Book Releases: June 2019 (II)

Quick heads-up, please remember that this is only one part of books coming out this Pride – my previous post, covering the first few days of the month, is here. So check that one out as well if you haven’t yet!

And you can always see what past releases you might have missed – here are all our posts about LGBT books that came out recently.

Honestly, though! Can you think of a better way to celebrate Pride, than publishing so many wonderful books? Yeah, me neither.

So check out what more June has in store for us!

Alex in Wonderland

Simon James Green

Release date: 6th June
Goodreads
Rep: gay mc (ownvoices)

In the town of Newsands, painfully shy Alex is abandoned by his two best friends for the summer. But he unexpectedly lands a part-time job at Wonderland, a run-down amusement arcade on the seafront, where he gets to know the other teen misfits who work there. Alex starts to come out of his shell, and even starts to develop feelings for co-worker Ben… who, as Alex’s bad luck would have it, has a girlfriend.

Then as debtors close in on Wonderland and mysterious, threatening notes start to appear, Alex and his new friends take it on themselves to save their declining employer. But, like everything in Wonderland, nothing is quite what it seems…

Tell Me How You Really Feel

Aminah Mae Safi

Release date: 11th June
Goodreads
Rep: Mexican Jewish mc, Muslim lesbian li

Sana Khan is a cheerleader and a straight A student. She’s the classic (somewhat obnoxious) overachiever determined to win.

Rachel Recht is a wannabe director who’s obsesssed with movies and ready to make her own masterpiece. As she’s casting her senior film project, she knows she’s found the perfect lead – Sana.

There’s only one problem. Rachel hates Sana. Rachel was the first girl Sana ever asked out, but Rachel thought it was a cruel prank and has detested Sana ever since.

Told in alternative viewpoints and inspired by classic romantic comedies, this engaging and edgy YA novel follows two strongwilled young women falling for each other despite themselves.

The Sol Majestic

Ferrett Steinmetz

Release date: 11th June
Goodreads
Rep: mlm relationship

The Sol Majestic is a big-hearted intergalactic adventure for fans of Becky Chambers and The Good Place.

“A feast of a book.” — Hugo Award-winning author Seanan McGuire

Kenna, an aspirational teen guru, wanders destitute across the stars as he tries to achieve his parents’ ambition to advise the celestial elite.

Everything changes when Kenna wins a free dinner at The Sol Majestic, the galaxy’s most renown restaurant, giving him access to the cosmos’s one-percent. His dream is jeopardized, however, when he learns his highly-publicized “free meal” risks putting The Sol Majestic into financial ruin. Kenna and a motley gang of newfound friends — including a teleporting celebrity chef, a trust-fund adrenaline junkie, an inept apprentice, and a brilliant mistress of disguise — must concoct an extravagant scheme to save everything they cherish. In doing so, Kenna may sacrifice his ideals — or learn even greater lessons about wisdom, friendship, and love.

Utterly charming and out of this world, The Sol Majestic will satisfy the appetites of sci-fi aficionados and newcomers alike.

Paris, 7 A.M.

Liza Wieland

Release date: 11th June
Goodreads
Rep: wlw relationship

The acclaimed, award-winning author of A Watch of Nightingalesimagines in a sweeping and stunning novel what happened to the poet Elizabeth Bishop during three life-changing weeks she spent in Paris amidst the imminent threat of World War II.

June 1937. Elizabeth Bishop, still only a young woman and not yet one of the most influential poets of the twentieth century, arrives in France with her college roommates. They are in search of an escape, and inspiration, far from the protective world of Vassar College where they were expected to find an impressive husband, a quiet life, and act accordingly. But the world is changing, and as they explore the City of Light, the larger threats of fascism and occupation are looming. There, they meet a community of upper-crust expatriates who not only bring them along on a life-changing adventure, but also into an underground world of rebellion that will quietly alter the course of Elizabeth’s life forever.

Paris, 7 A.M. imagines 1937—the only year Elizabeth, a meticulous keeper of journals, didn’t fully chronicle—in vivid detail and brings us from Paris to Normandy where Elizabeth becomes involved with a group rescuing Jewish “orphans” and delivering them to convents where they will be baptized as Catholics and saved from the impending horror their parents will face.

