Book Releases: May 2019 (II)

I told you that we had a monster list to get through for this month, and the releases just don’t let up. So in the interests of keeping this post as short as possible, on we go.

Proper English

K. J. Charles

Release date: 8th May
Goodreads
Rep: wlw mcs

A shooting party at the Earl of Witton’s remote country house is a high treat for champion shot Patricia Merton—until unexpected guests turn the social atmosphere dangerously sour.

That’s not Pat’s biggest problem. She’s visiting her old friend, the Earl’s heir Jimmy Yoxall—but she wants to spend a lot more time with Jimmy’s fiancée. The irrepressible Miss Fenella Carruth, with her laughing eyes and lush curves, is the most glorious woman Pat’s ever met, and it quickly becomes impossible to remember why she needs to stay at arm’s length.

But while the women’s attraction grows, the tensions at Rodington Court get worse. Affairs, secrets, betrayals, and blackmail come to light. And when a body is discovered with a knife between the shoulderblades, it’s going to take Pat and Fen’s combined talents to prevent the murderer destroying all their lives.

The Deepest Breath

Meg Grehan

Release date: 9th May
Goodreads
Rep: wlw mc

Stevie is eleven and loves reading and sea-creatures. She lives with her mum, and she’s been best friends with Andrew since forever. Stevie’s mum teases her that someday they’ll get married, but Stevie knows that won’t ever happen. There’s a girl at school that she likes more. A lot more. Actually, she’s a bit confused about how much she likes her. It’s nothing like the way she likes Andrew. It makes her fizz inside. That’s a new feeling, one she doesn’t understand. Stevie needs to find out if girls can like girls – love them, even – but it’s hard to get any information, and she’s too shy to ask out loud about it. But maybe she can find an answer in a book. With the help of a librarian, Stevie finds stories of girls loving girls, and builds up her courage to share the truth with her mum. Written in accessible verse ‘chapters’ and in a warm and reassuring style, The Deepest Breath will be of special relevance to young girls who are starting to realise that they are attracted to other girls, but it is also a story for any young reader with an open mind who wants to understand how people’s emotions affect their lives.

Sunset and Shades

Erica Lee

Release date: 10th May
Goodreads
Rep: wlw mcs

Kinsley Scott is a lesbian romance author who doesn’t actually believe in love. While her alter ego, Laurel Lake, loves happy endings and epic love stories, Kinsley has a more cynical view of the world. 

Grace Harper is a hopeless romantic hanging on every word of the lesbian romance novels she reads. She believes her happy ending is right around the corner if she can just move on from the ex who cheated on her. When Grace’s childhood best friend, Leah, suggests that she comes to Philly to get space from her ex, it seems like the perfect opportunity to start over, especially since Leah’s roommate is none other than Laurel Lake – Grace’s favorite romance author. 

Grace quickly learns that people aren’t always how they appear online and is disappointed to find that Kinsley Scott is nothing like Laurel Lake. She’s rude and vulgar and, unfortunately, irresistibly sexy. There is also much more to her than meets the eye, and as the two grow closer, her tough exterior is quickly stripped away, revealing much more than Grace ever bargained for.

I Wish You All The Best

Mason Deaver

Release date: 14th May
Goodreads
Rep: nb mc (ownvoices)

When Ben De Backer comes out to their parents as nonbinary, they’re thrown out of their house and forced to move in with their estranged older sister, Hannah, and her husband, Thomas, whom Ben has never even met. Struggling with an anxiety disorder compounded by their parents’ rejection, they come out only to Hannah, Thomas, and their therapist and try to keep a low profile in a new school.

But Ben’s attempts to survive the last half of senior year unnoticed are thwarted when Nathan Allan, a funny and charismatic student, decides to take Ben under his wing. As Ben and Nathan’s friendship grows, their feelings for each other begin to change, and what started as a disastrous turn of events looks like it might just be a chance to start a happier new life.

At turns heartbreaking and joyous, I Wish You All the Best is both a celebration of life, friendship, and love, and a shining example of hope in the face of adversity.

