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‘Lost’ meets ‘Boy Erased’ in Adam Sass’ compelling YA debut about Connor Major, a gay teenager who comes out to his single mother and ends up being forcibly sent to a conversion therapy facility on a remote island. Once there, Connor realizes there are even darker secrets at Camp Nightlight than are first apparent, and he sets out to uncover them—and take the whole place down from the inside.
One of the most talked-about novels of this year, Detransition, Baby follows the interlinked lives of three people: trans woman Reese, her ex Ames, who has detransitioned and is living as a man, and Katrina, Ames’ boss and girlfriend who learns she is pregnant as the story begins. While this book has been widely discussed as a “trans novel,” and certainly includes great insight and reflection on the violence and trauma that make up many trans women’s lived experiences, it is also a laugh-out-loud romantic comedy and a sharply sardonic look at modern relationships.
The less a reader knows going into this Dickensian tale of love and chicanery the better. Put simply, it concerns a plot to scam a beautiful young heiress, in which the urchin Sue is planted in her house to pose as a maid. Eventually adapted by Park Chan-wook into the Korean-language movie The Handmaiden, Fingersmith is the kind of book you cancel plans to finish. And it even precededGone Girl with its game-changing, mid-novel plot twist.
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Zachary Zane Boyslut: A Memoir and Manifesto
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Zachary Zane Boyslut: A Memoir and Manifesto
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If you’ve ever read his Men’s Health sex column, Sexplain It, then you know Zachary Zane is incomparably open and honest (and hilarious!) when it comes to writing about sex and sexuality. His new book, releasing May 9, 2023, is a series of essays about his experience as a bisexual man, and the pleasure that comes with living a shame-free life.
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George M. Johnson All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto
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George M. Johnson All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto
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Johnson’s self-described “memoir-manifesto” is an exploration of race, sexuality, gender, toxic masculinity, and the importance of finding joy as a queer Black person. It is currently being adapted for television by Gabrielle Union.
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Casey McQuiston Red, White & Royal Blue: A Novel
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Casey McQuiston Red, White & Royal Blue: A Novel
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This romantic comedy became something of an online phenomenon when it was first released two years ago, and has continued to gain momentum through word-of-mouth recommendations. It’s not hard to understand why: back when we were still deep in the last administration, the story of a prince and a president’s son falling in love and changing the institutions in which they both grew up was the kind of escapist fantasy many romance readers craved.
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Michael Arceneaux I Can’t Date Jesus: Love, Sex, Family, Race, and Other Reasons I’ve Put My Faith in Beyoncé
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Michael Arceneaux I Can’t Date Jesus: Love, Sex, Family, Race, and Other Reasons I’ve Put My Faith in Beyoncé
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Michael Arcenaux’s deeply funny and frank debut essay collection explores “Big Issues” like race and sexuality with a lightness of touch that somehow manages to both take them as seriously as they deserve while also poking fun at how seriously we tend to take them.
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Daniel M. Lavery Something That May Shock and Discredit You
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Daniel M. Lavery Something That May Shock and Discredit You
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From his time at The Toast to his tenure as Slate’s Dear Prudence agony aunt, not to mention a frequently hilarious newsletter, Daniel Lavery’s writing has been shot through with keen, slightly absurdist observations about pop culture and our relationship to it. In Something That May Shock and Discredit You, Lavery writes about his own experiences of transition through the lens of media mainstays such as Columbo, William Shatner, and HGTV’s House Hunters.
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John Paul Brammer Hola Papi: How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons
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John Paul Brammer Hola Papi: How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons
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As an advice columnist, John Paul Brammer is known for guiding queer letter-writers through tricky situations with wit, insight and grace. He turns those qualities inwards in this memoir, in which he relives key chapters from his life and tries to figure out what he’s learned from it all so far.
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Vaneet Mehta Bisexual Men Exist
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Vaneet Mehta Bisexual Men Exist
Bisexual men exist. This statement should be obvious, but as many m-spec (multi-gender attracted spectrum) guys know all too well, questions like “Are you sure you’re not gay?” and “Why can’t you just pick a side?” still abound in our society. To counteract that harmful messaging and empower m-spec men, Vaneet Mehta created the viral #BisexualMenExist campaign—then went on to write this book. Bisexual Men Exist is a handbook designed to validate and uplift m-spec men as they navigate coming out, dating, relationships, health, and more.
