Our Most Anticipated Queer Books for June 2026

It’s Pride Month, and you know what that means!!!!! Every publisher is racing to put out as many queer and trans titles as possible. Here at Autostraddle, of course, we celebrate LGBTQ+ books year-round, and that has become an increasingly vital initiative against the backdrop of rising book bans and censorship coupled with a decline in the number of places that actually publish thoughtful books criticism period, let alone with a queer and trans focus. On that note, check out some of the pieces we’ve been publishing about recent LGBTQ+ book releases beyond just these monthly preview lists, which are inherently stymied by the fact that we can’t possibly read all these books and that we’re only two people, so things often slip through the cracks. If you like reading about queer books, read our reviews and author interviews, and tell us what you think of them! We’ve got some more great ones dropping this week, so be on the lookout! And if there’s anything specific you’d like to see more of in our Books section, drop us a line in the comments below.

Set in one summer in the suburban Midwest, this coming-of-age debut novel follows 15-year-old Mina, whose life revolves around her two best friends, a dynamic swiftly and thoroughly rocked by an unexpected queer kiss. Friendship and desire become all tangled up in this exploration of girlhood.

A queer photographer is commissioned to a house on the Catalan coast to capture a celebrated writer, but their professional relationship quickly turns both intimate and unsettling. An “internationally bestselling, erotic, and quietly radical portrait of queer desire.”

(Riese wrote the above blurb, but hello, this is Kayla now chiming in to say: I so thoroughly enjoyed X Is Where I Am by Sara Torres—translated by Maureen Shaughnessy—earlier this year so CANNOT WAIT for more.)

Allen—an editor at Them.us and author of three previous books, including Patricia Wants to Cuddle—delivers a witty reimagination of a Midsummer Night’s Dream in which Puck is the non-binary producer of a dating show that subjects troubled couples through hell via unexpected exes. But they’re rattled when their own romantic life takes a twist as chaotic and emotionally excruciating as the ones they orchestrate on TV.

A 24-year-old MFA student is ready for her messy bisexual era enabled by her newly open relationship—only to fall for the only two people in the world who are off-limits to her, her boyfriend’s best friend and his girlfriend.

A queer Latine working class witch and a cursed heiress cross paths in 1968 Oakland and become romantically entangled. When Natalia “Nati” Fuentes hears of a mysterious illness befalling Violeta Miramontes, she works her way into Violeta’s life with a plan to break the curse upon her and collect a reward as a result. Of course, that plan is complicated by love. This debut novel promises both horror and romance.

From the author of the brilliant story collection Manywhere comes this novel set in Florida, where Ro and Liam live together in a secluded cabin. Ro has been recently diagnosed with autism and works as a navigator for people in search of gender affirming care. Their imperfect but stable for the most part lives are disrupted by the arrival of Quentin, the teen they’re quasi-parents to, visiting on his way to college where he intends to start T, and Ro’s burgeoning obsession with Mad Eden, an online fantasy serial about dragon riders. Stay tuned for an Autostraddle interview with Morgan Thomas about the novel.

Among the many brilliant queer essays, stories, poems, comics, and photo essays on Palestine you’ll find here is a new version of the essay Arab Lesbianism Is Not an Oxymoron by Noor Aldayeh, originally published on Autostraddle. Stay tuned for a full review of this anthology.

“Call Me By Your Name meets Elena Ferrante” in a dreamy, lyrical coming-of-age novel about a young Italian girl who’s whimsical, collection-focused approach to life is shattered by a childhood tragedy. Years later, a first love with an American girl forces her to reckon with all she’s outgrown and what she must learn to articulate.

From the author of the gorgeous memoir-in-essays The Natural Mother of the Child comes a new memoir about the author’s pursuit of home cooking. Krys Malcolm Belc turns to internet chefs and food celebrities for inspiration when the pandemic puts his life on pause and keeps him and his family at home, living their lives on their laptops. The book explores trans domesticity, feeding family, and the connection of food. Stay tuned for full coverage of the memoir.

This dark academia fantasy is about two former best friends who are reunited and then caught on opposite sides of the harrowing secrets held in the halls of a prestigious boarding school in Britain, rumored to be a magical institution.

Translated into 10 languages after becoming a Scandinavian bestseller, Waist Deep is set across seven summer days at a lakehouse in Denmark, when five friends from university come together to swim and catch up on each other’s lives. Mess, of course, ensues, including when Sylvia, who is in a monogamous relationship with her girlfriend, learns her old crush Esben will be getting married at the end of the week.

