Queer Literature
Queer writers and books! Sick of all your lesbians being married off? Bored of all your gays coming out again and again? Where are the trans* folks? In our Queer Book Club, we'll explore a variety of works by and about folks from all across the rainbow. This club usually meets the second Wednesday of the month, unless otherwise noted.
You can find some of Nell’s staff picks here.
Queer Book Club will be meeting Wednesday, June 11th at 7 pm; we will be reading Disco Witches of Fire Island by Blair Fell.
About the book:
Hit the dance floor with a coven of queer witches on 1980s Fire Island in this gay fantasy romance about finding magic, love, and family in the face of tragedy. It’s 1989, and Joe Agabian and his best friend Ronnie set out to spend their first summer working in the hedonistic gay paradise of Fire Island Pines. Joe is desperate to let loose and finally move beyond the heartbreak of having lost his boyfriend to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
The two friends are quickly taken in by a pair of quirky, older house cleaners. But something seems off, and Joe starts to suspect the two older men of being up to something otherworldly. In truth, Howie and Lenny are members of a secret disco witch coven tasked with protecting the island—and young men like Joe—from the relentless tragedies ravaging their community. The only problem is, having lost too many of their fellow witches to the epidemic, the coven’s protective powers have been seriously damaged.
Unaware of all the mystical shenanigans going on, Joe starts to fall for the super-cute bisexual ferryman who just happens to have webbed feet and an unusual ability to hold his breath underwater. But Joe’s longing to find love is tripped up by his own troublesome past as well as the lure of a mysterious hunk he keeps seeing around the island—a man Howie and Lenny warn may be a harbinger of impending doom.
The Disco Witches need to find help—fast—if they’re to save Joe and the island from the Great Darkness. But how? Fans of spicy queer romances with a dash of fantasy will fall in love with this stunning novel of community, love, sex, magic, and hope in desperate times.
Queer Book Club will be meeting Wednesday, July 9th, at 7 pm; we will be reading Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body by Megan Milks.
About the book:
Meet Margaret. At age twelve, she was head detective of the mystery club Girls Can Solve Anything. Margaret and her three best friends led exciting lives solving crimes, having adventures, and laughing a lot. But now that she's entered high school, the club has disbanded, and Margaret is unmoored--she doesn't want to grow up, and she wishes her friends wouldn't either. Instead, she opts out, developing an eating disorder that quickly takes over her life. When she lands in a treatment center, Margaret finds her path to recovery twisting sideways as she pursues a string of new mysteries involving a ghost, a hidden passage, disturbing desires, and her own vexed relationship with herself.
Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body reimagines nineties adolescence--mashing up girl group series, choose-your-own-adventures, and chronicles of anorexia--in a queer and trans coming-of-age tale like no other. An interrogation of girlhood and nostalgia, dysmorphia and dysphoria, this debut novel puzzles through the weird, ever-evasive questions of growing up.