Queer SF - May 2027
May 4, 2027
Ana Must Die (Again) — EJ Green
Genre: Horror
Rep: Sapphic
Some women are too angry to stay buried.
Daisy claws her way out of a shallow grave with one devastating realization: her head isn’t attached to her body. Desperate to find answers and with no memory of her past, Daisy ventures on a road trip with an ex-professional fighter and seamstress, who knows not only how to sew Daisy’s head back on, but also the way into Daisy’s heart.
Five hundred miles west, the Sons of Lazarus compound hides a deadly secret: they murder defiant women and raise them from the dead as obedient wives. As cult member Grace notices their way of life isn’t the perfect fantasy she’s been told to believe, she confronts what’s truth and fiction, discovering she may already be marked for death and resurrection too.
As Daisy and Grace’s paths converge toward a bloody confrontation, the women prove that the undead make better revolutionaries than the living, and that Sons of Lazarus made one fatal miscalculation: you can kill a woman’s body... but her rage, that comes back hungry.
Link: Kobo
May 11, 2027
Hero Adjacent — Alexis Veenendaal
Genre: Cozy humorous fantasy
Rep: Queer
When the Chosen One rejects your call, you might need to choose… another one.
After years of drudgery, Athragast the wizard is ready to retire. But the world needs saving in under two weeks, and when the Prince rejects Athie’s big “destiny” speech, he isn’t left with many options. A thieving busboy, a cigar-eating rodent that goes peep, and some troubled sellswords might be the best he can scrounge up on a budget.
Then Athie’s furry familiar steals the wrong warlock’s cigar, and things get a whole lot worse. A brooding villain flings the Runes of Destiny across the land, and Athie must get them back in time to figure out where the world-ending battle is taking place. The crew must séance with druids, party with goblins, and charm rhyming sages right out of their couplets. Along the way, Athie might just learn what it means to be a hero—at any age.
This whimsical, witty hug of a book is calling all lovers of fantasy, found family, crackling fires, and cozy socks. Stand up and face your destiny. Think of the children! Be a hero, or at least, be hero-adjacent.
Link: Kobo
May 14, 2027
The Constellation of Forgotten Things — Tiffany Chu & Renley Nicholas Chu
Genre: Literary fantasy short story collection
Rep: Queer
In the world of Reveria, broken dreams rise as trails of light across the night sky. A blacksmith’s boy vanishes into rebellion. Two cosmic beings—one of Memory, one of Void—discover their forbidden love might reshape reality.
The Constellation of Forgotten Things weaves together interconnected tales of love that defies impossible distances: between life and death, earth and sky, remembering and forgetting. Each story illuminates a different facet of love’s power to endure—and its cost.
This collection is both an act of remembrance and a celebration of the stories we tell to keep our beloveds alive, proving that some bonds transcend even the veil between worlds.
Perfect for readers who love the lyricism of Madeline Miller and Alix E. Harrow, the emotional storytelling of Studio Ghibli films, and the mythic beauty of Ursula K. Le Guin’s work. If you read for gorgeous language and deep feeling rather than fast plots—these stories will captivate you.
Link: Kobo
May 18, 2027
Potions Unincorporated — Iris Andersi
Genre: Cozy fantasy
Rep: M/F; queernorm world
In this cozy fantasy debut, a chronically ill witch attempts to rescue her familiar and take down the pharma corporation with a monopoly on chronic pain potions.
Linatta Mosset is lonely. Save for her familiar, a cat named Toad, nobody in town understands the challenge of managing a complex chronic illness. So, secluded in her cottage, Linatta brews potions to ease her symptoms. With the help of Potions Incorporated, her surplus potions are distributed and sold across the continent.
But her quiet life implodes when Potions Inc. guilts her into accepting a massive order. Stressed and exhausted, Linatta returns home from collecting ingredients to discover that Toad is missing. She’s horrified to find a ransom note demanding a lifetime supply of her brew in exchange for his safe return. Marik, the infuriatingly charming kidnapper, softens Linatta’s anger with his plight: his sister desperately needs Linatta’s potion and can’t afford it.
Linatta offers Marik a deal: if he gives Toad back and helps her fulfill Potions Inc.’s order, she’ll give him her precious potion recipe. As the pair forage for ingredients, their shared passion for plants causes new feelings to sprout. But Potions Inc. doesn’t want Linatta’s recipe getting out, and they’re willing to play dirty to get what they want.
With much-needed chronic illness rep and a cozy atmospheric setting, Potions Unincorporated is perfect for anyone who longs for connection and their own chosen family.
Link: Penguin Random House
They Walk in Darkness — KJ Charles
Genre: Gothic historical mystery
Rep: M/M
Something wicked stalks the night in this lush Gothic with an LGBTQIA+ love story to die for from award-winning author KJ Charles.
In the dark of wartime blackouts, London belongs to the shadows. Fabian Fisher knows that better than anyone. A card sharp with more debts than friends, he made a fatal mistake by cheating a notorious occultist. Now something is hunting him through the darkened city, the night is full of teeth… and his only hope of survival lies with a man he can’t stand.
Esoteric publisher Jim Appleby believes Fabian possesses unmatched clairvoyant power. He’ll protect Fabian from the night in return for his help uncovering a conspiracy threatening King and country. Unfortunately Fabian’s visions refuse to work when anyone actually needs them. And if he finds Jim infuriating, the feeling is entirely mutual.
