Shut Your Face, Anthony Pace!


Claire Davis - 2016
    Since then, he's known how he wants to spend his life. There have been trials, and challenges, but now - finally - the day is here for him to start college with his lifelong friend Anthony Pace.Anthony is a red-haired force of nature. He writes poetry about their enemies and eagerly participates in all Charlie's science experiments without understanding a word. Every morning, he waits at the end of their street so they can get the bus together.But things are changing.Families are important, and complex. Charlie's mum hasn't been well, and his relationship with Anthony begins to shine like a different star in the sky.Can everything come together in this explosion of physics and chemicals that Charlie calls life? Will Anthony Pace ever share his poems with the world, and can the Chihuahua, Princess Arabella, ever learn to stop licking?****WARNING: includes moderately explicit scenes of intimacy between consenting young adult males.

Any Other Girl


Rebecca Phillips - 2016
    When it comes to boys--especially other people's boys:Don't touch.Don't smile. Don't charm.In the past, drawing attention to herself helped distract people from what really makes Kat different--having two gay parents. But it also cost her friendships. Kat can't afford to lose any more of those, especially not her cousin, Harper. They're spending one last summer together at the lake, where they run into an intriguing newcomer named Emmett Reese. After years of trying to prove she's just like everybody else, Kat has found someone who wants her because she's not. A boy who could be everything she wants too--if Harper hadn't liked him first. . .

The Moment


T.C. Anderson - 2013
    You love her.

Anchors & Vacancies


Kat Savage - 2016
    It's all the things we all hold onto, all the things we let anchor onto us, and all the things that leave us vacant.

Late Bloomer


Morgan Hawes - 2019
    But Malcolm has a secret: he's spent the last ten years on dangerous suppressants. After collapsing at work, and on his doctor's orders, Malcolm has cut them out completely. Now he has to return to the office, presenting as himself for the first time ever. As an omega. Vincent Hoffman has a good life. He's got a home, he's got his cats. He likes his job, even though his boss is the annoying, smarmy son of the CEO. Vincent couldn't ask for anything more. He might've done, once upon a time (or eighteen months ago--but who's counting?), but his ex-fiancee put an end to those dreams when she walked out of his life. For now, Vincent is content. But after a disaster at the office, his comfortable life is threatened when Malcolm discovers his secret. Despite how he's presented himself all these years, Vincent isn't a harmless beta. He's an alpha. Now Malcolm's biological clock is ticking down towards his first heat. He's rich, he's connected, and he's gorgeous--an ambitious alpha could take a lot from man like Malcolm and there'd be nothing he could do about it. He needs to make a choice, and fast: he needs to find an alpha he can trust. Someone like... Late Bloomer is a non-shifter, extremely slow burn m/m a/b/o standalone romance novel that features explicit consent in every sex scene, lots of chemistry, mild BDSM themes, no mpreg, and a HEA.

Invisibly Breathing


Eileen Merriman - 2019
    Numbers have superpowers and they’re safe – any problem they might throw up can be solved.'If I were a five, I’d be shaped like a pentagon … there’d be magic in my walls, safety in my angles.'People are so much harder to cope with. At least that’s how it seems until Bailey Hunter arrives at school. Bailey has a stutter, but he can make friends and he’s good at judo. And Bailey seems to have noticed Felix:‘Felix keeps to himself mostly, but there’s something about him that keeps drawing me in.’Both boys find they’re living in a world where they can’t trust anyone, but might they be able to trust each other, with their secrets, their differences, themselves?

Legon Restoration


Nicholas Taylor - 2012
    Since then, tension has risen, kingdoms have fallen and the land is at a crossroad. House Evindass, along with the rest of the Pawdin Empire, is in a life-and-death struggle to free the land and themselves from the Iumenta. Now, in the last book of the Legon series, everything will come to a head. Who will stand triumphant? The Elves or the Iumenta…

Lola Dances


Victor J. Banis - 2008
    Sometimes funny, sometimes tragic and often bawdy, Lola Dances ranges from the 1850 slums of the Bowery to the mining camps of California and Montana, to the Barbary Coast of San Francisco. Little Terry Murphy, pretty and effeminate, dreams of becoming a dancer. Raped by a drunken profligate and threatened with prison, Terry flees the Bowery and finds himself in the rugged settlement of Alder Gulch, where he stands out like a sore thumb among the camp's macho inhabitants--until the day he puts on a dress and dances for the unsuspecting miners as beautiful Lola Valdez--and wins fame, fortune and, ultimately, love.

Going Up


A.E. Radley - 2019
    A destitute woman. Both on the way up. Selina Hale is on her way to the top. She's been working towards a boardroom position on the thirteenth floor for her entire career. And no one is going to get in her way. Not her clueless boss, her soon to be ex-wife, and most certainly not the homeless person who has moved into the car park at work. Kate Morgan fell through the cracks in a broken support system and found herself destitute. Determined and strong-willed, she's not about to accept help from a mean business woman who can't even remember the names of her own nephews. As their lives continue to intertwine, they have no choice but to work together and follow each other on their journey up.62,000 words

Behind the Hood


Marita A. Hansen - 2011
    See additional notes at the bottom of the blurb."The novel shines a light on a cultural sector rarely addressed in fiction writing, and the fast-paced narrative befits a contemporary thriller fiction novel." -HarperCollins.Life on the rough side of New Zealand.In this South Auckland neighbourhood where gang culture, drink, drugs, sex and violence is already a way of life, a vicious attack on a teenage girl sparks a ripple effect of revenge and fury. Live the carnage through multiple viewpoints as the tale unfolds to a bloody climax. NOT for the fainthearted. WARNING: Language and sexual references are graphic. 18+Additional notes: This book has no M/M. It has different main characters from book 2 and 3. The Rata brothers are minor characters in book 1 and major characters from book 2 onward. Unless you're a crime, social realism, or street lit reader, my suggestion is to start from book 2, then read book 3, and if you like those two then you could try book 1. Graffiti Heaven is a prequel series based around Ash Rata when he was younger.

