The 32 Best LGBTQ+ Books of 2025

A hilarious, emotional love story about an extremely anxious publicist who's tasked with keeping an extremely gay starlet in the closet—but who ends up falling for her instead.​ It's 2005, and Ali is a publicist for Hollywood's biggest stars. Part of her job entails keeping gay celebrities in the closet—which is pretty ironic, since she's a lesbian herself. When Ali is assigned a new gay client, Cara Bisset, who's breaking onto the scene with a (hetero) romantic blockbuster, keeping Cara's sexuality under wraps becomes Ali's biggest challenge yet. Cara is unruly and unpredictable and hates that she has to hide such an integral aspect of her identity. After a series of increasingly close calls, Ali is sent on the worldwide promotional tour for the movie to help keep Cara in line. Instead, she finds herself drawn to Cara's confidence and bravery. For the past year, Ali has been mired in grief after losing her partner in a freak accident. But with Cara, Ali's fears about the world subside, and she begins to question the Hollywood closeting system she’s helped perpetuate. As Cara's fame continues to rise, both Ali and Cara have to decide which is more important: maintaining the status quo or risking it all for another chance at love.

Finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction "A heart-wrenchingly honest, often luminescent exploration of how to find and cultivate true connections, sometimes in the unlikeliest of places . . . [Palaver is] an unshakable triumph.”—The Washington Post One of TIME's Must-Read Books of 2025 and Kirkus' Best of Fiction 2025 One of The Washington Post's Best Fiction Books of the Year Named a Most Anticipated Book by the New York Times, New York, Time, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, People, Harper's Bazaar, Bustle, and Town & Country A life-affirming novel of family, mending, and how we learn to love, from the award-winning Bryan Washington. In Tokyo, the son works as an English tutor and drinks his nights away with friends at a gay bar. He’s entangled in a sexual relationship with a married man, and while he has built a chosen family in Japan, he is estranged from his mother in Houston, whose preference for the son’s oft-troubled homophobic brother, Chris, pushed him to leave home. Then, in the weeks leading up to Christmas, ten years since they last saw each other, the mother arrives uninvited on his doorstep. With only the son’s cat, Taro, to mediate, the two of them bristle at each other immediately. The mother, wrestling with memories of her youth in Jamaica and her own complicated brother, works to reconcile her good intentions with her missteps. The son struggles to forgive. But as life steers them in unexpected directions—the mother to a tentative friendship with a local bistro owner and the son to a cautious acquaintance with a new patron of the bar—they begin to see each other more clearly. During meals and conversations and an eventful trip to Nara, mother and son try as best they can to determine where “home” really is—and whether they can even find it in one another. Written with understated humor and an open heart, moving through past and present and across Houston, Jamaica, and Japan, Bryan Washington’s Palaver is an intricate story of family, love, and the beauty of a life among others.
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A modern literary romcom and a life-affirming novel of family, mending, and how we learn to love, from the award-winning Bryan Washington.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER “I didn’t like this, I LOVED it.” —Taylor Jenkins Reid, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Atmosphere and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo A Rolling Stone 10 Most Anticipated Books of the Year • An NBC Queer Summer Beach Read to Devour • A Barnes & Noble Best Horror Book of the Year • A Scary Mommy 11 Most Anticipated Books of the Year • A Them 10 Most Anticipated Books of the Year • A Goodreads Editors' Top Pick of the Month • A Town & Country Must Read Book of the Winter • A LitHub Most Anticipated Book of the Year • A Fable Most Anticipated Read of the Year • A Goodreads Readers’ Most Anticipated Horror Novel of the Year • A Book Riot Most Anticipated Book of the Year A compulsive feminist reworking of Carmilla, the queer novella that inspired Dracula. It’s the height of the industrial revolution and ten years into Lenore’s marriage to steel magnate Henry, their relationship has soured. When Henry’s ambitions take them from London to the remote British moorlands to host a hunting party, a shocking carriage accident brings the mysterious Carmilla into their lives. Carmilla, who is weak and pale during the day but vibrant at night. Carmilla, who stirs up something deep within Lenore. And before long, girls from the local villages fall sick, consumed by a terrible hunger . . . As the day of the hunt draws closer, Lenore begins to unravel, questioning the role she has been playing all these years. Torn between regaining her husband’s affection and the cravings Carmilla has awakened, soon Lenore will uncover a darkness in her household that will place her at terrible risk. “Hungerstone is a delicious tribute to the inherent horrors of womanhood and the desperate and exquisite vulgarity of desire. This is everything I dream of in a novel.” —Ava Reid, #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Study in Drowning and Lady Macbeth
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THE FIERCEST, MOST POWERFUL RETELLING OF 2025: A STORY OF AMBITION, FEMALE OPPRESSION AND UNSTOPPABLE HUNGER . . . 'Rich and daring. This is everything I dream of in a novel' Ava Reid 'A beguiling feast of a novel' Lucy Rose, author of The Lamb 'I LOVED it' Taylor Jenkins Reid 'Phenomenal' Samantha Shannon FOR WHAT DO YOU HUNGER . . . ? Lenore is the wife of steel magnate Henry, but ten years into their marriage the relationship has soured, and no child has arrived to fill the distance growing between them. Henry's ambitions take them from London to the Peak District, to the remote, imposing Nethershaw estate, where he plans to host a hunting party. Lenore must work to restore the crumbling house and ready it for Henry's guests - their future depends on it. But as the couple travel through the bleak countryside, a shocking carriage accident brings the mysterious Carmilla into Lenore's life. Carmilla, who is weak and pale during the day but vibrant at night, Carmilla who stirs up something deep within Lenore. And before long, girls from the local villages fall sick, consumed by a terrible hunger . . . As the day of the hunt draws closer, Lenore begins to unravel, questioning the role she has been playing all these years. Torn between regaining her husband's affection and the cravings Carmilla has awakened, soon Lenore will uncover a darkness in her household that will place her at terrible risk . . . Set against the violent wilderness of the Peaks and the uncontrolled appetite of the Industrial Revolution, HUNGERSTONE is a compulsive sapphic reworking of CARMILLA, the book that inspired DRACULA: a captivating story of appetite and desire. Everyone is devouring HUNGERSTONE . . . 'An extraordinary book' Jennifer Saint 'Hungerstone grabbed me body and soul' Anya Bergman 'Ravenous, righteous and utterly sublime' Bea Fitzgerald 'Intoxicating and vivid . . . Sensual and vicious' Hannah Kaner 'A true feast for all the senses' Cosmopolitan 'A beguiling and spellbinding story of female repression and appetite' Heat 'A fabulous Gothic feast of a novel' Elodie Harper

