Gender: A Graphic Guide

Gender: A Graphic Guide is a great teaching tool and resource.

In this illustrated guide, Meg-John Barker and Jules Scheele travel through our shifting understandings of gender across time and space – from ideas about masculinity and femininity, to non-binary and trans genders, to intersecting experiences of gender, race, sexuality, class, disability and more. 

Tackling current debates and tensions, which can divide communities and even cost lives, Barker and Scheele look to the past and the future to explore how we might all approach gender in more caring and celebratory ways.

 Is masculinity ‘toxic’? Why are public toilets such a political issue? How has feminism changed the available gender roles – and for whom? Why might we all benefit from challenging binary thinking about sex/gender?

Barker, Meg-John & Jules Scheele. (2019). Gender: A Graphic Guide. New York: Icon.

The River Has Roots

The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar is a beautiful novella that reads like a folk tale. 

In the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, dwells the mysterious Hawthorn family.

There, they tend and harvest the enchanted willows and honour an ancient compact to sing to them in thanks for their magic. None more devotedly than the family's latest daughters, Esther and Ysabel, who cherish each other as much as they cherish the ancient trees.

But when Esther rejects a forceful suitor in favor of a lover from the land of Faerie, not only the sisters' bond but also their lives will be at risk...

After being introduced to Amal El-Mohtar's writing in This is How You Lose the Time War, I will be reading everything she publishes! This is a gorgeous book with beautiful illustrations.

El-Mohtar, Amal. (2025). The River Has Roots. New York: Tor.

The Jasmine Throne (Burning Kingdoms #1)

The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri is the first book in her Burning Kingdoms series. 

Exiled by her despotic brother, princess Malini spends her days dreaming of vengeance while imprisoned in the Hirana: an ancient cliffside temple that was once the revered source of the magical deathless waters but is now little more than a decaying ruin.
 
The secrets of the Hirana call to Priya. But in order to keep the truth of her past safely hidden, she works as a servant in the loathed regent’s household and cleaning Malini’s chambers.
 
When Malini witnesses Priya’s true nature, their destinies become irrevocably tangled. One is a ruthless princess seeking to steal a throne. The other a powerful priestess desperate to save her family. Together, they will set an empire ablaze.

Suri has created a great fantasy world filled with magic, political intrigue, and a story of revenge.

Suri, Tasha. (2021). The Jasmine Throne. New York: Orbit.

One Last Stop

One Last Stop by Casey McQuistion is the story of falling in love on the subway.

Moving to New York City is supposed to prove cynical twenty-three-year-old August right: magic and cinematic love stories don’t exist.

But then, she meets this gorgeous girl on the train.

Jane. Dazzling, charming, mysterious, impossible Jane. Jane with her rough edges and swoopy hair and soft smile.

August’s subway crush becomes the best part of her day, but pretty soon she discovers there’s one big problem: Jane is displaced in time from the 1970s, and August is going to have to use everything she tried to leave in her own past to help Jane. Maybe it’s time to start believing in some things after all . . .

McQuiston has written a great love story wrapped in two mysteries. The audiobook reader is great.

McQuistion, Casey. (2021). One Last Stop. New York: St. Martin's Press.

Hang the Moon (Written in the Stars #2)

Hang the Moon by Alexandria Bellefleur is the second book in the Written in the Stars romance series set in Seattle.

In a delightful follow-up to Written in the Stars, Alexandria Bellefleur delivers another queer rom-com about a hopeless romantic who vows to show his childhood crush that romance isn’t dead by recreating iconic dates from his favorite films...

Brendon Lowell loves love. It’s why he created a dating app to help people find their one true pairing and why he’s convinced “the one” is out there, even if he hasn’t met her yet. Or... has he? When his sister's best friend turns up in Seattle unexpectedly, Brendon jumps at the chance to hang out with her. He’s crushed on Annie since they were kids, and the stars have finally aligned, putting them in the same city at the same time.

Annie booked a spur-of-the-moment trip to Seattle to spend time with friends before moving across the globe. She’s not looking for love, especially with her best friend’s brother. Annie remembers Brendon as a sweet, dorky kid. Except, the 6-foot-4 man who shows up at her door is a certified Hot Nerd and Annie... wants him? Oh yes.

