2nd: The Sun and the Star by Rick Riordan and Mark Oshiro (hardback)
In November ’22, I re-read every Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus book, and the first two Trials of Apollo books. While I have yet to finish the Apollo books I haven’t read before, and plan on doing so before I read The Sun and the Star, I’m no less excited to finally get to a book finally centred around my favourite character in the series – Nico! Nico and his boyfriend, Will, have to travel to Tartarus to save Bob, a reformed Titan, after receiving a prophecy warning them of danger.
4th: Patricia Wants to Cuddle by Samantha Allen (paperback)
I’ve read mixed things about this book. Apparently it’s a queer King Kong, where a woman goes to an island after reaching the finals of a reality show, only for it to turn into a slasher in the last act when a Bigfoot-esque creature turns up to wreak havoc.
4th: The Funeral Cryer by Wenyan Lu (hardback)
The Funeral Cryer – a professional mourner – ostracised by her village due to the stigma of her role, and treated poorly by her ignorant husband, finds a way to change her life for the better. I really enjoy stories that tackle grief and death, especially in cultures different from my own, so this looks perfect.
4th: Queer Life, Queer Love: The Second Anthology ed. Julia Bell, Matt Bates, Kate and Sarah Beal (paperback)
The release of this one is perfectly timed for Pride month(s) celebrations. The follow up to Queer Life, Queer Love, this collects more work celebrating queer love, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it!
4th: No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy: Memoirs of a Working-Class Reader by Mark Hodkinson (paperback)
I previously read Cathy Rentzenbrink’s own memoir on being a working-class reader, Dear Reader, and absolutely adored it. Mark Hodkinson reflects on growing up working-class in Rochdale during the 70s and 80s, and the way writing and reading changed his life and shaped the person he is.
9th: Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White (paperback)
Andrew Joseph White is becoming the go-to for trans teen horror. Trans boy Benji, injected with a bioweapon by the Armageddon-cult that raised him, is taken in by a group of queer teens operating out of a local LGBTQ+ Centre. As the bioweapon changes his body, turning him into a monster, Benji begins to question the intentions of Nick, the leader of the Centre, and also uncovers some truths about his own existence.
11th: The Queer Film Guide: 100 Great Movies That Tell LGBTQIA+ Stories by Kyle Turner, illustrator Andy Warren (hardback)
Exactly what it says on the tin: an illustrated film guide of 100 definitive queer films, covering different movements, from the unknown indies to the mainstream award winners.
18th: A Trans Man Walks Into a Gay Bar by Harry Nicholas (paperback)
A memoir of Harry Nicholas’s experiences entering the dating scene for the first time as a trans gay man. I’m realising now that this list is very heavily dominated by queer recommendations, which I don’t think is a shock – they tend to do big queer release drops in time for Pride Month! I’ve been getting into trans memoir, and am really looking forward to picking this one up.
20th: Working-Class Queers: Time, Place and Politics by Yvette Taylor (paperback)
Yvette Taylor explores the many facets of being a working-class queer in 21st century Britain. She gets into education, employment, family and queer space, and how our lives continue to be shaped by class, with queer experience continuously commercialised and warped by political standards of what the ‘good queer subject’ looks like.
25th: All’s Well by Mona Awad (paperback)
A college theatre director with chronic back pain is given the chance to make her suffering known after three mysterious benefactors give her a look at a more promising future. It’s All’s Well That Ends Well and Macbeth combined, and after adoring Bunny, I’m sure this one will be a force to be reckoned with.
25th: Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer (hardback)
Blurbed with ‘Claire Dederer explores… our relationships with the artists whose behaviour disrupts our ability to understand the work on its own terms. She interrogates her own responses and behaviour, and she pushes the fan, and the reader, to do the same’, Monsters promises to be a provocative, necessary piece of writing in a time where we’re left to reckon with incredible artwork produced by monstrous people.
25th: Because I Don’t Know What You Mean and What You Don’t by Josie Long (hardback)
The cover shouts ‘horror’, to me, but apparently this is a collection of funny and occasionally cynical short stories drawing on the minutiae of modern life. Which makes sense – the fox is usually used to reflect the day to day of urban living.