USA Today Bestseller! “As brilliant as it is bizarre. From the very first page you know you are in the hands of an author at the height of their abilities. . . . This is the unhinged cannibal book of my dreams—and my nightmares.” —Ava Reid, #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Study in Drowning “Enthralling, weird, and brilliant. A medieval pseudo-historical horror tale that explores what happens when our prayers are answered but we’re not sure what has answered them, or what it will demand of us in return. There’s no other story like this, and I mean that in the best possible way.” —Christopher Buehlman, bestselling author of Between Two Fires From the nationally bestselling author of The Luminous Dead and The Death of Jane Lawrence, a transfixing fever dream of medieval horror following three women in a besieged castle that descends ravenously into madness under the spell of mysterious, godlike visitors. Aymar Castle has been under siege for six months. Food is running low and there has been no sign of rescue. But just as the survivors consider deliberately thinning their number, the castle stores are replenished. The sick are healed. And the divine figures of the Constant Lady and her Saints have arrived, despite the barricaded gates, offering succor in return for adoration. Soon, the entire castle is under the sway of their saviors, partaking in intoxicating feasts of terrible origin. The war hero Ser Voyne gives her allegiance to the Constant Lady. Phosyne, a disorganized, paranoid nun-turned-sorceress, races to unravel the mystery of these new visitors and exonerate her experiments as their source. And in the bowels of the castle, a serving girl, Treila, is torn between her thirst for a secret vengeance against Voyne and the desperate need to escape from the horrors that are unfolding within Aymar’s walls. As the castle descends into bacchanalian madness—forgetting the massed army beyond its walls in favor of hedonistic ecstasy—these three women are the only ones to still see their situation for what it is. But they are not immune from the temptations of the castle’s new masters… or each other; and their shifting alliances and entangled pasts bring violence to the surface. To save the castle, and themselves, will take a reimagining of who they are, and a reorganization of the very world itself.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones & The Six comes an epic new novel set against the backdrop of the 1980s space shuttle program, about the extraordinary lengths we go to live and love beyond our limits. Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. She is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA's space shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to go to space. Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston's Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, easygoing even when the stakes are high; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warmhearted Donna Fitzgerald, navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer who can fix any engine and fly any plane. As they become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe. Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, it all changes in an instant. Fast-paced, thrilling, and emotional, Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her best: telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love–this time among the stars.
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***THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*** 'This summer's biggest read' SUNDAY TIMES 'A richly drawn page-turner' OBSERVER 'Beautifully written, immersive' THE TIMES 'Our favourite TJR novel yet' COSMOPOLITAN 'I absolutely adored this' BRYONY GORDON READERS ARE SAYING... 'So emotional by the end that I could hardly speak' - Reader Review, 5***** 'Melted my heart by the end' - Reader Review, 5***** 'Taylor Jenkins Reid is the master of a really great love story' - Reader Review, 5***** 'Taylor Jenkins Reid's best book yet' - Reader Review, 5***** An epic novel set against the backdrop of the 1980s space shuttle program about the extraordinary lengths we go to live and love beyond our limits. In the summer of 1980, Joan Goodwin begins training to be an astronaut at Houston's Johnson Space Centre, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates. As the new astronauts prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined and begins to question everything she believes about her place in the observable universe. Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, everything changes in an instant. Atmosphere is a soaring story about the transformative power of love - this time among the stars. 'Is there a popular fiction writer alive who conveys falling in love better than Taylor Jenkins Reid?' DAILY MAIL 'Thrilling ... heartbreaking ... uplifting. ... I loved it' KRISTIN HANNAH, author of The Women 'NASA? Space missions? The 80s? This is a collection of all the things I love. ... Thrilling' ANDY WEIR, author of Project Hail Mary and The Martian 'Packs a hefty emotional punch' MAIL ON SUNDAY 'Breathtaking' HEAT 'Unputdownable' GRAZIA
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***THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER*** 'Tipped to be this summer's biggest read' SUNDAY TIMES 'A richly drawn page-turner' OBSERVER 'Quite possibly our favourite TJR novel yet' COSMOPOLITAN 'I absolutely adored this' BRYONY GORDON 'A breathtaking, quietly staggering tale of female empowerment, desire, and our place in the universe' HEAT 'Unputdownable' GRAZIA READERS ARE SAYING... 'So emotional by the end that I could hardly speak' - Reader Review, 5***** 'Melted my heart by the end' - Reader Review, 5***** 'Taylor Jenkins Reid is the master of a really great love story' - Reader Review, 5***** 'Taylor Jenkins Reid's best book yet' - Reader Review, 5***** An epic novel set against the backdrop of the 1980s space shuttle program about the extraordinary lengths we go to live and love beyond our limits. In the summer of 1980, astrophysics professor Joan Goodwin begins training to be an astronaut at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond; mission specialists John Griffin and Lydia Danes; warmhearted Donna Fitzgerald; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer. As the new astronauts prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined and begins to question everything she believes about her place in the observable universe. Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, everything changes in an instant. Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her best: transporting readers to iconic times and places, creating complex protagonists, and telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love – this time among the stars. 'Is there a popular fiction writer alive who conveys falling in love better than Taylor Jenkins Reid?' DAILY MAIL 'Packs a hefty emotional punch' MAIL ON SUNDAY 'Thrilling ... heartbreaking ... uplifting. Taylor Jenkins Reid's novel Atmosphere is the fast-paced, emotionally-charged story of one ambitious young woman, finding both her voice and her passion ... I loved it' KRISTIN HANNAH, author of The Women 'NASA? Space missions? The 80s? This is a collection of all the things I love. Great story, excellent research and accuracy, and a thrilling conclusion.' ANDY WEIR, author of Project Hail Mary and The Martian

