HOW QUEER BOOKSHOPS CHANGED THE WORLD, worthy thesis defended with passion

HOW QUEER BOOKSHOPS CHANGED THE WORLD
A.J. WEST
Oneworld Publications (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

The Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers: Non-Fiction For the week ending June 30, 2026

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: For over a century, LGBTQ+ bookshops have been the unsung heroes of queer liberation

Home not only to books but chaotic community noticeboards, vicious rescue cats and countless meet cutes, queer bookshops have always been more than just bookshops, offering friendship, solidarity and sanctuary.

Traveling the world—Shakespeare and Company in Paris, Gay’s the Word in London, the Oscar Wilde Bookshop in New York—A. J. West explores the remarkable history of these bookstores. Tracing their evolution from under-the-counter operations to beloved out-and-proud institutions, West reveals how the queer bookshop stood at the vanguard of LGBTQ+ rights, offering support and vital information through the AIDS crisis and bringing the fight to Section 28 and book bans.

A powerful testament not only to bookshops but to the courage of queer booksellers, from Sylvia Beach hiding books from the Nazis in laundry baskets to Craig Rodwell facing off against the police at the Stonewall riots, A. J. West celebrates the shops and booksellers that brought queer literature and lives into the mainstream.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I'd give it a perfect rating if I hadn't felt so put-upon with the opening chapters speed-lining queer history.

It was my emotional reaction. I'm not wrong; I literally cannot be wrong about my feelings.

It's necessary to put not-queer, or new to their history queer, readers in the picture of what these trailblazing heroically brave people did and what they risked for us all to have access to queer stories. It is breathtaking, and eye-opening, and quite honestly shaming for those of us not willing or able to stand up against Authority for the good of all.

It is more clear to me than ever before that the urgent project of the authoritarians trying to ban queer books, the tech scum trying to make all knowledge available only on their say-so and the seeker's ability to pay any vig "They" choose to demand, and the ruling class's desire to keep you as stupid as possible intertwine like snakes on Medusa's head. The underknown prophet of this future we now live in, Sinclair Lewis, wrote: "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying the cross."

Look around you...that was prophecy, not fiction.

Author AJ writes about the past in this book. It could, one day soon, feel like an elegy for les jadis if you and I are not very careful and very intentional in our actions in November 2026. It's fragile, this thing called Liberty, and it's always been very, very unpopular with with the ruling class. We-the-people have already seen how much control "They" want after women's bodily autonomy was stripped away from them in the US. Revoltingly it was enabled by a quisling woman. All of these struggles, legal battles, and societal shifts are under long-term and well-funded attack. How I wish more people had listened when Hilary Clinton spoke that truth.

Author AJ details the harms this determined regressive minority causes with seeming impunity in his chapters on the role of AIDS amelioration and drag-queen story hour bannings. Restraining the flow of often life-saving information to those in desperate need of it, and excluding people "They" don't like such as gender-nonconforming people, are terrible actions on their face. The true evil doesn't announce itself. It unfolds as Author AJ shows us consequences.


The best kind of non-fiction writing tells you a story that evokes emotional responses from the reader. I've seldom been more emotional in my response to a true story that does not involve a murder. Author AJ deserves all the kudos there are for bringing a storyteller's constructive attention to this crisis in our body politic.

THAT'S WHAT FRIENDS ARE FOR, aaarrrgh earworm earworm!!

THAT'S WHAT FRIENDS ARE FOR
WADE ROUSE
MIRA Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$28.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: In this poignant and hilarious story inspired by TV’s beloved The Golden Girls, bestselling author Wade Rouse celebrates love, aging, finding your people, and the art of impeccably timed one-liners.

Theodore Copeland has created a fabulous life in the desert oasis of Palm Springs, where he shares a fabulous pink mid-century home with three fabulous friends: Barry, a former actor still clinging to his youth, his hair, and the memory of the dream role that killed his career; Ron, an uprooted Christian from the Midwest with a big heart but no one to give it to; Sid, who, after coming out late in life, has never found love. Teddy is the caustic, unspoken leader of “The Golden Gays”—the foursome’s monthly drag tribute to The Golden Girls. Despite their foibles and bickering, they have turned their golden years into a golden era.

But the harmony of their desert enclave becomes a carousel of emotional baggage when Teddy’s estranged sister, Trudy, shows up on their doorstep, her dramatic teenage granddaughter in tow. While Teddy keeps Trudy at arm’s length, she manages to wheedle her way into the lives of the Golden Gays, until the real reason for her visit is revealed and the secrets they’ve all been keeping from each other unravel faster than a hastily stitched hemline.

