Our Most Anticipated Queer Books for August 2026

It’s a slightly quieter month for publishing before the boom of fall publishing begins, so this list of upcoming LGBTQ+ titles is a bit smaller than the past few months’ have been, but fear not! If you’re looking to grow your gay TBR pile, there’s still much to discover, especially if romance, fantasy, and sci-fi are your preferred genres. But we’ve also got some new literary fiction and expansive nonfiction heading your way, too. As always, if there’s anything you think deserves attention that didn’t make it onto our list below, let us know in the comments!

Beloved, bestselling author Nina LaCour (Yerba Buena) tells an “expansive story of love and longing, art and motherhood, friendship and desire,” set in 1940s New Orleans and following a glamorous Creole woman who, along with her sisters, are admired in their community, but who, unlike her sisters, longs for more — to be an artist, and to love women.

P. Paramita — who has previously contributed to Autostraddle, including in our food-themed print issue — pens this delicious debut novel about Zarina, a prep cook at a fancy New Haven restaurant and a fan of professional wrestling. Her hero is Sierra Myst, and the two strike up a friendship that begins online and gets increasingly more complicated. I’m sure we can expect incredible descriptions of food throughout.

Two LA teen A-list actors are sidelined by scandal, forced to spend the summer on a Montana farm, where they make some unexpected local connections, including one sister’s romance with a trans country boy. (Sidenote: Tilly has an article in the most recent issue of the Autostraddle print magazine!)

In this coming-of-age tale set in the spring of 1985, Lou Miller is on the precipice of graduating from high school when her father invites his coworker Jim and Jim’s two dogs to live with them, following Jim’s eviction. But there’s more to Jim’s presence here, and Lou and her mother Annemarie don’t have the full picture. Lou finds herself drawn to Jim, whose arrival shakes things up for this small-town Oregon family. I’ve heard from friends who’ve read it already that the language and illustrations throughout are stunning and immersive.

This is the final installment in El-Arifi’s popular Faebound trilogy, set in a queer and intricate fae realm. A revelation from the Fates shatters the world of Yeeran and Lettle, sending the characters on new journeys.

Sarah Lamble looks at the punitive nature of anti-trans sentiments and policies across the political spectrum and calls for “collective care, radical solidarity, and transformative justice.”

Malavika Kannan makes her adult debut with this novel about burnt-out youth climate activist Rishi who moves from Florida to study at Stanford. Her first year of college is full of queer mess, gay sex, literature, and friendship. But all her plans and ambitions are thrown into chaos at the onset of the COVID pandemic.

Mia leaves her home and her girlfriend behind after her mentor and teacher, the minimalist composer Ryder Wakefield, dies unexpectedly. She returns to Ryder’s home, where she has inherited everything, including the unfinished manuscript of his final composition which she seeks to finalize, confronted by the past and descending into madness along the way. Supposedly it’s for fans of Tár and The Piano Teacher, so sign me up.

A new collection of Indigenous writers have “risen, hungry, from the grave to summon more dark delicacies for your delectation” in this illustrated dark fiction anthology. Amongst these 21 new stories are pieces by trans, two-spirit and queer authors Billy-Ray Belcourt, Jessivca Johns, Joshua Whitehead, Erica Tremblay, Alina Pete, Tommy Orange, Shaawan Francis Keahna and P.C. Verrone.

And now enjoy the rest of our anticipate picks for the month!

The acclaimed author of the Erin McCabe Legal Thrillers debuts a new protagonist in Lieutenant Lauren Kelly, a trans detective exiled to the Homicide Cold Case unit and onto the small town murder of a trans woman — a mystery that eventually uncovers both a county-wide conspiracy and answers a personal haunting.

Queer tattoo artist Clemence navigates survival after sexual assault, joining a group of survivors at the encouragement of her therapist.

This academic text asks philosophical questions about the realities of everyday trans existence, from entering public restrooms to going through airport security and more life events that should feel mundane and yet become disorienting through the lens of transphobia and an increasingly hostile environment for trans people simply existing in public life.

