It’s Pride Month, and you know what that means: it’s the perfect excuse to buy a bunch of new queer books. To get you started, I’ve highlighted seven queer books that check off 2026 Read Harder Challenge tasks, including a nonfiction book about resistance, a recent gothic novel, a fabulist book, a book about a cult, a book set in space, a horror novel in translation, and a book by an African author.
Task #5: Read a nonfiction book about resistance
Our Work is Everywhere by Syan Rose
Reading this beautiful collection of oral histories and interviews feels likes sitting down with a bunch of rad queer and trans artists, healers, and activists, and listening to them talk about what inspires them, angers them, fuels them. The art is truly unique — each page feels like its own work of art. Here you’ll find stories about ancestral wisdom, the power of queer tarot, mutual aid organizations, community gardening initiatives, radical wealth redistribution, and so much more more. It’s an inspiring book spilling over with LGBTQ+ brilliance and creativity. —Laura Sackton
Task #6: Read a gothic novel published in the last ten years
The Salvage by Anbara Salam
In this sapphic gothic novel, when marine archeologist Marta Khoury is called to a remote Scottish isle to explore a recently uncovered Victorian shipwreck, she expects salvage to be the most interesting thing she finds. Instead, she’s snowed in as the Cuban Missile Crisis rages halfway across the globe and becomes convinced a shadowy figure stalks her every step, even as she searches for the ship’s artifacts, which have, mysteriously, disappeared. —Rachel Brittain
All Access members, read on for five more queer books that check off 2026 Read Harder Challenge tasks.
#14: Read a work of magical realism or fabulism
The Thirty Names of Night by Zeyn Joukhadar
Bursting with ghosts and birds, Joukhadar’s poetic novel alternates between two timelines. In contemporary New York City, a Syrian American trans boy grieves his mother who died in a strange fire five years prior, and an illustrated journal uncovered in Little Syria divulges the mysterious life of Laila Z, a Syrian American bird painter who wrote to “B” about the U.S. and disappeared over half a century ago. Adorned with medals for the Stonewall Book Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction, this hopeful story of ongoing conversations with beloveds delves into art, community, ornithology, personal histories, and resilience. —Connie Pan
#17: Read a book about a cult or cults
Simplicity by Mattie Lubchansky
Set in 2081, Simplicity is about a trans man scholar who sets out to research a cult living outside the dystopian walled city of New York—but soon, he begins to have hallucinations, and then cult members start to vanish. The blurbs for this are absolutely glowing. One, from Alissa Nutting, says this is the “hottest, most satirically dazzling, heart-wrenchingly brilliant ecosexual call to action you’ll ever read.” —Danika Ellis
#20: Read a book set in space
Moss’d in Space by Rebecca Thorne (July 7, 2026)
The bestselling author of Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea, a cozy sapphic fantasy romance novel, is back with a new cozy story set in space. I love cozy sci-fi, so you better believe I’m raring to go for this book. The moss-covered spaceship Torian just purchased is her ticket to a new life and definitely not a terrible idea, no matter what Amelia, her ex-captain, has to say about it. But when she tries to fix it up, she realizes that the moss is actually a sentient organic computer with a major grudge against the creator who abandoned it. As much as Torian hates to admit it, Amelia might’ve been right about this one. —Rachel Brittain
#21: Read a genre (SFF, horror, mystery, romance) book in translation
The Route of Ice & Salt by José Luis Zárate, Translated by David Bowles
This cult vampire novel became available for the first time in English translation thanks to an IndieGoGo campaign led by Innsmouth Free Press, a micro-press owned and operated by World Fantasy Award–winning author Silvia Moreno-García. Originally published in 1998, The Route of Ice & Salt is the story of the ship that carried Dracula to England, told from the point of view of the ship’s captain. Zárate writes a gothic novel that features classic gothic horror, queer desire and its repression, musing on the ways that the labeling and destroying of monsters can be applied to the real-world horrors of homophobia and persecution.
Content warning: homophobic violence, body horror, gothic horror, self-harm, suicide, internalized homophobia, sexual assault. —Leah Rachel von Essen
#23: Read a book by an African author
Fairytales for Lost Children by Diriye Osman (Somalia)
Diriye Osman is a British Somali writer whose genre-bending debut collection illuminates the lives of young queer Somalis, both in their home country and in the diaspora. His characters grapple with what family, relationships, identity, and what it means to belong, or not belong, to a place or a country. Osman is also an artist, and his illustrations appear throughout, adding another layer to the whole collection. —Laura Sackton
Join All Access to unlock members-only content
Get access to exclusive content and features with an All Access subscription on Book Riot.
-
Unlimited members-only content
-
The New Release Index, a powerful tool for finding your next favorite book
-
Create and share your collections of books
This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
