The Books and Boys Literary Archive
January ‘23
Ocean’s Echo
- Everina Maxwell
When Tennal - a rich socialite, inveterate flirt, and walking disaster - is caught using his telepathic powers for illegal activities, the military decides to bind his mind to someone whose coercive powers are strong enough to control him.
December ‘22
How to Write and Autobiographical Novel
- Alexander Chee
How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is the author's manifesto on the entangling of life, literature, and politics and how the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction have changed him. In these essays, he grows from student to teacher, reader to writer, and reckons with his identities as a son, a gay man, a Korean American, an artist, an activist, a lover, and a friend.
November ‘22
DIARY OF A MISTFIT
- Casey Parks
DIARY OF A MISFIT is at once dewy-eyed and diligent, capricious and capacious, empathetic and exacting. It's as richly textured as a pot of gumbo. As a work of autobiography, it's maximalist; subtitled 'A Memoir and a Mystery, it certainly is both of those things, but it's also an assiduous family history, a decades-spanning community chronicle a la Sarah Broom's
September ‘22
A Place Called Home
- David Ambroz
A galvanizing, stirring memoir about growing up homeless and in foster care and rising to become a leading advocate for child welfare, recognized by President Obama as an American Champion of Change. “You will fall in love with David Ambroz, his beautifully-told, gut-wrenching story, and his great big heart.” (Jeanette Walls, author of The Glass Castle)
August ‘22
The Town of Babylon
- Alejandro Varela
Andrés, a gay Latinx professor, returns to his suburban hometown in the wake of his husband’s infidelity. There he finds himself with no excuse not to attend his twenty-year high school reunion and hesitantly begins to reconnect with people he used to call friends.
March ‘23
A Home at the End of the World
- Michael Cunningham
In New York after college, Bobby moves in with Jonathan and his roommate, Clare, a veteran of the city's erotic wars. Bobby and Clare fall in love, scuttling the plans of Jonathan, who is gay, to father Clare's child. Then, when Clare and Bobby have a baby, the three move to a small house upstate to raise their child together and, with an odd friend, Alice, create a new kind of family.
July ‘22
Fire Island - Jack Parlett
"Jack Parlett’s Fire Island is that rare book: a compelling social history of a time and place that, through carefully assembled detail and astute analysis, brilliantly illuminates American culture as well as its topic.” — Michael Bronski, author of A Queer History of the United States
February ‘23
Detransition, Baby
- Torrey Peters
This provocative debut is about what happens at the emotional, messy, vulnerable corners of womanhood that platitudes and good intentions can't reach. Torrey Peters brilliantly and fearlessly navigates the most dangerous taboos around gender, sex, and relationships, gifting us a thrillingly original, witty, and deeply moving novel.
April ‘23
Funny Boy
- Shyam Selvadurai
An evocative coming-of-age novel about growing up gay in Sri Lanka during the Tamil-Sinhalese conflict. Refreshing, raw, and poignant, Funny Boy is an exquisitely written, compassionate tale of a boy’s coming-of-age that quietly confounds expectations of love, family, and country as it delivers the powerful message of staying true to one’s self no matter the obstacles.