This collection of queer coming-of-age poems moving through 2000s Florida at the height of the opioid epidemic explores desire, addiction, recovery, friendship, and more, all against the vibrant and volatile backdrop of Florida’s wildlife and climate and the circus town history of Sarasota. I’ve actually had the privilege of reading this one already, and it’s a wonderfully immersive read.

I will truly read anything penned by cartoonist Tillie Walden, and here she presents the real true story of Sylvia Drake and Charity Bryant, who lived against all odds as a lesbian couple in 19th century Vermont. Learn about their lives together through Walden’s illustrated historical and lyrical account.

Young Black girls, women, and nonbinary people make up the cast of characters in this short fiction collection spanning stories in and around a small working-class neighborhood outside of NYC. Stories include one one of a woman who can’t stop walking by her ex’s window, a character named D’asia whose friendship with a school security guard skirts toward inappropriate, and a little sister disturbed by her friend trying to hook up with her older brother. T Clark is a wonderful writer, and I think we can expect a lot of humor and heart here.

Gabrielle Korn hive RISE! Korn is back with a coming-of-age queer love story set in 2005 in the indie music scene. Susan and Eliza strike up an immediate connection on the way to an indie rock show, but that connection is quickly impacted by small-town rumors. Susan moves from Long Island to Brooklyn, goes to college, and enters the indie label world. Eventually, she and Eliza reconnect. Stay tuned for more coverage of this one, too!

A young couple’s choice to open their marriage after a devastating loss sends them on a five-year journey of desire, jealousy and self-discovery that leads husband and wife into disparate final places, while their expanding circle of friends and lovers are pushed to question their own lives and relationships along the way.

The narrator of this humorous literary mystery is a private detective (as a side gig) who has recently lost her partner and is trying to raise a kid amid the grief. She gets a call asking her to investigate…Alice B. Toklas’s reputed horn. Stay tuned for a very funny interview with the author.

Still rocked by grief after her father’s death, a sober music-lover is dreading her bridesmaid duties alongside her apparent nemesis. But forced proximity reveals this matchup might be exactly what she needs. A sapphic romance chock-full of banter, found family, and unexpected love.

Longtime Autostraddle fav Daniel M. Lavery is back with a new novel with a fifty-something, twice-divorced protagonist named Barbara who reflects on the dissolution of nine best friendships throughout her life and is in the market for a 10th and (hopefully?!) final best friend. Her choices become: the very young Caitlyn and the very unsuitable Other Barbara. Barbara works in gourmet food, and I’m seeing some comparisons to Heartburn by Nora Ephron, a personal favorite novel. From what I’ve been able to gather, this book is not explicitly queer, which is the only reason it’s not featured more prominently in the above top picks section (any other month, it may have made it in, but June is too stacked with more overtly queer books), but I’m all for championing any stories written by queer/trans authors.

The Emmy-award nominated comic and the creator of Autostraddle’s favorite late night segment (“Jokes Seth Can’t Tell”) digs into her most favorite pastime of all: giving advice.

In this modern retelling of Hermes, Atalanta and Circe, Hermes has finally healed from watching the woman she loved destroyed by Zeus, with Atalanta there to support her. But her determination to set her fury aside is challenged by a revenge-consumed, bloodied resurfacing, intent on Olympus’s fiery destruction.

This novel set in Dakar shows the aftermath of a viral video of a queer man’s grave being dug up by an angry mob, through the eyes and experiences of Ndéné, a French literature teacher who is grappling with his own queerness and whose nightlife-worker friend shows him the Dakar underground scene.

The third installment in the Dark Gods series, the recovering heirs must push past their own wounds to face a threat far greater than themselves, learning the true cost of survival.

Coming out as non-binary was no problem for teen Surya, but facing their crush on Blessing, a boy in their drama club, is a whole different story.

In lyrical memoir writing, Phill Branch grapples with the patriarchy and social traditions in Black America through his own experiences and in particular through his relationship with his complicated and often absent father, who did not want him jumping rope with girls (as the title alludes to).

Trying to live up to the legacy of her late mother, the Queen of Hollywood, Cosima runs to the inn where her parents met in hopes of finishing her mother’s bucket list. Instead, she meets Edie, and together they uncover a guest book holding a romantic treasure hunt spanning fifty years and several European countries.

