New in January: Mesha Maren, Siddharth Dube, Rob Halpern, and Sarah Léon

Author: Edit Team

January 3, 2019

It’s January, and we’ve got some new LGBTQ books to help you kick off the new year!

This month we’re excited for Mesha Maren’s “searing and gritty” debut novel, Sugar Run (Algonquin Books). From the publisher:

In 1989, Jodi McCarty is seventeen years old when she’s sentenced to life in prison. When she’s released eighteen years later, she finds herself at a Greyhound bus stop, reeling from the shock of unexpected freedom but determined to chart a better course for herself. Not yet able to return to her lost home in the Appalachian Mountains, she heads south in search of someone she left behind, as a way of finally making amends. There, she meets and falls in love with Miranda, a troubled young mother living in a motel room with her children. Together they head toward what they hope will be a fresh start. But what do you do with your past—and with a town and a family that refuses to forget, or to change?

January also brings Siddharth Dube’s memoir, An Indefinite Sentence: A Personal History of Outlawed Love and Sex (Atria Books):

From his time as a child in 1960s India, Siddharth Dube knew that he was different. Reckoning with his femininity and sexuality—and his intellect—would send him on a lifelong journey of discovery: from Harvard classrooms to unsafe cruising sites; from ivory-tower think-tanks to shantytowns; from halls of power at the UN and World Bank to jail cells where sexual outcasts are brutalized.

We’re also eager to check out Rob Halpern’s new book, Weak Link, out this month from Atelos, which the publisher describes as “an interstitial work containing poems, poem-essays, prose sequences, letters, translations, exercises, and manifestos.”

Another debut novel out this month is Sarah Léon’s Wanderer (Other Press), which “explores the stifled, unspoken feelings of a music teacher and his former student, and the damage done by their years of silence.” More from the publisher:

Hermin, a composer and instructor, leads a secluded life near the Bourbonnais Mountains in France, composing an homage to Schubert. On a bitter January night, this studious peace is broken when his former pupil, Lenny, a piano prodigy, mysteriously knocks at his door. The two men must confront the ghosts of their past, somewhere between musical harmony, erotic tension, and revelation.

And in young adult fiction, Sabina Khan’s The Love and Lies of Rukhsana Ali (Scholastic Press) tells the story of seventeen-year-old Rukhsana:

Unable to come out to her conservative Muslim parents, she keeps that part of her identity hidden. And that means keeping her girlfriend, Ariana, a secret from them too. Luckily, only a few more months stand between her carefully monitored life at home and a fresh start at Caltech in the fall. But when Rukhsana’s mom catches her and Ariana together, her future begins to collapse around her.

As always, if we missed an author or book, or if you have a book coming out next month, please email us.

Fiction

Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Still in Love by Michael Downing, Counterpoint
Sugar Run by Mesha Maren, Algonquin Books
Temper CA by Paul Skenazy, Miami University Press
Wanderer by Sarah Léon, Other Press

Sleeping With Strangers by David Thomson

Nonfiction

Gay a Day by L.A. Fields & Tyson Kadwell, Lethe Press
Improving Services for Transgender and Gender Variant Youth: Research, Policy and Practice for Health and Social Care Professionals by Tiffany Jones, Jessica Kingsley Publishers
The Reflective Workbook for Partners of Transgender People: Your Transition as Your Partner Transitions by D.M. Maynard, Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Sleeping with Strangers: How the Movies Shaped Desire by David Thomson, Knopf
Supporting Transgender and Non-Binary Students and Staff in Further and Higher Education: Practical Advice for Colleges and Universities by Matson Lawrence & Stephanie Mckendry, Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Working with Trans Survivors of Sexual Violence: A Guide for Professionals by Sally Rymer & Valentina Cartei, Jessica Kingsley Publishers

Shakespeare and Queer Theory by Melissa E. Sanchez

LGBT Studies

Capturing Mariposas: Reading Cultural Schema in Gay Chicano Literature by P. Doug Bush, Ohio State University Press
GLQ at Twenty-Five ed. by Marcia Ochoa & Jennifer DeVere Brody, Duke University Press
Incurable: The Haunted Writings of Lionel Johnson, the Decadent Era’s Dark Angel ed. by Nina Antonia, Strange Attractor Press
Queer Aging in North American Fiction by Linda M. Hess, Palgrave Macmillan
Seeking Rights from the Left: Gender, Sexuality, and the Latin American Pink Tide, ed. by Elisabeth Jay Friedman, Duke University Press
Shakespeare and Queer Theory by Melissa E. Sanchez, The Arden Shakespeare/Bloomsbury
Transgender, Translation, Translingual Address by Douglas Robinson, Bloomsbury Academic

Bloom by Kevin Panetta & Savanna Ganucheau

Young Adult and Children’s Literature

Bloom by Kevin Panetta & Savanna Ganucheau, First Second
The Cerulean by Amy Ewing, HarperTeen
Death Prefers Blondes by Caleb Roehrig, Feiwel & Friends
Firestarter by Tara Sim, Sky Pony Press
Lock & West by Alexander C. Eberhart, Seven Sisters Publishing
The Love and Lies of Rukhsana Ali by Sabina Khan, Scholastic Press
Our Year of Maybe by Rachel Lynn Solomon, Simon Pulse
The Princess of Baker Street by Mia Kerick, Harmony Ink Press
Song of the Dead by Sarah Glenn Marsh, Razorbill
The Whispers by Greg Howard, G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers

Romance

The Ashford Place by Jean Copeland, Bold Strokes Books
Brace for Impact by Becky Harmon, Bella Books
Careful What You Wish For by Jackie Calhoun, Bella Books
Emily’s Art and Soul by Joy Argento, Bold Strokes Books
Escape to Pleasure: Lesbian Travel Erotica ed. by Sandy Lowe & Victoria Villasenor, Bold Strokes Books
Is It Over Yet? by L.A. Witt, Self-published
Music City Dreamers by Robyn Nyx, Bold Strokes Books
Ordinary is Perfect by D. Jackson Leigh, Bold Strokes Books
Rising Above by Genevieve Fortin, Bella Books
Royal Court by Jenny Frame, Bold Strokes Books
Strings Attached by Holly Stratimore, Bold Strokes Books