Lake Bluff Library Adult Reading Lists

In this powerful volume, seventy-three LGBTQ+ kids and teens from fifteen different states throughout the USA tell their stories in their own words. They share the challenges they've faced coming out or coming to terms with their own identities; they write about their families, their schoolmates, their teachers, and their queer communities; and they offer messages of love and support to their LGBTQ+ peers.
(Description from catalog)

The Oscar-nominated star who captivated the world with his performance in Juno finally shares his truth. It was two months before the world premiere of Juno, and Elliot Page was in his first ever queer bar. With Juno's massive success, Elliot became one of the world's most beloved actors. His dreams were coming true, but the pressure to perform suffocated him. He was forced to play the part of the glossy young starlet, a role that made his skin crawl, on and off set. The career that had been an escape out of his reality and into a world of imagination was suddenly a nightmare. As he navigated criticism and abuse from some of the most powerful people in Hollywood, a past that snapped at his heels, and a society dead set on forcing him into a binary, Elliot often stayed silent, unsure of what to do, until enough was enough.
(Description from catalog)

A full-throated and provocative memoir in letters from the New York Times-bestselling author of The Death of Vivek Oji, "a dazzling literary talent whose works cut to the quick of the spiritual self" (Esquire). (Description from catalog)

Two fake-dating actors navigate their love story both on and offscreen. (Description from NoveList)

The gods wanted blood. She fought for love. Achilles has fled her home and her vicious Myrmidon clan to live as a woman with the kallai, the transgender priestesses of Great Mother Aphrodite. When Odysseus comes to recruit the "prince" Achilles for a war against the Hittites, she prepares to die rather than fight as a man. However, her divine mother, Athena, intervenes, transforming her body into the woman's body she always longed for, and promises her everything: glory, power, fame, victory in war, and, most importantly, a child born of her own body.
(Description from catalog)

A bold retelling of the traditional Greek myth of Psyche and Eros through a queer and feminist lens, grappling with the complex and thorny questions of how to harness the power of female and queer joy and cultivate freedom in a world that seeks to cage us.
(Description from NoveList)

Aima and Kalu are a long-time couple who have just split. When Kalu, reeling from his loss, visits a sex party hosted by his best friend Ahmed, he makes a decision that will plunge them all into chaos, brutally upending their lives. Ola and Souraya, two Nigerian sex workers visiting from Kuala Lumpur, intersect with the three old friends as everything goes to hell. Sucked into the city's corrupt underworld, they're all looking for a way out of the trouble they've instigated, driven by loss and fueled by a desperate need to escape the dangerous threat that looms over them.
(Description from catalog)

Leslie is assigned to the backwoods town of Spar Creek by the Frontier Nursing Service, under its mandate: vaccinate the flock, birth babies, and weather the judgements of churchy locals. Forged in the fires of the Western Front and reborn in the cafes of Paris, Leslie believes he can handle whatever is thrown at him—but Spar Creek holds a darkness beyond his nightmares. Something ugly festers within the local congregation, and its malice has focused on a young person they insist is an unruly tomboy who must be brought to heel. Violence is bubbling, ready to spill over, and Leslie will have to act fast if he intends to be of use. But the woods are haunted in ways Leslie does not understand. (Description from NoveList)

Two bisexual exes accidentally book the same European food and wine tour and challenge each other to a hookup competition to prove they're over each other—except they're definitely not.
(Description from NoveList)

A whimsical and healing novel about a trans man in New York who - almost 30, laid off, and broke - moves back to his small Illinois hometown, walks into the bookstore he worked at in high school...and slips through time to come face-to-face with his pre-transition, teenage self.
(Description from catalog)

In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Now, Gender Queer is here. Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity--what it means and how to think about it--for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere. (Description from catalog)

Lord Blackheart, a villain with a vendetta, and his sidekick, Nimona, an impulsive young shapeshifter, must prove to the kingdom that Sir Goldenloin and the Institution of Law Enforcement and Heroics aren't the heroes everyone thinks they are.--Description by NoveList

Nova Huang knows more about magic than your average teen witch. She works at her grandmother's bookshop, where she helps them loan out spell books and investigate any supernatural occurrences in their New England town. One fateful night, she follows reports of a white wolf into the woods, and she comes across the unexpected: her childhood crush, Tam Lang, battling a horse demon in the woods. As a werewolf, Tam has been wandering from place to place for years, unable to call any town home. Pursued by dark forces eager to claim the magic of wolves and out of options, Tam turns to Nova for help. Their latent feelings are rekindled against the backdrop of witchcraft, untested magic, occult rituals, and family ties both new and old in this enchanting tale of self-discovery. (description from publisher)