One of the Most Anticipated Books of 2025 Debutiful • LitHub • Our Culture • CrimeReads • LGBTQ Reads A “paranoid, self-annihilating” (Gretchen Felker-Martin, author of Manhunt and Cuckoo) horror debut following a woman who seeks refuge at an all-trans girl commune only to discover that demons haunt her fellow comrades—and she's their next prey! Herculine’s narrator has demons. Sure, her life includes several hallmarks of the typical trans girl sob story—conversion therapy, a string of shitty low-paying jobs, and even shittier exes—but she also regularly debates sleep paralysis demons that turn to mist soon after she wakes and carries vials of holy oil in her purse. Nothing, though, prepares her for the new malevolent force stalking her through the streets of New York City, more powerful than any she’s ever encountered. Desperate to escape this ancient evil, she flees to rural Indiana, where her ex-girlfriend started an all-trans girl commune in the middle of the woods. The secluded camp, named after 19th-century intersex memoirist Herculine Barbin, is a scrappy operation, but the shared sense of community among the girls is a welcome balm to the narrator’s growing isolation and paranoia. Still, something isn’t quite right at Herculine. Girls stop talking as soon as she enters the room, everyone seems to share a common secret, and the books lining the walls of the library harbor strange cryptograms. Soon what once looked like an escape becomes a trap all its own. While trying to untangle the commune’s many mysteries, the narrator contends with disemboweled pigs, cultlike psychosexual rituals, and the horrors of communal breakfast. And before long, she discovers that her demons have followed her. And this time, they won’t be letting her go.

The “best woman” in her brother’s wedding tells a little white lie in her quest to get the girl—her lifelong crush and the maid of honor—in this wildly entertaining debut novel about bad decisions and life’s messiest transitions. “Irresistibly fresh, bright, funny, and bursting with singular voice, this is the kind of romance I’ve been waiting for.”—Casey McQuiston, New York Times bestselling author of The Pairing Julia Rosenberg loves her brother. Really loves him. Enough to: be the “best woman” at his wedding; leave behind her hard-won New York life, brilliant best friends, and drag brunches for Boca Raton, Florida; entertain the uptight bride-to-be and her vicious cronies; try (and fail) to dodge the hometown hookup buddy she can’t resist; and navigate the tricky dynamics with her divorced parents. She’s not that nervous. Her family stood by her when she came out as a woman a few years ago. And it’s just one week in Florida—a week of old memories and sisterly duties that will force Julia to confront the tensions that have been bubbling beneath the surface of her closest relationships. No big deal. When it turns out that Kim Cameron, the gorgeous, self-assured girl that she crushed on hard in high school, is the maid of honor, Julia panics. She tells a teensy little lie to win Kim’s favor—a lie that snowballs out of control and threatens to undermine the blossoming attraction between them and complicate an already challenging relationship with her family. Using her wit, charm, and a suitcase full of couture “borrowed” from a pop star, Julia just might survive the horde of clone-like bridesmaids, go-kart racing bachelor parties, and alcohol-fueled speeches. But she won’t make it out unscathed. As best woman, she’s making the worst decisions of her life. An utterly contemporary send-up of My Best Friend’s Wedding and a riotous coming-of-age novel, Best Woman is rife with crackling wit and devastating poignancy and announces Rose Dommu as an exciting voice in fiction.

One woman's deadly obsession with a haunted archival film precipitates her undoing in Black Flame, from the USA Today bestselling author of Manhunt, Gretchen Felker-Martin. A cursed film. A haunted past. A deadly secret. The Baroness, an infamous exploitation film long thought destroyed by Nazi fire, is discovered fifty years later. When lonely archivist Ellen Kramer—deeply closeted and pathologically repressed—begins restoring the hedonistic movie, it unspools dark desires from deep within her. As Ellen is consumed by visions and voices, she becomes convinced the movie is real, and is happening to her—and that frame by frame, she is unleashing its occult horrors on the world. Her life quickly begins to spiral out of control. Until it all fades to black, and all that remains is a voice asking a question Ellen can’t answer but can’t get out of her mind. Do you want it? More than anything? Also by Gretchen Felker-Martin: Manhunt Cuckoo At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

In this “achingly beautiful debut” (The Boston Globe), a young Black gay man, estranged from his father, must confront his painful past—and his deepest desires around gender, love, and sex. “A beautiful, clear-eyed portrait of love in the face of religious and familial betrayal.”—Elle “This novel is less the arrival of a major talent and more the confirmation of one we should all already be reading. Don’t miss it.”—them A THEM BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR “I got tired of running away from what I should’ve been running toward.” The venerated Reverend Doctor John Freeman did not raise his son, Davis, to be touched by any man, let alone a white man. He did not raise his son to whisper that man’s name with tenderness. But on the eve of his wedding, all Davis can think about is how beautiful he wants to look when he meets his beloved Everett at the altar. Never mind that his mother, who died decades before, and his father, whose anger drove Davis to flee their home in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, for a freer life in New York City, won’t be there to walk him down the aisle. All Davis needs to be happy in this life is Everett, his new family, and his burgeoning career as an acclaimed violist. When Davis learns during the wedding reception that his father has been in a terrible car accident, years of childhood trauma and unspoken emotion resurface. Davis must revisit everything that went wrong between them, risking his fledgling marriage along the way. In resplendent prose, Denne Michele Norris’s When the Harvest Comes reveals the pain of inheritance and the heroic power of love, reminding us that, in the end, we are more than the men who came before us.
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In this “achingly beautiful debut” (The Boston Globe), a young Black gay man, estranged from his father, must confront his painful past—and his deepest desires around gender, love, and sex. “A beautiful, clear-eyed portrait of love in the face of religious and familial betrayal.”—Elle “This novel is less the arrival of a major talent and more the confirmation of one we should all already be reading. Don’t miss it.”—them A THEM AND ELLE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR “I got tired of running away from what I should’ve been running toward.” The venerated Reverend Doctor John Freeman did not raise his son, Davis, to be touched by any man, let alone a white man. He did not raise his son to whisper that man’s name with tenderness. But on the eve of his wedding, all Davis can think about is how beautiful he wants to look when he meets his beloved Everett at the altar. Never mind that his mother, who died decades before, and his father, whose anger drove Davis to flee their home in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, for a freer life in New York City, won’t be there to walk him down the aisle. All Davis needs to be happy in this life is Everett, his new family, and his burgeoning career as an acclaimed violist. When Davis learns during the wedding reception that his father has been in a terrible car accident, years of childhood trauma and unspoken emotion resurface. Davis must revisit everything that went wrong between them, risking his fledgling marriage along the way. In resplendent prose, Denne Michele Norris’s When the Harvest Comes reveals the pain of inheritance and the heroic power of love, reminding us that, in the end, we are more than the men who came before us.

