Alexandra's Staff Picks

For my LGTBQ+ book lists, search "LGBTQ YA," "LGBTQ Children's," "Queer Nonfiction," and/or "Queer Books I Have Read."

Showing 1 - 20 of 111  There are a total of 146 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe"
Star rating for Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe
Series:
Average Rating:
4.7 stars
Description:
Fifteen-year-old Ari Mendoza is an angry loner with a brother in prison, but when he meets Dante and they become friends, Ari starts to ask questions about himself, his parents, and his family that he has never asked before.
Book cover for "Babel"
Star rating for Babel
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
"From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a thematic response to The Secret History and a tonal retort to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British empire. Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal. 1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious...
Book cover for "Beach read"
Star rating for Beach read
Author:
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
"A romance writer who no longer believes in love and a literary writer stuck in a rut engage in a summer-long challenge that may just upend everything they believe about happily ever afters. Augustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews writes bestselling romance. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast. They're polar opposites. In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next...
Book cover for "Beauty queens"
Star rating for Beauty queens
Author:
Average Rating:
4.9 stars
Description:
When a plane crash strands thirteen teen beauty contestants on a mysterious island, they struggle to survive, to get along with one another, to combat the island's other diabolical occupants, and to learn their dance numbers in case they are rescued in time for the competition.
Book cover for "Beetle & the Hollowbones"
Star rating for Beetle & the Hollowbones
Author:
Series:
Beetle books volume 1.
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
Twelve-year-old goblin and witch-in-training Beetle enlists her former best friend, Kat Hollowbones, to help stop Kat's sorceress aunt from demolishing the mall where Beetle's friend Blob Ghost is trapped.
Book cover for "Ben and Beatriz"
Star rating for Ben and Beatriz
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"Beatriz Herrera is a fierce woman who will take you down with her quick wit and keen intellect. And after the results of the 2016 election worked hard to erase her identity as a queer biracial woman, she'd be right to. Especially if you come for her sweet BFF cousin, Hero. Beatriz would do anything for her, a loyalty that lands Beatriz precisely where she doesn't want to be: spending a week at the ridiculous Cape Cod mansion of stupid-hot playboy...

7. Binti

Book cover for "Binti"
Star rating for Binti
Series:
Binti volume 1.
Average Rating:
4.7 stars
Description:
Her name is Binti, and she is the first of the Himba people ever to be offered a place at Oomza University, the finest institution of higher learning in the galaxy. But to accept the offer will mean giving up her place in her family to travel between the stars among strangers who do not share her ways or respect her customs. Knowledge comes at a cost, one that Binti is willing to pay, but her journey will not be easy. The world she seeks to enter...