Red, White & Royal Blue

Casey McQuiston

Release date: 14th May
Goodreads
Rep: Latino bi mc with ADHD, gay li with depression

A big-hearted romantic comedy in which First Son Alex falls in love with Prince Henry of Wales after an incident of international proportions forces them to pretend to be best friends…

First Son Alex Claremont-Diaz is the closest thing to a prince this side of the Atlantic. With his intrepid sister and the Veep’s genius granddaughter, they’re the White House Trio, a beautiful millennial marketing strategy for his mother, President Ellen Claremont. International socialite duties do have downsides—namely, when photos of a confrontation with his longtime nemesis Prince Henry at a royal wedding leak to the tabloids and threaten American/British relations.

The plan for damage control: staging a fake friendship between the First Son and the Prince. Alex is busy enough handling his mother’s bloodthirsty opponents and his own political ambitions without an uptight royal slowing him down. But beneath Henry’s Prince Charming veneer, there’s a soft-hearted eccentric with a dry sense of humor and more than one ghost haunting him.

As President Claremont kicks off her reelection bid, Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret relationship with Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations. And Henry throws everything into question for Alex, an impulsive, charming guy who thought he knew everything: What is worth the sacrifice? How do you do all the good you can do? And, most importantly, how will history remember you?

We Contain Multitudes

Sarah Henstra

Release date: 14th May
Goodreads
Rep: mlm relationship

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe meets I’ll Give You the Sun in an exhilarating and emotional novel about the growing relationship between two teen boys, told through the letters they write to one another.

Jonathan Hopkirk and Adam “Kurl” Kurlansky are partnered in English class, writing letters to one another in a weekly pen pal assignment. With each letter, the two begin to develop a friendship that eventually grows into love. But with homophobia, bullying, and devastating family secrets, Jonathan and Kurl struggle to overcome their conflicts and hold onto their relationship…and each other.

This rare and special novel celebrates love and life with engaging characters and stunning language, making it perfect for fans of Jandy Nelson, Nina LaCour, and David Levithan.

Last Bus to Everland

Sophie Cameron

Release date: 14th May
Goodreads
Rep: gay mc, lesbian side character (lesbian author)

Brody Fair feels like nobody gets him: not his overworked parents, not his genius older brother, and definitely not the girls in the projects set on making his life miserable. Then he meets Nico, an art student who takes Brody to Everland, a “knock-off Narnia” that opens its door at 11:21pm each Thursday for Nico and his band of present-day misfits and miscreants.

Here Brody finds his tribe and a weekly respite from a world where he feels out of place. But when the doors to Everland begin to disappear, Brody is forced to make a decision: He can say goodbye to Everland and to Nico, or stay there and risk never seeing his family again.

All The Worlds Between Us

Morgan Lee Miller

Release date: 14th May
Goodreads
Rep: wlw relationship

Seventeen-year-old Quinn Hughes needs to be in top shape if she wants to medal at the swimming World Championships in ten months. This means no easy distractions, no matter how pretty they are.

She’s still piecing her confidence back together after not qualifying for the Olympics, her relationship with her twin brother is getting worse the more he hangs out with the popular kids, and then Kennedy Reed suddenly squeezes herself back into Quinn’s life. The girl who was her best friend. The girl who gave Quinn her first kiss. The girl who hasn’t spoken to her since.

Soon, Quinn finds herself juggling her new girlfriend, training for the biggest competition of her life, and discovering she’s not the only Hughes twin with a crush on Kennedy Reed. All these distractions are getting to her, and if she wants that medal she needs to find a way to stop drowning on dry land.

Falling

Kris Bryant

Release date: 14th May
Goodreads
Rep: wlw relationship

Shaylie Beck just wanted to go home.

She managed to snag the last seat on a late flight from New York to Denver. No one thought anything would go wrong. Nobody expected the unimaginable to happen. When the plane crashes, Shaylie fights for her life and is one of only eleven survivors

Piper Cole wants answers.

Why did her fiancée’s plane crash? She lost everything that night, and the investigation is taking too long. To help cope with losing the woman she loved, Piper attends a support group for survivors.

The friendship Piper and Shaylie develop help each to heal, but as their feelings turn to love, Shaylie’s torn. She can follow her heart to the woman she loves, or she can come clean about what really happened right before the plane crashed, and risk losing Piper forever.