‘A beautifully expansive novel about race and class... Franklin's emotional and intellectual range is vast... An exceptional debut’ – Katie Kitamura, author of Intimacies ‘So smart, so moving, so earned; as soon as I finished, I started reading it again’ – Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr! ‘The precision and ecstasy of Rob Franklin's prose had me entranced. Great Black Hope marks the arrival of a breathtakingly talented writer’ – Megha Majumdar, author of A Burning ‘Great Black Hope will allow you to vicariously experience a sweltering summer in the city – though this debut is much more than a simple tale of hedonism’ - BBC Culture ‘Perfectly captures the heady atmosphere of a New York summer’ - Dazed ‘A new voice in fiction to be reckoned with’ Harper’s Bazaar ‘Best Books of 2025’ ‘A book about New York that’s part love letter, part reckoning’ – Guardian ‘Gripping’ – Daily Mail An arrest for cocaine possession in the Hamptons on the last day of a sweltering summer leaves Smith, a young Black queer graduate, in a state of turmoil. Pulled into the court system and mandated treatment, he finds himself in an absurd but dangerous situation: his class protects him but his race does not. It is just weeks after the death of his beloved roommate Elle, a glamorous member of the Black elite, and he is still reeling from the tabloid spectacle - as well as the lingering question of how well he really knew his closest friend and what happened to her the night she died. When he flees to his hometown of Atlanta and generations of his family of doctors and college presidents and lawyers - the weight of expectations haunts him. Then Carolyn, the closest friend he has left, goes off the rails, Smith returns to New York only to lose himself in his old life, drawn back into the city's underworld. Will his search for the truth about Elle cost him his freedom and his future? Smith goes on a dizzying journey through the New York City nightlife circuit, anonymous recovery rooms, Atlanta's Black society set, police investigations and courtroom dramas, and a circle of friends coming of age in a new era. Great Black Hope is a propulsive, glittering story about what it means to exist between worlds, to be upwardly mobile yet spiralling downward and how to find a way back to hope.
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NATIONAL BESTSELLER “Cool and concise; a talent to watch.” —Jay McInerney author of Bright Lights, Big City “You’re going to get papercuts, you’re going to turn the pages so fast.” —Brad Thor, Today A gripping debut from an electrifying new voice about an upwardly mobile and downwardly spiraling Black man caught between worlds of race and class, glamourous parties and sudden consequences, a friend’s mysterious death and his own arrest. An arrest for cocaine possession on the last day of a sweltering New York summer leaves Smith, a queer Black Stanford graduate, in a state of turmoil. Pulled into the court system and mandated treatment, he finds himself in an absurd but dangerous situation: his class protects him, but his race does not. It’s just weeks after the death of his beloved roommate Elle, the daughter of a famous soul singer, and he’s still reeling from the tabloid spectacle—as well as lingering questions around how well he really knew his closest friend. He flees to his hometown of Atlanta, only to buckle under the weight of expectations from his family of doctors and lawyers and their history in America. But when Smith returns to New York, it’s not long before he begins to lose himself to his old life—drawn back into the city’s underworld, where his search for answers may end up costing him his freedom and his future. Smith goes on a dizzying journey through the nightlife circuit, anonymous recovery rooms, Atlanta’s Black society set, police investigations and courtroom dramas, and a circle of friends coming of age in a new era. Great Black Hope is a propulsive, glittering story about what it means to exist between worlds, to be upwardly mobile yet spiraling downward, and how to find a way back to hope.
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A young Black man is caught between worlds of race and class, glamour and tragedy a friend's mysterious death and his own arrest.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “This inventive, boundary-pushing follow-up to Detransition, Baby . . . [takes] on gender, transness and lives on the margins in all of their gorgeously complicated glory.”—People “Hot, heartbreaking, and thrillingly victorious.”—Miranda July, New York Times bestselling author of All Fours NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE • A CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A VULTURE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR (SO FAR) In this collection of one novel and three stories, bestselling author Torrey Peters’s keen eye for the rough edges of community and desire push the limits of trans writing. In Stag Dance, the titular novel, a group of restless lumberjacks working in an illegal winter logging outfit plan a dance that some of them will volunteer to attend as women. When the broadest, strongest, plainest of the axmen announces his intention to dance as a woman, he finds himself caught in a strange rivalry with a pretty young jack, provoking a cascade of obsession, jealousy, and betrayal that will culminate on the big night in an astonishing vision of gender and transition. Three startling stories surround Stag Dance: “Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones” imagines a gender apocalypse brought about by an unstable ex-girlfriend. In “The Chaser,” a secret romance between roommates at a Quaker boarding school brings out intrigue and cruelty. In the last story, “The Masker,” a party weekend on the Las Vegas strip turns dark when a young crossdresser must choose between two guides: a handsome mystery man who objectifies her in thrilling ways, or a cynical veteran trans woman offering unglamorous sisterhood. Acidly funny and breathtaking in its scope, with the inventive audacity of George Saunders or Jennifer Egan, Stag Dance provokes, unsettles, and delights.
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**The irresistible follow-up to the hit debut novel Detransition, Baby** A BOOK TO WATCH IN 2025 IN THE GUARDIAN, IRISH TIMES, ROLLING STONES AND THE BBC 'As innovative, insightful, funny, and confronting as we've come to expect from Peters' work' Independent, Best Books to Look Out for in 2025 'A shining talent' Stylist Best Books of 2025 'Hot, heartbreaking and thrillingly victorious' MIRANDA JULY 'Potent and surprising and takes no prisoners' CARMEN MARIA MACHADO 'Spellbinding. With pathos and wit, Peters explores characters on the brink of self-discovery' BRIT BENNETT Deep in the forest, a group of restless lumberjacks working an illegal logging outfit plan a winter dance that some will volunteer to attend as women; the broadest, strongest axeman finds himself caught in a rivalry with a pretty, young jack that culminates in jealousy, betrayal and an astonishing spectacle of transition. Meanwhile, in other times and places, the gender apocalypse is brought about by an unstable ex-girlfriend; an illicit boarding-school romance surfaces intrigue and cruelty; and a Las Vegas party weekend turns dark when a young crossdresser must choose between a thrilling mystery man or a veteran trans woman offering unglamorous sisterhood. In this quartet of tales, Torrey Peters' keen eye for the rough edges of desire reveals fresh possibilities. Acidly funny, boldly inventive and breathtaking in scope, Stag Dance provokes and unsettles, inspires and delights.
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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “This inventive, boundary-pushing follow-up to Detransition, Baby . . . [takes] on gender, transness and lives on the margins in all of their gorgeously complicated glory.”—People “Hot, heartbreaking, and thrillingly victorious.”—Miranda July, New York Times bestselling author of All Fours NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE • ONE OF VULTURE'S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Elle, Electric Lit, them, Chicago Public Library In this collection of one novel and three stories, bestselling author Torrey Peters’s keen eye for the rough edges of community and desire push the limits of trans writing. In Stag Dance, the titular novel, a group of restless lumberjacks working in an illegal winter logging outfit plan a dance that some of them will volunteer to attend as women. When the broadest, strongest, plainest of the axmen announces his intention to dance as a woman, he finds himself caught in a strange rivalry with a pretty young jack, provoking a cascade of obsession, jealousy, and betrayal that will culminate on the big night in an astonishing vision of gender and transition. Three startling stories surround Stag Dance: “Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones” imagines a gender apocalypse brought about by an unstable ex-girlfriend. In “The Chaser,” a secret romance between roommates at a Quaker boarding school brings out intrigue and cruelty. In the last story, “The Masker,” a party weekend on the Las Vegas strip turns dark when a young crossdresser must choose between two guides: a handsome mystery man who objectifies her in thrilling ways, or a cynical veteran trans woman offering unglamorous sisterhood. Acidly funny and breathtaking in its scope, with the inventive audacity of George Saunders or Jennifer Egan, Stag Dance provokes, unsettles, and delights.

