deeply Christian town, his free time revolved around his church community—drinking Messiah Macchiatos at the youth group cafe, bedazzling his jacket with the words “Jesus Is Lord,” and evangelizing in the streets of Spanish Harlem dressed as a sin‑themed clown. But when he started to question his sexuality, life became complicated. Kevin began to realize that the community that raised him might never truly accept him.
What follows is a winding story of self‑discovery, following Thornton from a revelatory summer in New York City to the transformative years of college—where he finds like‑minded people, a knack for performance, and first loves—all the way to adulthood, where he navigates complicated relationships, finds his way into the comedy scene, and forms a special bond with a black cat named Comet (who might just have the power to travel between dimensions). Through it all, he redefines himself again and again, realizing that few things go as planned, and that “driving off into the sunset” is never really the end of the story.
Told in his unique brand of brash but emotionally honest humor, and filled with 90s nostalgia, Big Baby is a coming-of-age tale that speaks to anyone who feels like they don’t fit in.
What does it mean to live a hyphenated life?
So many folks are forced to toggle across the multiple layers of who they are, and across the diverse spaces they occupy. They may be children of immigrants, 1.5 gen, of color; they may be disabled, neurodivergent, or queer. Regardless of how they identify, they exist in an in-between space while also trying to fit into the dominant culture. With a foot in multiple worlds, belonging fully to none, it can be hard to figure out where they fit in.
Dr. Han Ren, licensed psychologist and a hyphenate herself, seeks to offer solutions for those with intersectional identities to fully express who they are in any and every environment. The Hyphenated Life is an intersectional, inside out excavation of how existing in marginalized bodies affects the ways folks show up in dominant culture and predominantly white spaces.
Offering tools, stories, conversations, solutions and insights, this book will resonate with anyone who is navigating the intricacies of their multicultural identity development.
A first-of-its-kind practical guide to achieving gender freedom with joy, curiosity, and pleasure for transgender and non-binary individuals, gender explorers, and those who love them—perfect for readers of The Body is Not an Apology and Schuyler Bailar's He/She/They.
Taking everything they know from more than a decade of work with the queer and trans community, their personal journey of gender exploration, and clinical best practices, licensed therapist, coach, and speaker Rae McDaniel created the Gender Freedom Model. A uniquely supportive narrative for gender exploration and transition grounded in queer joy, their nine-pillar model has helped thousands of transgender and nonbinary individuals explore gender through play, pleasure, and freedom. And now, it can help you too.
Whether you're transgender, non-binary, cisgender, or still exploring, this compassionate and practical guide will help you experience your gender in new, expansive ways by teaching:
- How to move from anxiety, self-doubt, and fear to a confident, proactive state of mind.
- How to navigate discomfort and celebrate your inherent worth as you develop genuine self-love.
- How to design relationships, community, and a sex life that lights you up.
- Practical tools to align your gender identity and expression with your most authentic self through play, pleasure, and possibility.
"Rae McDaniel is a leader in their generation, matching compassion with clear-sighted vision for a sex-positive future.” – Emily Nagoski, Ph.D, author of Come As You Are and Burnout
More people than ever are receptive to the pleasures of anal, but compassionate, medically comprehensive information can be challenging to come by. No more!
Whether you’re a top or a bottom, gay or straight, experienced or just getting ready to stretch your, um, imagination—Butt Seriously gives you the medically accurate, scientifically-backed information you need to keep your peach ready to take you to the height of sexual bliss.
This first-of-a-kind guide will teach you how to keep your anus healthy, maximize your pleasure, and bust the myths holding us back around anal sex. Among other takeaways, Butt Seriously will:
- Offer comprehensive, medically-accurate sex-ed for anyone who engages, regardless of gender and sexual identity
- Reveal why a prostate orgasm is the best orgasm
- Show women how butt play allows access to their other erogenous spot (the A-zone)
- Recommend the best techniques, toys, lubes, and other products
- Teach readers how to poop, sit, eat, exercise to support their pelvic floor and heal common challenges such as hemorrhoids and fissures.
Almost every Latina has heard the phrase calladita te ves más bonita—you look most beautiful when you are silent. It's a message rooted in machismo passed from generation to generation, and one that poet and Latine therapist, Kim Guerra, grew up on.
In Badass Bonita, Guerra tells a story of coming into her own power, and guides readers through the process of finding their own. Rejecting what she was taught as a girl, she learned to use her voice—and the more she listened to that inner niña, the more she unearthed her inner guerrera. Vowing never to be calladita again, she now teaches Latine women to find their voices.
Tackling tough conversations around machismo, mental health, trauma, and intersectional identities, Badass Bonita is a guide that will help readers:
- Understand underlying sources of wounds and trauma.
- Shift from self‑silencing to revolutionary self‑love.
- Build confidence and bring positive change to relationships, family and community
This “moving, deeply human” memoir tells the inspiring story of the first openly transgender woman to win a NCAA title, following the obstacles she overcame to achieve her Olympic dreams (The Cut).
CeCé Telfer is a warrior. She has contended with transphobia on and off the track since childhood. Now, she stands at the crossroads of a national and international conversation about equity in sports, forced to advocate for her personhood and rights at every turn. After spending years training for the 2024 Olympics, Telfer has been sidelined and silenced more times than she can count. But she’s never been good at taking no for an answer.