The Road to Madison

Elle Spencer

Release date: 14th May
Goodreads
Rep: wlw relationship

As the sole heir to her family’s banking empire, a lot is expected of Madison Prescott. Falling in love with her childhood friend Ana Perez was not in the cards. As Madison’s father puts it, “A gay daughter? Married to the maid’s daughter? Running my company? Over my dead body.”

By the time George Prescott dies, it’s been 15 years since Madison and Ana were ripped apart by his lies. They haven’t spoken since, but Madison has spent every minute waiting for this day to come. Unfortunately, it turns out time doesn’t heal all wounds. Why was Madison willing to give up everything in the face of her father’s threats, and why can she never tell Ana the truth about what really separated them?

Caught between a present they can’t trust and a past they can’t forget, Madison and Ana must decide if this is their second chance, or their final heartbreak.

Nirvana is Here

Aaron Hamburger

Release date: 14th May
Goodreads
Rep: mlm relationship (ownvoices)

For Ari Silverman, the past has never really passed. After 20 years, the trauma from a childhood assault resurfaces as he grapples with the fate of his ex-husband, a colleague accused of sexually harassing a student. To gain perspective, Ari arranges to reconnect with his high school crush, Justin Jackson, a bold step which forces him to reflect on their relationship in the segregated suburbs of Detroit during the 1990s and the secrets they still share. An honest story about recovery and coping with both past and present, framed by the meteoric rise and fall of the band Nirvana and the wide-reaching scope of the #metoo movement, NIRVANA IS HERE, explores issues of identity, race, sex, and family with both poignancy and unexpected humor. Deftly told intertwining stories with rich, real characters are reminiscent of the sensuality and haunting nostalgia of André Aciman’s Call Me by Your Name blended with the raw emotion of Kurt Cobain’s lyrics.  Written by award-winning writer Aaron Hamburger, Nirvana Is Here is “a wonder of a book,” according to acclaimed novelist Lauren Grodstein (Our Short History). “As a Jewish Gen-Xer, the novel reminded me exactly of who I once was—and all that I still want to be. A brilliant accomplishment.”

Out East: Memoir of a Montauk Summer

John Glynn

Release date: 14th May
Goodreads
Rep: memoir

A gripping portrait of life in a Montauk summer house–a debut memoir of first love, identity and self-discovery among a group of friends who became family.

They call Montauk the end of the world, a spit of land jutting into the Atlantic. The house was a ramshackle split-level set on a hill, and each summer thirty one people would sleep between its thin walls and shag carpets. Against the moonlight the house’s octagonal roof resembled a bee’s nest. It was dubbed The Hive.

In 2013, John Glynn joined the share house. Packing his duffel for that first Memorial Day Weekend, he prayed for clarity. At 27, he was crippled by an all-encompassing loneliness, a feeling he had carried in his heart for as long as he could remember. John didn’t understand the loneliness. He just knew it was there. Like the moon gone dark.

OUT EAST is the portrait of a summer, of the Hive and the people who lived in it, and John’s own reckoning with a half-formed sense of self. From Memorial Day to Labor Day, The Hive was a center of gravity, a port of call, a home. Friendships, conflicts, secrets and epiphanies blossomed within this tightly woven friend group and came to define how they would live out the rest of their twenties and beyond. Blending the sand-strewn milieu of George Howe Colt’s The Big House, the radiant aching of Olivia Liang’s The Lonely City, OUT EAST is a keenly wrought story of love and transformation, longing and escape in our own contemporary moment.

Trans-Mission: My Quest to a Beard

Alex Bertie

Release date: 14th May
Goodreads
Rep: memoir

A brave first-hand account of online personality Alex Bertie’s life, struggles, and victories as a transgender teen, as well as a groundbreaking guide for transitioning teen.

I guess we should start at the beginning. I was born on November 2nd, 1995. The doctors in the hospital took one look at my genitals and slapped an F on my birth certificate. ‘F’ for female, not fail–though that would actually have been kind of appropriate given present circumstances.

When I was fifteen, I realized I was a transgender man. That makes it sound like I had some kind of lightbulb moment. In reality, coming to grips with my identity has taken a long time.

