Just a quick note from your friendly neighborhood bookworm/indie author
if you use kindle for the majority of your library, they will be shutting down the function that allows you to download your files and transfer them via USB on the 26th of February. Which doesn't sound like a huge deal, but this also means that if a book is taken off Amazon for any reason—like it being banned—they can scrape it off your kindle as well. So maybe backup your library?
Edit: as an indie author I feel like I should make a small note that this is not an excuse to say “fuck Amazon I’ll just pirate my books”. Please don’t do that. No one’s reaction so far has been that but I’m begging you not to react that way. That doesn’t hurt Amazon it hurts authors.
Some alternatives are
- check and see if the author sells their books on other marketplaces. Hint: any not enlisted on Ku are probably wide
- check your library. If they’re not at your library request them.
- if all else fails, reach out to the author. I have 100% hunted down a way for my book to be available to a reader that couldn’t access it for whatever reason. And I’d do it again.
Our Rec List Contributors Share Their Favorite Queer Reads of 2025!
With 2025 coming to a close, we asked our rec list contributors a simple – but also insanely difficult – question: pick their two favorite queer books from among all the titles they read in 2025. This list is the result – not books that came out in 2025, but those that we read during the year past and adored. What are your two favorite books from among all those you read in 2025?
The contributors to the list are: Alex, MJ, Shadaras, Shannon, Vee Sloane, D.V. Morse, polls, Linnea Peterson, Maggie Page, Sebastian Marie, Rhosyn Goodfellow, Rascal Hartley, Dei Walker, Nina Waters, and S. J. Ralston.
Brighter Than Scale, Swifter Than Flame by Neon Yang
The Irresistible Urge to Fall For Your Enemy by Brigitte Knightley
The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett
A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett
Love in the Light: A Musical Novel by Luke McQuillan
Metal from Heaven by August Clarke
Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters
Dead Hand Rule by Max Gladstone
The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab
We Could Be Rats by Emily Austin
When the Tides Held the Moon by Venessa Vida Kelley
Liar City by Allie Therin
DILF: Did I Leave Feminism? by Jude Doyle
The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune
The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin
Lessons in Magic and Disaster by Charlie Jane Anders
Navigating With You by Jeremy Whitley & Casio Ribeiro
Skullrunner by Vyvre Argent
The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White
Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow
Swordcrossed by Freya Marske
Peerless by Meng Xi Shi
The Water Outlaws by S.L. Huang
Stars of Chaos by priest
Find these and other books on our Goodreads book shelf or buy them through the Duck Prints Press Bookshop.org affiliate page. Join our Book Lover’s Discord server to chat books, fandom, and more!
COVER REVEAL for the soon to be addition to the iconic witches of Moondale series by @lou-wilham . Calling all sapphic witch enthusiasts + casual gothic romantasy fans to come stare at this beautiful cover with me.
I am so late on this, but alas. The queer agenda must go on!!
A UCI physics student infected by a cosmic parasite gets hungry.
11k words | print & ebook | 5/29
Preorder | Sample Chapter | charity
with the science budget cuts in the US, this book was very much unplanned for. but the current administration has demonstrated nothing but hostility against DEI and science. aspiring astrophysicists whose dreams have been shattered
a bit scared throwing it out as my first official release as the audience for this book (new adult?) is very different than my usual. so please keep in mind!
5/29 | print & ebook | preorder
PREORDER | SAMPLE | 70% off at 99¢ | 5/29
all proceeds go to physics student organizations at uci.
HELEN HERNANDEZ. An undergraduate physics student set for grad school- until her friend, Emmy Yuasa, goes missing. Dragged away by the eldritch horror beneath Aldrich. Zot, zot, zot. The strings are starving.
I sat alone in Aldrich Park. Griffiths Electrodynamics in one hand. A cryptozoologist's Field Guide to Cryptids in the other. Black painted nails and a big bottle of alcohol between my knees. Laughing to myself in the shade of a billowy tree as mud mucked my slacks...
Content warnings include swearing, alcohol, death, violence, blood, gore, body horror, psychological horror, cannibalism, cults, and parasitic infection.
FULL SAMPLE HERE
CHAPTER 1
DRINK. DERIVE. DESECRATE.
The key to being a successful physicist, or whatever the devil doeth. As remarked by Goodstein in States of Matter, Boltzmann and Ehrenfest died doing physics. It is only logical that I follow suit.
