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Readers' Cafe

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Antiquity / Hanna Johansson

Elegant, slippery, and provocative, Antiquity is a queer Lolita story by prize-winning Swedish author Hanna Johansson - a story of desire, power, obsession, observation, and taboo. Antiquity follows its unnamed narrator, a lonely woman in her thirties who becomes enamored of a chic older artist, Helena, after interviewing her for a magazine. Helena invites the narrator to join her in the Greek city of Ermoupoli where she summers with her teenage daughter Olga. At first an object of jealousy, Olga morphs into an object of desire as the pull of Helena is transposed onto her daughter and the prospect of becoming someone's first, if perverse, lover..

With echoes of Death in Venice, Call Me by Your Name, The Lover, and Lolita, but wholly original and contemporary, Antiquity probes the depths of memory, power, and the narratives that arrange our experience of the world.

Bad Habit / Alana S. Portero

Combining the raw realism and vulnerability of Shuggie Bain and Detransition, Baby with the poignant sensibility of Pedro Almod?var, a staggering coming-of-age novel deeply rooted in the struggles of a trans woman growing up in Madrid.Anchored by the voice of its sweet and defiant narrator, Bad Habit casts a trans woman's trying youth as a heartfelt odyssey. Raised in an animated yet impoverished blue-collar neighborhood, Alana S. Portero's protagonist struggles to find her place.

As the city around her changes-the heroin epidemic that ravages Madrid through the '80s and '90s, rallying calls of worker solidarity and the pulsing beat of the city's night scene- she becomes increasingly detached from the world and, most crucially, herself.

Blessings / Chukwuebuka Ibeh

Moonlight meets Purple Hibiscus in this gay coming-of-age novel from an astonishing young talent, set in post-military Nigeria and culminating in the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act of 2014.. Obiefuna has always been the black sheep of his family - sensitive where his father, Anozie, is pragmatic, a dancer where his brother, Ekene, is a natural athlete. But when an intimate connection blossoms between Obiefuna and a boy from a nearby village, happiness is fleeting once his father catches them together and banishes him to boarding school.. Obiefuna finds and hides who he truly is as he navigates his new school's strict hierarchy and unpredictable violence.

Broughtupsy / Christina Cooke

At once cinematic yet intimate, Broughtupsy is an enthralling debut novel about a young Jamaican woman grappling with grief as she discovers her family, her home, is always just out of reach. Tired of not having a place to land, twenty-year-old Akua flies from Canada to her native Jamaica to reconnect with her estranged sister. Their younger brother Bryson has recently passed from sickle cell anemia - the same disease that took their mother ten years prior - and Akua carries his remains in a small wooden box with the hopes of reassembling her family..

Over the span of two fateful weeks, Akua and Tamika visit significant places from their childhood - the home they grew up in, their mother's grave, a favorite beach - where Akua slowly spreads Bryson's ashes.

Cinema Love / Jiaming Tang

A staggering, tender epic about gay men in rural China and the women who marry them. For over thirty years, Old Second and Bao Mei have cobbled together a meager existence in New York City's Chinatown. But unlike other couples, these two share an unusual past. In rural Fuzhou, before they emigrated, they frequented the Workers' Cinema: a theater where gay men cruised for love. While classic war films played, Old Second and his countrymen found intimacy in the screening rooms. In the box office, Bao Mei sold movie tickets to closeted men, guarding their secrets and finding her own happiness with the projectionist.

City of Laughter / Temim Fruchter

A rich and riveting debut spanning four generations of Eastern European Jewish women bound by blood, half-hidden secrets, and the fantastical visitation of a shapeshifting stranger over the course of 100 yearsAn ambitious, delirious novel that tangles with queerness, spirituality, and generational silence, City of Laughter announces Temim Fruchter as a fresh and assured new literary voice.

The tale of a young queer woman stuck in a thicket of generational secrets, the novel follows her back to her family's origins, where ancestral clues begin to reveal a lineage both haunted and shaped by desire.

Ropshitz, Poland, was once known as the City of Laughter. As this story opens, an 18th century badchan, a holy jester whose job is to make wedding guests laugh, receives a visitation from a mysterious stranger - bringing the laughter the people of Ropshitz desperately need, and triggering a sequence of events that will reverberate across the coming century.

A Deadly Walk in Devon / Nicholas George

For fans of M.C. Beaton, Martha Grimes, and Alexander McCall Smith, the first in a charming new mystery series set in the English countryside, as a retired San Diego police detective embarks upon group walking tours in England's most scenic counties ... After a long career as a detective in San Diego, Rick "Chase" Chasen has traded in his badge for a change of scenery in the coastal comforts of Devon, England, until a local murder takes him on a deadly detour . . .

Still grieving the death of his long-time partner, Chase reunites with his dear friend and fellow Anglophile Billie Mondreau for a seacoast holiday of historic sightseeing. Assigned a pair of guides from the tour company Wanderers, Chase and Billie join seven other like-minded Americans looking forward to an English getaway.

Don't Want You Like a Best Friend / Emma R. Alban

A swoon-worthy debut queer Victorian romance in which two debutantes distract themselves from having to seek husbands by setting up their widowed parents, and instead find their perfect match in each other - the lesbian Bridgerton/Parent Trap you never knew you needed!

Gwen has a brilliant beyond brilliant idea.It's 1857, and anxious debutante Beth has just one season to snag a wealthy husband, or she and her mother will be out on the street. But playing the blushing ingenue makes Beth's skin crawl and she'd rather be anywhere but here. Gwen, on the other hand, is on her fourth season and counting, with absolutely no intention of finding a husband, possibly ever. She figures she has plenty of security as the only daughter of a rakish earl, from whom she's gotten all her flair, fun, and less-than-proper party games.

Ellipses / Vanessa Lawrence

Set in the glossy world of New York City media, this sharp and witty debut novel follows a young woman caught in a toxic mentorship with an older, powerful executive as she grapples with career, belonging, and the complexity of modern relationships in the digital age. When cosmetics mogul Billie rolls down her town car window and offers Lily a ride home from a glitzy Manhattan gala, Lily figures this could be a useful professional connection. She's heard of Billie's storied rise as a business titan, the product of white New England privilege and one of the few queer women in a corner suite. Billie could be just the jolt Lily needs to manifest her next step. A magazine writer, Lily interviews influencers, actresses, and fashion designers for her publication's stylish pages, all while navigating office microaggressions.

The Emperor and the Endless Palace / Justinian Huang

"What if I told you that the feeling we call love is actually the feeling of metaphysical recognition, when your soul remembers someone from a previous life?". In the year 4 BCE, an ambitious courtier is called upon to seduce the young emperor - but quickly discovers they are both ruled by blood, sex and intrigue.. In 1740, a lonely innkeeper agrees to help a mysterious visitor procure a rare medicine, only to unleash an otherworldly terror instead.. And in present-day Los Angeles, a college student meets a beautiful stranger and cannot shake the feeling they've met before..

Across these seemingly unrelated timelines woven together only by the twists and turns of fate, two men are reborn, lifetime after lifetime. Within the treacherous walls of an ancient palace and the boundless forests of the Asian wilderness to the heart-pounding cement floors of underground rave scenes, our lovers are inexplicably drawn to each other, constantly tested by the worlds around them.

Go Lightly / Brydie Lee-Kennedy

For readers of Dolly Alderton and Candice Carty-Williams, a spiky bisexual love story that introduces the unforgettable Ada - a free-spirited Holly Golightly for the age of DMs who follows the whimsies of her heart wherever they lead.Ada is a seeker, a perpetually moving ball of excess. A twenty-six-year-old Australian living in London, she ekes out a living as a cabaret performer and part-time temp. Yet Ada can't imagine wanting to be any other age or any other place. Every night is an opportunity to be thrilled and every morning a chance to recount her escapades to friends.

Green Dot / Madeleine Gray

At 24, Hera is a violently unsatisfied disaster. To her, the future is nothing but an exhausting thought exercise, one depressing hypothetical after another. She's a mean little thing, adrift in her own smug malaise, until her new job as an "online community moderator" of a news outlet's online comment section-a job even more mind-numbing than it sounds-introduces her to Arthur, a middle-aged journalist. Though she's preferred women to men for years now, she relishes becoming a clich? as their mutual infatuation quickly festers into affair. She is coming apart with want and loving every second of it! Well, except for the tiny hiccup of Arthur's wife - and that said wife has no idea Hera exists..

With her daringly specific and intimate voice, Gray has created an irresistible and messy love story about the terrible allure of wanting something that promises nothing; about the joys and indignities of coming into adulthood against the pitfalls of the 21st century; and the winding, torturous, and often very funny journey we take in deciding who we are and who we want to be.

