Will a dark history doom their future together?
New York copper Tom Halloran is a man with a past. If anyone finds out he once ran with the notorious O’Connell tunnel gang, he’ll spend the rest of his life doing hard time behind bars. But Tom’s secret is threatened when a horrible murder on his beat seems to have been caused by the same ancient magic that killed his gang.
Cat shifter Cicero is determined to investigate the disappearance of one friend and the death of another, even though no one else believes the cases are connected. When the trail of his investigation crosses Tom’s, the very bohemian Cicero instinctively recognizes the uncultured Irish patrolman as his witch. Though they’re completely unsuited to one another, Cicero has no choice but to work alongside Tom…all the while fighting against the passion growing within.
Tom knows that taking Cicero as his familiar would only lead to discovery and disaster. Yet as the heat between them builds, Tom’s need for the other man threatens to overcome every rational argument against becoming involved.
But when their investigation uncovers a conspiracy that threatens all of New York, Tom must make the hardest decision of his life: to live a lie and gain his heart’s desire, or to confess the truth and sacrifice it all.
Representation Includes
- MLM male protagonist (Tom)
- MLM male protagonist (Cicero)
Content Warnings
violence, murder, racist slurs, antisemitism, homomisia & homomisia slurs, attempted sexual assault, alcohol consumption mentioned, blood depiction, gun violence, kidnappingAwards
- Rainbow Award for Gay Paranormal Romance Winner (2016)
Reviews
Where to Find
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Live fast, die young.
Tam Hashford is tired of working at her local pub, slinging drinks for world-famous mercenaries and listening to the bards sing of adventure and glory in the world beyond her sleepy hometown.
When the biggest mercenary band of all rolls into town, led by the infamous Bloody Rose, Tam jumps at the chance to sign on as their bard. It’s adventure she wants – and adventure she gets as the crew embark on a quest that will end in one of two ways: glory or death.
It’s time to take a walk on the wyld side.
Representation Includes
- Lesbian protagonist (Tam)
Content Warnings
Violence, murder, death of a family member, drug addiction, self-harm (discussions and depiction), discussion of previous sexual abuse, emotionally abusive parentsAwards
-
Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Fantasy (2018)
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Reddit r/fantasy Stabby Award for Best Novel (2018)
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BookNest Award for Best Traditionally Published Novel (2018)
Reviews
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The last thing in the world Thom Creed wants is to add to his father’s pain, so he keeps secrets. Like that he has special powers. And that he’s been asked to join the League – the very organization of superheroes that spurned his dad. But the most painful secret of all is one Thom can barely face himself: he’s gay.
But becoming a member of the League opens up a new world to Thom. There, he connects with a misfit group of aspiring heroes, including Scarlett, who can control fire but not her anger; Typhoid Larry, who can make anyone sick with his touch; and Ruth, a wise old broad who can see the future. Like Thom, these heroes have things to hide; but they will have to learn to trust one another when they uncover a deadly conspiracy within the League.
To survive, Thom will face challenges he never imagined. To find happiness, he’ll have to come to terms with his father’s past and discover the kind of hero he really wants to be.
Representation Includes
- Gay protagonist (Thom)
Content Warnings
homophobia, misogynyAwards
- Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Children’s/Young Adult (2007)
- Gaylactic Spectrum Award Nominee for Best Novel (2008)
- The Inky Awards Nominee for Silver Inky (2008)
Reviews
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A mermaid’s supernatural beauty serves one purpose: to lure a sailor to his death.
The Massacre is supposed to bring peace to Eriana Kwai. Every year, the island sends its warriors to battle these hostile sea demons. Every year, the warriors fail to return. Desperate for survival, the island must decide on a new strategy. Now, the fate of Eriana Kwai lies in the hands of twenty battle-trained girls and their resistance to a mermaid’s allure.
Eighteen-year-old Meela has already lost her brother to the Massacre, and she has lived with a secret that’s haunted her since childhood. For any hope of survival, she must overcome the demons of her past and become a ruthless mermaid killer.
For the first time, Eriana Kwai’s Massacre warriors are female, and Meela must fight for her people’s freedom on the Pacific Ocean’s deadliest battleground.