I sat alone in Aldrich Park. Griffiths Electrodynamics in one hand. A cryptozoologist's Field Guide to Cryptids in the other. Black painted nails and a big bottle of alcohol between my knees. Laughing to myself in the shade of a billowy tree as mud mucked my slacks.
Like any good pupil of the physical sciences, I spent my free time drunk and skimming through the chapters. Week old tequila staining the pages, ink bleeding and weeping like runny mascara. Alcohol was the choice barbiturate amongst physics students. It eased the brain and, as it turns out, made solutions come easier. But this time I couldn't focus. She was on my mind.
Emmy Yuasa. Missing since the beginning of winter quarter. My closest friend and other half.
I shut the book and took a swig. Spilled even more over that rancid blue cover. Fellow undergrads passed by without so much as a second glance. It was midterm season after all.
The things I said to her.
Things I couldn't take back.
I got down to the last drop. Said goodbye to my Pink Whitney. Swayed to my feet. Took to the inner ring road. Thinking and drifting.
No. Whatever it was, it wasn't a kraken. You need water for that. And the walls of MSTB were drier than linear algebra at eight in the morning.
Winter quarter. Your typical lab session for the 52 series. Genius physics majors that couldn't figure out how to build a simple RC circuit. The professor let us stay after class. Pitch black outside the window. I wonder if he pitied us. Girls who had no clue what they were doing. Seniors retaking classes we did shit in.
We established ground and were trying to get a reading when the signal on the oscilloscope boxes went haywire. Fritzing and stretching to thousands of kilovolts on the screen. Now, I am stupid, but that shouldn't have been possible. Nothing got fried.
Emmy looked up from a dusty old book she'd found in one of the drawers. Searching for relics. All she found was a ledger full of names. Probably cursed by the tears of previous lab students. A resigned look and a pout on her lips. "C'mon Helen. Maybe we should just go home."
I gave a short laugh. Feeling foolish myself. I thought I'd prepared enough ahead of lab time, but thirty minutes had turned into an hour and neither of us knew what the hell we were doing. We were let downs. I was a let down. "No! Come on. We can do this. Maybe we just plugged it in wrong."
Emmy scoffed. "What if we plug it up Wight's-"
A crack. From the floor. I glanced down. UCI and its shitty buildings-
Tendrils.
Bursting upwards.
Thick ropes of thousands of twisted and fraying threads. Gnarled and snaggled like roots or hair. Strings that writhed as though alive. Clear and flickering like the lights above.
They snapped around Emmy's neck. Strangled her. The dendrite feelers hooking into her skin. She couldn't even scream.
I don't think any web trainings could have prepared me for this.
I lunged for the first thing I could get my hands on. Dragged an air track from its station on the table, a long metal beam with the frictionless gliders still stuck to it. Swung.
The air track passed right through it. Clattered heavy on the floor.
One lab session and I'm pretty sure we just disproved the laws of physics.
I thought of slamming some radioactive sources down its throat. But the tendrils had no mouth, no eyes. Only strings. Strings twisting together under one mind.
Emmy rasped. Blood weeping from the tiny holes pricked into her neck. I met her eyes. Whispered the words I could never take back.
She softened. The way she often did entering a final exam when we knew it would be the end of us. And her limbs went limp.
I threw one last oscilloscope before the tendrils dragged her into the floors of MSTB. Passing straight through as though she were made of nothing but light. Swallowed alive.
A final scream for my name. Helen. Helen Hernandez, the girl who failed to save anyone.
I don't even remember what I did. I came to with my knees aching over the sticky floor. Nails clawed raw. The floor before me streaked red.
We were supposed to get boba.
Of course it didn't have to make any sense at all. Professor Wight, on the phone right outside the door, didn't see a thing. Didn't hear us scream.
I did everything I could. Didn't sleep, didn't eat. I demanded a search of the building. Begged the police department to take it seriously. They didn't.
Spring rolled around. I could have graduated by now. But Emmy was still missing and we were supposed to be in this together.
I took matters into my own hands. Broke into the same exact room to search for clues.
The moment the smell hit I remembered everything.
The string-like tentacles bursting from the waxy floor.
The book. In the drawer.
I tore through every station in the room, threw open the cupboards. That ledger, near empty yet full of names. But just like Emmy and everything else touched by Irvine Company it was gone. Gone in an instant.
And I was next.
It was a terrible feeling. The kind that makes you sick to the point of vomiting. Sludge sinking from your throat to your stomach until your palms got wet from all the trembling and feverishness and cold shock sweat. The ache in my chest knowing that I had let her down. I had let Emmy down.