Make It Count is Telfer’s raw and inspiring story. From coming of age in Jamaica, where she grew up hearing a constant barrage of slurs, to living in the backseat of her car while searching for a coach, to Mexico, where she trained for the US Trials, this book follows the arc of Telfer’s Olympic dream. This is the story of running on what feels like the edge of a knife, of what it means to compete when you’re treated not just as an athlete, but as a walking controversy. But it’s also the story of resilience and athleticism, of a runner who found a clarity in her sport that otherwise eluded her—a sense of simply being alive, a human moving through space—finally, herself.
An immigration journalist and her wife trace their family’s intertwined past to unearth a history of how hundreds of thousands of Polish Jews survived Hitler’s Holocaust at the brutal hands of Stalin—a story that sheds light on the enduring power of hope and love.
Daniela Gerson and her wife, Talia Inlender, met at a picnic in Los Angeles, not knowing that 75 years earlier, their grandparents had left homes only blocks away from each other in a small Polish town, and fled east to Ukraine. The Gersons and the Inlenders would go on parallel odysseys of 5,000 miles to survive the Holocaust—journeys that would, after a deceitful loyalty test from Stalin, put them on cattle cars to a Soviet Gulag, trap them for years in limbo in Central Asia, and would end, after a decade on the run, with new lives built on secrets and lies.
For years, Daniela and Talia simply accepted this painful shared history as a sign that they were b’shert, meant to be. Their families’ refugee past fueled their work: Daniela as an immigration journalist; Talia an immigration attorney. But as Daniela uncovered more, she realized that their grandparents shared this escape path in the Soviet Union with most Polish Jews who survived; a group—sometimes collectively called “the Wanderers”—that is almost entirely absent from popular understanding of World War II. And unlike most Holocaust sagas that focus on the exceptionality of the Nazi genocide, theirs was also a universal story of refugees making impossible decisions when forced to seek safety, protect their children, and find new homes.
This is a story that, to the dismay of the world, remains relevant each time a political upheaval wreaks havoc on individual lives. Part genealogical detective story, part gripping history, part contemporary reporting on war-torn territories, The Wanderers chronicles Daniela’s journey to unearth this past with her wife, and reveal its echoes in still-contested lands from Ukraine to Israel.
The Wanderers is a groundbreaking narrative history, and a meditation on how a home left behind and a desperate journey to survive reverberates across borders and through generations.
Shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize for Nonfiction
A narrative blend of history, cultural criticism, and memoir in celebration of everyday queer women, based on a lesbian helpline that existed in North London in the nineties, and “a clear-eyed and moving addition to the still-expanding record of lesbian lives” (Publishers Weekly).
With warmth and humour, Elizabeth Lovatt reimagines the women who called and volunteered for the Lesbian Line in the 1990s, whilst also tracing her own journey from accidentally coming out to disastrous dates to finding her chosen family. With callers and agents alike dealing with first crushes and break-ups, sex and marriage, loneliness and illness, this is a celebration of the ordinary lives of queer women.
Through these revelations of the complexities, difficulties and revelries of everyday life, Lovatt investigates the ethics of writing about queer ‘sheros’ and the role living-history plays in the way we live today. What do we owe to our lesbian forebears? What can we learn from them when facing racism, transphobia and ableism in the community today?
Steeped in pop culture references and feminist and queer theory, Thank You for Calling the Lesbian Line is a timely and vital exploration of how lesbian identity continues to remake and redefine itself in the 21st century, and where it might lead us in the future.
“A must-read book for fans looking for a fresh, authentic voice in urban fantasy and horror.” –Tananarive Due
To be a client of Gwendolyn Montgomery—New York’s most powerful publicist, at Sublime Creative—is to be infused with a certain oomph, a mysterious glamour. She seems to have created the ideal life with her handsome new boyfriend, the perfect match. But Gwendolyn has a legion of long-buried secrets that could unravel everything.
After a grisly, bizarre incident at the Brooklyn Museum, Gwendolyn begins to realize that something nefarious is happening tied directly to her past, right as Fonsi Harewood comes back into her world. Fonsi is a queer Latinx psychic from the South Bronx who’s caught up in a love triangle with a ghost and his mortal ex. He’s able to communicate with the dead, and he comes with a dire warning for Gwendolyn, that the barrier between humans and spirits is weakening.
Gwendolyn would prefer not to have anything to do with ghostly drama. Yet in order to get to the bottom of the spookiness derailing her life and threatening the world, she must face the demons she’d long left behind. The Ghosts of Gwendolyn Montgomery is a sensuous, funny, mystical adventure that will leave you spellbound as you keep the pages turning.
Rolling Out’s Must-Read Books for June by Black Authors
LGBTQ+ influencers Terrell and Jarius open up about their joyful love story and family life—and the challenges they’ve encountered along the way—in this honest, powerful guidebook.
Terrell and Jarius Joseph—a picturesque home, adorable children, family businesses, and millions of fans online. Love Out Loud is Terrell and Jarius’s guide to help couples of all kinds sustain their relationship and nurture their nontraditional family. With the Josephs’s essential roadmap you’ll learn how to:
- Define your needs as individuals and as a couple to build the life of your dreams
- Recognize growing pains before they hurt your marriage
- Break tradition to discover your unique parenting style
- Build a circle of support for your children