Adult
2024 curated booklist
An Adult book means that it was written with an adult readership (ages 20+) in mind. It doesn’t necessarily mean that teens can’t read the book, or that it contains adult material (although it can).
Lamplighter
Kerry Donovan Brown
Old World lamplighters once lit the streets of cities like Constantinople, Alexandria and Rome. In the countryside, in the new colonies, the Lamplighter doesn’t light passages through the dark; he lights perimeters against it, and the wildernesses beyond.
In the tiny South Island beach settlement of Porbeagle, Candle is apprentice to his grandfather, Ignis. But as the community prepares to celebrate the Lamplighter’s retirement, old stories take on darker hues. If the origins of folklore are in a sunken history of violence and prejudice, what is the price of Candle’s freedom?
Inhabiting a luminous space between realism and parable, between an all-too-familiar contemporary New Zealand and a magical otherworld, Lamplighter is as captivating as it is unsettling. It is a remarkable debut from the winner of the 2012 Adam prize.
Category: Adult, NZ Authors, Fantasy
Representation: Gay
Content Warnings: Discrimination, abuse, violence, substance use/abuse, sexual activity
ISBN: 9780864739162
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name
Audre Lorde
If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.
A little black girl opens her eyes in 1930s Harlem. Around her, a heady swirl of passers-by, car horns, kerosene lamps, the stock market falling, fried bananas, tales of her parents’ native Grenada. She trudges to public school along snowy sidewalks, and finds she is tongue-tied, legally blind, left behind by her older sisters. On she stumbles through teenage hardships — suicide, abortion, hunger, a Christmas spent alone — until she emerges into happiness- an oasis of friendship in Washington Heights, an affair in a dirty factory in Connecticut, and, finally, a journey down to the heat of Mexico, discovering sex, tenderness, and suppers of hot tamales and cold milk. This is Audre Lorde’s story. It is a rapturous, life-affirming tale of independence, love, work, strength, sexuality and change, rich with poetry and fierce emotional power.
Category: Adult, Biography
Representation: Lesbian, BIPOC
Content Warnings: Racism, suicide, abuse, violence, sexual violence, sexual activity, substance use/abuse, self harm, mental illness
ISBN: 9780241351086
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
Ocean Vuong
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation.
At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one’s own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.
Category: Adult, Poetry, Autobiography
Representation: Gay
Content Warnings: Abuse, character death, discrimination, mental illness, sexual violence, substance use/abuse, sexual activity, violence
ISBN: 9781529110685
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
Arundhati Roy
So begins The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Arundhati Roy’s incredible follow-up to The God of Small Things. We meet Anjum, who used to be Aftab, who runs a guest-house in an Old Delhi graveyard and gathers around her the lost, the broken and the cast out. We meet Tilo, an architect, who although she is loved by three men, lives in a ‘country of her own skin’. When Tilo claims an abandoned baby as her own, her destiny and that of Anjum become entangled as a tale that sweeps across the years and a teeming continent takes flight…
Category: Adult, Fantasy
Representation: Intersex, transgender
Content Warnings: Transphobia, religion, violence, sexual violence, substance use/abuse, police violence/brutality, character death, suicide
ISBN: 9780241303979
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
Girl, Woman, Other
Bernardine Evaristo
Girl, Woman, Other is a magnificent portrayal of the intersections of identity and a moving and hopeful story of an interconnected group of Black British women that paints a vivid portrait of the state of contemporary Britain and looks back to the legacy of Britain’s colonial history in Africa and the Caribbean.
The twelve central characters of this multi-voiced novel lead vastly different lives: Amma is a newly acclaimed playwright whose work often explores her Black lesbian identity; her old friend Shirley is a teacher, jaded after decades of work in London’s funding-deprived schools; Carole, one of Shirley’s former students, is a successful investment banker; Carole’s mother Bummi works as a cleaner and worries about her daughter’s lack of rootedness despite her obvious achievements. From a nonbinary social media influencer to a 93-year-old woman living on a farm in Northern England, these unforgettable characters also intersect in shared aspects of their identities, from age to race to sexuality to class.
Sparklingly witty and filled with emotion, centering voices we often see othered, and written in an innovative fast-moving form that borrows technique from poetry, Girl, Woman, Other is a polyphonic and richly textured social novel that shows a side of Britain we rarely see, one that reminds us of all that connects us to our neighbors, even in times when we are encouraged to be split apart.
Category: Adult
Representation: Lesbian, non-binary, diverse gender identities, diverse sexualities, BIPOC
Content Warnings: Discrimination, substance use/abuse, racism, sexual violence, suicide, mental illness, sexual activity, police violence/brutality, disordered eating/eating disorder
ISBN: 9780802156983
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
Spoiled Fruit
ED. Levi Damien & Esau Amber
Spoiled Fruit is the debut title from micro press Aporo Press. This collection gathers 20 queer poets from across Aotearoa, compiles work largely first published on bad apple and asks these poets to reflect upon their work to create new pieces.
Emerging from this introspection are themes of growth, evolution, change and transition. Like spoiled fruit fallen and left to rot, new growth emerges.
