Queer SF - December 2025
December 1, 2025
Pearl Bound — Natalie G. Bergman
Genre: Gothic historical horror
Rep: Sapphic
She came to serve the rich. She awakened to burn them down.
In the waning days of the Gilded Age, Irish immigrant Eve Kelly accepts a coveted position at Greythorne, a mansion built on wealth, excess, and ruthless power. Behind its glittering façade, the Rennard family preys on the vulnerable—especially the women who serve them.
As Eve is drawn into the house’s seductive, dangerous orbit—and into a forbidden intimacy with the daughter of the family—she begins to uncover a legacy of violence hidden beneath chandeliers and silk.
But the house is not the only thing with a history.
Something ancient stirs in Eve’s blood—a power inherited from generations of women who survived by becoming something more than obedient. As predation tightens its grip, the servant they meant to consume becomes the reckoning they never saw coming.
Pearl Bound is a gothic historical horror novel steeped in female rage, class tension, queer desire, and the terrifying cost of autonomy.
Link: Goodreads
They Meet in Dreams — H.B. Wasiak
Genre: YA fantasy
Rep: MLM
It’s 1999, and Max Reid’s summer takes a strange turn when a boy in his dreams starts feeling way too real.
Seventeen-year-old Max seems to have it all—friends, attention, the kind of effortless charm that makes people look twice—but inside, his life feels hollow. He drifts through his days avoiding his mother’s meltdowns and going along with whatever life puts in front of him.
Everything changes when he starts dreaming of a boy named Andy.
Andy is nothing like anyone Max has ever met. He’s unguarded, honest, a little bit weird—the kind of person Max didn’t realize he’d been missing in his life. He makes Max feel truly seen.
Andy insists he isn’t just a dream, but a real person, sharing the dreams with Max. Max doesn’t believe him, of course. That would be insane. And yet, night after night, he escapes into that hidden world, forming a bond more vivid and intense than anything he experiences when he wakes up.
But the dreams are changing. Andy is hiding something. Whenever Max asks him to meet in real life, he refuses. He won’t explain why, leaving Max questioning everything, including his own sanity. Max is determined to prove Andy exists, because if the dreams end… what is he supposed to do with feelings for someone who might not be real at all?
And sooner or later, everybody wakes up.
Link: Goodreads
December 2, 2025
Skullrunner — Vyvre Argent
Genre: Fantasy
Rep: Sapphic
Series: Book 1 of The Godreaper Rebellions
The beginning of an epic fantasy series about sapphic pirates, a memory-stealing tyrant, and secrets hidden on the sea.
During the revolution, Commander Gavon slew the tyrannical god of memory and claimed his power. He then built the fair and democratic Golden Republic. But the Republic has terrible flaws, and anyone who fights for change might wake up one day with all memory of their identity stolen from them. Such a thing happened to pirate captain Cevette Zarcanzi. She plans to sail throughout the Seaward Isles, stealing memories trapped in physical form from the Republic’s secret archives, and burning them in hopes she might one day set her lost past free.
Evazina Gavon, the commander’s foster daughter, is an embodied fragment of the shattered soul of the goddess of death. Women like her, known as echoes, are feared and hated in the Golden Republic, and Commander Gavon has only kept her safe because the sacrifice of echoes is what fuels his memory magic. When she joins Cevette’s crew, Eva believes returning the memories to the citizens of the Golden Republic will lead them to speak out and peacefully remove her father from power. But, as Eva and Cevette sail to strange and remote islands, as their feelings for each other deepen, they discover that, to live freely, they must turn their ship around and fight.
Link: Goodreads
The Lightyears Between Us — Shannon K. English
Genre: YA science fiction
Rep: Sapphic
Seventeen-year-old noble Will Arrex and her classmate Paige Tarrant were destined to be bitter rivals. Where Will is ice cold and painfully poised—everything an Arrex should be—Tarrant is a firecracker, unafraid to speak her mind.
