LGBTQ+ Sci-Fi & Fantasy Fiction Books

A dark satire about an amusement park more deranged than anything Disney could imagine: a playland for gay men called Faggotland.

Castle Faggot is Derek McCormack's darkest and most delicious book yet, a satire of sugary cereals and Saturday morning cartoons set in an amusement park more deranged than anything Disney dreamed up.

At the heart of the park is Faggotland, a playland for gay men, and Castle Faggot, the darkest dark ride in the world. Home to a cartoon Dracula called Count Choc-o-log, the castle is decorated with the corpses of gays, some were killed, some killed themselves, all ended up as decor.

The book includes a map of Faggotland, a photobook of the castle, the instructions for a castle-shaped dollhouse, and the novelization of a TV puppet show about Count Choc-o-log and his friends, reminiscent of the classic stop-motion special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, but even gayer and more grotesque.

As scatological as Sade but with a Hanna-Barbera vibe, Castle Faggot transmutes McCormack's love of the lurid and the childlike, of funhouses and sickhouses, into something furiously funny: as Edmund White says, "the mystery of objects, the lyricism of neglected lives, the menace and nostalgia of the past,these are all ingredients in this weird and beautiful parallel universe."

Lush and frothy, incisive and witty, Shola Von Reinholds decadent queer literary debut immerses readers in the pursuit of aesthetics and beauty, while interrogating the removal and obscurement of Black figures from history.

Mathilda has long been attuned to the aesthetics of her environment, and enamoured with the Bright Young Things of the 20s. Her Transfixtions culminate when she uncovers a forgotten' Black Scottish modernist poet, Hermia Drumm.

As she endeavours to unearth everything she can about this Black Princess, she enrols in an artist residency dedicated to opposing extravagance and aesthetics. From abnegating Thought Artists, champagne theft and Black Modernisms, to art sabotage, alchemy and lotus-eating proto-luxury communist cults, Mathilda takes us on extravagant escapades in her attempts to uncover systems of erasure and embody ephemeral ideals of fluidity and beauty long held captive.

‘Brimming from start to finish with sly humour and gothic mischief’ SARAH WATERS

‘Atmospheric, sexy, creepy…totally addictive’ KATE DAVIES, author of In At The Deep End

‘A gloriously over-the-top queer romp’ I PAPER, top picks for 2021

‘It’s a terrible story and one way to tell it is this: two girls in love and a fog of wasps cursed the place forever after…’

BROOKHANTS SCHOOL FOR GIRLS: Infamous site of a series of tragic deaths over a hundred years ago. Soon to be the subject of a controversial horror movie about the rumoured ‘Brookhants curse’:

In the early 1900’s, Brookhants students Flo and Clara fell madly in love, brought together by their obsession for a scandalous memoir.

A few months later they were found dead in the woods, after a horrific wasp attack, the book lying next to their intertwined bodies.

Three more grisly deaths followed before the school was forced to close.

Now, the school’s doors are open once more. But as the crew of glamorous young actresses assemble to start filming, past and present begin to blur. And soon it’s impossible to tell quite where the curse ends and Hollywood begins…

‘Buzzing with wickedness…sly, wry and dangerous to know’ Rosie Garland

‘Ingenious, jaw-dropping…a queer roar and it's terrifying and it's a goddamned triumph’ Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and The Cabin at the End of the World

‘Wears its brilliance lightly…it's dark, sweet, and addictive. Simply one of the best books I've read in the last decade’ Joe Hill, New York Times bestselling author of The Fireman

‘A hot amalgamation of gothic horror and Hollywood satire, it’s draped with depth but bursting with life’ Washington Post

‘A deviously delicious cake’ O, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE

Dorothy isn't the happiest of girls. Kansas is pretty damn boring, her aunt and uncle are hicks, and it seems she doesn't much belong. But when her shed gets picked up by a cyclone and dropped in Oz, things begin to get interesting.

There's this broad called Glinda who's taken more than a bit of a liking to her, and perverted munchkins who run a tabloid newspaper full of green celebrity snatch.

There's also Ozma, who runs Oz's only transgender helpline-and who is toe-curlingly hot by the way.

Between silver shoes and matching purses, politics and dildos, lesbian witches and wizards with gambling debts, Dorothy must find her way home (wherever that might be)-and figure out who really makes her heels click.

The prince no longer kisses the princess, Cinderella helps her new husband to pick a new dress and the relationship between Mr Wolf and the three little pigs is a bit more complicated than you might have thought.

In this collection of delightful, empowering and often magical tales, Kevin Walker creates and adapts a host of stories for the LGBTQ+ community. These sometimes traditional and sometimes modern tales show queer people that they belong not only in today’s world, but also in a storytelling tradition going back centuries, if not millennia.

This is a wonderful collection for LGBTQ+ readers of all ages to enjoy and continue to tell for years to come, introducing characters who are romantic, brave, mysterious or fantastical – but always authentic.

Author: Kevin Walker
Format: Hardback
Pages: 176
ISBN: 9780750993807

The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions is a beloved queer utopian text written by Larry Mitchell with lush illustrations by Ned Asta, published by Calamus Press in 1977.

