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Self-Acceptance and Identity Affirmations for LGBT+ Teens (Ages 12-18)

#1 New Release in LGBTQ+ Issues, Maturing, and Civil and Human Rights

A positive affirmations book with invaluable information for all queer teens

Inspirational and motivational quotes and information. Queer Cheer provides advice and words of wisdom encouraging teens to find--and keep--their inner rainbow. Covering topics relevant to lgbt+ teens today, this instructional book includes everything ranging from bullies and discrimination to acceptance and advocating change.

Illustrated words of encouragement from a friend. Authors Eric Rosswood and Jodie Anders know what it's like to be a teen struggling with identity and societal norms. That's why they're fighting to counter the negativity facing queer teens now and in the future. Queer Cheer includes many teen voices offering tips, advice, related firsthand experiences, and other valuable knowledge.

Inside Queer Cheer, find:

• Affirmations and words of wisdom focusing on areas specific to LGBT+ teens
• Thought-provoking questions that lead to self-acceptance and encourage positive change
• Illustrations and doodles that inspire, empower, and strengthen the hearts and minds of queer teens

Readers of LGBTQIA+ books for young adults such as This Book Is Gay, All Boys Aren't Blue, or The ABC's of LGBT+ will love Queer Cheer. Also don't miss this multi-award-winning author's other books including Journey to Parenthood, We Make It Better, and The Ultimate Guide for Gay Dads.

From the National Book Award-longlisted author of The Need comes an extraordinary novel about a wife and mother who--after losing her job to AI--undergoes a procedure that renders her undetectable to surveillance...but at what cost?

In a city addled by climate change and populated by intelligent robots called "hums," May loses her job to artificial intelligence. In a desperate bid to resolve her family's debt and secure their future for another few months, she becomes a guinea pig in an experiment that alters her face so it cannot be recognized by surveillance.

Seeking some reprieve from her recent hardships and from her family's addiction to their devices, she splurges on passes that allow them three nights' respite inside the Botanical Garden: a rare green refuge where forests, streams, and animals flourish. But her insistence that her son, daughter, and husband leave their devices at home proves far more fraught than she anticipated, and the lush beauty of the Botanical Garden is not the balm she hoped it would be. When her children come under threat, May is forced to put her trust in a hum of uncertain motives as she works to restore the life of her family.

Written in taut, urgent prose, Hum is a work of speculative fiction that unflinchingly explores marriage, motherhood, and selfhood in a world compromised by global warming and dizzying technological advancement, a world of both dystopian and utopian possibilities. As New York Times bestselling author Jeff VanderMeer says, "Helen Phillips, in typical bravura fashion, has found a way to make visible uncomfortable truths about our present by interrogating the near-future."

The new, magical dungeon-adventure fantasy series from the author of Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Seeking to fulfill a promise to a childhood friend, Will Serfort enters Regarden Magical Academy with the goal of making it to the top of the magical world. There's just one problem: he can't use magic! Will his sword skills be the key to unlocking his true potential?

THE MAGEBLADE

Regarden is left reeling after a host of monsters crashes the Terminalia festival. With the Magia Vander having exhausted all their magic repairing the Great Barrier, Will and the remaining mages are the Tower's last line of defense. Yet this enemy may be too much even for Will...unless the Icemaiden can give him the edge he needs.

"Molly is one of the greatest young female characters I've had the luck of reading since I picked up Joy Williams's The Quick and the Dead back in 2000 . . . I TRULY LOVE THIS BOOK!!!!!!" --Gillian Flynn, Gillian Flynn Books

"Part Cruddy, part otherworldly hellion parable, Holly Wilson's Kittentits is a comet ripping through a Walmart, a carnival ride launching into the sun. Molly's voice is raw and true, and this book is fun as shit. Kittentits is unforgettable." --Lindsay Hunter, author of Hot Springs Drive

A feral, heart-busting, absurdist debut about Molly, a rambunctious and bawdy ten-year-old searching for friendship and ghosts.