Returning to the Fae world from Pacton’s The Absinthe Underground, this fairycore sapphic YA fantasy sees a Fae unmagical princess misfit and her friend, a human stablehand, on a whimsical adventure and friends-to-lovers journey through a dangerous labyrinth in search of the truth about her father.

Here we have the second book in the Echo Archives fantasy-adventure series. Kembral Thorne just wants to ride out her maternity leave, but then her best friend drags her along to an island mansion for a will reading alongside her rival-turned-girlfriend Rika Nonesuch. Her childhood crew reunites, and a deadly curse emerges.

Set in 1950s Hollywood, this tells the tale of a backlot fixer investigating the suspicious death of a closeted Black actor. If you’re interested in Black Hollywood history and queer LA history, this one is for you!

Protagonist Calla Quick’s parents disown her over text message, throwing off her plans to attend a women’s college with her girlfriend Ramona. She also starts questioning whether she’s a girl at at all. Calla adn Ramona end up stumbling upon a farmhouse in the woods where five queer trans teens claim to have sought refuge for decades, the land a protected escape from hate. It sounds like a super sweet queer and trans YA with a speculative twist.

A pop culture junkie devastated over the death of her best friend joins her friend on a yacht trip to Greece to live the Below Deck fantasy of her dreams — but soon she finds herself drawn into the disappearance of a fellow passenger that she’s certain is actually a murder mystery.

Holly Stars is back with another drag murder mystery in this follow-up to Murder in the Dressing Room. Misty Divine is back on the case after private detective shows up stabbed and uses his final words to offer her a warning: “You’re in danger, Misty… you must find Jeremy.”

For all of us raised upon The Face of the Milk Carton comes an homage in which a 17-year-old trans boy discovers he was kidnapped as a child, and his parents are still out there searching — for a daughter.

In 1982 Los Angeles, best friends Jude and Winnie are 18 and working at a strip club. Soon, they’re modeling for Penthouse and Hustler and then shooting hardcore porn. The novel explores the intricacies and systems of power in the ’80s adult filmmaking scene through the highs and lows of these two characters and their relationship, which is shattered by recrimination and betrayal. Jude eventually goes missing, and 30 years later, a divorced Winnie attempts to face her past and find out what happened to Jude.

From the Salem Witch Trials to the Titanic, color your heart out through myriad historical events as represented by Trixie and Katya.

It’s all pretty much right there in the title! Learn more about the queer history of the more than 30 pride flags detailed in this guide.

QUEER ZOMBIE STORY! Kristina awakens from her violent death, no longer the same woman she was. She’s full of rage, powerful, and hungry for the blood of the loved ones who abandoned her. To satiate her grief, she embarks on a journey of vengeance.

In a very loose retelling of Goethe’s Faust, a queer mixed Indonesian college student named Dian Faust accidentally rings the devil when attempting to call a suicide hotline. The devil presents as a charming scam caller named Memphis.

Chloe Bly lives a life of being gay and doing crime, robbing the gusts at the hotel where she works as a caterer. When she’s caught, the billionaire hotel owner offers her a job: a heist at his rival’s new luxury hotel. To do it, she has to team up with conwoman Harper Parisi. Feelings, naturally, emerge.

Pop culture criticism and personal memoir collide in this queer feminist essay collection about the scripts we’re given.

Unfolding through dual narratives and lyrical prose, this tells the story of Eben Turner and Chris Hartley, former lovers whose secret queer relationship was shattered by religion and small-town prejudices. When Eben returns to his family’s apple orchard in the rural part of Maine where he grew up following his parents’ death, it has been a decade since the end of that relationship, and Eben and Chris’s paths cross once again.

As a tennis gay, I am obviously thrilled about this upcoming romance about two rivals on the court turned lovers. Recent pro Austin Hardy has been out since high school, which has never been that big a deal for him, but suddenly he’s the first openly gay man to compete in a Grand Slam tournament and the headlines are buzzing, triggering his anxiety disorder. He trips and falls at practice and as a result comes face-to-face with the number two player in the world, the presumed straight and confirmed attractive Diego Cruz. They begin a friendship and then something more, all leading up to the US Open.

From a queer Vietnamese American poet comes this collection of poems that moves from hospital rooms to dive bars, contending with sickness, intergenerational trauma, desire, and fear.

