New Fiction - August 2025 > Likes and Comments

A Tale of Mirth & Magic by Kristen Vale. Romantasy. “A cozy and steamy romance between Elikki, a plus-size bisexual elf, and Barra, a purple half-giant who falls for her hard! She wants a casual hookup, but he can't get physical without his emotions getting involved.” Bi author.

Black Flame by Gretchen Felker-Martin. Horror. “Ellen, a deeply closeted lesbian, spends all her time restoring films at a failing archive. Presented with a print of an infamous exploitation film believed to have been destroyed during the Holocaust, she becomes obsessed she becomes over its depictions of occult practices and queer debauchery. She’s soon convinced that the acts portrayed in the film are not fiction, but reality. And they’re happening to her.”

Extinction Capital of the World: Stories by Mariah Rigg. “A stunning portrait of Hawai'i and a powerful meditation on family, queer love, and community amid imperialism and environmental collapse. An older man grapples with the American-weapons research conducted on a neighboring island. A pregnant woman seeks belonging while poaching flowers with her partner’s mother. Two teenage girls find love during a summer on Midway Atoll. A young woman returns to O’ahu after a breakup and reconnects with her estranged father and the island itself.” Samoan-Haole author.

Ghost Fish by Stuart Pennebaker (a woman). Literary fiction. “A tender coming-of-age novel about a young queer woman who is haunted by her sister’s death and starts to believe she has returned to her—in the form of a ghost fish. Ranges from New York City to Key West.”

Lessons in Magic and Disaster by Charlie Jane Anders. Speculative. “Jamie has a strong queer relationship, an esoteric dissertation proposal, and inherited generational trauma. She also has an extraordinary secret: she's a powerful witch. Serena, Jamie's mother, has been hiding from the world for several years, grieving the death of her wife. Now it's up to Jamie to understand the secrets behind a mysterious novel from 1749, unearth a long-buried scandal hinted therein, and learn the true nature of magic, before her mother ruins both of their lives.” Nationally bestselling author.

Lucky Day by Chuck Tingle. “Vera, a bisexual statistics professor, survives a global catastrophe known as a Low Probability Event: 8 million people die in a single day, in various improbable ways. Special Agent Layne asks her help in proving that a suspiciously lucky casino is connected to the deaths. She's the only person who can prevent another deadly improbability.”

Sea, Mothers, Swallow, Tongues by Kim de l'Horizon, trans. by Jamie Lee Searle. Literary fiction. “Autofiction in which Kim, a nonbinary person AMAB, dives into a writing project—the book we read—to write themselves into their own story. The book changes form and tone, openly attempting different strategies to reach its goal, and many of them don't work, which is the genius of the text. Historic vignettes illustrate older female relatives’ lives and destinies and how the patriarchy intersects with class. We learn about witches, mother roles, body negativity, dependency, and empowerment, while from the 20th century until today, WW II lurks in the background. The possibilities and limits of language are a central concern.” Winner of national book awards in Germany and Switzerland.

Songs for Other People's Weddings by David Levithan with songs by Jens Lekman. “A tender, funny romance about a wedding singer-songwriter whose own relationship is quietly unraveling.”

Sweetener by Marissa Higgins. Romance. “A messy lesbian novel following two exes who turn to online dating after their dramatic split, only to end up seeing the same woman. And all three are fixated on motherhood.”

The Barefoot Followers of Sweet Potato Grace: A Novel by Megan Okonsky. Contemporary. “Tombstone, Texas, has never seen anything like the barefoot travelers who barrel in one afternoon, looking like they just stepped out of the 1970s, right in the middle of Pinky’s eulogy for her beloved rescue cat. Pinky is relieved at the interruption, as she’d planned to use the second half of her eulogy to come out of the closet. Now, she doesn’t have to. Are the newcomers a circus troupe? Revolutionaries? A sinister cult? While the town grows suspicious and rumor mills churn, Pinky starts to think the wrath of Tombstone is a thing worth risking in order to be true to oneself.”

The Build-a-Boyfriend Project by Mason Deaver. Romance. “Eli’s roommates set him up with Peter so Eli can get over his ex once and for all. The date is a disaster, and when Eli’s boss hears him complaining, he suggests that Eli teach Peter to be a better boyfriend through a series of simulated dates, then write an article about it. Eli pretends to write the article while secretly interviewing Peter about growing up queer in the South.”