It's 1992, and ten-year-old Molly is tired of living in the fire-rotted, nun-haunted House of Friends: a Semi-Cooperative Living Community of Peace Faith(s) in Action with her formerly blind dad and their grieving housemate Evelyn. But when twenty-three-year-old Jeanie, a dirt bike-riding ex-con with a questionable past, moves in, she quickly becomes the object of Molly's adoration. She might treat Molly terribly, but they both have dead moms and potty mouths, so naturally Molly can't seem to leave Jeanie alone.

When Jeanie fakes her own death in a hot-air balloon accident, Molly runs away to Chicago with just a stolen credit card and a sweet pair of LA Gear Heatwaves to meet her pen pal Demarcus and hunt down Jeanie. What follows is a race to New Year's Eve, as Molly and Demarcus plan a séance to reunite with their lost moms in front of a live audience at the World's Fair.

A surrealist and bold take on the American coming-of-age novel, Holly Wilson's debut is about the interstices of loss, grief, and friendship.

This celebration of individuality and inclusivity reminds young readers that what makes them different is what makes them special.

In this inclusive and heartwarming picture book by award-winning writer Jonathan Merritt, Henry Higgleston struggles with being deemed an oddball by the other kids at school. But when his fabulous gay uncle arrives for a weekend with his pup Jimmy Chew in tow, Guncle is on a mission to teach Henry that what makes him different makes him special. This joyful story that celebrates family and self-acceptance will make every kid feel seen and loved.

Preorder now and receive the gorgeous DELUXE LIMITED EDITION while supplies last―featuring stenciled sprayed edges, as well as exclusive special design features. This must-have special edition is only available on a limited first print run while supplies last in the US and Canada only.

The Cruel Prince meets Ninth House in this dangerously romantic dark academia fantasy, where a lost heiress must infiltrate an arcane society and live with the vampire she suspects killed her family and kidnapped her sister.

It began long before my time, but something has always hunted our family.

Orphaned heiress Kidan Adane grew up far from the arcane society she was born into, where human bloodlines gain power through vampire companionship. When her sister, June, disappears, Kidan is convinced a vampire stole her--the very vampire bound to their family, the cruel yet captivating Susenyos Sagad.

To find June, Kidan must infiltrate the elite Uxlay University--where students study to ensure peaceful coexistence between humans and vampires and inherit their family legacies. Kidan must survive living with Susenyos--even as he does everything he can to drive her away. It doesn't matter that Susenyos's wickedness speaks to Kidan's own violent nature and tempts her to surrender to a life of darkness. She must find her sister and kill Susenyos at all costs.

When a murder mirroring June's disappearance shakes Uxlay, Kidan sinks further into the ruthless underworld of vampires, risking her very soul. There she discovers a centuries-old threat--and June could be at the center of it. To save her sister, Kidan must bring Uxlay to its knees and either break free from the horrors of her own actions or embrace the dark entanglements of love--and the blood it requires.

A unique collaboration from two of America's leading artists that explores the fascinating and hidden history of the plant world.

In this witty, deeply original book, the renowned novelist Jamaica Kincaid offers an ABC of the plants that define our world and reveals the often brutal history behind them.

Kara Walker, one of America's greatest visual artists, illustrates each entry with provocative, brilliant, enthralling, many-layered watercolors.

There has never been a book like An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children--so inventive, surprising, and telling about what our gardens reveal.

When the world is at war.
No one is safe.
Not even the gods.

Apollo would hide with Hyacinth and hold him until the sun burned out.

But that is not their destiny.

When Ares arrives announcing a turn of the tides and war thundering towards Niria, Apollo and Hyacinth take on a journey to save everyone from Zeus' wrath.

But when things don't go as planned, they might destroy themselves instead.

In this third installment of the Apollo Ascending series, romance, fate, adventure, and tragedy intermingle into an exhilarating story of loyalty and sacrifice.

A triumphant family story and sharply observed exploration of privilege, identity, and love in all its forms, following four estranged siblings whose lives collide in the lead-up to a family wedding, when new clues surface about their long-missing father

"Truly a great American novel that does the very best of what fiction can do: sink us into other people's lives, show us new worlds, make our hearts pound and our breath catch. Superb." --Julia Phillips

April, May, June, and July Barber don't have much in common anymore. An upcoming family wedding will place the four siblings in the same room for the first time in years. But shortly before, when April spots their father, who went missing while serving overseas a decade ago, their reunion becomes entirely more complicated.