Marine biologist Dr. Jo Ness loves jellyfish. She’s grappling with grief after the death of her best friend Aldo when she gets a call from Nadia, someone she used to love. Nadia tells her a giant jellyfish is terrorizing her small island community off the coast of Maine. Even though the footage of said giant jellyfish is dubious, Jo agrees to fly out to see Nadia again and perhaps save the island from the creature dubbed Clementine.

Chencia C. Higgins writes Southern Black sapphic romances like A Little Kissing Between Friends, and you can expect more of that from this new release.

The appetites of mermaids become a metaphor for queer desire in this tale of an outcast girl who begins a new life under the sea and whose community of fellow mermaids becomes threatened by a group of zealous hunters.

Set in the imagined city of New Soleil (inspired by New Orleans), this is the first in a duology about a crew of magical outlaws called the Nightshades.

This horror graphic novel is set three decades after a tragic accident shut down production of a hit children’s program called Mister Magic. The five surviving cast members are thrown together again and begin unraveling the truth of what happened and who the enigmatic host really was. The ensemble cast includes a queer character.

Queer bookshops have certainly changed my life, and A. J. West traces their impact on local communities and beyond, tracing their evolution from underground operations to thriving, openly queer-identified spaces.

Star soccer player and 12-year-old girl Sol has her world turned upside down when she starts crushing on the team captain Lily.

Laverne Cox tells her story from her childhood and early experiences with depression to working at a drag restaurant in NYC to her struggles to break into Hollywood to the lifechanging experience of being cast as Sophia in Orange Is the New Black and all that followed.

Set against the pandemic and protests against police brutality, this YA novel centers recent high school grad Tia, whose middle sister Mel is in a coma after a mental health crisis, as she navigates family, friendship, and a burgeoning crush.

Cubby Clark feels like her band is just about to have a breakthrough when her on-again/off-again boyfriend Connor leaves and achieves solo flame with a diss track about her. She seeks solace in her friends and bandmates Harry and Darcy—Darcy in particular. Cubby and Darcy hook up, and on the same night, a romantic photo of Cubby and Harry goes viral, complicating things.

Completing the duology that began with Devils Like Us, this sequel will appeal to fans of Our Flag Means Death with a promised swashbuckling adventure set in 19th century New England, centered on three teens on the run from a secret society, trying desperately to protect their found family of queer sailors and the ship where they’ve been able to live openly and find love.

Felix is a zookeeper in Cuba during the missile crisis and then an exile in 1960s London and then a man dying in 1980s AIDS-era Miami. The novel pieces together the fragments of Felix’s life, including Felix’s early forbidden relationship with a male coworker, his eventual marriage to his wife Anabel and its dissolution, and more turns in his life.

After Bob Jansen was fired from his job as a professor at a religious university in Duluth, he used the money from his successful legal settlement to put a down payment on a building to open the Main Club, a hub for LGBTQ+ social life in the Twin Ports area of northern Minnesota. Soon, the space became a community hub and vital lifeline for queer Minnesotans. Learn all about this hyperlocal queer history in the book!

A queer love story at the end of the world unfolds in this literary sci-fi novel. Two women meet on a beach of artificial sand. One is presumed to be a robot, and the other was raised in a pod in the ocean. Earth is pretty much cooked, depopulated, with most people absconding to Mars. But some of the holdouts hope to plant the seeds for someone to restore Earth in the future.

Elsie Parker can’t stop blushing around a certain girl at school, and she’s quickly learning about all sorts of new-to-her concepts as a middle school girl via her body-positivity puberty class, including what consent is and the differences between sex and gender.

Annie, Lola, Vicky, and Dylan return to their hometown as adults for a one-night-only revival of the gender-swapped version of the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead they were all in together as teens back when they were two couples, all friends, and before the closing-night party that tore them all apart and set them on the course to lead lives they never imagined living.

Volleyball rivals Jess and Vivienne begin to connect off the court, and I think we can see where this is going!

Feminist sociologist Angela Jones looks at sexuality and the social forces that influence sex and the erotic.

In an alternate version of the 1970s, Mitch Ward follows the lost love of his youth, Flynn, into the US Spaceguard, where he lands himself on a backwater moon base with his only friend Gloria, hoping Flynn will pass through on a shuttl eventually. Mitch and Gloria end up dishonourably discharged and return to a US slipping into fascism. They move to LA and start disco hopping. Flynn eventually ends up back in their lives.