Every twenty-five years, students aboard the Eden Space Station are chosen by lottery to pilot the Laikas—a fleet of ships sent on exploratory missions, humanity’s last hope to find a habitable world. As the only daughter of a powerful politician, Will was not supposed to be one of them.
When Will and Tarrant wind up piloting Laika 15 together, their mutual hatred begins to thaw. But all seems lost when they discover the Eden’s darkest secret… Laika 15 was never meant to come home.
Trapped in the vastness of space on an impossible mission, Will and Paige must bridge the lightyears keeping them apart if they want to survive.
Link: Goodreads
This Brutal Moon — Bethany Jacobs
Genre: Science fiction
Rep: Queer
Series: Book 3 of The Kingdom Trilogy
Bethany Jacobs returns with the thrilling conclusion to The Kindom Trilogy that began with the Philip K. Dick Award–winning These Burning Stars, the debut epic space opera trilogy about revenge, power, and the price of legacy.
Violence has erupted across the Treble. The colony that Jun Ironway and Masar Hawks have fought to protect is now woefully compromised, and its people, unwilling to submit to tyranny once more, face a brutal fight for their lives and freedom.
In the midst of upheaval and rebellion, new enemies arise at every corner, including a familiar player who won’t let power slip through his fingers again. Not when he has every Kindom Hand under his heel. And whether he will be as bloody-minded as his predecessors remains to be seen.
As the quiet ones launch their attack and all hope seems lost, Cleric Chono looks to unlikely allies to fight a final battle for peace. But one crucial question remains: where is Six?
Link: Goodreads
We Will Rise Again — Karen Lord (ed.), Annalee Newitz (ed.), & Malka Ann Older (ed.)
Genre: Speculative anthology
Rep: Queer
From genre luminaries, esteemed organizers, and exciting new voices in fiction, an anthology of stories, essays, and interviews that offer transformative visions of the future, fantastical alternate worlds, and inspiration for the social justice movements of tomorrow.
In this collection, editors Karen Lord, Annalee Newitz, and Malka Older champion realistic, progressive social change using the speculative stories of writers across the world. Exploring topics ranging from disability justice and environmental activism to community care and collective worldbuilding, these imaginative pieces from writers such as NK Jemisin, Charlie Jane Anders, Alejandro Heredia, Sam J. Miller, Nisi Shawl, and Sabrina Vourvoulias center solidarity, empathy, hope, joy, and creativity.
Each story is grounded within a broader sociopolitical framework using essays and interviews from movement leaders, including adrienne maree brown and Walidah Imarisha, charting the future history of protest, revolutions, and resistance with the same zeal for accuracy that speculative writers normally bring to science and technology. Using the vehicle of ambitious storytelling, We Will Rise Again offers effective tools for organizing, an unflinching interrogation of the status quo, and a blueprint for prefiguring a different world.
Link: Goodreads
The Curse of the Cole Women — Marielle Thompson
Genre: Gothic fantasy
Rep: Queer
Three generations of women struggle with a curse unfairly placed on their ancestor in this gothic story of magic, queer love, and mother-daughter relationships, perfect for fans of Spells for Forgetting and Practical Magic.
The Cole women are cursed. Each generation will birth a daughter, lose their love, and, as surely as the tide beats against the rocky shore, take her own life by giving herself to the sea. For generations, the Cole women have lived as outcasts, maintaining a lighthouse on a small island off the coast of New Hampshire. Ever since their ancestor was accused of witchcraft and cast into the sea hundreds of years prior, the islanders have ostracized the Coles, distrusting their rumored magic and their control of the lighthouse.
Despite their mistreatment, the Cole women are compelled to remain on the island because they know that if a Cole woman does not light the beacon on Juniper Island, anyone who is out at sea will be drowned. Out of guilt and obligation, the Cole women live out their solitary lives on the island, knowing someday their recompense for protecting the people from the sea will be to die in the sea themselves.
Told in three interwoven timelines in the late twentieth century, The Curse of the Cole Women unravels the lives of three women who struggle with their relationships with each other as they contend with the reality of their fates—is it truly a curse, or is it generational madness that drives Cole women to the sea?
