Books to read with Pride: as recommended by LGBTQ+ bookshops

Book Lovers Bookshop recommends...

The Build-A-Boyfriend Project by Mason Deaver

A Queer retelling of 'How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days', Mason Deaver's debut adult rom-com is one of my favourite reads of the last year.

This book has incredible trans and queer rep, flawed-yet-lovable main characters, an angsty and spicy romance, and so much heart! Mason is one of my favourite writers and I can't wait to see what they write next!

Category Is Books recommends...

Fierce Salvage: A Queer Words Anthology (edited by Ryan Vance and Michael Lee Richardson)

We have a soft spot for this collection, as it is full of queer writers in Scotland, many of which we have been lucky enough to meet over the years of running the bookshop!

A brilliant combination of short stories, prose and poetry, giving a real feeling of what it is like being queer in Scotland today.

Gay on Wye recommends...

Queer as Folklore by Sacha Coward

A Pride Month favourite at Gay on Wye, Queer as Folklore reveals the hidden queer histories woven through myths and legends, offering readers a magical and deeply affirming journey through folklore.

Scorched Grace by Margot Douaihy

Join Sister Holiday, a chain-smoking, tattooed, gold-toothed lesbian nun as she fights for answers over a deepening mystery.

To solve this high-stakes mystery, Sister Holiday will have to reckon with the sins of her chequered past. Her investigation leads down a twisty path of suspicion and secrets in the sticky, oppressive New Orleans heat, turning her against colleagues, students, and even fellow Sisters along the way.

Gay's The Word recommends...

How Queer Bookshops Changed the World by A.J. West

Travelling from Shakespeare and Company in Paris to Gay's the Word in London to the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop in New York, A.J. West has written the first history of these remarkable spaces.

We loved this book – and not because we are featured in it! An endlessly fascinating and hugely entertaining history! Long live the queer bookshop!

Nova Scotia House by Charlie Porter

Nova Scotia House is about Johnny who is 19 and Jerry, 45. It is about youth and age... it's about HIV and AIDS. It is about discovery and love and experience and the passing on of wisdom. It is about interiority and intimacy; interior selves nurtured into the light of self-understanding through the verve of intergenerational queer connection. It is about belonging and loss, housing and urban space, sex and gardening, desire and inequality. Nova Scotia House is an ode to the majesty of the marginalised. We hope you cherish reading it. We certainly did. 

Housmans recommends...

Thank You For Calling the Lesbian Line by Elizabeth Lovatt

This is a delightfully intelligent, funny, and moving exploration of lesbian lives in the 1990s, from awkward first dates to heart wrenching coming out stories, all painting a picture of a vibrant and loving community.

The Log Books by Adam Zmith and Tash Walker

The Log Books dives into the archives of the Gay and Lesbian Switchboard to explore queer lives from the 1970s through to the 2000s. It's a fantastic and exciting use of archival material that's equal parts joyful and profound.

Lighthouse recommends...

Namesake: Reflections on a Warrior Woman by N.S. Nuseibeh

Namesake is clear eyed and curious, guiding readers through the streets and checkpoints of occupied Palestine, to breakfast tables heaped with food and history, into family dynamics and institutions of privilege, through an Arab feminism built on the legacies of Muslim women – warriors and worriers. It is a gift; tender and fierce in equal measure, devastating in the humanity it holds at a time when the authors people face genocide. Nuseibeh's writing wears her queerness lightly, woven into an outsider's perspective on bodies and being, illness and conversion and so much more.

Namesake: Reflections on a Warrior Woman was the winner of the 2025 Jhalak Prose Prize. 

A Place of Our Own: Six Spaces That Shaped Queer Women's Culture by June Thomas

June Thomas' charm leaps off the page – warm and earnest and inquisitive, she offers us a cultural history of queer women's lives that beautifully illustrates the ways in women build and shape the spaces they need and are built and shaped by them in return. From feminist sex shops to bookshops, lesbian communes to holiday escapes, the 70s/80s/90s seeds of queer community and feminist business have so much to teach us and find comfort in.

Hermaphrodite Logic: A History of Intersex Liberation by Juliana Gleeson

Gleeson's Hermaphrodite Logic: A History of Intersex Liberation is bold and rigorous and frankly eye opening. As manufactured social panic about trans lives bleeds into courtrooms and parliamentary halls, it is more important that ever to understand the landscape of queer liberation past and present, with intersex voices at their heart. Philosophical and forthright, a blend of testimony and polemic, it's a book to galvanise and radicalise.

The Portal Bookshop recommends...

I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl's Notes From The End Of The World by Kai Cheng Thom

This collection of essays was an instant 5-star read for me. Gorgeously written, unflinching about the struggles facing the LGBT+ community as a whole and trans people in particular, but hopeful and inspiring. Left me feeling fired up and full of determined optimism. Read this and help us make the world better!

