The 50 Best LGBTQ+ Books to Read During Pride Month and Beyond

The less a reader knows going into this Dickensian tale of love and chicanery the better. Put simply, it concerns a plot to scam a beautiful young heiress, in which the urchin Sue is planted in her house to pose as a maid. Eventually adapted by Park Chan-wook into the Korean-language movie The Handmaiden, Fingersmith is the kind of book you cancel plans to finish. And it even precededGone Girl with its game-changing, mid-novel plot twist.

If you've ever read his Men's Health sex column, Sexplain It, then you know Zachary Zane is incomparably open and honest (and hilarious!) when it comes to writing about sex and sexuality. His new book, releasing May 9, 2023, is a series of essays about his experience as a bisexual man, and the pleasure that comes with living a shame-free life.

Johnson's self-described "memoir-manifesto" is an exploration of race, sexuality, gender, toxic masculinity, and the importance of finding joy as a queer Black person. It is currently being adapted for television by Gabrielle Union.

This romantic comedy became something of an online phenomenon when it was first released two years ago, and has continued to gain momentum through word-of-mouth recommendations. It's not hard to understand why: back when we were still deep in the last administration, the story of a prince and a president's son falling in love and changing the institutions in which they both grew up was the kind of escapist fantasy many romance readers craved.

Michael Arcenaux's deeply funny and frank debut essay collection explores "Big Issues" like race and sexuality with a lightness of touch that somehow manages to both take them as seriously as they deserve while also poking fun at how seriously we tend to take them.

From his time at The Toast to his tenure as Slate's Dear Prudence agony aunt, not to mention a frequently hilarious newsletter, Daniel Lavery's writing has been shot through with keen, slightly absurdist observations about pop culture and our relationship to it. In Something That May Shock and Discredit You, Lavery writes about his own experiences of transition through the lens of media mainstays such as Columbo, William Shatner, and HGTV's House Hunters.

Brandon Taylor won last year's Man Booker Prize with his debut novel Real Life, making his forthcoming short fiction collection Filthy Animals one of the most anticipated reads of 2021.

As an advice columnist, John Paul Brammer is known for guiding queer letter-writers through tricky situations with wit, insight and grace. He turns those qualities inwards in this memoir, in which he relives key chapters from his life and tries to figure out what he's learned from it all so far.

Bisexual men exist. This statement should be obvious, but as many m-spec (multi-gender attracted spectrum) guys know all too well, questions like "Are you sure you're not gay?" and "Why can't you just pick a side?" still abound in our society. To counteract that harmful messaging and empower m-spec men, Vaneet Mehta created the viral #BisexualMenExist campaign—then went on to write this book. Bisexual Men Exist is a handbook designed to validate and uplift m-spec men as they navigate coming out, dating, relationships, health, and more.

The titular character of this funny, provocative, genre-defying novel is a shapeshifter who regularly switches up their gender and appearances as they make their way through the queer punk scene of the early '90s, sleeping with whomever they choose and breaking all kinds of hearts along the way.

Any number of books from James Baldwin's oeuvre would have been apt for inclusion on this list, but the novella Giovanni's Room is an accessible point of entry for anybody unfamiliar with his work.

Encompassing perspectives from trans and femme artists and activists, Our Work Is Everywhere is an illustrated primer on the important work of queer people of color in moving the needle on LGBTQ+ equality. It falls somewhere between a historical text, an activism guide, and a visually stunning coffee table book.

The narrative of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous takes the form of a letter written by the protagonist to his Vietnamese mother, and flits from the present day, to her family's experiences during the Vietnam War, back to the narrator's childhood and eventual sexual awakening in the United States. Vuong is a poet, and that comes across in the lyrical prose, which finds beauty and grace in the ugliest and most desperate of scenarios.

Perhaps better known as Carol in the aftermath of its cinematic adaptation, The Price of Salt was considered exceptionally daring for its time in its depiction of a relationship between two women. While Patricia Highsmith's most famous work tends to involve a certain Mr. Ripley, whose crimes formed the basis of another iconically homoerotic movie, the romantic elements of The Price of Salt are far less obfuscated.

When faded novelist Arthur Less receives an invitation to his ex-boyfriend's wedding, he searches desperately for any excuse not to attend, and decides to embark on a last-minute, whistlestop world tour of every literary festival and residency he has previously avoided. This gorgeously witty (and Pulitzer-winning) comic novel is divided into sections chronicling Less' misadventures through France, Italy, Germany, India, Japan, and beyond.

This anthology of erotic fiction encompasses authors and characters of wide-ranging sexualities and gender identities, ensuring there will be something in its pages to titillate just about anyone, from Carmen Maria Machado's Gothic romance "The Lost Performance of the High Priestess of the Temple of Horror" to Alexander Chee's wild ride "Best Friendster Date Ever," to Zeyn Joukhadar's surprisingly moving "The Voyeurs."

Last Call captures a time in New York City—the late '80s and early '90s—that was extremely unsafe for gay men. This was not only due to the ongoing AIDS crisis, but also because a serial killer was preying on the patrons of gay bars; something that went underreported by the media, and, as author Elon Green argues, neglected by law enforcement.

"It's important for people to see how anti-queer bigotry manifested itself in this case," Green told the Guardian earlier this year. "They need to understand the stakes, not just for the victims but for the men who simply went to these bars during that period. There are systemic issues here."

Alison Bechdel is perhaps best known for coining the term "Bechdel test," a way of assessing the representation of women in fiction and film, but she also broke ground with her graphic memoir Fun Home, which digs deep into her childhood, her relationship with her closeted father, and her eventual coming out. Later, when it became a broadway musical, a pivotal moment led to another popular shorthand: the "Ring of Keys" moment, where a young, nascently queer person sees something they relate to but don't necessarily quite understand, in a queer adult.