Here are 100 books that Cutting Your Teeth fans have personally recommended if you like
Cutting Your Teeth.
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I don’t know if I have an expertise in queer indie fantasy (quite the opposite, in fact). I just know as a queer person who loves magical worlds, I want to help elevate as many of them as possible. Over the past few years, I’ve aimed to read almost exclusively queer books with a focus on indie books (well, any indie books really). My hope is for other people to find and uplift indie books. There are so many beautiful hidden gems that just need a little more exposure to find their reader homes.
This was just such a fun read. It had me giggling. Well, at first, it had me rolling my eyes. This is probably one of my all-time favorites. Within a few chapters, I was swooning for both characters and trying to logic a reason why things would turn out well, even though it’s literally about an assassin whose target is a prince.
There was so much fun worldbuilding in the background of this adorable romance, and I’m a sucker for big magical worlds.
He’s supposed to kill Prince Julien. Not fall for him.
Whisper doesn’t remember his real name. All he knows is the elite assassin guild that raised him—and controls him with the threat of blood magic. He doesn’t get to refuse assignments, even when his new job doesn’t make sense:
Infiltrate Prince Julien’s court, protect him until the signal arrives, then kill him.
Julien hides his political talent behind his playboy reputation. He trusts nobody besides his brothers, and he certainly doesn’t trust the sad-eyed, beautiful new stranger at court. But Whisper’s vulnerability and kindness draw Julien in anyway—especially when Whisper…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
I don’t know if I have an expertise in queer indie fantasy (quite the opposite, in fact). I just know as a queer person who loves magical worlds, I want to help elevate as many of them as possible. Over the past few years, I’ve aimed to read almost exclusively queer books with a focus on indie books (well, any indie books really). My hope is for other people to find and uplift indie books. There are so many beautiful hidden gems that just need a little more exposure to find their reader homes.
This book has so many tropes that I despise, such as miscommunication, deceit/manipulation, and third-act breakups. Yet somehow, Bryn managed to execute them all with such finesse that I fell in love.
Both main characters are adorable in completely different ways. Wes is such a confident goof, while Vincent is so sad and adorable that I just want to hug him. The romance is cute but fades to black. However, there are apparently some spicy short stories that follow up with the lives of Wes and Vincent. I need to get my next dose of these cute boys.
Vincent Barnes has suffered four years as a vampire, and they’ve been the most miserable years of his pathetic life. Too poor for black market blood, he feeds from sleeping humans to survive. He tries to never intrude on the same prey twice, but after a single delicious taste of a long-lost childhood neighbor, he can’t help returning for seconds.
Wesley Garcia has been waking up with fang marks. Lucky for him, he needs a vampire—to use as bait. He’s certain Vitalis-Barron Pharmaceutical killed his mother, but to gain access to their covert research labs, he has to bring them…
I don’t know if I have an expertise in queer indie fantasy (quite the opposite, in fact). I just know as a queer person who loves magical worlds, I want to help elevate as many of them as possible. Over the past few years, I’ve aimed to read almost exclusively queer books with a focus on indie books (well, any indie books really). My hope is for other people to find and uplift indie books. There are so many beautiful hidden gems that just need a little more exposure to find their reader homes.
This falls more on the Sci-fi side of SFF, but it really is just such a fun ride. What I loved the most about this one is how it seemed to have such a fascinating world of technology but was completely closed off from the world.
It takes place in a mansion, a very small setting, and very character-driven until BAM—suddenly you’re thrown into this big mysterious world with all the clues of technology advancements and government, etc (har har).
Watching the two main characters navigate their way through this dangerous world, and the way it shapes each of them is spectacular. My eyes watered for sure during this one.
Cinderella meets the Matrix in this LGBTQ fantasy perfect for fans of Becky Chambers, TJ Klune, and Martha Wells.
Eke lives in a nice house, in a wealthy neighborhood, with an upstanding family: Mr. and Mrs. Kensworth and their three children. But Eke is not family; Eke is property. He’s an AI whose job is to keep the house clean and organized, and no matter how much Eke secretly wishes to be allowed outside to see the stars or to make a real friend, he’s either ignored or bullied by the family that owns him.
This book is an elegiac meditation on the will to survive. Tor, a beluga whaler, and his wife, Astrid, a botanist specializing in Arctic flora, are stranded during the dark season of 1937-38 at his remote whaling station in the Svalbard archipelago when they misjudge ice conditions and fail to…
I don’t know if I have an expertise in queer indie fantasy (quite the opposite, in fact). I just know as a queer person who loves magical worlds, I want to help elevate as many of them as possible. Over the past few years, I’ve aimed to read almost exclusively queer books with a focus on indie books (well, any indie books really). My hope is for other people to find and uplift indie books. There are so many beautiful hidden gems that just need a little more exposure to find their reader homes.
