Pride Month - Adult Fiction
Check out these books featuring LGBTQ+ characters.
(All of these titles are available at the Westlock Library)
The (other) you : stories
Oates, Joyce Carol, 1938- author
2021
This is a singular, moving collection of photographs and stories of queer couples and families of colour from across the United States and around the world. Inclusive of all gender identities, races, and ages, this beautifully packaged book offers an intimate look at what it means to live at the intersections of queer and BIPOC identities today, and broadens how we see affection, love, and family.
All my mother's lovers : a novel
Masad, Ilana, author
2020
Intimacy has always eluded twenty-seven-year-old Maggie Krause--despite being brought up by married parents, models of domestic bliss--until, that is, Lucia came into her life. But when Maggie's mom, Iris, dies in a car crash, Maggie returns home only to discover a withdrawn dad, an angry brother, and, along with Iris's will, five sealed envelopes, each addressed to a mysterious man she's never heard of. In an effort to run from her own grief and discover the truth about Iris--who made no secret of her discomfort with her daughter's sexuality--Maggie embarks on a road trip, determined to hand-deliver the letters and find out what these men meant to her mother. Maggie quickly discovers Iris's second, hidden life, which shatters everything Maggie thought she knew about her parents' perfect relationship.
At certain points we touch
Joseph, Lauren John, author.
2022
Ten years earlier, our young narrator and a boy named Thomas James fall into bed with one another over the summer of their graduation. Their ensuing affair, with its violent, animal intensity and its intoxicating and toxic power plays initiates a dance of repulsion and attraction that will cross years, span continents, drag in countless victims - and culminate in terrible betrayal.
Big gay wedding : a novel
Lane, Byron, 1978- author
2023
Barnett Durang has a secret. No, not THAT secret. His widowed mother has long known he's gay. The secret is Barnett is getting married. At his mother's farm. In their small Louisiana town. She just doesn't know it yet. It'll be an intimate affair. Just two hundred or so of the most fabulous folks Barnett is shipping in - turning her quiet rescue farm for misfit animals into a most unlikely wedding venue. But there are forces, both within this modern new family and in the town itself, that really don't want to see this handsome couple march down the aisle.
Light from uncommon stars
Aoki, Ryka, author
2021
Shizuka Satomi made a deal with the devil: to escape damnation, she must entice seven other violin prodigies to trade their souls for success. She has already delivered six. When Katrina Nguyen, a young transgender runaway, catches Shizuka's ear with her wild talent, she has found her final candidate. Then Shizuka meets Lan Tran. As the lives of these three women become entangled by chance and fate, a story of magic, identity, curses, and hope begins, and a family worth crossing the universe for is found.
Love in the big city : a novel
Pak, Sang-yŏng, 1988- author
2021
This is an energetic, joyful, and moving novel that depicts both the glittering nighttime world of Seoul and the bleary-eyed morning-after. Young is a cynical yet fun-loving Korean student who pinballs from home to class to the beds of recent Tinder matches. He and Jaehee, his female best friend and roommate, frequent nearby bars where they push away their anxieties about their love lives, families, and money. A brilliantly written novel filled with powerful sensory descriptions and both humour and emotion, this is an exploration of millennial loneliness as well as the joys of queer life.
Mistakes were made : a novel
Wilsner, Meryl, author.
2022
"A smart and sexy rom-com about a college senior who accidentally hooks up with her best friend's mom. When Cassie Klein goes to an off-campus bar to escape her school's Family Weekend, she isn't looking for a hookup--it just happens. Buying a drink for a stranger turns into what should be an uncomplicated, amazing one-night stand. But then the next morning rolls around and her friend drags her along to meet her mom--the hot, older woman Cassie slept with. Erin Bennett came to Family Weekend to get closer to her daughter, not have a one-night stand with a college senior. In her defense, she hadn't known Cassie was a student when they'd met. To make things worse, Erin's daughter brings Cassie to breakfast the next morning. And despite Erin's better judgement--how could sleeping with your daughter's friend be anything but bad?--she and Cassie get along in the day just as well as they did last night. What should have been a one-time fling quickly proves impossible to ignore, and soon Cassie and Erin are sneaking around. Worst of all, they start to realize they have something real. But is being honest about the love between them worth the cost?"-- Publisher's description.
Our wives under the sea : a novel
Armfield, Julia, author.
2022
"Leah is changed. Months earlier, she left for a routine expedition, only this time her submarine sank to the sea floor. When she finally surfaces and returns home, her wife Miri knows that something is wrong. Barely eating and lost in her thoughts, Leah rotates between rooms in their apartment, running the taps morning and night. As Miri searches for answers, desperate to understand what happened below the water, she must face the possibility that the woman she loves is slipping from her grasp."-- Provided by publisher.
The pomegranate gate
Kaplan, Ariel author
2023
Toba Peres can speak, but not shout; sleep, but not dream. She can write with both hands at once, in different languages, but she keeps her talents hidden at her grandparents' behest. Naftaly Cresques sees things that aren't real, and dreams things that are. Always the family disappointment, Naftaly would still risk his life to honor his father's last wishes. After the Queen demands every Jew convert or face banishment, Toba and Naftaly are among thousands of Jews who flee their homes. Defying royal orders to abandon all possessions, Toba keeps an amulet she must never take off; Naftaly smuggles a centuries-old book he's forbidden to read. But the Inquisition is hunting these particular treasures-and they're not hunting alone. Toba stumbles through a pomegranate grove into the mirror realm of the Mazik: mythical, terrible immortals with an Inquisition of their own, equally cruel and even more powerful. With the Mazik kingdoms in political turmoil, this Inquisition readies its bid to control both realms. In each world, Toba and Naftaly must evade both Inquisitions long enough to unravel the connection between their family heirlooms and the realm of the Mazik. Their fates are tied to this strange place, and it's up to them to save it.
Solomon's crown : a novel
Siegel, Natasha, author
2023
Twelfth-century Europe. Newly crowned King Philip of France is determined to restore his nation to its former empire and bring glory to his name. But when his greatest enemy, King Henry of England, threatens to end his reign before it can even begin, Philip is forced to make a precarious alliance with Henry's volatile son, Richard, risking both his throne, and his heart. When Philip and Richard find themselves staring down an impending war, they must choose between their desire for each other and their grand ambitions.
The thirty names of night : a novel
Joukhadar, Zeyn, author
2020
Five years after a suspicious fire killed his mother, a closeted Syrian American trans boy sheds his birth name and searches for a new one. He has been unable to paint since his mother's ghost has begun to visit him each evening. The only time he feels truly free is when he slips out at night to paint murals on buildings in the once-thriving Manhattan neighborhood known as Little Syria. One night, he finds the tattered journal of a Syrian American artist named Laila Z. She famously and mysteriously disappeared more than sixty years before, but her journal contains proof that Laila Z's past is intimately tied to his mother's-and his grandmother's--in ways he never could have expected. Even more surprising, Laila Z's story reveals the histories of queer and transgender people within his community that he never knew. Following his mother's ghost, he uncovers the silences kept in the name of survival by his own community, his own family, and within himself, and discovers the family that was there all along.
Upright women wanted
Gailey, Sarah, author
2020
Esther is a stowaway. She's hidden herself away in the Librarian's book wagon in an attempt to escape the marriage her father has arranged for her-a marriage to the man who was previously engaged to her best friend. Her best friend who she was in love with. Her best friend who was just executed for possession of resistance propaganda. The future American Southwest is full of bandits, fascists, and queer librarian spies on horseback trying to do the right thing.