While the siblings' search for the truth about their father forces them back into each other's lives, it also intensifies their private dramas. April loves her husband, but seeks excitement outside their marriage. May had big dreams for the future, but she's still stuck living at home. June is eager to marry her girlfriend, so why does she need a drink at every wedding-related event? And then there's baby brother July, whose unrequited love for his straight roommate has him more confused than ever.

Confronting the past together, April, May, June, and July will find not only answers about their father, but new romance, hope, and understanding as they learn to embrace the beauty of their shared history.

The story behind this novel by one of twentieth-century Britain's great poets and men of letters is nearly as remarkable as the book itself. Not long ago, a friend just returned from America told the author that he had read in the Spender manuscript collection of the University of Texas a novel called The Temple and dated 1929. Stephen Spender immediately obtained a copy of his old draft manuscript--admired in the early thirties by his London publisher, but remaining unpublished because of the sensitivity of the contents and fear of libel actions--and read it with astonished pleasure. He then rewrote it in part, taking care not to diminish its ardent youthfulness, its innocence and cynicism, and the immediacy of its view of the last days of Weimar Germany, on the eve of Hitler's rise to power.

It is, as one might expect, an autobiographical novel. Vividly present along with the protagonist, and not much disguised, are the two other members of the famous triumvirate Auden-Spender-Isherwood. Here are the experiences of a twenty-year-old Oxford poet on vacation in Hamburg, who then travels down the Rhine with two companions. We see his response to the bronzed young Germans--the Children of the Sun--their friendships, parties, sexuality, naturism (especially their cult of the naked body), and all the gauche hedonism that was soon to vanish under the Nazis.

Clearly The Temple is a novel of historical and literary importance. But it is, as well, an entertaining and moving story of a young man's awakening.

A searing novel about being a wife, a mother, and an artist, and how marriage makes liars of us all--from the author of Very Cold People and 300 Arguments

A nuclear family can destroy a woman artist. I'd always known that. But I'd never suspected how easily I'd fall into one anyway.

When Jane, an aspiring writer, meets filmmaker John Bridges, they both want the same things: to be in love, to live a successful, creative life, and to be happy. When they marry, Jane believes she has found everything she was looking for, including--a few years later--all the attendant joys and labors of motherhood. But it's not long until Jane finds herself subsumed by John's ambitions, whims, and ego; in short, she becomes a wife.

As Jane's career flourishes, their marriage starts to falter. Throughout the upheavals of family life, Jane tries to hold it all together. That is, until John leaves her.

Liars is a tour de force of wit and rage, telling the blistering story of a marriage as it burns to the ground, and of a woman rising inexorably from its ashes.

A year in the life of the unforgettable Catalina Ituralde, a wickedly wry and heartbreakingly vulnerable student at an elite college, forced to navigate an opaque past, an uncertain future, tragedies on two continents, and the tantalizing possibilities of love and freedom

When Catalina is admitted to Harvard, it feels like the fulfillment of destiny: a miracle child escapes death in Latin America, moves to Queens to be raised by her undocumented grandparents, and becomes one of the chosen. But nothing is simple for Catalina, least of all her own complicated, contradictory, ruthlessly probing mind. Now a senior, she faces graduation to a world that has no place for the undocumented; her sense of doom intensifies her curiosities and desires. She infiltrates the school's elite subcultures--internships and literary journals, posh parties and secret societies--which she observes with the eye of an anthropologist and an interloper's skepticism: she is both fascinated and repulsed. Craving a great romance, Catalina finds herself drawn to a fellow student, an actual budding anthropologist eager to teach her about the Latin American world she was born into but never knew, even as her life back in Queens begins to unravel. And every day, the clock ticks closer to the abyss of life after graduation. Can she save her family? Can she save herself? What does it mean to be saved?

Brash and daring, part campus novel, part hagiography, part pop song, Catalina is unlike any coming-of-age novel you've ever read--and Catalina, bright and tragic, circled by a nimbus of chaotic energy, driven by a wild heart, is a character you will never forget.