"A singular, bewitching work about cycles of life and loss, the patterns of behavior that seem to lock us into who we are, and the quest for a faith that might break us free." —Hua Hsu, author of Stay True Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2025 by Vulture and LitHub A genre-bending story about breaking―both of the heart and form itself―from the author of Biography of X. Adrift in the winter of 2021 after a sudden breakup and the ensuing depression, the novelist Catherine Lacey began cataloguing the wreckage of her life and the beauty of her friendships, a practice that eventually propagated fiction both entirely imagined and strangely true. Betrayed by the mercurial partner she had trusted with a shared mortgage and suddenly catapulted into the unknown, Lacey’s appetite vanished completely, a visceral reminder of the teenage emaciation that came when she stopped believing in God. Through relationships, travel, reading, and memories of her religious fanaticism, Lacey charts the contours of faith’s absence and reemergence. Bending form, she and her characters recall gnostic experiences with animals, close encounters with male anger, griefdriven lust, and the redemptive power of platonic love and narrative itself. A hybrid work across fiction and nonfiction with no beginning or ending, The Möbius Book troubles the line between memory and fiction with an openhearted defense of faith’s inherent danger.

One of Them's Best LGBTQ+ Books of 2025 “When I tell you that beauty is a monster, I need you to know it is my favorite kind.” So begins Arabelle Sicardi’s blazingly original collection of essays. A former beauty editor, Arabelle has devoted their entire adult life to the subject of beauty—they have analyzed it, criticized it, praised it, benefited from it, loathed it. Now, in The House of Beauty, they get to the contradictions at the heart of it: beauty and horror, two sides of the same coin. With their signature blend of intellectual rigor and poetic sensibility, Arabelle explores how beauty myths are crafted, sold, and weaponized, from corporate boardrooms to your local nail salon. Follow alongside Arabelle as they trace the global trail of the shimmering mica in your beauty products, choose-your-own-adventure-style, or journey into the past to unearth the sinister connection between fragrance and fascism. Bear witness as they visit a tech convention focused on the next horrifying frontier of body modification, or as they ask what’s at stake in the braids we weave in our hair. Sharp yet tender in their observations, Arabelle challenges readers to reconsider beauty as more than a product of consumption, inviting a vision of beauty rooted in community and self-care, one that transcends industry-driven ideals. Equal parts exposé and cultural reckoning, The House of Beauty cracks open an industry that sells dreams and wields power. Once you have encountered Arabelle’s words, there is no looking back.

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER A humorous collection of autobiographical essays from comedian and Emmy Award–winning actor Jeff Hiller, who shares his journey from growing up “profoundly gay” in 1980s Texas to his experiences as an inept social worker and how he clawed, scraped, and brawled to Hollywood’s lower middle-tier. While struggling to find success as an actor and pay the bills, something accidentally happened to Jeff Hiller: he aged. And while it’s one thing to get older and rest on the laurels of success from the blood, sweat, and tears of your youth, it’s quite another to be old and have no laurels. At forty, stuck in a temp job making spreadsheets, the dream of becoming a star seemed out of reach. But after twenty-five years of guest roles on TV and performing improv in a grocery store basement, he finally struck gold with a breakout role on HBO’s Somebody Somewhere, playing Joel—the kind of best friend everyone wishes they had. In his book, Jeff dives into the grit and grind of climbing the Hollywood ladder. It’s a raw and often hilarious tale of the struggles, triumphs, and humiliations that shaped him into the wonderfully imperfect person he is today. With a mix of awkward charm and heartfelt honesty, Jeff shares his journey: growing up very Lutheran in Texas, navigating bullying as a gay kid, working as a social worker for unhoused youth and HIV prevention, and the endless ups and downs of being a struggling actor. For every one of us who have a dream that we’re chasing—and chasing, and chasing—his is a funny, moving, and utterly relatable story.