Link: Goodreads
December 6, 2025
Hinterland — Logan Spurgeon
Genre: Horror
Rep: Queer
Kestrel awakes in the woods without a real name or his memories. Before him are twelve strangers, an altar on fire, and bones hanging from the trees like wind chimes. He’s to be initiated into their group so they may fulfill their purpose: head to the mountain of the so-called gods, have a feast, and bring about the end of the world. Kestrel is willing to risk it all to escape, but without any memories, he knows he must play along until he finds a way out.
It won’t be easy. Winter is on their heels, hunters are searching for them, and the strange rituals they perform will rip his humanity from his flesh. But Kestrel isn’t alone. One of the strangers claims to be his friend from before, and there are others willing to join his side and leave the wilderness... if the gods let them.
Link: Goodreads
December 9, 2025
The Writhing, Verdant End — Corey Farrenkopf, et al.
Genre: Weird ecological horror anthology
Rep: Queer
An ailing community traverses a chasm of nightmare animal amalgams to reach the lush paradise beyond. Lovers in a plant apocalypse fight for survival and search for meaning in the face of immeasurable loss. Reunited friends resurrect an extinct bird through grisly sacrifices that bring about unexpected consequences.
The Writhing, Verdant End collects weird ecological horror stories by Corey Farrenkopf (author of Living in Cemeteries and Haunted Ecologies), Tiffany Morris (Green Fuse Burning), and Eric Raglin (Extinction Hymns), exploring the awe, terror, and strangeness of the natural world in dire times.
Link: Goodreads
This Hideous Heart — Jessie Thomas
Genre: Gothic horror romance
Rep: Sapphic
A house is never without its ghosts. And the ghosts of Montresor are restless...
Buffalo, 1881. Reunited after nearly a year, clairvoyant Madeline “Mattie” Montresor welcomes her wife Lenore back into their home—once the stage for extravagant séances held to entertain the city’s wealthy elite. But the house has changed dramatically in the time they’ve been separated. The rooms feel colder. The shadows seem darker. Mattie is tense and fraying at the edges, haunted as she’s never been before.
In an attempt to exorcise the house of its tortured souls, Mattie and Lenore must pick apart its many horrific secrets. As they confront a gruesome past, the veil between this world and the next grows thinner, the haunting more malevolent. And when a killer appears to return from the grave, they find themselves in a desperate race against the impossible—all while Death closes in.
Link: Goodreads
Death Between the Stars — Nico Vincenty
Genre: Science fiction fantasy
Rep: Sapphic
Two friends, three days, one haunted spaceship.
After spending the past few years hosting a successful ghost hunting webseries, Magnolia and Korinne score the ultimate opportunity of their career: tagging along as one of humanity’s ancient generation ships flies to its final resting place. It’s the perfect setting for the show’s finale, and possibly the last chance to admit the feelings they’ve long denied for each other.
From the beginning, the investigation has the potential to be scarier than all the rest. Before, Magnolia assumed the ghosts were present; now, she can see their faces, feel their fear, and hear their warnings. Korinne, forever a skeptic of the supernatural, finds it difficult to understand Magnolia’s unease. After all, she only believes in things backed by irrefutable evidence, and there’s definitely no proof of a malicious spirit in the engine room.
The pressure is on, both for the finale and their lives. As the strange occurrences pile up, Magnolia must fight to convince Korinne of a malevolent threat, and of some unlikely allies in their corner. If they can’t land the ship before it’s torn apart, their souls—and the souls of all the passengers gone before them—will be lost forever.
Link: Goodreads
Reclamation — Kristen Zimmer
Genre: Dystopian
Rep: Sapphic
Series: Book 1 of the Dark Horse Series
Kristen Zimmer, author of The Gravity Between Us, When Sparks Fly, and Forbidden Girl takes readers on an adrenaline-fueled dystopian journey into the future where a scrappy band of rebels rise up to bring down an unequal and unrelenting government.
This is your future.
The United States of America has been gone for over a century.