A high-stakes lesbian love story inspired by Irish mythology and set in a lush, folklore-inspired fantasy world.

We’re in NYC in 1925, and private detective Ginny Dugan’s search for who’s to blame for a bloody event at a gambling club brings her to a queer dance hall in a Long Island town where she also ends up infiltrating a secret society.

In this satirical thriller, washed up author Mallory Maddox sees gay addict and sex worker Leo as a potential way out of her writer’s block and career stagnancy.

A year after the disappearance of his best friend, Stefan becomes obsessed with a woman he encounters who looks just like him, uncovering a pattern of troubled, unruly students at the Royal College of Saint Almsworth who’ve disappeared, replaced by women who look just like them and live at the selective student accommodation of Dorley Hall. Stefan sets out to uncover the truth in a book cited as appealing to “readers of Torrey Peters, Imogen Binnie and Gretchen Felker-Martin.”

To save herself and her family, Taryn enters the singing reality competition Starmaker, which puts a little twist on the typical singing competition format…the lowest ranking contestants are publicly executed.

The search for King Arthur’s Excalibur serves as background to a romance between Lady Edith Darling, who breaks free of her quiet life in her family manor to honor her grandmother’s dying wish and Thomasin Shaw, leader of the most feared gang in London.

Described by Reactor as “a delicious ghost story full of both emotional drama and dramaturgy,” this dark academia romance is set against a production of Romeo and Juliet at a sanitarium turned liberal arts university in Rhode Island, centered on a theater major looking to find the blood-soaked spirit responsible for the death of her mother, an alum.

After her beloved former Prof dies and leaves her prize spellbook library to Bryn, she’s forced to return to her old academy stomping grounds, where she finds the school’s former queen Amelia, now headmistress, who desperately wants Bryn to stay and teach — and the former ice between them starts melting, fast.

After her life blows up, Mo Ellery becomes a part-time school crossing guard and quickly gains a new enemy in Poodle Dude, a guy who drives an SUV full of poodles and constantly speeds through her school zone. But then Poodle Dude ends up driving into a sinkhole, the town suspects foul play, and disastrous Mo becomes an unlikely and unofficial detective on the case.

In this queer folk horror novel, decades of secrets and superstition come to a head in the isolated town of Boone’s Ferry, Vermont, where siblings Ashley and Malcolm inherit property after the death of their mother and grandmother. There are two timelines here, in 1919 and 2016.

The wicked queen of Snow White fame’s story continues in this second book in a queer witchy duology.

During a tarot reading for a stranger in her family’s occult shop, Mikaela Broussard has a vision of said stranger stabbing in her heart…right after the Death card is pulled. Mikaela keeps this stranger, named Joelle, close, but she also starts to find her possible-murderer irresistible.

Willa Childs doesn’t remember the tragic accident that led her to a banishment at a mysterious, seaside reformatory, or why her only fellow wards seem to know more about her than she knows about herself. As her memories begin to surface, the lines between reality and nightmare begin to blur, and Willa’s got no idea

Lex Croucher serves up the sequel to the queer medieval rom-com Gwen & Art Are Not In Love with yet another queer quest full of yearning.

Found family, magic, and self-discovery are at the heart of this young adult fantasy novel of fey, powers, and queer romance.

Two high school rivals are forced into proximity as adults — one is now wildly successful, the other barely scraping by — to look into the disappearance of a mutually beloved former teacher. They find themselves on a wild ride through a aeries of alternate realities, where other versions of themselves are experiencing very different relationship dynamics..

The ampersand and living a life of “and-ing” fuel this collection. According to the publisher, the poems here “revolt against all forms of supremacy, inviting us into unexpected kinship with animal, mineral, vegetal, and heavenly bodies, each replete with its own languages, temporalities, histories, and worlds.”

