This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
It’s Tuesday, and you know what that means: new books! Here’s a round-up of the week’s best new releases, or maybe you’d prefer some under-the-radar picks?
Today we’re going a bit eerie with the new releases and recommendations. An odd choice in the summer, perhaps, but the summer slasher is a staple of film — and also, with the current heatwave, we’ve got the horrors of global climate change hanging over us anyway. Something a bit… chilling might be in order. Stay cool, stay hydrated, and definitely read these books in a cold, faintly creepy basement if that’s an option for you.
Here are seven of the most exciting new LGBTQ books out this week, including a whole lot of new fantasy novels, a gay take on Narnia, a sapphic historical fantasy featuring a very queer Shakespeare, bisexual YA horror, and an exploration of being a queer woman in Guyana. Let’s get into it!
p.s. Did you know that Book Riot has a TikTok? we’ve started posting there recently, like this one recorded at the Big Gay Dog Walk and this one about reading Casey McQuiston’s upcoming bi4bi romance The Pairing, highly recommended.
This spring, Swedish American author Alvina Chamberland released her English-language debut, Love the World Or Get Killed Trying, a brilliant, fiery work of autofiction about a transgender woman on the cusp of 30 traveling alone through Iceland, Paris, and Berlin. The publisher’s marketing copy describes the book as “an urgent wildfire scream-of-consciousness, cry-of-love manifesto,” which certainly got my attention. After reading and sitting with the novel for a while, I kept returning to this turn of phrase, “scream of consciousness.” It’s a visceral, irreverent term that perfectly encapsulates Chamberland’s narrative voice. But what is a scream-of-consciousness book? Where did the phrase come from? Are there others like it? I spoke with Alvina Chamberland about Love the World Or Get Killed Trying, scream-of-consciousness prose, and other works to which it might apply.
For something on the gentler side, check out these essential board books with photography.
