As someone too fond of both alliteration and scouring publisher’s catalogs, Monday is the day I list some of the upcoming books I’m most looking forward to! And it being Pride Month, these will be skewed even more heavily than usual in the direction of queer lit.

Thus!

Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Queer Protagonists
Published on: 18th June 2019
Goodreads

There is a Wild Man who lives in the deep quiet of Greenhollow, and he listens to the wood. Tobias, tethered to the forest, does not dwell on his past life, but he lives a perfectly unremarkable existence with his cottage, his cat, and his dryads.
When Greenhollow Hall acquires a handsome, intensely curious new owner in Henry Silver, everything changes. Old secrets better left buried are dug up, and Tobias is forced to reckon with his troubled past—both the green magic of the woods, and the dark things that rest in its heart.

Tor seem to be publishing more and more queer titles in the last few years, and I couldn’t be more delighted. Silver in the Wood first came to my attention when it was included in the Tor.com Publishing 2019 Debut Sampler. I picked up the sampler because it included excerpts of a few titles I was already interested in – Gideon the Ninth and Monster of Elendhaven are two I’m particularly pining for – and of course I took the chance to check out the other titles. Silver in the Wood grabbed me immediately as a uniquely beautiful story, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it!

All of Us with Wings by Michelle Ruiz Keil
Genres: Queer Protagonists
Representation: PoC, Queer Protagonists
Published on: 18th June 2019
Goodreads

Michelle Ruiz Keil's #OwnVoices debut is a literary YA fantasy about love, found family, and healing--an ode to post-punk San Francisco through the eyes of a Mexican American girl.
Seventeen-year-old Xochi is on her own in San Francisco, running from a painful past. On a visit to Golden Gate Park, she meets Pallas, a precocious twelve-year-old with a rockstar family that lives in one of the city's storybook Victorian mansions. Xochi accepts a position as Pallas's live-in governess and quickly becomes part of the band's household, fascinated by their free-love philosophy and the happy calm that balances out their glamorous music personas.
But on the night of the Vernal Equinox, as a concert afterparty rages in the house below, Xochi and Pallas perform a pagan ritual that unintentionally summons a pair of ancient creatures devoted to righting the wrongs of Xochi's adolescence. She'd do anything to preserve her new life, but the nightmares of her past are never far behind: the mother who abandoned her, the man who betrayed her, and the loving grandmother whose death left Xochi alone in the world.
With the creatures determined to exact vengeance on those who've hurt her, no one in Xochi's life is safe--not the family she's chosen, nor the one she left behind.

I have been waiting for this book for – a year? AT LEAST. It sounds reminiscent of Francesca Lia Block’s Weetzie Bat books, except with a bisexual Latinx main character and even more magic! I mean, come on. How can you not be coveting this???

The Affair of the Mysterious Letter by Alexis Hall
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Secondary World Fantasy
Representation: Queer Protagonists
Published on: 18th June 2019
Goodreads

In this charming, witty, and weird fantasy novel, Alexis Hall pays homage to Sherlock Holmes with a new twist on those renowned characters.

Upon returning to the city of Khelathra-Ven after five years fighting a war in another universe, Captain John Wyndham finds himself looking for somewhere to live, and expediency forces him to take lodgings at 221b Martyrs Walk. His new housemate is Ms. Shaharazad Haas, a consulting sorceress of mercurial temperament and dark reputation.

When Ms. Haas is enlisted to solve a case of blackmail against one of her former lovers, Miss Eirene Viola, Captain Wyndham finds himself drawn into a mystery that leads him from the salons of the literary set to the drowned back-alleys of Ven and even to a prison cell in lost Carcosa. Along the way he is beset by criminals, menaced by pirates, molested by vampires, almost devoured by mad gods, and called upon to punch a shark.

But the further the companions go in pursuit of the elusive blackmailer, the more impossible the case appears. Then again, in Khelathra-Ven reality is flexible, and the impossible is Ms. Haas' stock-in-trade.

This one sounds like an incredible amount of fun, with plenty of weirdness to keep things interesting. I’m pretty indifferent to Sherlock and the various re-imaginings of him, but this doesn’t sound very Arthur Conan Doyle to me – wars with other universes? Vampires? Shark-punching?! Even if the mystery doesn’t hook me, I think everything else about it will!

That’s it for now! (I mean, I could go on, but if I share every book on my dying-to-read list, what would I post about next week?) Do you have any of these pre-ordered? What other books are you most looking forward to?

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