Staff Picks
Creepin it Queer: Horror Featuring LGBTQIA+ Characters
- Garrett W.
- Friday, October 15, 2021
Collection
Looking for a scary read for this Halloween? Check out these spooktacular books featuring LGBTQIA+ characters!
Let the Right One in
Published in 2008
Twelve-year-old Oskar is obsessed by the murder that's taken place in his neighborhood. Then he meets the new girl from next door. She's a bit weird, though. And she only comes out at night--Publisher's description.
Meddling Kids
A Novel
Published in 2017
"The summer of 1977. The Blyton Summer Detective Club (of Blyton Hills, a small mining town in Oregon's Zoinx River Valley) solved their final mystery and unmasked the elusive Sleepy Lake monster--another low-life fortune hunter trying to get his dirty hands on the legendary riches hidden in Deboën Mansion. And he would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for those meddling kids. 1990. The former detectives have grown up and apart, each haunted by disturbing memories of their final night in the old haunted house. There are too many strange, half-remembered encounters and events that cannot be dismissed or explained away by a guy in a mask ... The time has come to get the team back together, face their fears, and find out what actually happened all those years ago at Sleepy Lake. It's their only chance to end the nightmares and, perhaps, save the world."--Jacket.
The Taking of Jake Livingston
Published in 2021
"When a murderous ghost begins to haunt sixteen-year-old Jake Livingston, high school soon becomes a different kind of survival game"-- Provided by publisher.
The Gilda Stories
Published in 2016
"Before Buffy, before Twilight, before Octavia Butler's Fledgling, there was The Gilda Stories, Jewelle Gomez's sexy vampire novel."The Gilda Stories is groundbreaking not just for the wild lives it portrays, but for how it portrays them--communally, unapologetically, roaming fiercely over space and time."--Emma Donoghue, author of Room"Jewelle Gomez sees right into the heart. This is a book to give to those you want most to find their own strength."-Dorothy Allison"Gomez's women are savvy and bold, with a sense of ancestry and history. The author's compassion, affection, and respect for her characters are infectious."-Library Journal This remarkable novel begins in 1850s Louisiana, where Gilda escapes slavery and learns about freedom while working in a brothel. After being initiated into eternal life as one who "shares the blood" by two women there, Gilda spends the next two hundred years searching for a place to call home. An instant lesbian classic when it was first published in 1991, The Gilda Stories has endured as an auspiciously prescient book in its explorations of blackness, radical ecology, re-definitions of family, and yes, the erotic potential of the vampire story. Jewelle Gomez is a writer, activist, and the author of many books including Forty-Three Septembers, Don't Explain, The Lipstick Papers, Flamingoes and Bears, and Oral Tradition. The Gilda Stories was the recipient of two Lambda Literary Awards, and was adapted for the stage by the Urban Bush Women theater company in thirteen United States cities. Alexis Pauline Gumbs was named one of UTNE Reader's 50 Visionaries Transforming the World, a Reproductive Reality Check Shero, a Black Woman Rising nominee, and was awarded one of the first-ever "Too Sexy for 501c3" trophies. She lives in Durham, North Carolina. More praise for The Gilda Stories:"Jewelle's big-hearted novel pulls old rhythms out of the earth, the beauty shops and living rooms of black lesbian herstory, expressed by the dazzling vampire Gilda. Her resilience is a testament to black queer women's love, power, and creativity. Brilliant!"--Joan Steinau Lester, author of Black, White, Other "-- Provided by publisher.
The City We Became
Published in 2020
"Five New Yorkers must come together in order to save their city from destruction in the first book of a stunning new series by Hugo award-winning and NYT bestselling author N. K. Jemisin. Every great city has a soul. Some are ancient as myths, and othersare as new and destructive as children. New York? She's got six. When a young man crosses the bridge into New York City, something changes. He doesn't remember who he is, where he's from, or even his own name. But he can feel the pulse of the city, can see its history, can access its magic. And he's not the only one. All across the boroughs, strange things are happening. Something is threatening to destroy the city and her six newborn avatars unless they can come together and stop it once and for all"-- Provided by publisher.
Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke
Published in 2021
Sadomasochism. Obsession. Death. A whirlpool of darkness churns at the heart of a macabre ballet between two lonely young women in an internet chat room in the early 2000s -- a darkness that threatens to forever transform them once they finally succumb to their most horrific desires. What have you done today to deserve your eyes?
Summer Sons
Published in 2021
"Lee Mandelo's debut Summer Sons is a sweltering, queer Southern Gothic that crosses Appalachian street racing with academic intrigue, all haunted by a hungry ghost. Andrew and Eddie did everything together, best friends bonded more deeply than brothers, until Eddie left Andrew behind to start his graduate program at Vanderbilt. Six months later, only days before Andrew was to join him in Nashville, Eddie dies of an apparent suicide. He leaves Andrew a horrible inheritance: a roommate he doesn't know, friends he never asked for, and a gruesome phantom that hungers for him. As Andrew searches for the truth of Eddie's death, he uncovers the lies and secrets left behind by the person he trusted most, discovering a family history soaked in blood and death. Whirling between the backstabbing academic world where Eddie spent his days and the circle of hot boys, fast cars, and hard drugs that ruled Eddie's nights, the walls Andrew has built against the world begin to crumble. And there is something awful lurking, waiting for those walls to fall"-- Provided by publisher.
Cemetery Boys
Published in 2020
Yadriel, a trans boy, summons the angry spirit of his high school's bad boy, and agrees to help him learn how he died, thereby proving himself a brujo, not a bruja, to his conservative family.