The shadows lengthened. I came to. Booked it the hell out of there.
Now, my training in physics left me with a great deal of trust in textbooks and literature. But a tortured student knows when to give up. Reading that book of cryptids, I knew. The answer was obvious. Trivial even. This was something different. Something inconceivable. Something confined to the grounds of the University of California, Irvine. And to stop it I had to kill the thing inside the walls of MSTB.
FULL SAMPLE HERE
The answer was obvious. Trivial even. This was something different. Something inconceivable. Something confined to the grounds of the University of California, Irvine. And to stop it I had to kill the thing inside the walls of MSTB.
Hi everyone! Sorry for being late on this one... But here's what my reading looked like in April!
Sunrise On The Reaping, by Suzanne Collins
5/5 stars | 382 pages | audio & digital | 2nd prequel to the Hunger Games
We started off the month strong! Sunrise On The Reaping is Collins' second prequel to the Hunger Games series. This time, we're following Haymitch, a previous District 12 victor, who in the original series as Katniss and Peeta's mentor.
If you don't know what the Hunger Games is all about: it chronicles the eponymonous Hunger Games, a televised competition where children from the various District compete to the death, presided over by the tyrannical Capitol. This is a modern classic, for sure, and I recommend everyone read at least the original trilogy! It's an emotional gutpunch, full of social critiques while still being action packed.
This description could be easily applied to Sunrise On The Reaping. While the previous prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, had a different take on the structure, here we return to the bread and butter of the trilogy. Similarly to The Hunger Games, we follow Haymitch's journey into the games, what happens in the Arena, and the immediate aftermath. I was glad to return to this familiar setup -- I think Collins mastered it, and it works so, so well. But it's no wonder reviewers are calling it "the saddest Hunger Games book"... The final two chapters are gut wrenching reminders of the devastation of the Games, and beautifully interwoven with the poetry that has always been a keystone of the series. A stunner!! Highly recommend!
In An Absent Dream, by Seanan McGuire
4/5 stars | 204 pages | audio & digital | #4 in the Wayward Children
In a surprise twist, I've returned to the Wayward Children series... After having read one of the novellas a couple years back, I had decided the series wasn't for me... But I decided to give the even numbered books another go, since they're small portal fantasy adventures. The odd numbered books tell the story of what happens after the children return from their parallel worlds, when they all live together in Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children.
I was excited for some straight-forward magical adventures, and that's what I got! I really enjoyed Lundy's story, as she travels to the weird realm of the Goblin Market, where deals are all everyone does. I like the sinister twist on the classic portal fantasy story, and the commentary on Lundy's life when she returns "home". The narration is also top-tier. It follows impeccably and has a nice, fresh character to it. And, of course, the crown jewel here is the world-building -- it's refreshing, and, although not very detailed, super vivid.
Lovely novella, and I would highly recommend -- even if you didn't particularly enjoy another installment in the series.
Time's Agent, by Brenda Peynado
2.25/5 stars | 207 pages | digital | standalone
I was super excited to pick up Time's Agent, as it has a super cool pitch! This novella follows Raquel, a former agent that cataloged pocket time-warping parallel universes. But everything has gone pear-shaped -- her wife is living in a pocket universe nestled in her necklace, and her daugher's consciousness is inside a metal robot dog.
So, yeah, it sucks to be Raquel -- but that's about it for the book. It starts with a lively exploration of her hayday, but then quickly devolves into her future. Suddenly the world is cartoonishly apocalyptic. Though I understand what Peynado is going for, the social critique falls flat from the sheer exaggeration of the many, many disasters. Similarly, Raquel's grief doesn't feel like a compelling portrait, but rather a quick sketch. And although the worldbuilding is interesting, the cool details are glossed over in long, long lists of all the terrible things that are happening in this dystopia.
The novella also strives for a message of indigenous liberation which is very haphazardly tacked on as a climax. It's mentioned before, but barely developped before the "explosive" finish of the final chapter. I found it lackluster and disappointing. The use of random Spanish words in the middle of phrases is also awkward and looses its charm as soon as it starts. This is a definite pet peeve of mine, but it felt particularly odd, here. Overall, this unfortunately wasn't the enjoyable read I was expecting.
Someone You Can Build A Nest In, by John Wiswell
4/5 stars | 310 pages | audio | standalone
Another one I was excited about -- Someone You Can Build A Nest In also has an interesting pitch. It's a horror comedic comedy, about a monster who falls in love with a human... Who just might be trying to kill her.
I honestly wasn't expecting to like this! I'm not a horror gal, but I ate this one up! I think it was Carmen Rose's lilting narration and Wiswell's almost cozy writing. It's a bizarre comp, to be sure, but it works! I found myself rooting for the main couple, despite their circumstances. I also found the plot around the romance to be super compelling -- maybe even more than the main pairing. This is kind of rare in romance books, and so it was refreshing to be gripped by the background shennanigans. There's also a strong and emotional reflection on motherhood, family, duty... Such an enjoyable and unexpected experience! I highly recommend -- though beware of some vivid descriptions of... internal organs and the like.
Paladin's Grace, by T. Kingfisher
2.5/5 stars | 398 pages | audio & digital | #1 in the Saint of Steel series
I ended up following that with another romance, but that unfortunately fell flatter... I have been meaning to get into T. Kingfisher (and this won't be my last try, for sure!), so I was excited to read Paladin's Grace. This fantasy romance follows Grace, a perfumist with a haunting past, and Stephen, a paladin with a dead god and a lot of guilt. Oh, and there's some murders!
At first I was enjoying myself, but I felt it went off the rails from the midpoint onwards. As with a lot of romances, the B plot overtook the story, particularly in the climatic finish, leaving little room for the relationship to finish growing. Stephen is a compelling character, but he isn't utilized to his full potential, and Grace isn't fleshed out enough. I ended up forcing myself to finish this, and left feeling that I had read nothing special. This could be any couple, really, and not even necessarily a fantasy one. I continue to have high hopes for Kingfisher's work, though, and I'm excited to keep reading -- I'm sure something will stick!
The Spirit Bares Its Teeth, by Andrew Joseph White
5/5 stars | 381 pages | audio | standalone
And, to finish the month off with another bombshell... I had been avoiding The Spirit Bares Its Teeth for its horror-ness (specifically medical horror!) for a while. But my urge to read about an autistic medium trans boy locked away in a school for insane young ladies in a ghost-filled Victorian England... it was too strong! And I'm so thankful for that!
This is AMAZING. The most vivid first person narration, chilling to the bone, which comes alive in the voice of Raphael Corkhill. I literally could not stop listening to this, and finished it on a long bus ride, after which I could not pick anything else up! It's a creepy medical horror of trans solidarity, autistic resistance and found family. It's also a harsh depiction of the realities of being a woman and of being considered insane. Silas' character jumps off the page, and is clearly either inspired by White's personal life or on his incredibly thoughtful research. Daphne, our love interest, is so real I found myself moved to tears. Silas' infatuation and eventual love feels so genuine, it reminded me of my girlfriend so vividly! Multiple times there were tears in my eyes (yes, it was awkward on the bus, thank you) and I was almost left at our rest stop because of The Spirit Bares Its Teeth. Again, not recommended for the weak-of-stomach and the medically squeamish (speaking as one myself, it was a challenge), but if you think you can do it... Do it!!
Thank you guys!! See you soon with more reviews :))
My launch for And They Were Neighbors will be a bit unconventional.
The official release date is July 22, 2025, but I will be releasing the book early through Kickstarter in March! What does this mean?
It means that if you back my Kickstarter, you’ll get early access to the book. Not only that, but as a backer you’ll receive special perks that are exclusive to the Kickstarter!
That’s because Kickstarter is not charity, like GoFundMe or other fundraising sites. It’s a platform where creators (from indie authors like me to big names like Critical Role and Brandon Sanderson) essentially pitch a product to customers, and customers can invest in that product by pledging an amount to it.
To sum it up, you’ll be able to buy the book early, but you’ll only receive it (and you’ll only be charged) if the project fully funds.
One of the rewards will be a Kickstarter exclusive special edition hardcover! Picture the cover on a dust jacket over a gorgeous hardcase with foil artwork, sprayed edges, a ribbon, custom end-page art, and more!
And if you back the campaign in the first 48 hours, your name will be in the acknowledgments!
For now, you can check out my campaign pre-launch page and sign up to be notified when the campaign goes live!
I have created a master list of queer fiction books which can be sorted and filtered by your preferences. However, many have asked how to use it - so I have created a quick guide below!
This is not like google sheets - any filters you create will only be shown to you and will disappear when you exit that screen. So feel free to mess around! I promise you won’t ruin anything.
Step 1: Open the database
Step 2: Select the “Create Your Own Filter” view on the left-hand side.
Step 3: Click “filter” on the top bar.
Step 4: Input any filters you would like to organize the files by. The screen will automatically update with books that fit into all of your specifications.