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Andrea Lawlor Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl
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Andrea Lawlor Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl
The titular character of this funny, provocative, genre-defying novel is a shapeshifter who regularly switches up their gender and appearances as they make their way through the queer punk scene of the early ’90s, sleeping with whomever they choose and breaking all kinds of hearts along the way.
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Syan Rose Our Work Is Everywhere: An Illustrated Oral History of Queer and Trans Resistance
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Syan Rose Our Work Is Everywhere: An Illustrated Oral History of Queer and Trans Resistance
Encompassing perspectives from trans and femme artists and activists, Our Work Is Everywhere is an illustrated primer on the important work of queer people of color in moving the needle on LGBTQ+ equality. It falls somewhere between a historical text, an activism guide, and a visually stunning coffee table book.
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Ocean Vuong On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous: A Novel
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Ocean Vuong On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous: A Novel
The narrative of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous takes the form of a letter written by the protagonist to his Vietnamese mother, and flits from the present day, to her family’s experiences during the Vietnam War, back to the narrator’s childhood and eventual sexual awakening in the United States. Vuong is a poet, and that comes across in the lyrical prose, which finds beauty and grace in the ugliest and most desperate of scenarios.
Perhaps better known as Carol in the aftermath of its cinematic adaptation, The Price of Salt was considered exceptionally daring for its time in its depiction of a relationship between two women. While Patricia Highsmith’s most famous work tends to involve a certain Mr. Ripley, whose crimes formed the basis of another iconically homoerotic movie, the romantic elements of The Price of Salt are far less obfuscated.
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Andrew Sean Greer Less (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize): A Novel
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Andrew Sean Greer Less (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize): A Novel
When faded novelist Arthur Less receives an invitation to his ex-boyfriend’s wedding, he searches desperately for any excuse not to attend, and decides to embark on a last-minute, whistlestop world tour of every literary festival and residency he has previously avoided. This gorgeously witty (and Pulitzer-winning) comic novel is divided into sections chronicling Less’ misadventures through France, Italy, Germany, India, Japan, and beyond.
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Edited by R.O. Kwon and Garth Greenwell Kink: Stories
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Edited by R.O. Kwon and Garth Greenwell Kink: Stories
This anthology of erotic fiction encompasses authors and characters of wide-ranging sexualities and gender identities, ensuring there will be something in its pages to titillate just about anyone, from Carmen Maria Machado’s Gothic romance “The Lost Performance of the High Priestess of the Temple of Horror” to Alexander Chee’s wild ride “Best Friendster Date Ever,” to Zeyn Joukhadar’s surprisingly moving “The Voyeurs.”
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Elon Green Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York
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Elon Green Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York
Last Call captures a time in New York City—the late ’80s and early ’90s—that was extremely unsafe for gay men. This was not only due to the ongoing AIDS crisis, but also because a serial killer was preying on the patrons of gay bars; something that went underreported by the media, and, as author Elon Green argues, neglected by law enforcement.
“It’s important for people to see how anti-queer bigotry manifested itself in this case,” Green told the Guardian earlier this year. “They need to understand the stakes, not just for the victims but for the men who simply went to these bars during that period. There are systemic issues here.”
Alison Bechdel is perhaps best known for coining the term “Bechdel test,” a way of assessing the representation of women in fiction and film, but she also broke ground with her graphic memoir Fun Home, which digs deep into her childhood, her relationship with her closeted father, and her eventual coming out. Later, when it became a broadway musical, a pivotal moment led to another popular shorthand: the “Ring of Keys” moment, where a young, nascently queer person sees something they relate to but don’t necessarily quite understand, in a queer adult.
Philip Ellis is a freelance writer and journalist from the United Kingdom covering pop culture, relationships and LGBTQ+ issues. His work has appeared in GQ, Teen Vogue, Man Repeller and MTV.
Jordyn Taylor is the Executive Digital Editor at Men’s Health. She is the co-author of ‘Best. Sex. Ever.: 200 Frank, Funny & Friendly Answers About Getting It On,’ and an adjunct professor at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. She’s covered sex, relationships, health, wellness, and LGBTQ+ issues since 2013, and has previously worked as a reporter and editor at Mic and the New York Observer.
Milan Polk is an Editorial Assistant for Men’s Health who specializes in entertainment and lifestyle reporting, and has worked for New York Magazine’s Vulture and Chicago Tribune.
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