Getting involved would be a terrible idea—her stay is temporary and he wants forever—but when Brendon learns Annie has given up on dating, he’s determined to prove that romance is real. Taking cues from his favorite rom-coms, Brendon plans to woo her with elaborate dates straight out of Nora Ephron’s playbook. The clock is ticking on Annie’s time in Seattle, and Brendon’s starting to realize romance isn’t just flowers and chocolate. But maybe real love doesn’t need to be as perfect as the movies... as long as you think your partner hung the moon.

Bellefleur, Alexandria. (2021). Hang the Moon. New York: Avon.

Night Owls

Night Owls by A.R. Vishny is the story of two folkloric Jewish monsters, Estries, who run a theater on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

Clara loves rules. Rules are what have kept her and her sister, Molly, alive—or, rather, undead—for over a century. Work their historic movie theater by day. Shift into an owl under the cover of night. Feed on men in secret. And never fall in love.

Molly is in love. And she’s tired of keeping her girlfriend, Anat, a secret. If Clara won’t agree to bend their rules a little, then she will bend them herself.

Boaz is cursed. He can’t walk two city blocks without being cornered by something undead. At least at work at the theater, he gets to flirt with Clara, wishing she would like him back.

When Anat vanishes and New York’s monstrous underworld emerges from the shadows, Clara suspects Boaz, their annoyingly cute box office attendant, might be behind it all.

But if they are to find Anat, they will need to work together to face demons and the hungers they would sooner bury. Clara will have to break all her rules—of love, of life, and of death itself before her rules break everyone she loves.

Vishny has written an amazing genreblend of mystery, historical folklore, New York history, romance and more. Read this book! 

Vishny, A.R. (2024). Night Owls. New York: Harper. 

Christmas Notch Romance Series

The Christmas Notch romance series by Julie Murphy and Sierra Simone is a fun read any time of the year. Books: A Merry Little Meet Cute; A Holly Jolly Ever After; A Jingle Bell Mingle, plus novellas!

Centered around three members of a boy band, years after their retirement, this series is funny, hot as hell, and super queer even though the main romances are m-f. 

If you like romance, erotica or Christmas, read these fun books.

Murphy, Julie and Sierra Simone. 

Housemates

Housemates by Emma Copley Eisenberg is the story of friendship, love and photography in Philadelphia. 

When Bernie replies to Leah’s ad for a new housemate in Philadelphia, the two begin an intense and defiantly uncategorizable friendship based on a mutual belief in their art, and one another. Both aspire to capture the world around them: Leah through her writing; Bernie through her photography.

After Bernie’s former photography professor, the renowned yet tarnished Daniel Dunn, dies and leaves her a complicated inheritance, Leah volunteers to accompany Bernie to his home in rural Pennsylvania, turning the jaunt into a road trip with an ambitious mission: to document America through words and photographs.

What ensues is a journey into the heart of the nation, bringing the housemates into conversation with people from all walks of life—“the absurd dreamers and failures of this wide, wide country”—as they try to make sense of the times they are living in. Along the way, Leah and Bernie discover what it means to chase their own ideas and dreams, and to embrace what they are capable of both romantically and artistically.

Warm and insightful, Housemates is a story of youth and freedom—a glorious celebration of queer life, and how art and love might save us all.

Eisenberg, Emma Copley. (2024). Housemates. New York: Hogarth

The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye

The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye by Briony Cameron is the fictionalized story of a real woman who was one of the more successful pirates of the Caribbean in the mid-1600s.

In the tumultuous town of Yáquimo, Santo Domingo, Jacquotte Delahaye is an unknown but up-and-coming shipwright. Her dreams are bold but her ambitions are bound by the confines of her life with her self-seeking French father. When her way of life and the delicate balance of power in the town are threatened, she is forced to flee her home and become a woman on the run along with a motley crew of refugees, including a mysterious young woman named Teresa.

Jacquotte and her band become indentured servants to the infamous Blackhand, a ruthless pirate captain who rules his ship with an iron fist. As they struggle to survive his brutality, Jacquotte finds herself unable to resist Teresa despite their differences. When Blackhand hatches a dangerous scheme to steal a Portuguese shipment of jewels, Jacquotte must rely on her wits, resourcefulness, and friends to survive. But she discovers there is a grander, darker scheme of treachery at play, and she ultimately must decide what price she is willing to pay to secure a better future for them all.

An unforgettable tale told in three parts, The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye is a thrilling, buccaneering escapade filled with siege and battle, and is also a tender exploration of friendship, love, and the search for freedom and home.

Cameron, Briony. (2024). The Ballad of Jacquotte Delehaye. New York: Atria Books.

The Future of Another Timeline

The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz is a queer, feminist, punk time travel novel. 

