The best books about queer people on the edge

Using the surreal premise that a human woman named Tiny gives birth to an owl, Chouette paints one of the truest and most beautifully messy portraits of motherhood I’ve ever encountered.

Chouette is not like other babies, and Tiny is nothing like other mothers. Holding tightly to her dream/memory of the female owl lover who impregnated her, Tiny embraces her life as the wild mother of a wild child, as she both struggles to contain Chouette’s most violent impulses and loves and protects her fiercely from everyone’s perceptions of what she’s supposed to be.

Chouette challenged my ideas and made me think more deeply about what it means to be a woman and a mother—as well as an atypical child—amid society’s rigid expectations.

Against the backdrop of a speculative future in which extra shadows have become the alternative to prison and cameras watch our every move, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself takes a raw, honest look at grief, family, queerness, and how we survive.

Kris has lost her wife Beau and gained an extra shadow—along with a child who also has an extra shadow. As she navigates her new reality, Kris can either sink deeper into her grief, accepting a life of surveillance and oppression for herself and her kid, or she can choose love and hope.

Crane’s approach to storytelling, open and vulnerable and using small fragments and pop quizzes, allowed me deep into Kris’s heart, and I rooted for her as she forged a life against all odds.   

I immediately fell for the premise of Scorched Grace—a lesbian, chain-smoking, tattooed, former punk-rocker nun—becomes an amateur sleuth when a series of fires threatens her school.

Then this mystery novel went deeper than I expected, following two intriguing questions: who’s setting the fires and how did Sister Holiday end up in a convent? Both storylines do something important and compelling: expose the extreme traumas that women can suffer and show us the ways they survive.

I can’t wait to see what Sister Holiday is up to next.

Lawlor’s novel gave me the best gift a book can offer: it changed my mind halfway through.

I had been so intrigued by the premise of a shapeshifting character who can change their gender at will, that I forced myself to read on even though I wasn’t enjoying the emphasis on sex, especially as conquest, and I was sorely disappointed the story didn’t seem to go deeper.

But as I continued, I was happy to be proven wrong. By the end of the novel, I was checking my own biases and prejudices and empathizing deeply with Paul and his/her/their struggles. Reading this novel was an emotional experience unlike any I’ve had with a book.

Reese, a transgender woman, has been in a tailspin since her girlfriend Amy detransitioned to become Ames and their relationship ended.

Now the thing she wants most—a child—is getting further and further out of her reach. Meanwhile, Ames’s lover, Katrina, gets pregnant. Ames can’t commit, either to Katrina or to life as a father, because it would feel untrue to his gender identity, and Katrina doesn’t want to keep the baby without a partner.

Seeing a chance to revive his connection with Reese and to live in a way that feels more authentic, Ames proposes the three of them become a family and raise the baby together.

This novel is a complicated and beautifully messy exploration of how three women might entwine their lives to fulfill their own and one another’s deepest desires.