In its place, The Unified American Territories—a nation divided, the impoverished and the wealthy are separated by a looming steel wall. In the Northern Territories—The Vault, as it is known by its inhabitants—the government rules with an iron All citizens are tested for intelligence and aptitude, thrust into compulsory higher education and saddled with insurmountable debt. All student loans are granted and controlled by a branch of the regime called The Federal Bureau of Education. Failure to repay their debt consigns borrowers to the Knowledge Reclamation Process, a mysterious government-sanctioned brainwashing program that strips them of their education with dire mental and physical side effects.
Fletcher Daniels is a recent college graduate struggling to stay ahead of her arrears. After a visit from Reclamation Agents, she knows her life is about to change for the worse. Enter Youth Opposed to Reclamation, a scrappy band of rebels who try in their own small way to bring some relief to the people of The Vault by smuggling as many potential Reclaimees to safety as possible. When Fletcher meets and falls for fellow female YOR member, Sparrow, her world is twisted away from the one she once knew even more radically. The group offers Fletcher a chance to escape her fate, but through them, she sees the promise of bringing real change to The Vault. History has taught her that even the smallest rebellions can trigger revolutions. It’s time for history to repeat itself.
Link: Goodreads
December 12, 2025
The Dawn Throne — Tara Sim
Genre: Fantasy
Rep: Bi MC; sapphic MC; ace WLM MC
Series: Book 3 of The Dark Gods
In the aftermath of the chaos and tragedy of Godsnight, the heirs find themselves struggling to recover and determine their next moves. But when Phos, the god of light, stages an attack on their realms in a bid for cosmic control, the heirs decide to take the fight to Phos in Solara, the realm of light.
But once in Solara, they discover a realm terrorized by the myth of the Sunslayer who has been targeting those in Phos’s bloodline. In order to forge a delicate truce in an attempt to buy time, Nik, Rian, and Julian set off to capture the Sunslayer; while Angelica, Risha, and Dante remain in the city to search for a way to defeat Phos for good.
Link: Goodreads
December 13, 2025
The Mage and His Stolen Prince — J.E. Ridge
Genre: Fantasy
Rep: M/M
Series: Book 3 of Stolen Groom
Once upon a time, five royal champions embarked on a quest—wait, wrong story.
Once upon a time, five royal champions chose to marry to save their kingdoms—no, that’s not right.
Once upon a time, a prince fell in love with a girl—wrong again!
Let’s try one more time.
Once upon a time, an evil mage’s apprentice fell in love with a fake prince.
Wilde and Trey have lived this story before, but Wilde is determined to change the ending, even if that means resetting time and living through the same story over and over again.
Link: Goodreads
December 15, 2025
Fearmoji — David-Jack Fletcher (ed.)
Genre: Horror anthology
Rep: Queer
Emojis are adorable things...
Until they turn on us.
Witness the birth of Fearmoji, a collection of queer tales from the minds of queer horror’s up-and-coming superstars.
Inside, you will find demons, disgruntled office workers, a holiday paradise turned sour with blood, moving graffiti, a sinister beaver and more.
Featuring stories by Lucas Demorre, gaast, Ivana Geček, David-Jack Fletcher, Chisto Healy, Maya Kook, Niko Lapidus, TT Madden, Carlos E. Rivera, S.S.N. Smith, Fendy Tulodo, John Schlimm, and A. Max Traphagan.
Link: Goodreads
Scholarly Pursuits: A Queer Anthology of Cozy Academia Stories — Nina Waters (ed.)
Genre: Fantasy cozy academia anthology
Rep: Queer
Transforming the core settings of “dark academia” to be cozy and snug, “Scholarly Pursuits: A Queer Anthology of Cozy Academia Stories” features 22 delightful, charming science fiction and fantasy stories set at colleges, universities, libraries, and other places where people pursue academic excellence—and all feature queer characters! From field research shenanigans to cooking adventures, from space station education departments to eldritch libraries, our awesome authors have brought their vivid imaginings to life in this anthology. We can’t wait to share it with you!