Representation Includes
- The main character is sapphic and Indigenous from a fictional Northwestern Pacific Island
Content Warnings
gore, death, torture, animal death, abuseAwards
- Won the Best Indie Book Award
Reviews
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Hadriana in All My Dreams, winner of the prestigious Prix Renaudot, takes place primarily during Carnival in 1938 in the Haitian village of Jacmel. A beautiful young French woman, Hadriana, is about to marry a Haitian boy from a prominent family. But on the morning of the wedding, Hadriana drinks a mysterious potion and collapses at the altar. Transformed into a zombie, her wedding becomes her funeral. She is buried by the town, revived by an evil sorcerer, and then disappears into popular legend.
Set against a backdrop of magic and eroticism, and recounted with delirious humor, the novel raises universal questions about race and sexuality. The reader comes away enchanted by the marvelous reality of Haiti’s Vodou culture and convinced of Depestre’s lusty claim that all beings–even the undead ones–have a right to happiness and true love.
From the introduction by Edwidge Danticat:
Despestre offers us the kind of tale we rarely get in the hundreds of zombie stories featuring Haitians, stories set both inside and outside of Haiti. In Hadriana in All My Dreams we get both langaj–the secret language of Haitian Vodou–as well as the type of descriptive, elegiac, erotic, and satirical language, and the artistic license needed to create this most nuanced and powerful novel.
Representation Includes
- Female central character who expresses attraction regardless of gender, and has sexual experiences with women and men
Content Warnings
Very sexual, with frequent and in-depth depictions of sex and rape; Sexual assault and sexual violence; death of queer characterAwards
- Winner of the Prix Renaudot
Reviews
Where to Find
Details
- Originally published in French in 1988
- Original title: Hadriana dans tous mes rêves
- Translated into English in 2017 by Kaima L. Glover
- ISBN13: 9781617755552
Integrating both Maori myth and New Zealand reality, The Bone People became the most successful novel in New Zealand publishing history when it appeared in 1984.
In a tower on the New Zealand sea lives Kerewin Holmes: part Maori, part European, asexual and aromantic, an artist estranged from her art, a woman in exile from her family. One night her solitude is disrupted by a visitor–a speechless, mercurial boy named Simon, who tries to steal from her and then repays her with his most precious possession. As Kerewin succumbs to Simon’s feral charm, she also falls under the spell of his Maori foster father Joe, who rescued the boy from a shipwreck and now treats him with an unsettling mixture of tenderness and brutality. Out of this unorthodox trinity Keri Hulme has created what is at once a mystery, a love story, and an ambitious exploration of the zone where indigenous and European New Zealand meet, clash, and sometimes merge.
Winner of both a Booker Prize and Pegasus Prize for Literature, The Bone People is a work of unfettered wordplay and mesmerizing emotional complexity.
Representation Includes
- Aromantic asexual mixed-race Maori/white protagonist
Content Warnings
Child abuse and violence against a child by a major character; child neglect; alcoholismAwards
- Booker Prize
- Pegasus Prize for Literature
- Ockham New Zealand Book Award
Reviews
- Ace Reads’s review
- Louise’s review
- redbeardace’s review and Tabitha at Asexuality in Fiction’s reply
Where to Find
Details
- First published 1984 by Spiral Press
- ISBN13: 9780140089226
Welcome to Riverside, where the aristocratic and the ambitious battle for power in the city’s ballroom, brothels and boudoirs. Into this alluring world walks Katherine, a well-bred country girl versed in the rules of conventional society. Her mistake is thinking that they apply. For Katherine’s host and uncle, Alec Campion, aka the Mad Duke Tremontaine, is in charge here—and to him, rules are made to be broken. When Alec decides it would be more amusing for his niece to learn swordplay than to follow the usual path to marriage, her world changes forever. Blade in hand, it’s up to Katherine to navigate a maze of secrets and scoundrels and to gain the self-discovery that comes to those who master: the privilege of the sword.
Representation Includes
- Bisexual female protagonist
- Most major characters are bisexual
Content Warnings
RapeAwards
- Won the Locus Award
- Nominated for the World Fantasy Award, Nebula Award, and Gaylactic Spectrum Award
- Included on the Otherwise Award Honor List
Reviews
Where to Find
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In this visionary novel by Larissa Lai–her first in sixteen years–a community of parthenogenic women, sent into exile by the male-dominated Salt Water City, goes to war against disease, technology, and powerful men that threaten them with extinction.
