Herculine (2025) Grace Byron "Grace Byron's literally unforgettable Herculine pulses with surprise, intelligence, and tension. Here we have a novel of the mind and heart alike, a trans horror story of marooning and discovery that can make the reader both shudder and laugh out loud, and the arrival of a major new voice."
Hot Girls with Balls (2025) Benedict Nguyễn "Benedict Nguyen's Hot Girls with Balls is so fun, so adrenalized, as grippy as Pilates socks, that it seems a little unfair that it's also smart as hell. It's a novel that's utterly contemporary, vividly specific, funny, and moving. Nguy?n has given us a kinetic, deeply pleasurable satire that I'll be pressing into many hands, this volleyball season and after."
The Tiny Things Are Heavier (2025) Esther Ifesinachi Okonkwo "The Tiny Things are Heavier is a brave, winning novel of contemporary migration, with all the collisions and losses, the transformations and conflicts it brings. Okonkwo's writing is confident, lush, embodied, and a joy to read. In her carefully-rendered and specific world, we touch, and are moved by, the universal."
When the Harvest Comes (2025) Denne Michele Norris "Aching and resplendent, deeply felt and meticulously imagined, When the Harvest Comes is a song of becoming and reconciliation: of family, of self, of abiding love. It leaves the reader better acquainted with love, courage, and the temerity to imagine--and ask for--more."
Goddess Complex (2025) Sanjena Sathian "Goddess Complex is the most interesting, illuminating, and bold contemporary novel of ideas I've read in years. Sanjena Sathian has given us a world that's split - between India and America, between acid and ache, between the longing to reproduce and the longing to remain inviolate, between comedy and horror - in a way that affords us that rarest of opportunities: a space to truly think."
Blue Light Hours (2024) Bruna Dantas Lobato "Reading Blue Light Hours, I found myself first pensive, then intrigued, then wildly moved and completely captured. You won't regret any time spent with Bruna Dantas Lobato's delicate and wise constructed universe of connection, of loss, of the immigrant's privations, of radiant love."
Anyone's Ghost (2024) August Thompson "In Anyone's Ghost, August Thompson has given us a devastating, heart-cracking, richly imagined love story for the ages. I read hungrily, relishing Thompson's poetic eye and deep respect for the complexities of life, loss, sexuality, and love."
Housemates (2024) Emma Copley Eisenberg "[A] wise and beautiful and gorgeously gay exploration of America, art, and the rugged vast country that is love itself."
The Spoiled Heart (2024) Sunjeev Sahota "In this thoughtful, searching excavation of interlocking tragedies and contemporary politics, Sunjeev Sahota offers us a novel at once Shakespearean and thrillingly of our time. The Spoiled Heart hurts to read, but in all the good ways."
Dead in Long Beach, California (2024) Venita Blackburn "Riveting in its style and innovations of form, Venita Blackburn has given us a wholly original, moving, gorgeous novel in Dead in Long Beach, California. An education of the mind and heart alike. Chef's kiss, pick it up."
City of Laughter (2024) Temim Fruchter "Reading City of Laughter is like stumbling upon an heirloom treasure chest: richly imagined, painstakingly crafted, full of delights. In sonorous, inventive writing that pays homage to a glorious folkloric tradition, Fruchter gives us the stories of queer Jewish femmes through the varied generations of an unforgettable family."
People Collide (2023) Isle McElroy "People Collide is spectacular. McElroy has given us a work of art that's original, stylish, and frequently masterly in the ways it explores the porous and mutable nature of bodies, selves, partnerships, and what we call love. Bravo."
Land of Milk and Honey (2023) C Pam Zhang "A twelve-course feast for the senses and intellect. C Pam Zhang is one of the most talented novelists writing today, and she has given us a novel that is original and painful and sensuous, a honey-and-acid tasting menu exploring pleasure, loss, sex, power, and resurrection."
Idlewild (2023) James Frankie Thomas "Thomas' Idlewild is a crackling, blindingly funny, thrilling and poignant romp through queer youth, the early 2000s, 9/11 NYC, Quaker schools, and the maddening, heartrending, singular friendship between Fay and Nell that I will never forget. Thomas is a voice and mind we've been waiting for."
Hope (2023) Andrew Ridker "Hope shows us a family in freefall in the Obama-era suburbs and asks us to imagine the component parts of redemption. Leaping from nonmonogamy to research scammery, from Jewishness to Big Publishing, from filial love to filial hatred, Ridker has given us a delightful novel: capacious, mordant, bustling, and wise."
Dykette (2023) Jenny Fran Davis "A bold and refreshingly zany novel of gay millennial life in New York, Dykette is sharp and unsparing as a play piercing needle. Bound to set countless group chats afire, this book signals Jenny Fran Davis as a writer to watch."