Part-fable, part-manifesto, the book takes place in Ramrod, an empire in decline, and introduces us to the communities of the faggots, the women, the queens, the queer men, and the women who love women who are surviving the ways and world of men.

Cherished by many over the four decades since its publication, The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions offers a trenchant critique of capitalism, assimilation, and patriarchy that is deeply relevant today.

This new edition will feature essays from performance artist Morgan Bassichis, who adapted the book to music with TM Davy in 2017 for a performance at the New Museum, and activist filmmaker Tourmaline.

A blend of searing social commentary and speculative fiction, Chana Porter's fresh, pointed debut is perfect for fans of Jeff VanderMeer and Carmen Maria Machado.

Plus never-before-seen short story featuring an expanded ending to the novel...

Trina Goldberg-Oneka is a fifty-year-old trans woman whose life is irreversibly altered in the wake of a gentle but nonetheless world-changing invasion by an alien entity called The Seep. Through The Seep, everything is connected. Capitalism falls, hierarchies and barriers are broken down; if something can be imagined, it is possible.

Trina and her wife, Deeba, live blissfully under The Seep's utopian influence until Deeba begins to imagine what it might be like to be reborn as a baby, which will give her the chance at an even better life. Using Seeptech to make this dream a reality, Deeba moves on to a new existence, leaving Trina devastated.

Heartbroken and deep into an alcoholic binge, Trina follows a lost boy she encounters, embarking on an unexpected quest. In her attempt to save him from The Seep, she will confront not only one of its most avid devotees, but the terrifying void that Deeba has left behind. A strange new elegy of love and loss, The Seep explores grief, alienation, and the ache of moving on.

A unique alien invasion story that focuses on the human and the myriad ways we see and don t see our own world. Mesmerising.
Jeff VanderMeer, award winning author of Dead Astronauts and the Borne trilogy

The standard canard is that utopian settings are boring, monolithic, didactic, and make for bad fiction. How lucky we are to have Chana Porter to blow such nonsense out of the water with this moving and beautiful book.
China Miéville

The psychedelics are coming! The psychedelics are coming! What if becoming one with the universe was as easy as drinking punch at a party? It turns out that after enlightenment, we still squabble with our partners, worry about fashion choices, and drink too much booze. A great speculative work combining first contact tropes, techno-utopian fantasy, gender theory, and ayahuasca fan fiction, Chana Porter's The Seep imagines a brave newer world by rewriting the question of the ancients: If all things return to the one, where does the one return to? Porter's dazzling trick answer updates Zhaozhou's: the bar.
Eugene Lim, author of Dear Cyborgs

With its wonderfully fraught utopia, the likes of which you have never seen before, The Seep defies not only the recent glut of dystopias, but the long-accepted categories of fiction. An entire universe gets packed into a slim page-turner, in which the search for meaning carries on even after our greatest desires are met.
Robert Repino, author of the War with No Name novels

In a time of dreary dystopias, Chana Porter's The Seep is that rarest of books: a genuine utopian hope of salvation. While the novel accomplishes this through an alien intervention, its message is not simply one of blind optimism, but a complex portrait of people struggling with change, fear, and ultimately hope. Porter shows us that the end of the world is easy. The beginning of the world is the real challenge.
Rachel Pollack, award-winning author of Godmother Night

Unlike anything you've ever read.
Bustle

A beautiful new limited edition paperback of The Song of Achilles, published as part of the Bloomsbury Modern Classics list

The god touches his finger to the arrow's fletching. Then he breathes, a puff of air - as if to send dandelions flying, to push toy boats over water. And the arrow flies, straight and silent, in a curving, downward arc towards Achilles' back.

Greece in the age of heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the court of King Peleus and his perfect son Achilles. Despite their differences, the boys develop a tender friendship, a bond which blossoms into something deeper as they grow into young men.

But when Helen of Sparta is kidnapped, Achilles is dispatched to distant Troy to fulfil his destiny. Torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus follows, little knowing that the years that follow will test everything they hold dear. 

A shocking collection of dark stories, ranging from chilling contemporary fairytales to disturbing supernatural fiction.

Alone in a remote house in Iceland a woman is unnerved by her isolation; another can only find respite from the clinging ghost that follows her by submerging herself in an overgrown pool. Couples wrestle with a lack of connection to their children; a schoolgirl becomes obsessed with the female anatomical models in a museum; and a cheery account of child's day out is undercut by chilling footnotes.

These dark tales explore women's fears with electrifying honesty and invention and speak to one another about female bodies, domestic claustrophobia, desire and violence.

'A brilliant collection of stories . . . All will burrow their way into your brain and not let go' Stylist

'Shimmers with menace . . . Fans of Angela Carter and Shirley Jackson take note' i Newspaper

KIRSTY LOGAN WAS SELECTED AS ONE OF BRITAIN'S TEN MOST OUTSTANDING LGBTQ WRITERS by Val McDermid for the International Literature Showcase in 2019

From drag queens and discos, to black holes and monsters, these stories and poems wrestle with love and loneliness and the fight to be seen.

By turns serious and fantastical, hilarious and confrontational, We Were Always Here addresses the fears, mysteries, wonders and variety of experience that binds our community together.

We Were Always Here is a snapshot of current Scottish LGBTI+ writing and a showcase of queer talent.