Harper heads to Black Mountain Academy, an elite boarding school in the Appalachian Mountains that may or may not be haunted by the ghosts of witches past, following the death of her grandmother Gigi who also attended the school and filled Harper’s head with stories of magic.

To land a coveted position in her Jenga-stacked megacity’s Divine Gardens, Cyprin cheats her way into victory over her brilliant, insufferable rival Purcell a the annual flower pageant. In a world where God turns out to be just a very tired guy with a very good garden, Cyprin and Purcell’s rivalry spirals into obsession — threatening to take the whole world down with them in the process.

A sorceress-in-training operates the worst coffee shop in the tiny town of Pine Hollow — a café whose true purpose is to provide safe passage to at-risk magical beings — falls for the one human woman she’s not supposed to fall for.

Billed as “Thelma and Louise meets The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo,” this salacious slow-burn suspense romance centers on a feud between two A-list actresses who find their relationship further complicated by a murder that will make them both iconic.

Two teenage girls become enraptured by each other one summer when one moves across the street from the other, bound by their shared love for a children’s book series about Nadia the space explorer and her companion Rosa.

Here’s a cozy sapphic fantasy tale of an adventurous ranger and an aspiring bard who loves music despite her family’s pressure for her to live a more traditional life.

The world of necromancy is at the center of this queer gothic horror romance set in London in 1849­.

Mika is on the precipice of 25, has a soul-sucking office job, and falls into some ill-advised hookup situations in her attempts to explore sex, which she has never had before. According to some early reviews, messy queer representation is to be found, though it’s unclear through which characters.

Celebrated novelist Danny Ramadan tells his story of family, borders, queer safe homes, and LGBTQ+ communities across the Middle East.

Combining “the ruthless zombie perils of The Last of Us with the every-woman-for-herself angle of Yellowjackets,” two best friends at a residential treatment center for “troubled” girls witness the zombie apocalypse and the beginning of a battle that will show them both who they truly are.

In the summer of 1947, the titular estate where young women were long been secreted away and where Grace Harrow has been haunted by their cries throughout her childhood, is sold to a wealthy hotelier, whose arrival with his daughters shakes things up for Grace.

A grizzly bear starts picking off folks in this small mountain town, bringing together three girls with an unlikely bond.

Here’s a monstrous sapphic tale about a vampire falling for the girl who’s hunting her.

Luci owns Little Lighthouse Books, a bookstore in a defunct lighthouse on the Jersey Shore. She seeks the attention of Aster, the trans woman who owns the coffee shop next door. And then the two take in a baby dragon together named Dandelion.

The “leading trans scholar Susan Stryker invites readers to ride along on her lifelong quest to uncover what gender means and does” in this genre-bending work of experimental and lyrical nonfiction that weaves history, personal narrative, and trans studies.

Riley tells her dads it’s her last summer as the chef of their Cape Cod lobster shack and then auditions to be the private chef for a singer’s European tour. That singer turns out to be her favorite popstar Luna Leya.

The spicy WNBA romance you’ve been waiting for — unusually centered on an already-married couple. WNBA star Courtney is thriving on the court, but at home her marriage to an exotic-dancer-turned-housewife is missing the passion it once had. Forced by an injury to sit out the Euro league season, Courtney’s wife is thrilled to finally have her girl home, but they’ve got a lot of work to do to land that successful rebound.

Singer-songwriter Delilah Cohen gets left by her more famous fiancée right before she starts recording her first solo album, leaving her with the scraps of their honeymoon road trip they’ll never take and love songs that are no longer relevant. She decides to take the road trip solo in search of new song inspiration and ends up picking up a stranger named Emmett, who turns out to be a golem of Jewish folklore.

A transgender doula with years of experience leading body-based healing work, Gender Rituals offers “tools for both personal transformation and collective survival — so you can live your gender journey wholly and unapolagetically.”

First published in 1976, here is a seminal feminist text which “blends a raw account of Meulenbelt’s evolution as a mother, lover and political thinker with an incisive portrayal of the struggles women face in their pursuit of autonomy and equality.”