“Extraordinary. A story about belonging in liminal spaces, and longing for things seemingly just out of reach. A searing, beautiful book.” —Kiley Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Come and Get It "Complex and enduring...We would follow Zuzu anywhere." —Oprah Daily A big-hearted novel of nostalgia and longing, and a poignant exploration of how we choose to love. Zuzu met her best friend Cash on the first day of college, and nothing was ever the same. Tall, witty, and popular, his friendship represented a kind of belonging for Zuzu, who had always felt like an outsider growing up biracial in her rural hometown. Though their friendship was charged with longing, it never progressed to romance. Now approaching her forties, Zuzu has built a stable life with her wife Agnes, a steadfast and career-driven lawyer. Yet Zuzu is haunted by the choices that have shaped her: living with her mother instead of her father in childhood, pursuing law over art, and marrying Agnes while harboring complex feelings for Cash. When a sudden loss pulls Zuzu back to her hometown, the “what ifs” in her mind become louder than ever, and she begins to unwind the turns that have led her here. Will she embrace the choices she’s made, or risk everything for a chance to chase the past? A novel that speaks to unfulfilled desires and the euphoric nostalgia that’s particular to the beginning of middle age, The Other Wife is as heartfelt as it is daring in its deep reckoning with the past and quest for true joy.

A darkly comic, introspective debut collection that looks beneath the surface of trans life in 2010s Seattle People called it paradise, but baby, it wasn’t. What to do when starting testosterone unlocks a newfound desire for men? How to respond when your boss’s boss asks if you’ve had “the surgery” and then requests you talk her niece out of transitioning? What obligation do you have to intervene in the faltering mental health of the baby trans drug dealer you’ve met only once while tripping on the acid he sold you? The young transmasculine characters in Crawl navigate these and other questions in the dive bars, bathhouses, parks, workplaces, music venues, beaches, and college campuses of 2010s Seattle. Max Delsohn’s stories—by turns exuberant, heartfelt, tragic, and wry—portray the pleasures and pains of sex and romance, the possibilities and ambivalences of gender expression, and the joys and failures of community in a city and a time that has branded itself a radical queer utopia but proves much more complicated in reality.

A darkly comic memoir-in-essays about the scam of the American Dream and doing whatever it takes to survive in the Sunshine State—from the award-winning author of High-Risk Homosexual “Relatable, funny and deeply heartfelt, this memoir is one not to miss.”—Today “Edgar Gomez is a young writer of deep talent and enormous grace.” —James McBride, New York Times bestselling author of The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR: Today, The Millions, Paste In Florida, one of the first things you’re taught as a child is that if you’re ever chased by a wild alligator, the only way to save yourself is to run away in zigzags. It’s a lesson on survival that has guided much of Edgar Gomez’s life. Like the night his mother had a stroke while he and his brother stood frozen at the foot of her bed, afraid she’d be angry if they called for an ambulance they couldn’t afford. Gomez escaped into his mind, where he could tell himself nothing was wrong with his family. Zig. Or years later, as a broke college student, he got on his knees to put sandals on tourists’ smelly, swollen feet for minimum wage at the Flip Flop Shop. After clocking out, his crew of working-class, queer, Latinx friends changed out of their uniforms in the passenger seats of each other’s cars, speeding toward the relief they found at Pulse nightclub in Orlando. Zag. From committing a little bankruptcy fraud for the money for veneers to those days he paid his phone bill by giving massages to closeted men on vacation, back when he and his friends would Venmo each other the same emergency twenty dollars over and over. Zig. Zag. Gomez survived this way as long as his legs would carry him. Alligator Tears is a fiercely defiant memoir-in-essays charting Gomez’s quest to claw his family out of poverty by any means necessary and exposing the archetype of the humble poor person for what it is: a scam that insists we remain quiet and servile while we wait for a prize that will always be out of reach. For those chasing the American Dream and those jaded by it, Gomez’s unforgettable story is a testament to finding love, purpose, and community on your own terms, smiling with all your fake teeth.

"When his grandfather dies, Jay travels south with his family to the property they've inherited, a once flourishing farm that has fallen into disrepair. The trees are diseased, the fields parched from months of drought. Jay's father, Jack, sends him out to work the land, or whatever land is left. Over the course of these hot, dense days, Jay finds himself drawn to Chuan, the son of the farm's manager, different from him in every way except for one. Out in the fields, and on the streets into town, the charge between the boys intensifies. Inside the house, the other family members begin to confront their own secrets and regrets. Jack is a professor at a struggling local college whose failures might have begun when he married his student, Sui Ching. Sui Ching does her best to keep the family together, though she too wonders what her life could have been. And Fong, the manager, refuses to look at what is: at Chuan, at the land, at the global forces that threaten to render his whole life obsolete." --
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'Shimmeringly intelligent and elegiacally intimate' YIYUN LI 'A mesmerising tale. Both heartbreaking and joyful' MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM A radiant novel of the longing that blooms between two boys over the course of one summer--about family, desire, and what we inherit--from celebrated author Tash Aw.

From a rising literary star and the author of how to be a good girl comes a brilliant, biting, and beautifully wrought memoir of trauma and the cost of survival A VULTURE NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR "Piercing . . . . Trauma Plot flips the confessional memoir on its head."—The Cut "An innovative, rigorous, genre-bending, and ultimately life-affirming account of what it takes to survive."—Vulture In the thick of lockdown, 2020, poet, critic, and memoirist Jamie Hood published her debut, how to be a good girl, an interrogation of modern femininity and the narratives of love, desire, and violence yoked to it. The Rumpus praised Hood’s “bold vulnerability,” and Vogue named it a Best Book of 2020. In Trauma Plot, Hood draws on disparate literary forms to tell the story that lurked in good girl’s margins—of three decades marred by sexual violence and the wreckage left behind. With her trademark critical remove, Hood interrogates the archetype of the rape survivor, who must perform penitence long after living through the unthinkable, invoking some of art’s most infamous women to have played the role: Ovid’s Philomela, David Lynch’s Laura Palmer, and Artemisia Gentileschi, who captured Judith’s wrath. In so doing, she asks: What do we as a culture demand of survivors? And what do survivors, in turn, owe a world that has abandoned them? Trauma Plot is a scalding work of personal and literary criticism. It is a send-up of our culture's pious disdain for “trauma porn,” a dirge for the broken promises of #MeToo, and a paean to finding life after death.