8. Bloom

Book cover for "Bloom"
Star rating for Bloom
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
Now that high school is over, Ari is dying to move to the big city with his ultra-hip band--if he can just persuade his dad to let him quit his job at their struggling family bakery. Though he loved working there as a kid, Ari cannot fathom a life wasting away over rising dough and hot ovens. But while interviewing candidates for his replacement, Ari meets Hector, an easygoing guy who loves baking as much as Ari wants to escape it. As they become...
Book cover for "Boyfriend material"
Star rating for Boyfriend material
Series:
Material volume 1.
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
"Wanted: One (fake) boyfriend Practically perfect in every way Luc O'Donnell is tangentially-and reluctantly-famous. His rock star parents split when he was young, and the father he's never met spent the next twenty years cruising in and out of rehab. Now that his dad's making a comeback, Luc's back in the public eye, and one compromising photo is enough to ruin everything. To clean up his image, Luc has to find a nice, normal relationship...and Oliver...
Book cover for "The bride test"
Star rating for The bride test
Author:
Series:
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
"Khai Diep has no feelings. Well, he feels irritation when people move his things or contentment when ledgers balance down to the penny, but he doesn't experience big, important emotions like love and grief. Rather than believing he processes emotions differently due to being autistic, he concludes that he's defective and decides to avoid romantic relationships. So his mother, driven to desperation, takes matters into her own hands and returns to...
Book cover for "Bringing down the duke"
Star rating for Bringing down the duke
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
England, 1879. Annabelle Archer, the brilliant but destitute daughter of a country vicar, has earned herself a place among the first cohort of female students at the renowned University of Oxford. In return for her scholarship, she must support the rising women's suffrage movement. Her charge: recruit men of influence to champion their cause. Her target: Sebastian Devereux, the cold and calculating Duke of Montgomery who steers Britain's politics...
Book cover for "The charm offensive"
Star rating for The charm offensive
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
"Ever since he was a kid, Dev Deshpande has believed in fairy tales, and he has spent his career crafting them for the reality dating show Ever After. As the most successful producer in the franchise's history, Dev always scripts the perfect love story for his contestants, even as his own love life crashes and burns off-screen. That is, until the show casts disgraced tech wunderkind Charlie Winshaw as its star. Charlie is far from the romantic Prince...
Book cover for "Check, please!"
Star rating for Check, please!
Author:
Series:
Check please! volume 1.
Average Rating:
4.7 stars
Description:
Eric Bittle ('Bitty') may be a former junior figure skating champion, vlogger extraordinaire, and very talented amateur pâtissier, but being a freshman on the Samwell University hockey team is a whole new challenge. It is nothing like co-ed club hockey back in Georgia. First of all? There's checking (anything that hinders the player with possession of the puck, ranging from a stick check all the way to a physical sweep). And then there is Jack--his...
Book cover for "The chosen"
Star rating for The chosen
Author:
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
A baseball game between Jewish schools is the catalyst that starts a bitter rivalry between two boys and their fathers.
Book cover for "Circe"
Star rating for Circe
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Description:
Follows Circe, the banished witch daughter of Helios, as she hones her powers and interacts with famous mythological beings before a conflict with one of the most vengeful Olympians forces her to choose between the worlds of the gods and mortals.
Book cover for "The city of brass"
Star rating for The city of brass
Series:
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
A "historical fantasy in which a young con artist in eighteenth century Cairo discovers she's the last descendant of a powerful family of djinn healers. With the help of an outcast immortal warrior and a rebellious prince, she must claim her magical birthright in order to prevent a war that threatens to destroy the entire djinn kingdom"--
Book cover for "Conventionally yours"
Star rating for Conventionally yours
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"LGBTQIA+ ROMCOM Conrad Stewart and Alden Parks are enemies, and that's the way it's always been. But when they're stuck together on a cross-country road trip to the biggest fan convention of their lives, the competition takes a backseat as unexpected feelings blossom. Yet each boy has a reason why they have to win the upcoming con tournament and neither is willing to let emotion get in the way-even if it means giving up their one chance at something...
Book cover for "A court of thorns and roses"
Star rating for A court of thorns and roses
Series:
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Description:
"Dragged to a treacherous magical land she only knows about from stories, Feyre discovers that her captor is not an animal, but Tamlin, a High Lord of the faeries. As her feelings toward him transform from hostility to a fiery passion, the threats against the faerie lands grow. Feyre must fight to break an ancient curse, or she will lose Tamlin forever"--
Book cover for "The cruel prince"
Star rating for The cruel prince
Author:
Series:
Folk of the air volume 1.
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Description:
Jude was seven years old when her parents were murdered and she and her two sisters were stolen away to live in the treacherous High Court of Faerie. Ten years later, Jude wants nothing more than to belong there, despite her mortality. But many of the fey despise humans. Especially Prince Cardan, the youngest and wickedest son of the High King. To win a place at the Court, she must defy him - and face the consequences.
Book cover for "Daisy Jones & the Six"
Star rating for Daisy Jones & the Six
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
"Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go-Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it's the rock and roll she loves most. By the time she's twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things. Another band getting noticed is The Six, led by the brooding Billy Dunne....