Two souls bound together.
But one thing threatens to tear them apart.
Jealousy.

While tensions build and fates shift, Hyacinth and Apollo seek Zephyrus.
God of the west wind.
Well connected among low deities.
And Hyacinth's previous lover.

Amid political schemes and personal struggles, Apollo and Hyacinth tumble through a world verging on war.

But as jealousy flares and secrets come to light, all their careful planning may burn to ash.

This fast-paced sequel to A Veil of Gods and Kings is full of romance and unexpected twists set in a dark, magical world.

A stirring, unsparing debut novel about black life in Philadelphia and the struggle to build intimate connections through the eyes of a struggling ex-Army grad student, from the "extraordinary [and] insightful" author of Sink (New York Times Book Review).

After a deployment in the Iraq War dually defined by threat and interminable mundanity, Joseph Thomas is fighting to find his footing. Now a doctoral student at The University, and an EMS worker at the hospital in North Philly, he encounters round the clock friends and family from his past life and would-be future at his job, including contemporaries of his estranged father, a man he knows little about, serving time at Holmesburg prison for the statutory rape of his then-teenage mother. Meanwhile, he and his best friend Ray, a fellow vet, are alternatingly bonding over and struggling with their shared experience and return to civilian life, locked in their own rhythms of lust, heartbreak, and responsibility.

Balancing the joys and frustrations of single fatherhood, his studies, and ceaseless shifts at the hospital as he becomes closer than he ever imagined to his father, Joseph tries to articulate vernacular understandings of the sociopolitical struggles he recounts as participant-observer at home, against the assumptions of his friends and colleagues. GOD BLESS YOU, OTIS SPUNKMEYER is a powerful examination of every day black life--of health and sex, race and punishment, and the gaps between our desires and our politics.

A striking literary memoir of genderfluidity, class, masculinity, and the American Southwest that captures the author's experience coming of age in a Tucson, Arizona, trailer park.

Newly arrived in the Sonoran Desert, eleven-year-old Zoë's world is one of giant beetles, thundering javelinas, and gnarled paloverde trees. With the family's move to Cactus Country RV Park, Zoë has been given a fresh start and a new, shorter haircut. Although Zoë doesn't have the words to express it, he experiences life as a trans boy--and in Cactus Country, others begin to see him as a boy, too. Here, Zoë spends hot days chasing shade and freight trains with an ever-rotating pack of sunburned desert kids, and nights fending off his own questions about the body underneath his baggy clothes.

As Zoë enters adolescence, he must reckon with the sexism, racism, substance abuse, and violence endemic to the working class Cactus Country men he's grown close to, whose hard masculinity seems as embedded in the desert landscape as the cacti sprouting from parched earth. In response, Zoë adopts an androgynous style and new pronouns, but still cannot escape what it means to live in a gendered body, particularly when a fraught first love destabilizes their sense of self. But beauty flowers in this desert, too. Zoë persists in searching for answers that can't be found in Cactus Country, dreaming of a day they might leave the park behind to embrace whatever awaits beyond.

Equal parts harsh and tender, Cactus Country is an invitation for readers to consider how we find our place in a world that insists on stark binaries, and a precisely rendered journey of self-determination that will resonate with anyone who's ever had to fight to be themself.

Rakesfall is a groundbreaking, standalone science fiction epic about two souls bound together from here until the ends of time, from the author of The Saint of Bright Doors.

Some stories take more than one lifetime to tell. There are wrongs that echo through the ages, friendships that outpace the claws of death, loves that leave their mark on civilization, and promises that nothing can break. This is one such story.

Annelid and Leveret met as children in the middle of the Sri Lankan civil war. They found each other in a torn-up nation, peering through propaganda to grasp a deeper truth. And in a demon-haunted wood, another act of violence linked them and propelled their souls on a journey throughout the ages. No world can hold them, no life can bind them, and they'll never leave each other behind.

Tracing two souls through endless lifetimes, Rakesfall is a virtuosic exploration of what stories can be. As Annelid and Leveret reincarnate ever deeper into the future, they will chase the edge of human possibility, in a dark science fiction epic unlike anything you've read before.