1992 - Beth is at a Riotgrrl concert with her friends when a decision they make creates a new path in the timeline. 

2022 - Beth is part of a group of time travelers who are hoping to make small changes in the past to ensure body autonomy for women in all timelines. 

1892 - In the White City as Chicago's World's Fair is about to open the battle for the future in on. Trends started by Comstock and his followers could take away women's rights for the whole of the future.

Newitz is a science fiction genius. They take stories to places few others would think of. Due to the current political climate in the US this is not an easy book to read right now, but maybe corrections are coming here too.

Newitz, Annalee. (2019). The Future of Another Timeline. New York: Tor.

The City in the Middle of the Night

The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders

January is a dying planet - divided between a permanently frozen darkness on one side, and blazing endless sunshine on the other. Humanity clings to life, spread across two archaic cities built in the sliver of habitable dusk. 

But life inside the cities is just as dangerous as the wastelands outside. Sophie, a student and reluctant revolutionary, is supposed to be dead, after being exiled into the night. 

Saved only by forming an unusual bond with the enigmatic beasts who roam the ice, Sophie vows to stay hidden from the world, hoping she can heal. But fate has other plans - and 

Sophie's ensuing odyssey and the ragtag family she finds will change the entire world. [from fantastic fiction]

Anders is a talented writer who takes stories places other authors don't even think of. Her science fiction is amazing and will leave you thinking of the characters long after you finish reading. 

Anders, Charlie Jane. (2019). The City in the Middle of the Night. New York: Tor.

City of Laughter

 

City of Laughter by Temim Fruchter is a family saga through four generations of women.

A rich and riveting debut spanning four generations of Eastern European Jewish women bound by blood, half-hidden secrets and the fantastical visitation of a shapeshifting stranger over the course of 100 years.

City of Laughter follows a young queer woman stuck in a thicket of generational secrets back to her family's origins, where ancestral clues begin to reveal a lineage both haunted and shaped by desire.

Ropshitz, Poland, was once known as the City of Laughter. As this story opens, an 18th-century badchan, a holy jester whose job is to make wedding guests laugh, receives a visitation from a mysterious stranger - bringing the laughter the people of Ropshitz desperately need, and triggering a sequence of events that will reverberate across the coming century.

In the present day, Shiva Margolin, recovering from the heartbreak of her first big queer love and grieving the death of her beloved father, struggles to connect with her guarded mother, who spends most of her time at the local funeral home. A student of Jewish folklore, Shiva seizes an opportunity to visit Poland, hoping her family's mysteries will make more sense if she walks in the footsteps of her great-grandmother, Mira, about whom no one speaks.

What she finds will make her question not only her past and her future, but also her present. Electric and sharply intimate, City of Laughter zigzags between our universe and a tapestry of real and invented Jewish folklore, asking how far we can travel from the stories that have raised us without leaving them behind. [from fantastic fiction]

Fruchter, Temim. (2024). City of Laughter. New York: Grove Press.

Sea of Tranquility

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel is a story with a mystery that spans 489 years.

Edwin St. Andrew is a second son in England at the beginning of the 20th century. As he is not going to inherit his father's house and wealth, he is sent to Canada to make a life for himself. In 1912 he has made it across the continent to Vancouver island. Walking in the forest toward a maple tree he experiences disorientation - seeing a terminal with a man playing the violin.

Olive Llewellyn is on a world tour for her pandemic novel as it is about to become a movie. In 2203 while walking through an airship terminal, passing a man playing the violin, she suddenly sees trees in a forest. 

In 2401 in a colony on the moon, Gaspery Roberts is hired by the Time Institute to investigate an anomaly in North America. He will travel back in time to interview four people in different times, all connected to an airship terminal in Oklahoma City.

Mandel has created a compelling puzzle of a story. This is a fun book. Read it now!

Mandel, Emily St. John. (2022). Sea of Tranquility. New York: Alfred A Knopf. 

The Future

The Future by Naomi Alderman is a science fiction book that takes place a few years from now technology-wise. 

Martha Einkorn was raised on a compound in Oregon. She now works for a social media mogul who wants to control everything. 

Lai Zhen, raised in Hong Kong, is an internet-famous survivalist. She writes articles, interviews and posts videos that have millions of followers. 

Both Martha and Lai have a role to play in a chain of events set into motion to change the course of the world, to hopefully save humanity. If something happens to make people willing to restructure their lives to help the Earth repair itself. One or both of them are unaware of their roles.