A vibrant and intimate novel about growing up, first love, and all the joy and heartbreak of competitive high school basketball, from the Lambda Literary Award–winning author of I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself “Deeply affecting . . . Crane’s writing drives forward hard and fast. . . . Knowledge of the sport isn’t required to understand the novel; all you need is a familiarity with loving something to the point of pain.”—Casey McQuiston, The New York Times Book Review Star point guard Mack Morris’s senior year of high school begins with twin cataclysms: the death of Mack’s father and the arrival of transfer student Liv Cooper. Playing side by side for their high school basketball team, Mack and Liv discover an electrifying, game-winning chemistry on the court. Off the court, they fall into an equally intoxicating more-than-friendship—one that feels out-of-bounds in their small Pennsylvania town. Mack teeters on the precipice of adulthood as desire and grief collide with drugs, sex, and the looming college signing deadline. Caught between the dual impulses of ambition and self-destruction, Mack must decide what kind of life they want to fight for. Written with the lush longing of André Aciman’s Call Me by Your Name, the obsessive attention of Jean Kyoung Frazier’s Pizza Girl, and the sweeping romance of the beloved film Love & Basketball, A Sharp Endless Need is a stunning testament to the big feelings of coming of age, falling in love, and, of course, playing sports.
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A vibrant and intimate novel about growing up, first love, and all the joy and heartbreak of competitive high school basketball, from the Lambda Literary Award–winning author of I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself “Deeply affecting . . . Crane’s writing drives forward hard and fast. . . . Knowledge of the sport isn’t required to understand the novel; all you need is a familiarity with loving something to the point of pain.”—Casey McQuiston, The New York Times Book Review A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Elle, them, Book Riot Star point guard Mack Morris’s senior year of high school begins with twin cataclysms: the death of Mack’s father and the arrival of transfer student Liv Cooper. Playing side by side for their high school basketball team, Mack and Liv discover an electrifying, game-winning chemistry on the court. Off the court, they fall into an equally intoxicating more-than-friendship—one that feels out-of-bounds in their small Pennsylvania town. Mack teeters on the precipice of adulthood as desire and grief collide with drugs, sex, and the looming college signing deadline. Caught between the dual impulses of ambition and self-destruction, Mack must decide what kind of life they want to fight for. Written with the lush longing of André Aciman’s Call Me by Your Name, the obsessive attention of Jean Kyoung Frazier’s Pizza Girl, and the sweeping romance of the beloved film Love & Basketball, A Sharp Endless Need is a stunning testament to the big feelings of coming of age, falling in love, and, of course, playing sports.

A searing journey through the highs and lows of twenty-first century womanhood from an award-winning journalist beloved for her unflinchingly honest and often comedic appraisals of pop culture, identity, and disillusionment “A delicious reading experience—like hearing your smartest friend eviscerate the worst person you know.”—Sabrina Imbler, author of How Far the Light Reaches “Such a brilliant writer, with so many surprising moves.”—Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, Baby After a brief fling with corporate stability in her twenty-something cis era, Harron Walker has transitioned into a terminally single freelancer and part-time shopgirl. She's in the throes of her second adolescence and its requisite daily spirals. She wants it all, otherwise known as: basic human rights, a stable job with good pay and healthcare benefits, someone to love, the ability to feel safe and secure, the pursuit of satisfaction and maybe even contentment. And when she starts to acquire those things—well, as The Monkey's Paw famously asked, "What could go wrong?" In sixteen wholly original essays that blend memoir, cultural criticism, investigative journalism, and a dash of fanfiction, Walker places her own experiences within the larger context of the pressing and underdiscussed aspects of contemporary American womanhood that make up daily life. She recounts an attempt to eviscerate a corporation's attempt at pinkwashing their way into bath bomb sales while simultaneously confronting her “pick me” impulse to do so. She interrogates her relationship to labor, from the irony of working in a transphobic workplace in order to cover gender-affirming surgery to the cruel specter of the girlboss that none of us ever think we'll become. She explores the allure and violence of assimilating into white womanhood in all its hegemonic glory, exposes the ways in which the truth of trans women's reproductive healthcare is erased in favor of reactionary narratives, and considers how our agency is stripped from us—by governments, employers, partners, and ourselves—purely on account of our bodies. With razor-sharp, biting prose that’s as uncompromising as it is playful, Walker grapples with questions of love, sex, fertility, labor, embodiment, community, autonomy, and body fluids from her particular vantagepoint: often at the margins, conditionally at the center.