A novel that gives thanks to “old” friends, That's What Friends Are For proves that while family may be the tie that binds, it’s the chosen family that truly keeps us together.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Four older...old, "of a certain age" is such an absurd weasel-wording...gay guys live in Zsa Zsa Gabor's Palm Springs home, in the absence of other places to be as they live out their invisibility, bond to each other the way the Golden Girls did, and perform as a drag troup reenacting episodes of the show.

You need to be charmed by the premise to enjoy the book. I was; I did.

It was more true to the spirit of the show than I expected. In novel form, that meant packing in a lot of trauma recall, a lot of wistful nostalgia, a lot of regrets for pasts "misspent" in all the ways people do that, in not a lot of space. The gestalt of these four charmers is just *chef's kiss* and the repartee flows like Veuve Cliquot from a marabou mule. (Zsa Zsa is, after all, the former owner of their house.)

If no one is currently in development talks for this book it will utterly stun me. Heartstopper for the teens, Heated Rivalry for the horny adults, That's What Friends Are For representing the generation that fought these stupid necessary battles for all y'all that seem to've been erased from the collective memory. *ahem* I meant to say "the seasoned citizens." Of course I did.

Celebrating found family, talking honestly about what life looks like as "The End" hoves into view without crowding you (yet), flexing the wicked-humor muscles developed from years of deflecting nastiness...it's a grown person's happy place, this. Drama arises because humans create drama the same way we breathe—automatically—but it never feels calculated, like Author Rouse said "let me rile these queens up now" while twirling his mustachios. I bought into the dynamics he built, accepted the moments when the men had trouble dealing with things as natural and inevitable. Author Rouse uses the conflicts the way a good therapist urges one to use them: get to know your friend better, get to know yourself better, apply kindness and acceptance like the balm it truly is, and move on.

A big issue in the story is staying stuck. It's a huge issue in almost everyone's life, from what I can tell. It's good to see it addressed openly, with candor, and in such a humorous setting. (I admit I want to bash Barry for chasing his long-past youth. Grow up!!) What Author Rouse has done is deliver a warm-hearted, clear-eyed, just sentimental enough look at the unforgiving terminal illness of Getting Old, in a relatable and enjoyable visible way denied to queer folk by our heteronormative culture.

Kudos! More soon? Please?

THE QUICKSAND THEATRE COMPANY, an entry in the loose Eidolonia series

THE QUICKSAND THEATRE COMPANY (Eidolonia series)
MOLLY RINGLE
Central Avenue Publishing (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: A runaway witch, a cursed actor, and a magical theatre troupe full of sequins and secrets—this cozy, queer fantasy takes the stage with romance, rebellion, and fae-fueled drama.

When Vai Delvecchio leaves their home in the night, fleeing a family scandal, they knock on the door of the least likely but most alluring of sanctuaries: the traveling Quicksand Theatre Company. Actor Leo Takahashi—a.k.a. Leonidas the Obstreperous—grants Vai a bed in his caravan in exchange for Vai’s magical assistance in theatrical productions. Vai finds their respectable, dignified life transformed into a whimsical world of sequins, makeup, and irreverent comedy sketches.

In the caravan’s close quarters, it’s inevitable that Leo and Vai grow curious about each other, a feeling that blossoms into mutual desire. But trouble waits in the wings. Vai has to face the fallout of their family’s mistakes, and Leo guards a somber secret: soon, an unbreakable deal he made with a malevolent faery will take effect, destroying his freedom and potentially his life.

Yet it may be in the darkest lairs of the fae realm, and in the painful longing of separation, that Vai and Leo each find the truth that makes them whole again.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Nonbinary magic-practicing person in an ocean of really hot water falls for queer performer guy with a *major* secret that keeps him from showing how reciprocal their interest in him is. Set, as so many stories seem to be, in a theater company, a world of playacting, dissembling, and self-invention, it takes its time getting Vai the enby character and Leo our queer hero together.

Too long. It's dragged out to explore the world, the fae's roles in human events, Vai's terrible choices vis-à-vis their family, Leo's errrmmm, uhhh, equally terrible decisions of a very different sort. It's a found-family narrative that one spends the entire read dreading the end of because every single one of the Quicksand Theatre Company's participants very, very badly needs the protection as well as the support of the whole company.