Alderman is a masterful storyteller. The twists and turns in this thriller will keep you up late reading. 

Alderman, Naomi. (2023). The Future. New York: Simon and Schuster. 

Bathe the Cat

Bathe the Cat by Alice McGinty is a hilarious tale of a family getting ready for a visit from grandma. 

While two dads and their kids run in circles trying to get the house presentable for a visit from grandma, the cat keeps rearranging the list - created out of refrigerator magnets.

This is a great book that should be at the top of your list for picture book gifts! All of the books by Alice McGinty are wonderful. 

McGinty, Alice. (2023). Bathe the Cat. New York: Chronicle Books.

Julian is a Mermaid

Julian is a Mermaid by Jessica Love is a beautiful picture book. 

This book about a boy and his grandmother is the tale of letting someone grow and shine in their own way. About seeing people for who they are. 

Read this beautiful book or buy it for a small loved one in your life. 

Love, Jessica. (2018). Julian is a Mermaid. New York: Candlewick Press.

He Who Drowned the World (Radiant Emperor #2)

He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan is the stunning conclusion to her Radiant Emperor series, an alternate history to the end of the Great Yuan and the founding of the Ming Dynasty. 

Zhu Yuanzhang, formerly Zhu Chongba, has crowned themself king of a large part of southern China, land taken back from the Mongol Yuan dynasty.

General Ouyang, who fought against Zhu, will form an uneasy alliance with Zhu to continue the destruction of the Yuan. Someone else is also pulling strings to gain the throne himself. So far, Zhu cannot figure out who that could be.

In this heart-wrenching conclusion, Parker-Chan closes this brilliantly written alternate history, queer retelling of a pivotal time in Chinese and world history. If you are a fan of history or great writing read this series. It is a feat of literature. 

Parker-Chan, Shelley. (2023). He Who Drowned the World. New York: Tor.

The Degenerates

Rose, her sister Maxine and Alice have lived at the Massachusetts School for the Feeble-Minded most of their lives. It is an institution for any girls or women deemed other or who had nowhere else to go or were unwanted by their families (poor, marginalized or disabled girls). The place is full of bullies, vicious attendants, and very little happiness. But the three girls have worked out a life that works for them.

Maxine does everything she can to protect her sister Rose who is likely on the Autism spectrum. Alice is her best friend who was given up because she was born with a clubbed foot.

London is in foster care. She lives with an old woman who spends her days yelling insults and profanity out of her window. When London is taken away and sent to the school, she vows to escape.

Told through four voices The Degenerates is an historical novel that looks at the harsh life that was true of many, many people. Mann has written it with sensitivity and hope, turning it into a beautiful telling of an awful situation.

Mann, J. Albert. (2020). The Degenerates. New York: Atheneum.

The Gilda Stories

The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez is a different kind of vampire tale. Written in segments, the first being published in the Village Voice, this tale follows a young Black woman from escaping enslavement through the year 2050.

In the 1950s, outside of New Orleans, Gilda finds a young woman hiding in her cellar. The Girl has escaped and fled from Mississippi. Gilda takes her in, moves her to town to help at her brothel. 

After a few years, when Gilda is ready to move on, she turns the girl - giving her the chance to live until she decides otherwise. All she asks is that the girl use the name Gilda.

The chapters that follow lead Gilda to San Francisco, Boston, New York and more. While telling the story of a gentler vampire archetype, one who gives as she takes, Gilda travel through generations of changes in civil rights.

Gomez is a classic lesbian novel. She explores Blackness, radical ecology, redefinitions of family, and the fluidity of the vampire in human society.

Gomez, Jewelle. (1991). The Gilda Stories. San Francisco: City Light Books.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid is a wonderful story of a Hollywood starlet.

The Hollywood star Evelyn Hugo, one of the biggest stars in the history of tinsel town, has been out of the limelight for years. Now she is donating some of her most iconic dresses to auction.

Monique Grant is a writer / journalist working at Vivant magazine. Her editor is shocked when Monique is requested to interview Hugo. No one has interviewed her since her starlet days. Now in her eighties she is considered a recluse. 

What follows is the story of Evelyn Hugo's life - in more detail than any other source has ever had access to. Told in chapters of her life - based on the time with seven different husbands - this is the glamourous life all fans crave.

Taylor Jenkins Reid has written a wonderful tale of a very full life. There are twists and turns, love and scandal. I absolutely love this book. Read it today!

Reid, Taylor Jenkins. (2017). The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. New York: Atria.