The Entanglement of Rival Wizards by Sara Raasch. Romantasy. Rival grad student wizards (one human, one half-elf, both male) are forced to work together without killing―or falling for―each other. Book 1 in a series.

The Midnight Shift by Cheon Seon-Ran, translated by Gene Png. Horror. “Explores queer love and the consequences of loneliness. When four elderly people commit suicide back-to-back at the same hospital, the police force dismisses the events as being due to the patients’ loneliness. As Officer Su-Yeon begins her investigation alone, she runs into a mysterious woman, Wanda, at the crime scene. Wanda, hot on the trail of her ex-lover, Lily, gives Su-Yeon the answer: a vampire did it.” A bestseller in South Korea.

The New Lesbian Pulp, ed. by Sarah Fonseca and Olivia Saenz. Short stories. “Lesbian pulp fiction thrived in the oppressive 1950s, telling subversive stories of lonely women who find connection, passion, and revenge. In reviving the genre, the editors layered nuance into classic tropes while dialing up the melodrama, romantic peril, and collateral damage. Vigilante lesbians gather roadkill for revenge, a woman and her former high school bully hook up and commit murder, Brooklyn witches cruise kink parties for human sacrifice, and a sinister kidnapping goes horribly wrong (or horribly right).”

The Secret Crush Book Club by Karmen Lee. Romance. “A dedicated single mother and a librarian with a secret write their own sweet and sexy love story in this small-town sapphic rom-com.” Black author, Black MCs.

The Sun and the Moon by Rebekah Faubion. Sapphic romance. “A park ranger and a pilot meet when their parents start dating. They’re suspicious of their parents’ union, but along the way, they find chemistry with each other.”

This Is My Body by Lindsay King-Miller. Horror. “Single gay mom Brigid always thought cutting ties with her extremist Catholic family was the best thing she could have done for her daughter, Dylan—and for herself. But when Dylan starts having terrifying fits of unnatural violence, Brigid can’t shake her memories of a girl from her childhood who behaved the same way—until Brigid’s uncle, Father Angus, performed an exorcism. As Brigid starts to uncover secrets about Father Angus, that long-ago exorcism, and her family’s past, she realizes she and Dylan are in danger.”

This Vicious Hunger by Francesca May. “Dark gothic horror-fantasy about two young women struggling to find freedom of choice in a world where their path feels predetermined. Turning to each other, they soon find themselves sinking deeper into a world of beauty, poison, and an insatiable quest for knowledge.”

Three Parties by Ziyad Saadi. Literary fiction. “Firas, a 23-year-old queer Palestinian refugee, plans to come out at his elaborate birthday dinner party in this tragicomic reimagining of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. Sharp, darkly funny, and full of surprises, the novel gleefully upends the Western coming-out narrative and sensitively explores the traumas and pressures faced by Palestinian immigrants—all in the span of a single life-changing day.”

Well, Actually by Mazey Eddings. A second-chance romance between a bisexual cisgender woman and a bisexual cisgender man. The man, a beloved social media personality who has built a platform on deconstructing toxic masculinity, gets publicly called out for his own misogynist behavior.

Whites: Stories by Mark Doten. “Political and sharply satirical short fiction that features characters such as a nonbinary sneaker podcaster turned Jan 6 insurrectionist, an anti-vax nursing home employee, a gay White supremacist, and a demonically possessed cookie manufacturer.”

Adding to that a.maz.ing. list one small-press entry that I reviewed: Lamb: A Novel in Snapshots by Troy Ford for my fellow elderqueers or those who want to know what coming-of-age meant fifty years ago.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Thank you, Richard! I'll add that to the list my Pride Center library team is considering.

I'll be reading Sea, Mothers, Swallow, Tongues and The Midnight Shift (someday...).

Just finished A Happy Beginning by B.A. Richards It is has tons of smut but is so good. Has gay, ace and poly relationships. Is fantasy. Think Red, White and Blue but with fairies, vampires and trolls.

Thanks, Rebecca. My Pride Center didn't start compiling our new releases lists until April, so we missed that one.

Richard wrote: "Adding to that a.maz.ing. list one small-press entry that I reviewed: Lamb: A Novel in Snapshots by Troy Ford for..." Appreciate the mention, Richard, thank you!