Greta & Valdin / Rebecca K Reilly

For fans of Schitt's Creek and Sally Rooney's Normal People, an irresistible and bighearted international bestseller that follows a brother and sister as they navigate queerness, multiracial identity, and the dramas big and small of their entangled, unconventional family, all while flailing their way to love. .

It's been a year since his ex-boyfriend dumped him and moved from Auckland to Buenos Aires, and Valdin is doing fine. He has a good flat with his sister Greta, a good career where his colleagues only occasionally remind him that he is the sole Maaori person in the office, and a good friend who he only sleeps with when he's sad. But when work sends him to Argentina and he's thrown back in his former lover's orbit, Valdin is forced to confront the feelings he's been trying to ignore - and the future he wants.

How We Named the Stars / Andres N. Ordorica

When Daniel de La Luna arrives as a scholarship student at an elite East Coast university, he bears the weight of his family's hopes and dreams, and the burden of sharing his late uncle's name. Daniel flounders at first -- but then Sam, his roommate, changes everything. As their relationship evolves from brotherly banter to something more intimate, Daniel soon finds himself in love with a man who helps him see himself in a new light. But just as their relationship takes flight, Daniel is pulled away, first by Sam's hesitation and then by a brutal turn of events that changes Daniel's life forever.

Like Happiness / Ursula Villarreal-Moura

A searing debut about the complexities of gender, power, and fame, told through the story of a young woman's destructive relationship with a legendary writer.. It's 2015, and Tatum Vega feels that her life is finally falling into place. Living in sunny Chile with her partner, Vera, she spends her days surrounded by art at the museum where she works. More than anything else, she loves this new life for helping her forget the decade she spent in New York City orbiting the brilliant and famous author M. Dom?nguez..

When a reporter calls from the US asking for an interview, the careful separation Tatum has constructed between her past and present begins to crumble. Dom?nguez has been accused of assault, and the reporter is looking for corroboration.. As Tatum is forced to reexamine the all-consuming but undefinable relationship that dominated so much of her early adulthood, long-buried questions surface.

Love and Hot Chicken / Mary Liza Hartong

The debut of a dynamite new voice from the South, Love and Hot Chicken is a spicy and hilarious Tennessee story about family, friendship, fried chicken, and two girls in love.The Chickie Shak is something of a historical landmark. Red clapboard walls, thriving wasp population, yard-toilets resplendent with sunflowers. My best friend Lee Ray and I used to come after our softball games and snag a picnic table while our mammas ordered the home team special. Truth is, most people around here order the same thing until the day somebody throws their ashes off a roller coaster at Dollywood. The line snakes around the building as far as you can see, the grimiest bunch of Jessies, Pearls, and Scooters you ever did behold, hobnobbing in the parking lot from noon until night.

Love the World or Get Killed Trying / Alvina Chamberland

The English language debut from novelist Alvina ChamberlandThrough playful poetic prose, sharp social commentary and self-deprecating gallows humor LOVE THE WORLD OR GET KILLED TRYING dives into the mind of Alvina, a trans woman on the eve of turning 30.

The reader is invited to follow her journey through the breathtaking wilderness of Iceland and busy city boulevards of Berlin and Paris as she probes questions of eternity, sexuality, longing, death, love, and how hard it is to remain soft when you're a ceaseless target of straight men's secret lust and open disgust. This novel tackles universal issues through a trans woman's specific lens - insisting on these experiences speaking to far more than just issues of sexuality and gender.

Reaching its climax through an urgent wildfire scream-of-consciousness, cry-of-love-manifesto, LOVE THE WORLD OR GET KILLED TRYING is a raw and vulnerable work of magical brutalist autofiction; abstract in the sense of poetically digging beneath the surface, and experimental in the sense of trying to find out new things and express them in new ways, while concretely asserting that if trans women one day collectively outed every man who seeks them out, a full-blown revolution would ensue by nightfall.

Redsight / Meredith Mooring

An imaginative new space opera for fans of Gideon the Ninth filled with sapphic romance, space pirates, a blind witch and powerful priestesses. Korinna has simple priorities: stay on the Navitas, stay out of trouble, and stay alive. She may be a Redseer, a blind priestess with the power to manipulate space-time, but she is the weakest in her Order. Useless and outcast. Or so she has been raised to believe. As she takes her place as a navigator on an Imperium ship, Korinna's full destiny is revealed to her: blood brimming with magic, she is meant to become a weapon of the Imperium, and pawn for the Order that raised her. But when the ship is attacked by the notorious pirate Aster Haran, Korinna's world is ripped apart. Aster has a vendetta against the Imperium, and an all-consuming, dark power that drives her to destroy everything in her path.

