Our Most Anticipated Queer Books for November 2026

We try to get this list up on the first Tuesday of the month, but you’ll note this is coming in a little late this month, and that’s because we’ve been on deadline for our next print issue, which you are not going to want to miss so it’s a great time to become a subscriber!

November is a little lighter on new releases, but there are still plenty of queer books to get excited about, including an excellent short fiction collection centering trans women in Chicago, a new book on polyamory by Michelle Tea, a new memoir from the author of the much-accoladed All Boys Aren’t Blue, and more. Remember: Using the links below to shop for books gives us a small kickback, so if you’re doing some holiday shopping for books, use our Bookshop.org links!

Littlepuss Press puts out some incredible books, and this one is no exception! My wife has not stopped talking about this one ever since she devoured it and blurbed it (“Delicious, fabulous writing–devoured this in one sitting.” – Kristen Arnett), and I can’t wait to read it myself! The story collection follows young trans women in Chicago.

The author of All Boys Aren’t Blue—which was the most banned book of 2024—is back with their debut adult memoir, in which George “navigates an HIV diagnosis, alcoholism, tremendous loss, and nationwide book bans over the span of 15 years.”

A single 35-year-old lifelong nanny is struck with baby fever. She made it out of an abusive relationship with her ex-wife and now wonders what’s next. A baby, apparently. The novel promises to unsettle “traditional narratives about motherhood, gender, class, domestic violence, and the politics and labor of care.”

Protagonist Grace Goldberg-Li begins to wonder if she might be an alien, sparked by a visit to the Bronx Zoo when she is six-years-old and a jaguar tells her she is not human. In adulthood, she still isn’t sure. The many twists and turns of this debut novel also include a queer love story.

This novel is set in 2171 on a post-climate collapse/nuclear fallout/plague/etc version of Earth that has been reclaimed by nature. Small, self-sufficient, women-only religious utopias have emerged in the wreckage. Igraine and Ophelia are teen girls who live in one of these communities and are studying to eventually join a gothic cathedral on the moon. But Ophelia starts having visions of a male archangel, throwing a wrench in their futures.

Basketball romance alert!!! AD is a Black, nonbinary lesbian WNBA player with a messy dating history who isn’t exactly raking in the brand deals, and Chelsea is a sports-agnostic, sex-positive influencer looking to take her platform to the next level, so when AD’s agent proposes they pretend to be in a relationship to buoy both of their careers, they’re both on board.

The one and only Michelle Tea is back, this time with a complex exploration of polyamory through personal narrative and the gonzo reporting she’s supreme at. This is about to become THE essential text on polyamory, I can feel it.

And now enjoy the rest of our anticipated book picks for November 2026.

Combining historical writing on lesbian and feminist movements and analysis of poetry as creative practice and poetry criticism, this new title from State University of New York Press is described as “conversational, nerdy, funny, and sexy”—a fun combination all around.

Here we have another academic text release that combines modes of nonfiction and critical writing. This pulls from South Asian, Indigenous, feminist, and queer philosophies as it contributes new scholarship to queer and feminist justice studies.

It’s 1999 and three women are about to enjoy a dangerous web of obsession and infatuation. Gifty is a woman lost in grief and therapy after her wife’s death. Isobel’s a former pop star who just got hired to nanny for Ally, businesswoman and mother of six whose husband just surprised her with a 6-month work trip to Indonesia. One of them will die!

A lesbian couple are attempting enjoying their golden years together in ‘90s Far Rockaway when the electric company fucks it all up —and prompts them to flee town and their adult children on a freewheeling roadtrip — by digging up the bodies of their murdered dead husbands, buried in the rosebushes.

A “tongue-in cheek spin” on the Eastern European fairy tale “The Girl Who Pretended to be a Boy,” a nonbinary knight fights to resist an invasion and rescue their crush (the most beautiful women in the world).

The conclusion of the Dark Gods Saga finds the heirs fighting to destroy not just the gods themselves, but the sources of their divine power.

Created posthumously by a collective of her close friends and literary scholars, celebrated Koyoonk’auwi (Concow) poet and essayist Janice Gould is remembered through lyrical essays, prose poems, and personal photographs. It traces Gould’s life from her coming of age as a queer/Two-Spirit California Native in the late 1960s to her experiences in lesbian feminist circles to her marriage and journey as an artist..

This book looks at the animosity and content often directed at lesbian feminists, centering the work of Beverly Smith, Andrea Dworkin, Pat Parker, and Jill Johnston.

Set in San Francisco in 1981, this graphic narrative pulls from real life events to tell the story of Randy Shilts, an early pioneer of LGBTQ+ journalism who covered the HIV/AIDS crisis.

This is the sequel to Pioneer Summer, the trailblazing coming-of-age queer book that sparked a massive book banning campaign in Russia. In the sequel, star-crossed lovers Yurka and Volodya’s stories continue, 20 years after they first met in a youth camp in the first book.