One young woman’s relentless quest to become the first Cherokee astronaut will irrevocably alter the fates of the people she loves most in this tour de force of a debut about ambition, belonging, and family. My mother took my sister and me, and she drove through the night to a place she felt a claim to, a place on earth she thought we might be safe. I stopped asking questions. I picked little glass pieces from my sister’s hair. I watched the moon. Steph Harper is on the run. When she was five, her mother fled an abusive husband—with Steph and her younger sister in tow—to Cherokee Nation, where she hoped they might finally belong. In response, Steph sets her sights as far away from Oklahoma as she can get, vowing that she will let nothing get in the way of pursuing the rigorous physical and academic training she knows she will need to be accepted by NASA, and ultimately, to go to the moon. Spanning three decades and several continents, To the Moon and Back encompasses Steph’s turbulent journey, along with the multifaceted and intertwined lives of the three women closest to her: her sister Kayla, an artist who goes on to become an Indigenous social media influencer, and whose determination to appear good takes her life to unexpected places; Steph’s college girlfriend Della Owens, who strives to reclaim her identity as an adult after being removed from her Cherokee family through a challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act; and Hannah, Steph and Kayla’s mother, who has held up her family’s tribal history as a beacon of inspiration to her children, all the while keeping her own past a secret. In Steph’s certainty that only her ambition can save her, she will stretch her bonds with each of these women to the point of breaking, at once betraying their love and generosity, and forcing them to reconsider their own deepest desires in her shadow. Told through an intricately woven tapestry of narrative, To the Moon and Back is an astounding and expansive novel of mothers and daughters, love and sacrifice, alienation and heartbreak, terror and wonder. At its core, it is the story of the extraordinary lengths to which one woman will go to find space for herself.
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'A singular, sonorous, wholehearted novel . . . Eliana Ramage is a dynamite writer' Claire Lombardo, author of The Most Fun We Ever Had 'A powerful story about the mixture of combativeness, compromise and love that forms the heart of a family' Kaliane Bradley, author of The Ministry of Time A LitHub most anticipated book of 2025 My mother took my sister and me, and she drove through the night to a place she felt a claim to, a place on earth she thought we might be safe. I stopped asking questions. I picked little glass pieces from my sister's hair. I watched the moon. Steph Harper is on the run. When she was five, her mother ran - with Steph and her younger sister in tow - from an abusive husband into the arms of a small Cherokee community, where she hoped they might finally belong. But Steph soon sets her sights as far away as she can get, vowing that she will let nothing interfere with her dream to become an astronaut, and ultimately, to go to the moon. In Steph's certainty that only her ambition can save her, she will stretch her bonds with the three women who know and love her most dearly: her younger sister Kayla, an artist whose determination to appear good takes her life to unexpected places; her college girlfriend Della, who strives to reclaim her identity as an adult after being removed from her family as a young girl through a challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act; and her mother Hannah, who has held up her family's history as a beacon of inspiration to her kids, all the while keeping the truth about her own past a secret. Told through these women's interwoven lives, and spanning three decades and several continents, To the Moon and Back is an astounding and expansive coming-of-age novel of mothers and daughters, love and sacrifice, alienation and heartbreak, terror and wonder. At its core, it is the story of the extraordinary lengths one woman will go to find a little space for herself. 'Ramage will break your heart and take you to the stars. From painfully accurate depictions of adolescence, to effortless jumps through time and space - I loved it all' Kiley Reid, author of Such A Fun Age
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A REESE WITHERSPOON BOOK CLUB PICK | A LITHUB MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2025 | AN AMAZON BEST BOOK OF 2025 The astounding and expansive coming-of-age novel about a young woman whose quest to become the first Cherokee astronaut irrevocably alters the fates of the people she loves most. ‘Will break your heart and take you to the stars. I loved it.’ Kiley Reid, bestselling author of Such a Fun Age ‘A breathtaking debut about family, identity, and love across generations.’ Reese Witherspoon ‘A powerful story about the mixture of combativeness, compromise and love that forms the heart of a family.’ Kaliane Bradley, bestselling author of The Ministry of Time Steph Harper is on the run. When she was five, her mother ran – with Steph and her younger sister in tow – from an abusive husband into the arms of a small Cherokee community, where she hoped they might finally belong. But Steph soon sets her sights as far away as she can get, vowing that she will let nothing interfere with her dream to become an astronaut, and ultimately, to go to the moon. In Steph’s certainty that only her ambition can save her, she will stretch her bonds with the three women who know and love her most dearly: her younger sister Kayla, an artist whose determination to appear good takes her life to unexpected places; her college girlfriend Della, who strives to reclaim her identity as an adult after being removed from her family as a young girl through a challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act; and her mother Hannah, who has held up her family’s history as a beacon of inspiration to her kids, all the while keeping the truth about her own past a secret. Told through these women’s interwoven lives, and spanning three decades and several continents, To the Moon and Back is an astounding and expansive coming-of-age novel of mothers and daughters, love and sacrifice, alienation and heartbreak, terror and wonder. At its core, it is the story of the extraordinary lengths one woman will go to find a little space for herself. Praise for To The Moon and Back A singular, sonorous, wholehearted novel, one I wanted to devour and savour at once.’ Claire Lombardo, bestselling author of The Most Fun We Ever Had ‘A brilliant, faceted, warm-hearted novel, with characters to love and truly root for, and pages that seem to turn themselves.’ Sarah Thankam Mathews, author of the National Book Award Finalist All This Could Be Different ‘A captivating debut about family, queer identity, love, career and heritage. This novel has something for everyone.’ De'Shawn Charles Winslow, author of In West Mills ‘A soaring masterpiece... Every character in this novel will stay with you forever. I love this book.’ Casey Plett, author of A Dream of a Woman ‘A passionate and compulsively readable novel. Dare I say, a stellar debut.’ Margot Livesey, author of The Road to Belhaven

A Literary Hub Most Anticipated Book of the Year • An Autostraddle Most Anticipated October Read • A BookRiot Most Anticipated Queer Book of the Year "In these extraordinary essays, Lisowski reads the entrails of her life like a witch and invites you along for the ride. How could you say no?" —Carmen Maria Machado From Lambda Award-winning poet Zefyr Lisowski, a sharply personal and expansive memoir-in-essays dedicated to the strange and absurd beauty of horror films, exploring the complications of gender, the insidiousness of class ascension, and the latent violence hidden in our own uncanny reflections. This is how it worked: first I loved them, and then I loved myself. At twenty-seven, poet Zefyr Lisowski found herself in the place she feared most: a locked psych ward. While inside, she turned to horror movies—her deepest, most constant comfort. Rather than disturb, scary movies have always provided solace and connection for Lisowski, as they do many others—offering a vision of a world filled equally with beauty and pain, and a reason to reach out to others and hold them tight. After all, as Lisowski argues, what terrifies us most about these movies is our own uncanny reflection—and at the root of that fear, a desperate desire to love and be loved. In these wide-ranging essays, Lisowski weaves theory and memoir into nuanced critiques of films such as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Saint Maud. From fears about sickness and disability, to trans narratives and the predator/victim complex, to the struggle to live in a world that wants you dead, she explores horror’s reciprocal impact on our culture and—by extension—our lives. Through it all, Lisowski lays bare her own complex biography—spanning from a trans childhood in the South to the sweaty dancefloors of Brooklyn—and the family, friends, and lovers that have bloomed with her into the present. Deeply felt, blood-spattered, and brimming with care and wonder, Uncanny Valley Girls thrusts this seasoned poet to centerstage.