Road to Ruin / Hana Lee

An electrifying, gritty fantasy from debut author Hana Lee that takes a royal messenger on a high-speed chase across a climate-ravaged wasteland, featuring motorcycles, monsters, and magic.. Jin-Lu has the most dangerous job in the wasteland. She's a magebike courier, one of the few who venture outside the domed cities on motorcycles powered by magic. Every day, she braves the wasteland's dangers - deadly storms, roving marauders, and territorial beasts - to deliver her wares. Her most valuable cargo? A prince's love letters addressed to Yi-Nereen, a princess desperate to escape the clutches of her abusive family and soon-to-be husband. Jin, desperately in love with both her and the prince, can't refuse Yi-Nereen's plea for help. The two of them flee across the wastes, pursued by Yi-Nereen's furious father, her scheming betrothed, and a bounty hunter with mysterious powers.

The Sins on Their Bones / Laura R. Samotin

Set in a Jewish folklore-inspired reimagining of 19th century Eastern Europe, this queer dark fantasy debut pits two estranged husbands and a daring spymaster on opposite sides of a civil war. Perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo, C.S. Pacat, and Katherine Arden.. Dimitri Alexeyev used to be the Tzar of Novo-Svitsevo. Now, he is merely a broken man, languishing in exile after losing a devastating civil war instigated by his estranged husband, Alexey Balakin.

In hiding with what remains of his court, Dimitri and his spymaster, Vasily Sokolov, engineer a dangerous ruse. Vasily will sneak into Alexey's court under a false identity to gather information, paving the way for the usurper's downfall, while Dimitri finds a way to kill him for good.. But stopping Alexey is not so easy as plotting to kill an ordinary man.

A Sweet Sting of Salt / Rose Sutherland

Once a young woman uncovers a dark secret about her neighbor and his mysterious new wife, she'll have to fight to keep herself - and the woman she loves - safe in this stunning queer reimagining of the classic folktale "The Selkie Wife.". When a sharp cry wakes Jean in the middle of the night during a terrible tempest, she's convinced it must have been a dream. But when the cry comes again, Jean ventures outside and is shocked by what she discovers - a young woman in labor, drenched to the bone in the bitter cold and able to speak barely a word of English..

Although Jean is the only midwife for miles around, she's at a loss for who this woman is or where she's from; Jean can only assume that she must be the new wife of the neighbor up the road, Tobias.

These Letters End in Tears / Musih Tedji Xaviere

Set in a country where being gay is punishable by law, These Letters End in Tears is the heart-wrenching forbidden love story of a Christian girl with a rebellious heart and a Muslim girl leading a double life. Bessem notices Fatima for the first time on the soccer field - muscular and focused, she's the only woman playing and seems completely at ease. When Fatima chases a rogue ball in her direction, Bessem freezes, mesmerized by the athlete's charm and beauty. One playful wink from Fatima, and Bessem knows her life will never be the same..

In Cameroon, a country where same-sex relationships are punishable by law, the odds are stacked against Bessem and Fatima from the start. And when Fatima's older brother, a staunch Muslim, finds out about their affair, he intervenes by physically assaulting them, an incident that precedes a police raid at the only gay bar in town.

The Z Word / Lindsay King-Miller

Chaotic bisexual Wendy is trying to find her place in the queer community of San Lazaro, Arizona, after a bad breakup - which is particularly difficult because her ex is hooking up with some of her friends. And when the people around them start turning into violent, terrifying mindless husks, well, that makes things harder. Especially since the infection seems to be spreading. Now, Wendy and her friends and frenemies - drag queen Logan, silver fox Beau, sword lesbian Aurelia and her wife Sam, mysterious pizza delivery stoner Sunshine, and, oh yeah, Wendy's ex-girlfriend Leah - have to team up to stay alive, save Pride, and track the zombie outbreak to its shocking source.


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Poudre River Public Library District (970) 221-6740
Including the collection of Front Range Community College, Larimer Campus


Library logo

Facebook Instagram LinkedIn You Tube

Poudre River Public Library District
(970) 221-6740

Including the collection of
Front Range Community College, Larimer Campus