Featuring: Nicola Andrews, ki anthony, kate aschoff, Jo Bragg, Cadence Chung, Rhys Feeney, Ted Greensmith-West, Haukupu, Kyra Lawler, Rex Letoa Paget, Casey Lucas, Ivy Lyden-Hancy, Amy Marguerite, Jackson McCarthy, Hannah Patterson, Ngaio Simmons, sylvan spring, El Spurlock, Fetuolemoana Tamapeau and Laura Vincent.
Category: Adult, Poetry, NZ Authors
Representation: Diverse gender identities, diverse sexualities
Content Warnings: Unknown
ISBN: 9780473686840
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
Hijab Butch Blues: A Memoir
Lamya H
When fourteen-year-old Lamya H realizes she has a crush on her teacher–her female teacher–she covers up her attraction, an attraction she can’t yet name, by playing up her roles as overachiever and class clown. Born in South Asia, she moved to the Middle East at a young age and has spent years feeling out of place, like her own desires and dreams don’t matter, and it’s easier to hide in plain sight. To disappear. But one day in Quran class, she reads a passage about Maryam that changes everything: When Maryam learned that she was pregnant, she insisted no man had touched her. Could Maryam, uninterested in men, be . . . like Lamya?
From that moment on, Lamya makes sense of her struggles and triumphs by comparing her experiences with some of the most famous stories in the Quran. She juxtaposes her coming out with Musa liberating his people from the pharoah; asks if Allah, who is neither male nor female, might instead be nonbinary; and, drawing on the faith and hope Nuh needed to construct his ark, begins to build a life of her own–ultimately finding that the answer to her lifelong quest for community and belonging lies in owning her identity as a queer, devout Muslim immigrant.
This searingly intimate memoir in essays, spanning Lamya’s childhood to her arrival in the United States for college through early-adult life in New York City, tells a universal story of courage, trust, and love, celebrating what it means to be a seeker and an architect of one’s own life.
Category: Adult, Autobiography
Representation: Diverse gender identities, diverse sexualities
Content Warnings: Racism, homophobia, transphobia, islamophobia, suicide, religion, abuse, discrimination, self harm
ISBN: 9780593448762
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
The Color Purple
Alice Walker
A powerful cultural touchstone of modern American literature, The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early-twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance, and silence. Through a series of letters spanning nearly thirty years, first from Celie to God, then from the sisters to each other, the novel draws readers into a rich and memorable portrayal of Black women—their pain and struggle, companionship and growth, resilience and bravery.
Deeply compassionate and beautifully imagined, The Color Purple breaks the silence around domestic and sexual abuse, and carries readers on an epic and spirit-affirming journey toward transformation, redemption, and love.
Category: Adult, Historical
Representation: Lesbian, BIPOC
Content Warnings: Racism, sexual violence, sexual activity, substance use/abuse, violence, religion, police violence/brutality, character death, bullying, mental illness
ISBN: 9780156028356
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
The Price of Salt
Patricia Highsmith
An unlikely encounter between Therese, a young sales clerk, and Carol, a lonely homemaker, leads to an amorous romance in this classic work of lesbian fiction.
Struggling against the oppressive routines of their daily lives and the strict social norms governing mid-century femininity, the new lovers take to the open road where their new relationship can thrive. But their dreamy, blissful adventure is sharply interrupted when Carol must make a difficult choice between her child and her lover.
Category: Adult, Historical, Romance
Representation: Lesbian
Content Warnings: Homophobia, sexual activity, mental illness
ISBN: 9781626543119
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
Stone Butch Blues
Leslie Feinberg
Stone Butch Blues, Leslie Feinberg’s 1993 first novel, is widely considered in and outside the U.S. to be a ground-breaking work about the complexities of gender.
Stone Butch Blues follows the life of Jess Goldberg, a gender-nonconforming butch lesbian, from her childhood in the 1940s through the 1970s. Jess explores her transgender and lesbian identities amid homophobia, transphobia, police violence, gendered violence, classism, anti-Semitism, and anti-butch animus.
Stone Butch Blues is considered a cult classic in rainbow communities, and continues to be popular almost 30 years after its original publication.
Category: Adult, Historical,
Representation: Lesbian, transgender, diverse gender identities, diverse sexualities
Content Warnings: Homophobia, transphobia, sexual activity, sexual violence, police violence/brutality, mental illness, substance use/abuse, character death, suicide, racism
ISBN: 9781555838539
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
James Baldwin
In the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence, a young man finds himself caught between desire and conventional morality.
David is a young American expatriate who has just proposed marriage to his girlfriend, Hella. While she is away on a trip, David meets a bartender named Giovanni to whom he is drawn in spite of himself. Soon the two are spending the night in Giovanni’s curtainless room, which he keeps dark to protect their privacy. But Hella’s return to Paris brings the affair to a crisis, one that rapidly spirals into tragedy.
David struggles for self-knowledge during one long, dark night—“the night which is leading me to the most terrible morning of my life.” With a sharp, probing imagination, James Baldwin’s now-classic narrative delves into the mystery of loving and creates a deeply moving story of death and passion that reveals the unspoken complexities of the human heart.
Category: Adult, Historical
Representation: Gay
Content Warnings: Homophobia, sexual activity, sexual violence, mental illness, substance use/abuse, character death, suicide, transphobia, racism, violence
ISBN: 9780345806567
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)