Poignant and captivating, Liza Wieland’s Paris, 7 A.M. is a beautifully rendered take on the formative years of one of America’s most celebrated—and mythologized—female poets.

Accidental Prophet

Bud Gundy

Release date: 11th June
Goodreads
Rep: mlm relationship

Intelligent, handsome, and struggling to make his rent, thirty-year-old Drew Morten loses his only meaningful relationship when his grandmother dies. A famous television anchor, Claudia Trenton, leaves Drew the legacy of her secret memoir. From the fate of a vanished medieval prince to a top-secret NASA study about a mystifying space object, her unreported discoveries hum with wonder.

But history merges with the present and upends Drew’s life when he has a terrifying revelation. Teaming up with a brilliant woman who receives the same vision and a handsome man whose arrival is either fortuitous or sinister, Drew follows the clues in his grandmother’s memoir and races against time to save the world from an apocalyptic nightmare about to be unleashed in downtown San Francisco.

As catastrophe looms, so does the question: Who, or what, is the real enemy?

In Case You Forgot

Frederick Smith & Chaz Lamar

Release date: 11th June
Goodreads
Rep: mlm Black mcs

Two newly single, Black, queer, and socially aware men have packed up to start again–in love, career, and life–in the West Hollywood neighborhood of LA.

Zaire James, on the cusp of 30, has decided marriage isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Despite friends, family, and coworkers loving Zaire’s “perfect” partner, divorce is a necessary step for finding himself and being free. If only it were that easy.

Kenny Kane has made a career of deferring dreams, lowering expectations, and chasing partners not on his level in hopes of finding a love to call his own. However, on the verge of the big 4-0, he realizes the clock is ticking on all his dreams.

As Zaire and Kenny undo the significant relationships of their pasts, they hope new opportunities, energy, mindsets, and connections will reinvigorate what is missing in their lives–drama and all.

Take the Edge Off

T.A. Moore

Release date: 11th June
Goodreads
Rep: mlm relationship

You don’t end up an ex-car thief and ex-con because you’re good at resisting temptation… and Cal Tate’s rich new boss is very tempting. 

Cal has always been the bad boy lovers don’t bring home to Mom, but now he’d like someone other than a debt collector waiting for him at home. He has a legit job as a driver with his brother’s company, he’s got a doctor on the hook, and he still can’t help crawling into bed with Joseph Bailey. 

Joe has never met anyone as easy in their own skin as his new driver. Or as ridiculously beautiful. He’s in London to downsize the family business… and to investigate the abusive emails that imply a dark secret around his mother’s death. But unpicking the lies he’s been told makes Joe realize he isn’t sure who is without them. 

When his life falls apart, the only person he can be himself with is Cal. But with the anonymous stalker’s threats increasing, Joe worries that someone will finish the job they started over two decades ago—and end any chance for a happy future between him and Cal.

The Griefkeeper

Alexandra Villasante

Release date: 11th June
Goodreads
Rep: Salvadoran wlw mc (Latina author), wlw relationship

This stunning YA debut is a timely and heartfelt speculative narrative about healing, faith, and freedom.

Seventeen-year-old Marisol has always dreamed of being American, learning what Americans and the US are like from television and Mrs. Rosen, an elderly expat who had employed Marisol’s mother as a maid. When she pictured an American life for herself, she dreamed of a life like Aimee and Amber’s, the title characters of her favorite American TV show. She never pictured fleeing her home in El Salvador under threat of death and stealing across the US border as “an illegal”, but after her brother is murdered and her younger sister, Gabi’s, life is also placed in equal jeopardy, she has no choice, especially because she knows everything is her fault. If she had never fallen for the charms of a beautiful girl named Liliana, Pablo might still be alive, her mother wouldn’t be in hiding and she and Gabi wouldn’t have been caught crossing the border.

But they have been caught and their asylum request will most certainly be denied. With truly no options remaining, Marisol jumps at an unusual opportunity to stay in the United States. She’s asked to become a grief keeper, taking the grief of another into her own body to save a life. It’s a risky, experimental study, but if it means Marisol can keep her sister safe, she will risk anything. She just never imagined one of the risks would be falling in love, a love that may even be powerful enough to finally help her face her own crushing grief.

The Grief Keeper is a tender tale that explores the heartbreak and consequences of when both love and human beings are branded illegal.

