Modern Queer Fiction
We're often being asked for LGBTQIA+ fiction recommendations for adults. Here are a few! Part of our lists of recommendation series. Order directly through us or browse and buy through our bookshop.org store.
Modern Queer Fiction
Shuggie Bain: Winner of the Booker Prize 2020 by Douglas Stuart
Hardback RRP £14.99
It’s the 1980’s and Glasgow is dying and good families must grift to survive. Douglas Stuart's Shuggie Bain lays bare the ruthlessness of poverty, the limits of love, and the hollowness of pride. 'We were bowled over by this first novel, which creates an amazingly intimate, compassionate, gripping portrait of addiction, courage and love.' - The judges of the Booker Prize
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
Paperback RRP £8.99
In a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland where everything is meticulously planned, lives Elena Richardson whose guiding principle is playing by the rules. When Mia Warren, an enigmatic artist and single mother, arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenage daughter Pearl, their lives quickly get intertwined with Elena her husband and her four children. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past, and a disregard for the rules that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
Paperback RRP £8.99
Brilliant, heartbreaking and highly original, Ocean Vuong's debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, and a testament to the redemptive power of storytelling. This is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born. It tells of Vietnam, of the lasting impact of war, and of his family's struggle to forge a new future. And it serves as a doorway into parts of Little Dog's life his mother has never known - episodes of bewilderment, fear and passion - all the while moving closer to an unforgettable revelation.
Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi
Paperback RRP £8.99
Ada has always been unusual. Her parents prayed her into existence, but something must have gone awry. Their troubled child begins to develop separate selves and is prone to fits of anger and grief. When Ada grows up and heads to college in America, a traumatic event crystallises the selves into something more powerful. As Ada fades into the background of her own mind, these 'alters' - now protective, now hedonistic - take control, shifting her life in a dangerous direction.
This is How You Lose the Time War: An epic time-travelling love story by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
Paperback RRP £10
An epic love story spanning time and space. Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future. Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war. That's how war works. Right?
Frankissstein: A Love Story by Jeanette Winterson
Paperback RRP £8.99
Inspired by Mary Shelley's gothic classic Frankenstein , discover this audacious new novel about the bodies we live in and the bodies we desire.
As Brexit grips Britain, Ry, a young transgender doctor, is falling in love. The object of their misguided affection: the celebrated AI-specialist, Professor Victor Stein. Meanwhile, Ron Lord, just divorced and living with his Mum again, is set to make his fortune with a new generation of sex dolls for lonely men everywhere. Ranging from 1816, when nineteen-year-old Mary Shelley pens her radical first novel, to a cryonics facility in present-day Arizona where the dead wait to return to life, Frankissstein shows us how much closer we are to the future than we realise.
Patsy by Nicole Dennis-benn
Paperback RRP
Patsy yearns to escape the beautiful but impoverished Jamaican town where she was raised for a new life in New York and the chance to start afresh. Above all, she hopes to be reunited with her oldest friend, Cicely, and to rekindle their young love. But spreading her wings will come at a price: she must leave her five-year-old daughter, Tru, behind. And Patsy is soon confronted by the stark reality of life as an undocumented migrant in a hostile city.
Expertly evoking the jittery streets of New York and the languid rhythms and lilting patois of Jamaica, Patsy weaves between the lives of Patsy and Tru as mother and daughter ultimately find a way back to one another. Daring, tender and profound, this is the story of one woman's fight to discover her sense of self in a world that tries to define her, and of the lasting threads of love stretching across years and oceans.
Rainbow Milk by Paul Mendez
Hardback RRP £14.99
Rainbow Milk is an intersectional coming-of-age story, following nineteen-year-old Jesse McCarthy as he grapples with his racial and sexual identities against the backdrop of a Jehovah's Witness upbringing and the legacies of the Windrush generation. Jesse seeks a fresh start in London - escaping from a broken immediate family, a repressive religious community and the desolate, disempowered Black Country - but finds himself at a loss for a new centre of gravity, and turns to sex work to create new notions of love, fatherhood and spirituality.
See the rest of our selection of LGBT+ books on our bookshop.org list
Order books directly from us or buy online through our bookshop.org store.
Our January opening hours are:
Mon / Wed / Fri / Sat
From 10am - 4pm
Please note. The shop floor will be open for the sale of essential food and household items. We will not be open for you to browse our bookshelves, but if you have ordered books or household items online or via the phone you will be able to collect them during these opening hours! Shop online today!
You will see we have a QR code at the door, if you have the NHS COVID-19 app downloaded to your smart phone please scan this as you enter the shop.s you enter the shop.