It's hard to relax, honestly, with the Sword of Damocles hanging by a fraying strand from a horse-hair wig. It was a good narrative choice, in other words; but it went on that small fraction too long and wore out my readerly patience. I was quite happy pnce the pace picked up in about the last third of the narrative. I was reading the last 10% at two in the morning; exhausted when I got up, was pretty pleased with the resolution presented.

I'm told this story shares a storyverse with other tales by the author. I never felt that level of mildly bewildered exclusion. I intend this as a compliment. Too often the shared background of a series obtrudes with major points feeling obscure if one is not already acquainted with the rest of the world that's already built. I didn't feel that reading this story...yes, I could tell some characters must've been from somewhere else by their introduction or the responses to them, but what they did in the moment was complete and logical in the context of *this* story. It's a tough feat, and Author Ringle pulls it off.

Normalizing all facets of queerdom earns the book its fractional fifth star. I was utterly gruntled as I ran into characters from everywhere on my peoples' spectrum; this is something I will always round up on the curve for. I couldn't offer a full fifth star because "fae" is a four-letter word in my vocabulary and rhymes in my mind with "feh."

I ain't helpin' y'all with that one, do your own research. My word was this fun. I'm so very happy I got to read it!

VICTORIES GREATER THAN DEATH, well-deserved 2022 Locus Award for Best Young Adult Novel

VICTORIES GREATER THAN DEATH
CHARLIE JANE ANDERS
Tor Teen
$18.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Tina never worries about being ‘ordinary’—she doesn’t have to, since she’s known practically forever that she’s not just Tina Mains, average teenager and beloved daughter. She’s also the keeper of an interplanetary rescue beacon, and one day soon, it’s going to activate, and then her dreams of saving all the worlds and adventuring among the stars will finally be possible. Tina’s legacy, after all, is intergalactic—she is the hidden clone of a famed alien hero, left on Earth disguised as a human to give the universe another chance to defeat a terrible evil.

But when the beacon activates, it turns out that Tina’s destiny isn’t quite what she expected. Things are far more dangerous than she ever assumed. Luckily, Tina is surrounded by a crew she can trust, and her best friend Rachael, and she is still determined to save all the worlds. But first she’ll have to save herself.

Buckle up your seatbelt for this thrilling sci-fi adventure set against an intergalactic war from international bestselling author Charlie Jane Anders.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE AUTHOR. THANK YOU.

My Review: This is, hands down, the queerest YA book I've read.

I really could stop writing now with the injunction for you to go get a copy and read it before setting it loose into the library, the Little Free Library, the bus subway breakroom etc etc. Tina and her found families are urgently needed in a world where the ugliest, most hateful and judgmental people are launching their latest attack on progress, inclusion, and a better world.

Same as it ever was.

What the younger readers will learn from reading Aunt Charlie Jane's book is that there is a future, and it can look the way you'd like it to look...but you have to be willing to move outside your boundaries, you have to embrace your ability to make, find, and accept the world's wildness and surprises. Your efforts will pay off in proportion to your commitment to them.

How Author Charlie Jane accomplishes that is to take one teen girl, one best friend of teen girl, and hurl them into a cosmic battle of good against evil. Do you know a teenager...have you EVER known a teenager...who did not resonate like a struck bell to this plot? And then Author Charlie Jane shakes the soda bottle to fizz up the stakes by making everyone in the girls' expanded universe into some form of different, but without Othering them for the differences...after all, if the way you just are is somehow different from how I am, who says *I* get to decide that YOU are the Other?

This is a truth that permeates all Author Charlie Jane's work. It makes the banners and haters and deniers completely mental. Since I think making those sorts of people wildly uncomfortable is a very worthy cause, I want to support it wherever I can.

While I love a dense, richly textured world, I'm an old man and have been reading since before Author Charlie Jane was born, so I found the expository bits too frequent and a smidge too detailed for my reading pleasure to morph into joy. They seem a touch overdone for today's SF-savvy youth, if I'm honest; but that is a thing I'm happy to see because it means this book can be an onramp into SF for even the most innocent and unworldly young person.

Matching my expectations, then, was not her project...that was what she did with Even Greater Mistakes, her other work from the annus mirabilis that was her 2022...but speaking to her audience, to the future leaders and readers. This is a wonderful thing, an excellent project, and a top-quality execution of it.

Gift it. Read it yourself, then give it to all the young readers you know.