TW: sexual assault, suicidal ideation, violence, bombing, PTSD

Kim Reaper, Vol 2: Vampire Island

Sarah Graley

Release date: 11th June
Goodreads
Rep: bi mc (ownvoices), poc mc, wlw relationship

Hit cartoonist Sarah Graley (Our Super Adventure) tells a new story about the trials of supernatural dating in Kim Reaper: Vampire Island!

College relationships are tough for everyone, but they’re extra hard for Kim. Her grumpy grim reaper bosses are always making her work overtime, her girlfriend Becka’s roommate keeps hanging around, and for some reason, she’s going on an awkward group date to Vampire Island! But when she stumbles into a long-lost friend, Kim accidentally finds herself in the middle of a vampire grudge, plus a new strain on her relationship. Surely she can figure out how to study, be a good girlfriend, maintain her social life, and still pay rent? She just might need a little help.

On Shaky Ground

Andrew Grey

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

Martin Graham built his business from the ground up with hard work and intuition. Due to a degenerative eye disease, he’s learned to rely on his other senses to feel out the competition. To realize his dream, he just needs to broker one last deal… and finally secure an assistant.

Brock Littleton is desperate for money—desperate enough take the job no one else wants: assistant to demanding, fussy, intensely private Mr. Graham.

Everything about Brock gets under Martin’s skin in ways he never expected, making him realize a successful business isn’t the only component to a happy future. But as Martin’s deal comes together, one of the prices could be the relationship with Brock that Martin is just starting to believe could be real.

Always a Love Song

Charley Clarke

Release date: 15th June
Goodreads
Rep: lesbian mc & li

When golden girl pop star Bridget Callahan’s broken engagement comes out, she heads back to her hometown for the first time in five years to write songs for her next album. And maybe while she’s there, she’ll finally be able to face the woman she left behind who she never let go.

Bar owner Alex Marlow has spent the past five years mending her broken heart by pretending she doesn’t have one. But Bridget’s return disrupts her ordered life and brings all those chaotic, buried feelings back to the surface. Can they forgive each other and themselves for mistakes made when they were younger?

A lesbian romance about music, accepting the past, and embracing second chances to write a new future.

Silver in the Wood

Emily Tesh

Release date: 18th June
Goodreads
Rep: mlm relationship

There is a Wild Man who lives in the deep quiet of Greenhollow, and he listens to the wood. Tobias, tethered to the forest, does not dwell on his past life, but he lives a perfectly unremarkable existence with his cottage, his cat, and his dryads.

When Greenhollow Hall acquires a handsome, intensely curious new owner in Henry Silver, everything changes. Old secrets better left buried are dug up, and Tobias is forced to reckon with his troubled past—both the green magic of the woods, and the dark things that rest in its heart.

All of Us with Wings

Michelle Ruiz Keil

Release date: 18th June
Goodreads
Rep: Latinx bi mc (ownvoices)

Michelle Ruiz Keil’s YA fantasy debut about love, found family, and healing is an ode to post-punk San Francisco through the eyes of a Mexican-American girl.

Seventeen-year-old Xochi is alone in San Francisco, running from her painful past: the mother who abandoned her, the man who betrayed her. Then one day, she meets Pallas, a precocious twelve-year-old who lives with her rockstar family in one of the city’s storybook Victorians. Xochi accepts a position as Pallas’s live-in governess and quickly finds her place in their household, which is relaxed and happy despite the band’s larger-than-life fame.

But on the night of the Vernal Equinox, as a concert afterparty rages in the house below, Xochi and Pallas accidentally summon a pair of ancient creatures devoted to avenging the wrongs of Xochi’s adolescence. She would do anything to preserve her new life, but with the creatures determined to exact vengeance on those who’ve hurt her, no one is safe—not the family she’s chosen, nor the one she left behind.

TW for rape, paedophilia, romanticises a relationship between an adult and minor.

The Affair of the Mysterious Letter

Alexis Hall

Release date: 18th June
Goodreads
Rep: bi female mc, trans mc

In this charming, witty, and weird fantasy novel, Alexis Hall pays homage to Sherlock Holmes with a new twist on those renowned characters. 

Upon returning to the city of Khelathra-Ven after five years fighting a war in another universe, Captain John Wyndham finds himself looking for somewhere to live, and expediency forces him to take lodgings at 221b Martyrs Walk. His new housemate is Ms. Shaharazad Haas, a consulting sorceress of mercurial temperament and dark reputation.