Set in small-town Mississippi in the 1970s, here is a thriller mystery that starts with a man entering the bathroom at a local gay bar and never coming out. Samuel Barkley, the town’s only Black detective, is on the case. Paranormal intrigue ensues.

Not to be confused with milktooth, Milk Teeth is the story of a broodmother vampire stricken with uncontrollable hunger after bringing a third fledgling into the abandoned skyscraper office space where she nurses them through early unlife. Her only hope is the help of a mortal OBGYN who may be able to understand what’s happening to her — if only their connection did not threaten the secrecy of her entire vampiric coven!!

A “beautiful, brutal sapphic fantasy” about a mysterious castle that traps its residents in time and the witch and bloodseeking monster trying to unravel their curses there while literally battling their own personal demons.

Mar Ortega gets into an elite pre-college art school in Baltimore and decides they want to try out new pronouns. When they arrive at school, they find themselves limited by financial restraints, unable to afford the nicest materials. They feel simultaneously at home here and at odds due to the access barriers.

Murder mystery meets magic in this conclusion to Melissa Caruso’s Echo Archives trilogy.

This is the conclusion to the dark fantasy trilogy, The Witches of Halstett.

This dark fantasy and alternate history book is the sequel to Meg Ripley’s Necrology.

Epic high fantasy adventures abound in this tale about aging mercenary Mordrena Halfheart who seeks her revenge.

The official sequel to the Mighty Nein campaign from Critical Role and follows the fates of Caleb Widogast and Beauregard Lionett.

The myth of Medusa gets a sapphic reimagining.

Susie’s two best friends Jo and Helen hate each other but have to put their differences aside to help Susie film an action movie.

There’s a sweet sapphic love story threaded through this dark fantasy novel about a housemaid and a Carrion Knight.

This horror-comedy novel has a bisexual protagonist who decides to haunt the people ghosting her. She also has a sleep paralysis demon.

Blind girl Arden gets tangled up with a mysterious young witch named Myra.

24 queer, trans, nonbinary and intersex essays tell unflinching stories about “the messy realities, impossible heartbreaks, and profound liberations inherent to queerly uncoupling in the 21st century.” Writers include tabloid sensation Thomas Beatie, film director Silas Howard and authors Julia Serano and Sassafras Lowery.

Rachel Maddow pens a historical analysis of the United States Department of Justice and the consequential decisions it has made, impacting our rights, the economy, politics, and more.

Biologist Spencer R. Scott draws from his experiences co-founding the queer regenerative community and education hub Solar Punk Farms in this mix of memoir and scientific inquiry that calls for community and collective action in the face of capitalism.

Drawing from her life as an educator, Shayda Karai looks at the power of “mess”, a “Mad, queer, femme, and decolonial tool that intervenes in oppressive institutional structures.”

This looks at the lives and experiences of 12 different queer international students from seven countries with anti-LGBTQIA+ laws who are in the U.S. pursuing a higher educaiton.

25 years ago, an entire senior class was killed on a class trip to a luxurious resort deep in the Florida Keys. Paige, the daughter of one of that night’s five survivors, is back in town when her best friend, KJ, goes missing —and Paige knows there’s only one place she could be.

For this project, author Jennifer Tabler and photographer Bailey Russel teamed up to ask rural LGBTQ+ community members what brings them joy. They took the participants’ portraits and had the participants annotate them, yielding a collective work of social practice art.

This poetry collection documents the real-life religious controversy of the 1990s when a teen in a small town in the Philippines claimed to be visited by the Virgin Mary.

This cultural history of NYC provides a “close look at the ways queer and trans writers and artists resisted predatory redevelopment in New York City from 1950 to 2020.”

This is the second book in the dystopian Strangeloom trilogy.

This future-set novel promises a cozy sci-fi adventure.

Luella is a teen girl living on an island whose cruel father makes her dive for riches in the shipwrecks he orchestrates by turning off the lighthouse every twenty-fifth ship. She responds to a newspaper ad posted by The Society for the Protection of Faeries, claiming selkies live on her island, and the lie secures her a new life in the society.

Here we have a punk femme collection of poetry exploring hookup culture, online dating, and modern love.

This is a practical book about the concept and practice of trans people changing their voices and is meant to function as a personal log as well as an expansive guide. It’s for anyone seeking to find their gender-affirming voice.

This sapphic love story is set in 1852 and starts with protagonist Abby Proctor getting kidnapped from a train.

Young Indian woman and reality TV star Amrita’s world is upended when a deepfake porno of her shows up online.

While this is an M/F romance, the leads are both bisexual.

Kate Raphael interviews Rebecca Gordon and Jan Adams about their four decades of radical feminist activism.