Kirilow is a doctor apprentice whose lover Peristrophe is a “starfish,” a woman who can regenerate her own limbs and organs, which she uses to help her clone sisters whose organs are failing. When a denizen from Salt Water City suffering from a mysterious flu comes into their midst, Peristrophe becomes infected and dies, prompting Kirilow to travel to Salt Water City, where the flu is now a pandemic, to find a new starfish who will help save her sisters. There, Kirilow meets Kora, a girl-woman desperate to save her family from the epidemic. Kora has everything Kirilow is looking for, except the will to abandon her own family. But before Kirilow can convince her, both are kidnapped by a group of powerful men to serve as test subjects for a new technology that can cure the mind of the body.
Bold, beautiful, and wildly imaginative, The Tiger Flu is at once a female hero’s saga, a cyberpunk thriller, and a convention-breaking cautionary tale–a striking metaphor for our complicated times.
Representation Includes
- Lesbian protagonist of color
Content Warnings
Sexual assault; cannibalism; pandemic and disease; death of main character’s girlfriend by disease; torture; police brutality; drug use; graphic medical and vivisection scenes; eye trauma; general body horrorAwards
- Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction
Reviews
Where to Find
Details
- Published October 23rd 2018 by Arsenal Pulp Press
- Paperback ISBN13: 9781551527314
At one time a wild young girl and a brilliant artist, Ava Delaney changes dramatically after a violent event that rocks her entire family. Once loved and respected in their community and in their church, they are ostracized by their neighbors, led by their church leader, and a seventeen-year feud between the Delaneys and the church ensues. Ava and her family are displaced from the community even as they continue to live within it, trapped inside their creaky, shadowy old house.
When a mysterious woman arrives unexpectedly for a visit, her presence stirs up the past and ghosts and other restless things begin to emerge. And something is reignited in Ava: the indifferent woman she has become begins to give way to the wild girl, and the passionate artist, she used to be. But not without a struggle that threatens her well-being and, ultimately, her life.
Mia McKenzie is a winner of the Astraea Foundation’s Writers Fund Award and the Leeway Foundation’s Transformation Award. She describes herself as “a black feminist and a freaking queer.” Her work has been recommended by The Root, Colorlines, Feministing, Angry Asian Man, and Crunk Feminist Collective, among others. She is the creator of the blog BlackGirlDangerous.org.
Representation Includes
- Black lesbian main character
- Black gay supporting character
Content Warnings
Racism; sexism; homophobia (both internalized and external); death of a family member; death of a gay character; trauma; domestic violenceAwards
- Lambda Literary Award
Reviews
Where to Find
Details
- Published November 19th 2012 by Black Girl Dangerous Press
- Paperback ISBN13: 9780988628601
With this groundbreaking novel, Maureen F. McHugh established herself as one of the decade’s best science fiction writers. In its pages, we enter a post-revolution America, moving from the hyper-urbanized eastern seaboard to the Arctic bleakness of Baffin Island; from the new Imperial City to an agricultural commune on Mars. The overlapping lives of cyber-kite fliers, lonely colonists, illicit neural-pressball players, and organic engineers blend into a powerful, taut story of a young man’s journey of discovery. This is a macroscopic world of microscopic intensity, one of the most brilliant visions of modern SF.
Representation Includes
- Gay man protagonist of mixed Chinese and Puerto Rican descent
- Gay supporting characters
Content Warnings
Government in which being gay is illegal; sexist society; rape; suicideAwards
- Won the Lambda Award, the Nebula Award for Best First Novel, the Locus Award for Best First Novel, and the Otherwise Award
- Nominated for the Hugo Award
Reviews
- D’s review
- Matthew Cheney’s review and discussion on rereading classics
- Nicky’s review
- Alexis Hall’s review
- Lee Mandelo’s short review and discussion on this novel’s place in “queering SF”
Where to Find
Details
- Published March 1992 by Tor Books
- Paperback ISBN13: 9780312860981