When Ms. Haas is enlisted to solve a case of blackmail against one of her former lovers, Miss Eirene Viola, Captain Wyndham finds himself drawn into a mystery that leads him from the salons of the literary set to the drowned back-alleys of Ven and even to a prison cell in lost Carcosa. Along the way he is beset by criminals, menaced by pirates, molested by vampires, almost devoured by mad gods, and called upon to punch a shark. 

But the further the companions go in pursuit of the elusive blackmailer, the more impossible the case appears. Then again, in Khelathra-Ven reality is flexible, and the impossible is Ms. Haas’ stock-in-trade.

Something Like Gravity

Amber Smith

Release date: 18th June
Goodreads
Rep: trans mc

For fans of Love, Simon and Eleanor and Park, a romantic and sweet novel about a transgender boy who falls in love for the first time—and how first love changes us all—from New York Times bestselling author Amber Smith.

Chris and Maia aren’t off to a great start.

A near-fatal car accident first brings them together, and their next encounters don’t fare much better. Chris’s good intentions backfire. Maia’s temper gets the best of her.

But they’re neighbors, at least for the summer, and despite their best efforts, they just can’t seem to stay away from each other.

The path forward isn’t easy. Chris has come out as transgender, but he’s still processing a frightening assault he survived the year before. Maia is grieving the loss of her older sister and trying to find her place in the world without her. Falling in love was the last thing on either of their minds.

But would it be so bad if it happened anyway?

The Travelers

Regina Porter

Release date: 18th June
Goodreads
Rep: lesbian mc

A gripping new novel with a distinctly American edge, The Travelers highlights the lives of two families—meet James Samuel Vincent—an affluent New York attorney who shirks his modest Irish American upbringing but hews to his father’s wily nilly ways; and Agnes Miller Christie—a beautiful African American woman who encounters tragedy on a Georgia road that propels her to  a new life in the Bronx; Eddie Christie, a recently married sailor on an air craft carrier in Vietnam and the Tom Stoppard play that becomes his life anchor; an interracial couple, both academic scholars, who travel to far of Brittany to save their aching marriage; Eloise Delaney, the unapologetic lesbian starting life over again in 1970s’ Berlin; a black moving man stranded during a Thanksgiving storm in Portsmouth, New Hampshire; and two half-brothers who meet for the first time as adult men in a crayon factory. 

Spanning the 1950s to Obama’s first year as President,The Travelers is both an intimate family portrait and a sweeping exploration of what it means to be American today. With its piercing humor, dialogue and sense of place,The Travelers introduces readers to a cast of characters destined to make a lasting impression.

Empress of Forever

Max Gladstone

Release date: 18th June
Goodreads
Rep: wlw mc

A feminist Guardians of the Galaxy—a smart, swashbuckling, wildly imaginative adventure of a rag-tag team of brilliant misfits, dangerous renegades, and enhanced outlaws in a war-torn future.

A wildly successful innovator to rival Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, Vivian Liao is prone to radical thinking, quick decision-making, and reckless action. On the eve of her greatest achievement, she’s trying to outrun those who are trying to steal her success.

In the chilly darkness of a Boston server farm, Viv sets her ultimate plan into motion. A terrifying instant later, Vivian Liao is catapulted through space and time to a far future where she confronts a destiny stranger and more deadly than she could ever imagine. 

The end of time is ruled by an ancient, powerful Empress who blesses or blasts entire planets with a single thought. Rebellion is literally impossible to consider–until Vivian arrives. Trapped between the Pride, a ravening horde of sentient machines, and a fanatical sect of warrior monks who call themselves the Mirrorfaith, Viv must rally a strange group of allies to confront the Empress and find a way back to the world and life she left behind.

A magnificent work of vivid imagination and universe-spanning action, Empress of Forever is a feminist Guardians of the Galaxy crossed with Star Wars and spiced with the sensibility and spirit of Iain M. Banks and William Gibson.

Hexarchate Stories

Yoon Ha Lee

Release date: 25th June
Goodreads
Rep: lesbian mc, bi mc, nonbinary mcs (trans author)

The essential short story collection set in the universe of Ninefox Gambit.