This book is a fricken gut punch. At least the first few chapters. Dang, they hit me hard and heavy. I definitely almost set the book down. It was just sad and a reminder of how awful my teen years were.
However, once we got to the wonderful world of magic and space tech, the theme lightened up, and I found myself falling in love with this mysterious, magical planet far, far away. I’m very patiently awaiting book two in the duology.
All Casper Bell has ever wanted is to belong. But now, abandoned by his friends and family after being outed, he has nothing left to lose when the people of Novilem abduct him.
Except Earth.
Teleported to a world where stars grant humans magic, Casper discovers he has the rare ability to draw power from all twelve astrological signs — a gift that makes him a political pawn for the Estellar Council.
But Novilem’s inhabitants seem as hard and cold as the stone their city is carved from, and Casper’s new…
As a queer, nonbinary author and lover of historical fiction, I’ve spent countless hours thinking about how to tell stories I care about in a genre that has traditionally excluded people like me. We all know that life was hard for LGBTQ+ folks growing up in, well, basically any time in recent history. There’s a time and place for realistic depictions of those hardships, but we also need space to imagine ourselves in more joyful, fantastical depictions of the past. After all, if straight people can enjoy Jane Austen without thinking too hard about the legal rights of women during that era, why can’t queer people do the same?
Have you ever read Dracula and thought, “What if the vampire were a lady? An extremely gay lady?” That’s Carmilla in a nutshell!
The story actually predates Bram Stoker’s tale by several years, making it a neat little literary artifact on its own, but this isn’t some dry historical text. It is, in fact, super heckin’ horny, to the point that I would strongly advise against listening to the audiobook with, say, your parents or other unsuspecting cishets in the room. It’s gonna get awkward.
It’s also fairly short, making for an easy, steamy bedtime read for anyone who’d like to imagine themself as a waifish little lass ravaged nightly by your lesbian vampire BFF.
In an isolated castle deep in the Austrian forest, Laura leads a solitary life with only her ailing father for company. Until one moonlit night, a horse-drawn carriage crashes into view, carrying an unexpected guest - the beautiful Carmilla.
So begins a feverish friendship between Laura and her mysterious, entrancing companion. But as Carmilla becomes increasingly strange and volatile, prone to eerie nocturnal wanderings, Laura finds herself tormented by nightmares and growing weaker by the day...
Pre-dating Dracula by twenty-six years, Carmilla is the original vampire story, steeped in sexual tension and gothic romance.
I loved books as a kid, especially fantasy books, but could never find anyone like me within their pages. I’m a lesbian Chinese writer who adores stories about messed-up, complicated queer people. I’m thrilled by the range of books available now that feature queer, messy characters. We all deserve representation, and to me that means representation that’s complex, that encompasses the ugly and the beautiful. One of my goals as an author is to make you fall in love with monsters—brutal, flawed women who may not deserve love, but who demand it all the same.
This novella is a close retelling of Carmillaby Sheridan Le Fanu, which is theOG sapphic vampire story. It recasts the ending to give the leads a happy ever after, and ups the sapphic content to modern standards, adding a bit of steaminess. Simper’s version retains Laura’s initial ambivalence and horror towards Carmilla, the historical setting, and the gothic flair. It’s a must-read for fans of the original who are looking for a more modern interpretation.
In the late 19th century, Laura lives a lonely life in a schloss by the forest, Styria, with only her doting father and two governesses for company. A chance accident brings a new companion, however – the eccentric and beautiful Carmilla.
With charm unparalleled and habits as mysterious as her history, Carmilla’s allure is undeniable, drawing Laura closer with every affectionate touch and word. Attraction blossoms into a temptation Laura fears to name, a tantalizing passion burning brighter than the fires of hell. But when a mysterious plague begins stealing the lives of young women in her home and the…
Tina Edwards loved her childhood and creating fairy houses, a passion shared with her father, a world-renowned architect. But at nine years old, she found him dead at his desk and is haunted by this memory. Tina's mother abruptly moved away, leaving Tina with feelings of abandonment and suspicion.
I’ve always been inspired by the setting as character. Place is powerful, especially when that place is touched by the natural world. Between growing up in the rural American South and doing fieldwork with biologists, nature has wormed its way into the majority of my work. And as a queer horror writer, I deeply value horror stories that have us in the protagonist’s role. I’ve curated this list to reflect all of that at once: queer protagonists trying to survive in environments that would love to eat them alive. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.