Link: Goodreads
December 16, 2025
The Dragonscale Comb — J.S. Fields
Genre: Epic fantasy
Rep: Sapphic
Series: Book 2 of Myths of Yuro
Marani is no longer human.
In the aftermath of treasonous princesses, soothsaying secrets, and ruined balls, Marani finds herself a not quite human, but not fully dragon, either. She and her brother Jacks must complete their transformations to claim their forgotten heritage, but the island of Yuro now knows dragons are alive. Those who control dragons control the archipelago, and everyone from dragon hunters to soothsayers has gone hunting.
Marani must navigate carnivorous pegasi and vindictive harpies while searching for her brother’s transformation key, as well as untangle the strange magic that refuses to release her human body. Answers might be found in a secluded unicorn-historian bar, or from the pages of Princess Nuria’s lost notebook. A forest of magical creatures and roving bands of hunters stand between Marani, the safety of her loved ones, and her future. But love is a magic all its own, and the power to finally transform Yuro’s dragons may not lay with them, but with one determined princess, and the legacy of the Dragonscale Comb.
Link: Goodreads
A Bond of Blood and Stone — TJ West
Genre: Romantasy
Rep: Queer
Series: Book 1 of Bound Hearts
Drawing on the rich but troubled histories of Appalachia and Ancient Rome, A Bond of Blood and Stone is a steamy romantasy about star-crossed lovers, queer desire, and the birth of a revolution.
The last thing Titus Orestes wants is to govern the exploited colony known as the Province, the only source of the valuable mineral known as Ore. Nevertheless, when a family oath gone awry presents him with the chance to do some good for its oppressed people, he can’t turn away, even when faced with the animosity of the brooding, handsome Aemon Smelter.
Aemon Smelter hardly knew his father, yet thanks to his mother he’s now bound to avenge his death by assassinating Titus Orestes. However, when he starts falling in love with the kind, sensitive Patrician, he quickly learns that even the most powerful family oaths can’t truly bind the human heart.
As the Province hurtles toward rebellion and the Dominion tightens its grip, Aemon and Titus will find shelter in one another’s arms, even as the world around them begins to burn.
Link: Goodreads
December 18, 2025
A Gun Is the Thing With Feathers — Adorne Sibley
Genre: Science fiction, dystopia
Rep: Ace MC; queer cast
Series: Book 1 of The Apologues of Emma
Emma Taumata just cooked her last bounty alive. It was an accident.
Emma’s a washed-up bounty hunter working for Earth’s colonialist alien overlords, the Qhixs’is, who so generously turned off the power, factories, and banned toilets nearly two decades ago. Despite her hatred of them, Emma loves her job, but she’s just had another shitty Thursday and lost the last of her points. So, she’s forced to hunt her childhood best friend, Davis Jake.
The once serialized A Gun Is The Thing With Feathers is now here, in full novel form, featuring bonus content! For fans of Science Fiction Dystopia and post apocalypse vibes. AGITTWF features a strong female ace protagonist and an LGBTQIA+POC cast, full of found family, platonic love and adventure.
Comps: The Future by Naomi Alderman, Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, and Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig.
Tasting Notes: Reclaimed and overgrown dystopia, found family, sentient car and chicken, streaming slop, golf, and murder to a nightmare social media, rebellion and resistance, tentacle aliens, Jane doesn’t die
Content Guidance: This novel has plenty of swearing, violence, specifically blood and gore, bigotry, ghosts, guns, religious extremism, non-terrestrial creatures, capitalism, manipulation, and children in danger. It also contains some depictions of parental abuse, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, body horror, mentions of sexual violence, and Maxx Hard (you’ll get it when you meet him.)
Link: Itch.io
December 29, 2025
House of Carter: The Crimson Bond — Grey Cashmere
Genre: Dark fantasy romance
Rep: Sapphic
Where magic commands power and the wood whispers the truth you seek.
On the eve of the Carter heir’s coronation, a fisherman discovers the body of the young heir washed ashore in the wreckage of a sunken vessel. His death sends shockwaves through the magic realm, thrusting Lady Isabella Carter into a position she never expected—nor ever prepared for.