An ex-Kel art thief has to save the world from a galaxy-shattering prototype weapon…

A general outnumbered eight-to-one must outsmart his opponent…

A renegade returns from seclusion to bury an old comrade…

From the incredible imagination of Hugo- and Arthur C. Clarke-nominated author Yoon Ha Lee comes a collection of stories set in the world of the best-selling Ninefox Gambit. Showcasing Lee’s extraordinary imagination, this collection takes you to the very beginnings of the hexarchate’s history and reveals new never-before-seen stories. 

TW: gore, body horror, mentions of rape and suicide

Stage Presents

Aidan Wayne

Release date: 25th June
Goodreads
Rep: wlw relationship, trans mc

It’s dislike at first sight—or first email—for two girls who are accepted into the Disney College Program and get assigned as roommates.

Dana has worked hard, and she sees this opportunity with a Fortune 500 company as her first step toward becoming a successful businesswoman. In contrast, Ashlee is a Georgia peach who’s led a sheltered life that has left her shallow, vapid, and ignorant—or so Dana thinks.

Ashlee’s dream of becoming a princess is about to come true! She’s been preparing all her life, dancing since she was three, and she plans to use this chance to boost her performing career. On the other hand, Dana is cynical, even if she is kind of pretty…. But what’s up with the whole trans thing?

Can enemies become friends and then more as each girl gradually sees what’s beneath the surface?

Here is What You Do

Chris Dennis

Release date: 25th June
Goodreads
Rep: gay mcs

A debut short story collection that explores the vulnerability, grit, and complex nature of our humanity from a new, vital queer voice.

A yacht races to outrun a tsunami. A young man jailed on a drug charge forms a relationship with his cellmate that is by turns tender and brutal. A family buys a rural slaughterhouse, and tensions with their religious neighbors quickly escalate. A teen raised by his eccentric gay father, a Turkish immigrant, finds his life fractured by violence. A fictionalized Coretta Scott King, surveilled and harassed by the FBI, considers the costs of her life with her husband.

Here Is What You Do is a bravura, far-ranging collection, its stories linked by sorrow and latent hope, each one drilling toward its characters’ darkest emotional centers. In muscularly robust prose, with an unfailing eye for human drives and frailties, Chris Dennis captures the raw need, desire, cruelty, and promise that animate our lives.

Technically You Started It

Lana Wood Johnson

Release date: 25th June
Goodreads
Rep: bi li

When a guy named Martin Nathaniel Munroe II texts you, it should be obvious who you’re talking to. Except there’s two of them (it’s a long story), and Haley thinks she’s talking to the one she doesn’t hate.

A question about a class project rapidly evolves into an all-consuming conversation. Haley finds that Martin is actually willing to listen to her weird facts and unusual obsessions, and Martin feels like Haley is the first person to really see who he is. Haley and Martin might be too awkward to hang out in real life, but over text, they’re becoming addicted to each other.

There’s just one problem: Haley doesn’t know who Martin is. And Martin doesn’t know that Haley doesn’t know. But they better figure it out fast before their meet-cute becomes an epic meet-disaster . . .

The Song of the Sea

Jenn Alexander

Release date: 25th June
Goodreads
Rep: wlw relationship

Lisa Whelan wasn’t planning on falling in love.

The ocean has always been a place of comfort for Lisa Whelan, so after her newborn son passes away, she returns to her family home to seek solace in the song of the sea. She’s not expecting to meet anyone, and is caught off guard by the attraction she feels for Rachel, the co-owner of a local restaurant. That initial spark is dampened, however, when Lisa learns that Rachel has a young son.

Rachel Murray has worked to build a good life, but raising Declan hasn’t been without its challenges. Each day when Rachel picks him up from school, she says a silent prayer that he will be waiting for her in his classroom, and not in the principal’s office because of his disruptive behavior.

Despite her grief, Lisa finds herself drawn to both Rachel and Declan. She believes she can keep her emotions at bay—keep from drowning in grief and keep from falling in love—but she finds both to be a tidal wave washing over her and sweeping her off her feet.

For Lisa, tears may be the silent language of her grief, but the love she feels for Rachel and Declan has the power to become the resounding song of hope—if she allows herself to hear it.

I’m really happy with how many genres this list covers! I’m sure everyone will find something for themselves here! Happy reading, guys!