Bleak, beautiful, and visceral. I’ve reread this graphic novel a dozen times just to look at the absolutely stunning creature design that engulfs the environment. Sal, a sword-wielding exterminator, is faced with their crumbling relationship, their terrible job, and the monsters that lurk in every corner of this near-future world—all in one shift.
LA, 2028. Down-on-their-luck exterminator Sal Hernandez is sick of long hours and living in their work van. They’re ready to quit their job and reconcile with their estranged partner. The only thing standing in their way is one last shift. But what seems like a routine call quickly gets out of hand when a proselytizing mass of flesh abducts Sal’s newest coworker, Luke, and turns their extermination job into a rescue mission.
I started in publishing at the Advocate magazine, twenty years ago in its heyday, then moved to Alyson Books, who first published Emma Donoghue among many others, offering a place for queer writers showcasing queer stories to find their audience. Afterwards, I became involved with Gertrude literary journal, a beloved, 25-year-old non-profit, LGBTQA journal that has now evolved to The Gertrude Conference. All the while, I read, wrote, and supported queer stories, like these gems!
I vote that this novella by Cassandra Khaw be made into an animated limited series, opening on a mermaid who leaves her two children after they’ve devoured what is left of the city that had to be burned to the ground to prevent the spread of the plague.
They devoured because they have teeth, as mermaids do. The children also have “supple lips”, as their father had, a prince who abducted and forced the mermaid to marry him then cut her tongue out.
She leaves them and their destruction behind to wander the countryside with a plague doctor who wears a vulture mask. It was the plague doctor who insisted they burn everything to the ground. The unusual pair soon find their way to a village where saints decide which people can be brought back from the dead in (on theme) Frankenstein-ian ways. A perfect animation.
A sensuous and strange horror novella full of creeping dread and delicious gore, twisting mermaid myths into something sharp, dangerous, and hungry, for fans of Christina Henry, Carmen Maria Machado and Eric LaRocca.
After the murder of her husband and the fall of his empire, a mermaid and her plague doctor companion escape into the wilderness. Deep in the woods, they stumble across a village where children hunt each other for sport, sacrificing one of their own at the behest of three surgeons they call "the saints." These saints play god with their magic, harvesting the best bits of the…
I am a queer writer who lovers to read and write mystery and crime fiction. The history of these genres is often full of homophobic stereotypes and scapegoating of queer characters. While I think it’s important to show queer characters as flawed, I also want to make sure to celebrate the contributions of queer writers to these messy, wonderful genres.
This book is a gripping story that reads like a thrilling noir caper.
I felt drawn into the main character’s story, both as she navigated the mystery and in her stirring relationship with her family. The intersection of her identity as a queer woman from a Chinese-American family provided so much of the story’s heart and stakes—I found myself reading to see how these tensions would resolve as much as to figure out whodunnit.
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I’m a reader and an author who loves stories that are so beautifully written they wrap you up tight in comfort, ensuring no matter what hurt the characters go through, you know it will all be okay in the end. And in stressful times—even in times that aren’t so stressful!—I think we all need that little bit of fictional certainty, that knowing that everything is going to be okay in the end. I started writing to give queer characters suffering from problems like loneliness, anxiety, and homelessness, as many happy endings as I could.Because no matter the difficulties you may be going through, everyone deserves a happy ending.😊
This is the story of two young men, one rich, one homeless but it’s not a simple rescue me type story. Laurie and Sasha reach out desperately to one another from their different worlds, and against all odds begin an affair, hidden in the attics of Laurie’s sumptuous home and on the bleak moorland of a Romani encampment. For Laurie, it’s a delicious sexual awakening, and Sasha returns his affections, opening up to him a whole new world of freedom. But Sasha has secrets, and a murky, violent past.
I’ve reread this book countless times. Harper Fox’s writing is breathtaking and it’s so comforting to read characters you can’t help but adore falling in love and finding their way through conflict to a safe and happy ending.
Laurence Fitzroy is trapped in a golden cage. The only son of a wealthy London baronet, he’s struggling to escape his father’s suffocating world. But Laurie is losing his fight. At nineteen years of age, bright and imaginative, he’s no match for the brutal Sir William. Laurie wants to be an actor – bad enough as far as Sir William is concerned, but, worse than that, he’s gay.
One bitter winter night, he meets a young homeless man huddled in blankets outside the opera house. The two form a bond straight away, and Laurie takes him home, wanting only to…