Isabella stands poised between glory and ruin, haunted by family secrets, political rivals, and the curse that coils around her inheritance like a tightening noose.
She is feared. Admired. Destined for greatness. But never—under any circumstance—meant to love a Terra.
When Ines Reinner, a humble herbalist with fiery red hair and no magic to her name, crosses her path, the two collide with the force of fate itself. What begins as hatred, resentment, and razor-edged tension slowly ignites into something far more dangerous
House of Carter beckons readers into a darkly enchanting tale—an 1800s-inspired world of Power, Fate, and Forbidden Devotion that will leave you breathless, yearning, and unable to turn away.
If you love villainous women, sapphic dark fantasy romance, and tension sharp enough to cut... Welcome to Everwood.
Link: Goodreads
December 30, 2025
An Arcane Inheritance — Kamilah Cole
Genre: Speculative dark academia thriller
Rep: M/F; bi MCs
A modern-day dark academia fantasy with a twist, perfect for fans of Babel and A Deadly Education.
Warren University has stood amongst the ivy elite for centuries, built on the bones―and forbidden magic―of its most prized BIPOC students… hiding the rot of a secret society that will do anything to keep their own powers burning bright. No matter who they must sacrifice along the way.
Ellory Morgan is determined to prove that she belongs at Warren University, an ivy league school whose history is deeply linked to occult rumors and dark secrets. But as she settles into her Freshman year, something about the ornate buildings and shadowy paths feels strangely… familiar. And, with every passing day, that sense of déjà vu grows increasingly sinister.
Despite all logic, despite all reason, despite all the rules of reality, Ellory knows one thing to be true: she has been here before. And if she can’t convince brooding legacy student Hudson Graves to help her remember a past that seems determined to slip through her fingers as if by some insidious magic… this time, she may lose herself for good.
Link: Goodreads
Lesbians in Space: The Sapphics Strike Back — J.S. Fields (ed.), William C. Tracy (ed.) & Heather Tracy (ed.)
Genre: Science fiction anthology
Rep: Lesbian
History doesn’t reward nice women.
Launch into a new batch of Lesbians and Space, delving into cosmic encounters, grappling with artificial intelligences, finding ancient empires, and veering through daring heists and covert escapades!
Explore abandoned relics and ruins, dodge space debris, communicate with unknown and known aliens, and participate in space races. Lesbians in Space explores the galaxy from the unique perspective of the lesfic world, blending the best of sapphic literature with modern sci-fi and space opera tropes.
With stories by Tim Pratt, TJ Berry, Aimee Cozza, Kia Leep, N.A. Soleil, Rem Wigmore, Sarah Zane, Karin J. Robinson, Theresa Tyree, Karen Lawler, Fiona Moore, Robin C.M. Duncan, C.J. Hosack, Jonathan Fuller, Gina Fabio, Rien Gray, Kristina W. Kelly, Melissa Hopper, William C. Tracy, and Heather Tracy.
Link: Goodreads
December 31, 2025
The Island of Forever — Jeremey Harrison
Genre: YA fantasy
Rep: MLM
Seventeen-year-old Max Greenfell grew up hearing stories about the Island of Forever, a mythical paradise once ruled by a ruthless shapeshifter who destroyed everything in his path. When the island’s magic began to dwindle and monsters roamed its sandy shores, a hero arose to vanquish the evil and restore the land.
But all good fairy tales are just that—stories. Or so he thought.
When a strange storm sweeps through his town, Max wakes up on the shores of the fabled utopia. At first, he finds solace in the island’s allure, an impossible escape from the constant bullying and crushing anxiety he faces at school. He soon learns that his arrival has disrupted the world’s balance, threatening to unleash the shapeshifter once more.
With help from a snarky merman and a pistol-wielding fairy, Max must embark on a dangerous adventure to save the island. To return home, he’ll have to face his fears and survive an encounter with his greatest foe: himself.
Link: Goodreads