25th: Neon Roses by Rachel Dawson (hardback)
Perfect for fans of the movie Pride, Neon Roses follows a Welsh woman living in Wales in 1984 who is swept up into the world of queer activism when the group Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners arrive in the valley. It sounds delightful, and exactly what I need to partner with my annual rewatch of Pride.
25th: All the Dead Lie Down by Kyrie McCauley (hardback)
After tragedy strikes, Marin Blythe is offered the opportunity to move to an estate in Maine to become the nanny of two girls. After the mysterious eldest daughter suddenly arrives, the girls’ behaviour suddenly escalates in intensity, and Marin begins to fear Lovelace House and the secrets it holds. I absolutely love a good haunted house horror, and this promises to deliver a story that has echoes of Mike Flanagan’s The Haunting of Bly Manor.
25th: Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender by Dr Kit Heyam (paperback)
Dr Kit Heyam seeks to ‘widen the scope’ of what we perceive as trans history by ‘telling the stories of people across the globe whose experience of gender has been transgressive, or not characterised by stability or binary categories’. It’s a defiance against strictly Western perspective, and looks incredible.
30th: Bad Gays: A Homosexual History by Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller (paperback)
Lemmey and Miller subvert the idea of queer history being all gay heroes and icons by writing about the queer people who were ‘bad’, examining what we can learn about queer history and identity through these figures.
More Releases:
- 4th: Children of Paradise by Camilla Grudova (paperback): Grudova’s The Doll’s Alphabet blew me away when I read it last year, and going by reviews, Children of Paradise is going to more than live up to expectations. A woman applies for a job at the Paradise, an old cinema in the city, and attempts to win the approval of her strange coworkers while trying to make sense of the Paradise itself.
- 4th: Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman (paperback): In this satire on mass extinction, a mining executive and a biologist reluctantly team up to find a fish – the venomous lumpsucker – that may have gone extinct.
- 4th: The Daydreams by Laura Hankin (hardback): A satire perfect for the 90s, teen-celebrity obsessed individual in everyone’s life, The Daydreams tracks the reunion of the now-adult stars of an acclaimed 2004 teen show after the disastrous live season two finale that destroyed their reputations.
- 9th: Such Sharp Teeth by Rachel Harrison (paperback): A woman returns home to support her twin-sister through her pregnancy, only to be attacked by a werewolf her first week in town. Harrison’s The Return is a favourite of mine, and while Cackle wasn’t a perfect read, it was still enjoyable, and I love how Harrison writes women’s rage.
- 11th: Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh (paperback): The paperback release of Moshfegh’s latest novel, a tale of violence set in a medieval fiefdom.
- 18th: The Guest by Emma Cline (hardback): Cline’s first novel since The Girls sees Alex, a woman kicked out after a dinner party mishap by the older, richer man she’s been seeing, moving between other homes in the area, ‘trailing destruction in her wake’.
- 18th: Quietly Hostile by Samantha Irby (paperback): The next collection of essays from Irby, reported to be darker in tone than her previous comedy, but no-less enjoyable, follows her experiences during quarantine.
- 25th: Komi Can’t Communicate Volume 24 by Tomohito Oda (paperback): The next volume of a series that feels never-ending at this point. I would recommend people take their time with the earlier volumes, properly enjoy the series as-it-was, as I’m unsure if we’re ever going to get a satisfying conclusion. Komi’s friend-search is almost at a standstill as she deals with love-triangle related relationship drama, which is always a tired trope. Alas, I am in too deep, and will be reading this, but want people to know that this may not be a great one if you want a shorter romance, and one without love triangles.
- 25th: The Happy Couple by Naoise Dolan (hardback): I loved Dolan’s Exciting Times, so this is on my watch list for sure. However, it will not be purchased until the paperback is released next year. Five lives intersect in the leadup to a wedding that could tear them all apart.
- 31st: Meat Love: An Ideology of the Flesh by Amber Husain(paperback): Husain ‘casts a critical eye on the visual culture of meat as it gentrifies and mutates’, exploring the possibility of developing an ‘ethical’ approach to the growing of animals and consumption of meat in a time of environmental catastrophe.
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