Over the last six years, I’ve come out to my family and friends, changed my name, battled the healthcare system, started taking male hormones and have had surgery on my chest. My quest to a beard is almost complete. This is my story.

Accessible and emotional, Trans Mission fills a gap in nonfiction about and for transgender teens.

This was published in 2017 in the UK.

The Lost Coast

Amy Rose Capetta

Release date: 14th May
Goodreads
Rep: nb mc, bi mc

The spellbinding tale of six queer witches forging their own paths, shrouded in the mist, magic, and secrets of the ancient California redwoods.

Danny didn’t know what she was looking for when she and her mother spread out a map of the United States and Danny put her finger down on Tempest, California. What she finds are the Grays: a group of friends who throw around terms like queer and witch like they’re ordinary and everyday, though they feel like an earthquake to Danny. But Danny didn’t just find the Grays. They cast a spell that calls her halfway across the country, because she has something they need: she can bring back Imogen, the most powerful of the Grays, missing since the summer night she wandered into the woods alone. But before Danny can find Imogen, she finds a dead boy with a redwood branch through his heart. Something is very wrong amid the trees and fog of the Lost Coast, and whatever it is, it can kill. Lush, eerie, and imaginative, Amy Rose Capetta’s tale overflows with the perils and power of discovery — and what it means to find your home, yourself, and your way forward.

The Stonewall Riots: Coming Out in the Streets

Gayle E. Pitman

Release date: 14th May
Goodreads
Rep: nonfiction

This book is about the Stonewall Riots, a series of spontaneous, often violent demonstrations by members of the gay (LGBTQ+) community in reaction to a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. The Riots are attributed as the spark that ignited the LGBTQ+ movement. The author describes American gay history leading up to the Riots, the Riots themselves, and the aftermath, and includes her interviews of people involved or witnesses, including a woman who was ten at the time. Profusely illustrated, the book includes contemporary photos, newspaper clippings, and other period objects. A timely and necessary read, The Stonewall Riots helps readers to understand the history and legacy of the LGBTQ+ movement.

The Hierophant’s Daughter

M. F. Sullivan

Release date: 19th May
Goodreads
Rep: wlw mc

By 4042 CE, the Hierophant and his Church have risen to political dominance with his cannibalistic army of genetically modified humans: martyrs. In an era when mankind’s intergenerational cold wars against their long-lived predators seem close to running hot, the Holy Family is poised on the verge of complete planetary control. It will take a miracle to save humanity from extinction.

It will also take a miracle to resurrect the wife of 331-year-old General Dominia di Mephitoli, who defects during martyr year 1997 AL in search of Lazarus, the one man rumored to bring life to the dead. With the Hierophant’s Project Black Sun looming over her head, she has little choice but to believe this Lazarus is really all her new friends say he is–assuming he exists at all–and that these companions of hers are really able to help her. From the foulmouthed Japanese prostitute with a few secrets of her own to the outright sapient dog who seems to judge every move, they don’t inspire a lot of confidence, but the General has to take the help she can get.

After all, Dominia is no ordinary martyr. She is THE HIEROPHANT’S DAUGHTER, and her Father won’t let her switch sides without a fight. Not when she still has so much to learn.

Shadows You Left

Jude Sierra and Taylor Brooke

Release date: 20th May
Goodreads
Rep: mlm relationship

ERIK

The white picket fence. The happily-ever-after. That life was never meant for him. For years he’s been bouncing from city to city—from one cage fight to another. That’s his outlet. That’s pain Erik can control. But in Seattle, everything changed. River’s an artist. He’s a pretty boy. He does yoga. Someone so soft shouldn’t be intrigued by Erik’s rough edges.

RIVER

His life was quiet. He had a simple routine. Designing tattoos, avoiding drama. Well, mostly. Then Erik comes along—scarred and dangerous, shrouded in mystery. A mystery River can’t resist trying to solve. Maybe a secret as dark as his own. Neither of them expected a relationship so complicated, so intense. Neither of them expected…each other. Erik and River are both trying to escape a shadowed past. But the thing about shadows is: the faster you run, the faster they chase you.

And that ends part two.

What May releases are you looking forward to most?