Find hand-drawn floral sketches in this tale about a magical florist.

Lauren Hough hops into her refurbished 2001 Dodge van to take the road trips across the country she was never able to embark on before (“no money, no vacation days, no car capable of making the trip”). With her Husky mix Woody as her companion, she travels from gas stations to restaurants to autoshops to bars for this travelogue meets social commentary meets personal narrative about being a lesbian moving through all different cross-sections of the country.

What a title! This new release comes from the author of Enemy Feminisms comes this exploration of “politicized femme-ness,” or: “a feminism that is self-consciously artificial, extravagant in its erotic and political appetites, and staunchly anti-work, abolitionist, and utopian.”

This atmospheric and strange lesbian vampire tale and gothic saga is told partially through footnotes and a thread of intertextuality. Wraiths, curses, feral desires!

Filipino essayist Joseph Trinidad explores “life as a queer, Brown, transnational hybrid” in his debut collection, inspired by the creatures of Filipino folktales, lessons from his grandmother’s chicken farm, and more stories of borders, becoming, family, and coming out.

In a graphic novel adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s groundbreaking Orlando, the threads of expansive gender and sexuality are teased out even more, building upon the classic.

Chloe loves roleplaying games and is looking for the same excitement in her regular life, which leads her to a mead-making workshop at a rural honey farm, where the owner’s niece Teddy shows up.

Bisexual actress Hannah Murray (Cassie from Skins!) pens her life story, exploring mental health, fame, and how she became entangled (and, eventually, disentangled) from a shadowy “wellness organization.”

Folks, we’ve got another queerleader book! In Doe, captain of the cheerleading team Maris Larsen inadvertently makes a deal with an ancient creature after Genevieve Ray joins the team and becomes coach’s new favorite. It sounds like Dare Me but with magic.

Noelle and Yumi are friends for ten years before one bad night ruins the friendship and results in a year without contact. But then they’re offered a spot on their favorite reality show, a stand-in for The Amazing Race called The Adventureverse. One small catch: It’s an all-couple’s season. So they have to fake a relationship in order to win the potentially life-changing prize money.

In early 20th century Suffolk, two teen girls hatch a plan to abscond to London to live as lovers, but after they’re caught, one is banished to a cabin in the woods.

Cami is a 15-year-old out lesbian at her conservative boarding school for international students in Italy hoping to one day have an art career. She encounters senior Nat, an overachiever in every way who is closeted, even to herself. The two concoct a plan to start a Genders & Sexualities Alliance (GSA). And then they start falling in love.

Jaliya visits her uncle in Jamaica with the ulterior motive to learn more about her estranged mother. She ends up discovering more about her own identity and in a love triangle with her childhood crush and a free-spirited girl named India.

Two girls grow closer…while hunting an alien cryptid that may or may not be a hoax. But strange things keep happening in this town, and secrets unspool.

Beloved cookbook author Julia Turshen’s queer love story follows a single Mom with an eight-year-old son who flees Brooklyn and a rocky relationship for her quiet Upstate New York hometown, where she falls for a charming, gay vegetable farmer.

This audiobook release features the memoir of comedian and podcaster Roz Hernandez, interwoven with clips from her fifty-show summer road trip tour and behind-the-scenes moments from her life on the road.

Sapphire’s California woods farm Sourland is thrown into a crisis of succession when Sapphire goes missing and her ex-girlfriend Frankie, a disgraced ballerina, shows up claiming ownership. Fizz, Sapphire’s more recent lover and an ex-baseball player, is already working the land at Sourland. The two fight for power, unearthing the past.

When Emma’s three best friends are murdered during a camping trip they intentionally failed to invite her to, she becomes suspect number one, and teams up with Beck, one of the victim’s sisters, to solve the mystery herself. Part twisty thriller, part queer coming-of-age novel, and a promised page-turner.

There are multiple bisexual characters in this love triangle novel that unfolds over a wedding week in Cape Cod. Tess hopes her impending society wedding to her soon-to-be state senator husband overwrites the failures of her first marriage. She invites her first husband Peter, who decides to show up with a much younger man named Mitch. Waspy mess ensues.

Here we have a cozy sci-fi story of sapphic shenanigans in space.

A queer Victorian gothic, Carrion Crow is about a woman locked in her family’s attic with a sewing machine and her mother, who carries secrets of her own.