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I volunteer as a mentor through Girls Write Now, a New York-based nonprofit that uplifts young women and gender-expansive writers and future leaders, and let me tell you that the program’s mentees are beaucoup talented. Like, for real. In every workshop I’ve done since starting with the organization a couple years ago, I’ve been blown away with the level of writing coming from high schoolers.
Each year culminates in an anthology that mentees can choose to contribute to. This year, Dutton Books, Dottir Press, and Amazon all helped to publish the anthology’s 25th iteration—which has stories where “cooking unites families, supermarkets become places of connection and adventure, neighbors evolve into mermaids as the sea levels rise, and every month nails are trimmed to cut down memory. The smallest gifts in life become impossible blessings of gratitude.”
If you’d like to see the future of writing, and help an amazing nonprofit, I highly recommend getting a copy.
Shifting gears to new releases, but still speaking of collections, this week sees the reissue of a beloved set of stories by J. California Cooper titled Homemade Love. In novel land, there’s From Savagery by Alejandra Banca, translated by Katie Brown, which follows young Venezuelan migrants, and the middle grade Buffalo Dreamer by Violet Duncan that has a young girl learning the truth about what happened to Indigenous children at residential schools in Canada.
For the lovers, there’s Nisha Sharma’s Twelfth Night-inspired rom-com Marriage & Masti, and the sapphic fake-dating romance Hers for the Weekend by Helena Greer. If you’re as partial to graphic novels as I am, Jennifer Dugan’s Full Shift is illustrated by Kit Seaton and follows a teen werewolf, while Ed Brubaker’s Houses of the Unholy is illustrated by Sean Phillips and follows a hunt for a killer. But, if you want things more cutesy, more demure, there’s the adorable stray cat manga Cat Companions Maruru and Hachi by Yuri Sonoda.
Nonfiction-wise, Et Cetera: An Illustrated Guide to Latin Phrases by Maia Lee-Chin, illustrated by Marta Bertello is one for the word nerds, and I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine by Daniel J. Levitin takes care of the music lovers.
And the featured books below have villainesses as protagonists, queer horror, ’80s gossip, and more.
I’ll Have What He’s Having by Adib Khorram
After a breakup, Farzan Alavi is a hot mess. When he decides to drown his sorrows in some fine red at Kansas City’s newest wine bar, he unexpectedly gets VIP treatment. He’s ushered to a special table for one and given extra special attention by a sommelier who’s super fine. This sommelier, David Curtis, thinks Farzan is Frank Allen, the city’s super influential food critic, and tries his best to razzle dazzle him. This razzle turns into some bedroom tussling, and once the case of mistaken identity is cleared up, both men have a good little kii. It starts to seem like their fun has come to an end since David is focused on studying to become a sommelier, until Farzan inherits his family’s bistro and needs someone’s restaurant knowledge. David agrees to help, as long as Farzan helps him study for his test, and things stay on a spicy and delicious path.
That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America by Amanda Jones
In this memoirifesto, Louisiana librarian Amanda Jones recounts how she went to advocate for the freedom to read at a local public hearing in 2022 and was immediately plunged into a nightmare. Right-wing book banners called her things like a pedo and a porn pusher, but she fought back. She sued her defamers and has been encouraging others to do the same. In That Librarian, she calls on all book lovers to stand up to the deluge of book bans the U.S. has been suffering through the last few years.
Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan
Protagonist Rae is a baddie. In more ways than one. As she’s dying, she takes advantage of a second chance at life, but it’ll mean striking a magical bargain that puts her in the world of her favorite fantasy series. This sounds all well and good, except the kingdom in the story is about to go to war, there are monsters, scheming and scamming court dwellers, and—most importantly—Rae is to be the villainess. Gasp. It’s all good, though, since villainesses stay with the best one-liners and fashions…even if she may not be able to live past the final page.
Libertad by Bessie Flores Zaldívar
In this queer YA coming-of-age tale, Libertad (Libi) Morazán is a high school senior who writes political poetry for her anonymous Instagram account as the heated 2017 Honduran presidential election gets closer and closer. As protests ramp up, she finds out about her older brother’s involvement, and her crush on a girl gets discovered by her mother. Now, the homebound homophobia and corruption feel like it’s closing in around her, and once a tragedy strikes, leaving her home may be the only thing she can do.
Hotline by Dimitri Nasrallah
Hotline takes it back to the ’80s, when Muna Heddad and her son escape to Montreal from a war-torn Lebanon. She assumed she’d be able to teach French, but schools don’t trust her to, and she very quickly finds herself in need of money quickly. The only job she can get is as a hotline operator at a weight-loss center, where she takes calls all day from people inquiring about ads. But the callers don’t want to just find out about losing weight—soon enough, the ease they feel speaking to Muna has them spilling their own tea. She finds out about all manner of bad marriages, personal insecurities, and grieving children, even as her life outside of the call center keeps her boxed out.
Come Out, Come Out by Natalie C. Parker
In this queer YA horror, five years ago, Fern, Jaq, and Mallory were girls seeking refuge from intolerance in an old abandoned house. But one day, Mallory never made it home. Now, as Jaq and Fern are about to graduate from high school, something that looks like Mallory starts to appear and it wants revenge. Suddenly, the cisgender and heteronormative identities the girls had shielded themselves with begin to crumble, and they start to remember what really happened all those years ago.
Other Book Riot New Releases Resources:
- All the Books, our weekly new book releases podcast, where Liberty and a cast of co-hosts talk about eight books out that week that we’ve read and loved.
- The New Books Newsletter, where we send you an email of the books out this week that are getting buzz.
- Finally, if you want the real inside scoop on new releases, you have to check out Book Riot’s New Release Index! That’s where I find 90% of new releases, and you can filter by trending books, Rioters’ picks, and even LGBTQ new releases!
