This list is a small selection of GLBT fiction, including some older classics and more recent successes both critical and commercial. Many authors included here have written other excellent works of fiction. Other recommended authors include: Ann Bannon, Christopher Bram, Stacey D'Erasmo, Jean Genet, Katherine Forrest, Ellen Hart, Andrew Holleran, Christopher Isherwood, Audre Lorde, Carson McCullers, Claire McNab, Isabel Miller, Ethan Mordden, Jane Rule, Sarah Schulman, Tom Spanbauer, Colm Toibin, Patricia Nell Warren and John Weir.
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Call me by your name / |
In this warm, sensual novel set during an Italian summer, a young man falls for one of his father's graduate students and experiences all the exquisite pains and joys of first love. |
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Bastard out of Carolina / |
Bone, an abused girl growing up in poverty in the rural South, takes shelter and inspiration from the women of her family in this heart-wrenching and largely autobiographical novel. |
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Aquamarine / |
Three different versions of Olympic swimmer Jesse Austin's life play out, each based on different decisions she makes in her romantic life after winning the silver medal at the age of 17 in 1968. |
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Giovanni's room / |
A young African American who is engaged to be married falls in love with an Italian waiter in Paris and struggles with his sexual identity. |
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Regeneration / |
The first book in a trilogy, Barker's acclaimed novel deals with the treatment of shell-shocked soldiers during World War I, centering on poet Siegfried Sassoon. |
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Rubyfruit jungle / |
Molly Bolt is the feisty and courageous protagonist in this classic lesbian bildungsroman. |
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The hours / |
Drawing inspiration from Virginia Woolf's life and her novel Mrs. Dalloway, Cunningham tells the haunting stories of a group of contemporary characters. |
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Hood : a novel / |
When Cara dies in a car crash, Pen is left to cope with a secret widowhood. This novel follows Pen through the week following Cara's death, as she grieves and strives to put together a new life. |
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Middlesex / |
Calliope/Cal's gender identity is contested from birth, but Eugenides' novel transcends his character's hermaphroditism to embrace universal themes such as belonging and displacement in this warm-hearted multigenerational tale of a Greek-American family. |
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Plays well with others / |
Young Hartley leaves the South for the Big Apple to make it as a writer in the early 1980s. There he falls in with a carefree bohemian community of artists struggling to adapt to a deadly new disease. |
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Just as I am : a novel / |
In his bold and moving portrait of contemporary black life, Harris tackles such issues as bisexuality, AIDS and racism. |
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The price of salt / |
A young set designer and a divorced mother fall in love in 1950s New York City. As they travel across the country their relationship blooms, but discovery of the true nature of their relationship by others could alter their lives. |
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The line of beauty : a novel / |
Nick Guest, a young Henry James scholar and Oxford graduate, is temporarily installed in the home of a wealthy classmate where he is introduced to London's political and cultural elite against a backdrop of 1980s excess. |
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Putting on the Ritz / |
Keenan, writer/producer of television's Frasier, focuses his hilarious Wodehousian knack for satire on the business tycoons of New York high society. |
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Tales of the city / |
This addictive and operatic novel revolves around the tenants who occupy an apartment building on Barbery Lane in a vibrant 1970's San Francisco. |
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Alternatives to sex / |
In this highly contemporary, post-9/11 comedy, McCauley satirizes one man's quest to have it all: true love, good sex, and great real estate. |
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Confessions of a mask. |
The first novel dealing with male homosexuality in modern Japanese literature to gain both artistic recognition and wide popularity, Confessions is a fierce and semi-autobiographical portrait of a young man coming to terms with his sexuality. |
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Was : a novel / |
In a haunting reimagining of Oz, Dorothy Gael is a survivor of abuse on the Kansas frontier. Meanwhile, a modern-day actor dying of AIDS seeks treatment from a psychiatrist who knew Dorothy at the end of her life. |
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Coffee will make you black / |
The civil rights movement serves as a backdrop in this delightful coming of age story in which Stevie struggles to create her own racial and sexual identity. |
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Tipping the Velvet. |
This historical novel is a lush and sensual tour of Victorian London, with our guide Nancy, who is looking for independence, identity, and ultimately, love. |
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A boy's own story / |
White's highly autobiographical novel of a boy's adolescence in the 1950s is a classic coming of age novel, celebrated for its elegant prose. |
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Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. |
The surprisingly humorous story of an adopted daughter struggling to accept her sexuality while coming to terms with her extremely religious mother. |
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Memoirs of Hadrian ; and, Reflections on the composition of Memoirs of Hadrian / |
In this landmark of historical fiction, the Emperor Hadrian shares reminiscences of his life with his nephew Marcus Aurelius, creating a self-portrait that captures the decadence, cruelty, and beauty of ancient Rome. |