The Common Press recommends...

Females by Andrea Long Chu

Females is a book that, when I first read it in 2019, I knew was designed to provoke. Deliberately inverting the conventions of existing gender theory, Andrea Long Chu starts with a confrontation – 'Everyone is female, and everyone hates it' – and lets the rest of her tract (manifesto feels too strong a word) follow from there.

Perhaps tellingly, the SCUM Manifesto's very own Valerie Solans is used as a leading light to dictate the direction of Long Chu's enquiries. Critically hounded since its publication with doubts as to its sincerity or coherence, this republication of Females ends with an afterword from the now-Pulitzer Prize-winning Long Chu, reflecting upon her original intentions in writing the book, and positioning it within today's ever more hostile landscape of gender and cultural politics. It's this afterword that makes me most excited to think about the book with readers at Common Press - whatever one makes of Females itself, it is a book that forces you to re-examine the security of your own convictions, and to think a little harder about what constitutes your own identity.

Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes by Henry Van Dyke

Oliver is precocious, black and gay. He reads Baudelaire, plays with his pet peacock, eats smoked oysters and fends off the maid Della Mae whenever she gets the 'Nasties'. He lives in rural Michigan with two elderly ladies: the white, wealthy Etta and her devoted housekeeper, Harry, his aunt. When a psychic warlock named Maurice LeFleur comes to stay, however, promising to contact the ghost of Etta's dead son, their eccentric household starts to fall apart.

First published in 1965, at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, this sparklingly witty debut novel is a radically hopeful vision of racial integration and sexual acceptance that was years ahead of its time.

The Common Press Dalston recommends...

A Queer Scrapbook: Britain and Ireland since 1945 (edited by Justin Bengry, Matt Cook, Rebecca Jennings and E-J Scott)

What could be more queer than a scrapbook? Torn, shuffled and pasted, this book is an assemblage of material - photos, interviews, testimonies and capsule histories – that goes some way to representing what the last half century of queer living has been like in post-War Britain.

An Army of Lovers Cannot Fail by Helene Giannecchini

The incompletion of the archive is intrinsic to the fragmented nature of queer histories, and the mixed emotions provoked by this incompletion – joy, grief, yearning – are the subject of Helene Chiannecchini's book.

A lesbian photographer in New York, a transsexuals' getaway in 50s Americana and the diary of a French man living with HIV: these are just three of the archival stories which become in this book a way of thinking through the enduring political force of queer friendship and affinity.

Trans Central Station by Rachel Pollack

When Rachel Pollack – science fiction author, trans activist and world-renowned expert in the tarot – passed away in 2023, the world lost one of its leading trans luminaries.

Republished with an introduction by former friend Sarah Schulman, Trans Central Station is Pollack's retrospective reflection upon an always-changing life of constant transition.

The Old Queeriosity Shop recommends...

Magical Boy by The Kao

A cute series about a trans guy dealing with responsibility he didn’t ask for whilst navigating his identity and family life. There are some difficult topics that are handled sensitively and with care, making this a light read. The main character, Max, and his friends are a joy to read.

Magica Riot by Kara Buchanan

After a gig, Claire is saved from a creature by the drummer of her favourite Punk band 'Magica Riot'. It turns out the band members are all magical girls! She's soon whisked into a secret world of magic, music and dangerous enemies. It's a wonderful indie read that’s an homage to the Magical Girl Genre, punk, and the power of Love and Friendship.

Delilah Green Doesn't Care by Ashley Herring Blake

Our book club absolutely devoured this and often asks if we can do more Ashley Herring Blake books. This book kicks off the Bright Falls series, and follows Delilah as she returns to her hometown for her Step-sister's wedding – eventually running into her step-sister's best friend Claire, who ends up catching her eye.

Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant

A thrilling creature feature with real Marine Science and killer mermaids! This one was really hard to put down, so I ended up finishing it in one sitting and have no regrets. We recommend this one to customers quite often, especially for those just getting into horror or wanting something a little bit different.

Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea by Rebecca Thorne

Book 1 in a fantastic sapphic cosy fantasy series. Reyna and Kianthe leave their old lives behind to start a new life together, opening a bookshop/café combo – but things don't quite go as planned. Chock full of found family and puns. And Dragons.

Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle

This is hard book to describe, but at its core it's a love letter to the community. Chuck manages to combine horror, social commentary, and genuine care in a way that just works. His works are well worth checking out!

One Last Song by Nathan Evans

Older protagonists often get overlooked in queer fiction – so One Last Song is a refreshing change of pace. The deuteragonists, Joan and Jim, live in a care home and are both in their 80s! It's a story about finding love in later life, but also a look back on how far things have come since the start of the fight for queer liberation.