As zeppelins drone overhead and London descends ever deeper into fear, desperation drives Jim to attempt a ritual that changes Fabian forever—and Jim with him. Bound together by forces neither fully understands, the two men must navigate a dark world of secrets, treachery, and unexpected desire.
But in the shadowed city, nobody can be trusted. And the closer Fabian and Jim grow, the more dangerous their tenuous connection becomes…
Link: Kobo
This House Has a Murder Problem — Nicholas DiDomizio
Genre: Cozy mystery-horror
Rep: Gay
With odes to The Saturday Night Ghost Club and the tongue-in-cheek voice of Benjamin Stevenson comes a cozy mystery-horror set in a world where all houses are haunted, so picking the right ghost is just as important as picking the right floorplan. Especially if that house is haunted not only by a spirit but also a flesh-and-blood killer…
Spencer and Eddie would give anything to leave their cramped Hoboken apartment behind for a real house. Unfortunately for them, houses don’t just come with huge price points and high interest rates, they come with the ghosts that inhabit them. The market is hot with buyers searching for the perfect ghost—after all, you can rip up old carpet, but you can’t just ditch a bad haunting.
And as it turns out, the ghosts in Harmony Falls are much more charming than the city apartment ghosts Spencer and Eddie are used to. But the sweeter the ghost, the higher the price, and with their budget constraints, their dream of a quaint house in the center of town slips right through their fingers.
When Spencer and Eddie bring on a matter-of-fact new realtor who connects them with a house firmly within budget full of lake views, rustic charm, and a curmudgeonly but lovable ghost, they finally have hope that their luck might change. Except, they keep waking up to strange noises at night. And all the previous owners vanished without a trace. Something is off in their new dream house. And it might not just be the spirit that’s haunting them, but a real-life killer…
Link: Kobo
May 25, 2027
A Practical Guide to Small-Town Sorcery — Autumn K England
Genre: Cozy fantasy
Rep: Queer
Series: Book 2 of Everyday Magic (stands alone)
After surviving years of war, soup mage Thorne Everleigh and his best friend Dell Shepherd dream of a quiet place to put down roots, where every tomorrow is more likely to bring fresh bread than battles. The quirky community of Cloven Valley seems perfect, but there’s just one catch: the first time Thorne cooks in his new kitchen, his cauldron fills not with soup, but with tiny creatures made of pure chaos with very strong opinions about… well, everything.
Most people would flee a home overrun by imps, but Thorne and Dell have spent enough of their lives running. This time, they stay. And as Cloven Valley’s delightfully peculiar residents fold them into their community, the scars of war slowly begin to fade. Between negotiating with their new imp roommates, befriending a cupcake warlock and the local tome witch, and dodging rampant speculation about their relationship, Thorne and Dell begin to believe something they never thought possible: They’ve finally found home.
But Cloven Valley is quietly fading. Something—or someone—is causing the ancient magic that has sheltered the town for generations to fail, and unless Thorne and Dell can save it, the haven they’ve only just begun to love may become yet another place they’ll have to leave behind forever.
Link: Goodreads
How to Destroy Destiny — Alexis Hall
Genre: Contemporary fantasy
Rep: Sapphic
Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Long Live Evil in a scintillating contemporary fantasy from USA Today bestselling author Alexis Hall!
Thirty years ago, the Midnight Realm began to bleed into the mortal world, turning people into monsters and ever-larger chunks of England into fairytale hellscapes. And a man in a harlequin mask told Olivia Day she was the only one who could stop it.
She never really thought to ask why. Probably because she was twelve at the time.
So Olivia and her friends became the Guardians of Destiny; the thin glittery line between the world we know and a place of unknown terrors.
That was… literally in a previous millennium.
These days she has a perfectly nice life with a perfectly nice wife, a perfectly nice house and perfectly nice kids. She only occasionally wakes up screaming from the nightmares.
But when her daughter starts having dreams about a palace made of mirrors, and a man who turns into an owl, and terrible red eyes in the night...
Well, Olivia always said she’d do anything to protect her daughter.
Link: Macmillan
Run! Run! Run! — Emme Lund
Genre: Fantasy
Rep: Queer, trans
A punk-queer romp through the magical end of the world—“a huge-hearted, utterly original flight of world-remaking imagination” (Karen Russell)—by the acclaimed author of The Boy with a Bird in His Chest.
The witches foretell that humanity will end in forty years, and who can blame them? Forests burn. When it rains, it floods. People are vanishing. In Portland, Oregon, activists have been protesting for 400 days straight, and the only results are more conservative policies, including one that cuts off access to gender-affirming hormones. August is a rudderless poet dating Brighton, a cop, in the hopes that Brighton may marry him and give him the access he needs to a steady supply of testosterone. Across town, M and his best friend, Iris, are tired of protesting: they decide to rob a police union pharmacy and redistribute the hormones they’ve been hoarding.
When the union building is inexplicably burned down post-robbery, the city is thrown into chaos. M and Iris, along with August and a mysterious newcomer named Selena, are forced on the run through Oregon, seeking refuge with witches and faeries as they come face-to-face with a magical underworld they never knew they belonged to. As the fugitives flee the authorities through the Pacific Northwest forest, Selena reveals a magical world with a prophecy at the center and parts for Iris, M, and August to play. But given the choice, will they hide out in a supernatural world or join the fight to save humanity?
Link: Penguin Random House