Viscera


Gabrielle Squailia - 2016
    But they’re long dead now, buried in the catacombs beneath the city of Eth, where their calcified organs radiate an eldritch power that calls out to anyone hardy enough to live in this cut-throat, war-torn land. Some survivors are human, while others are close enough, but all are struggling to carve out their lives in a world both unforgiving and wondrous. Darkly comic and viciously original, Viscera is an unforgettable journey through swords-and-sorcery fantasy where strangeness gleams from every nook and cranny.“Exquisitely imagined, deeply insightful yet scathingly witty, Viscera barrels along at a scorching pace after vividly realized characters whose separate quests—for identity, for revenge, for release—find themselves on a collision course in a world that's simultaneously both grimdark and surreal. Lusciously weird and utterly unique.” —Nicole Kornher-Stace, author of Archivist Wasp“Viscera is a work of gleeful weirdness, set in a world that calls to mind China Miéville's Bas-Lag novels, and full of characters fighting to reshape themselves and their destinies, in search of deep and resonant truth.” —Kat Howard, author of Roses and Rot

Down the Memory Hole


Bonnie Turner - 2005
    The thought of giving up his friendship is bad enough. But how can he relate to someone who forgets his grandson's name, wears adult diapers, and thinks dog biscuits are people cookies-someone who could die in the night and scare Buzz right out of puberty. Buzz thinks Alzheimer's is caused by a traumatic event, such as the train accident that killed Grandpa's brother Barkley in childhood. The situation turns deadly when Buzz and Mitch-whose friendship Buzz refuses to end-attempt to cure Grandpa of Alzheimer's disease by recreating the train accident on a hot summer day. (Ages 12-14/YA)

Giant Days #1


John Allison - 2015
    His story of three friends at university lightly flavored with the occult features some of the best dialogue in comics, and we couldn't help but think it's like Monty Python goes to college. Sign us up!WHY YOU'LL LOVE IT: John Allison's daily webcomics are hilarious, the kind of strips where every panel makes you laugh out loud. As a result, John has earned a large, loyal following of readers that have followed his work daily for the past 12 years. This is a series ans of things like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Scott Pilgrim, or Gunnerkrigg Court will not ant to miss.WHAT IT'S ABOUT: Susan, Esther, and Daisy started at university three weeks ago and became fast friends because their dorm rooms were next to each other. Now, away from home for the first time, all three want to reinvent themselves. But in the face of handwringing boys, "personal experimentation," influenza, mysterymold, nuchauvinism, and the willful, unwanted intrusion of "academia," they may be lucky just to make it to spring alive.

Thrust


Rachel Spangler - 2021
    At the age of thirteen she made the varsity team, won a state championship, came out, and fell head over heels in love with her team captain, Lauren Standish. After being gently rebuffed by the high school senior, young Jess vowed she would return for her some day when their age difference became irrelevant and her own accomplishments made her not merely an equal, but an Olympian. Eleven years later, Jess makes good on her promise, but when she arrives back in Buffalo a few months before the big games, she’s intrigued to find that the woman she’s always dreamed of could also be exactly the coach she needs to win gold. Lauren, however, isn’t the bubbly team captain she’d been at eighteen. After a stellar collegiate career of her own, circumstances forced her to her dreams on the shelf and return to Buffalo. She’d made peace with a quiet life spent running a rustbelt fencing club and coaching kids when Team USA’s hottest young fencer waltzes back into her life. As much as Lauren finds Jess’s confidence and athleticism alluring, she also sees the hot-headed superstar as a threat to the carefully controlled world rebuilt in the wake of the traumatic loss she is desperate to avoid reliving. Never one to turn her back on a friend in need, Lauren agrees to coach Jess on the condition that they focus only on the swordplay and not the sharp point of attraction threatening to sever the bonds of her professionalism. The two women set to work preparing for the biggest event of their lives, but as tension mounts in the lead-up to the Olympic games, the pressure and the passion building between them also grows, leaving both to wonder if Jess is trying to win the gold, or win the girl.

The California Dashwoods


Lisa Henry - 2018
    Choose your true family. Know your own heart.When Elliott Dashwood’s father dies, leaving his family virtually penniless, it’s up to Elliott to do what he’s always done: be the responsible one. Now isn’t the right time for any added complications. So what the hell is he doing hooking up with Ned Ferrars? It’s just a fling, right?Elliott tries to put it behind him when the family makes a fresh start in California, and if he secretly hopes to hear from Ned again, nobody else needs to know. While his mom is slowly coming to terms with her grief, teenage Greta is more vulnerable than she’s letting on, and Marianne—romantic, reckless Marianne—seems determined to throw herself headfirst into a risky love affair. And when Elliott discovers the secret Ned’s been keeping, he realizes that Marianne isn’t the only one pinning her hopes on a fantasy.All the Dashwoods can tell you that feelings are messy and heartbreak hurts. But Elliott has to figure out if he can stop being the sensible one for once, and if he’s willing to risk his heart on his own romance. A modern retelling of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility.