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A novel by a brilliant new voice, Hombrecito is a queer coming-of-age story about a young immigrant's complex relationships with his mother and his motherlandIn this groundbreaking novel, Santiago Jose Sanchez plunges us into the heart of one boy's life. His mother takes him and his brother from Colombia to America, leaving their absent father behind but essentially disappearing herself once they get to Miami.In America, his mother works as a waitress when she was once a doctor. The boy embraces his queer identity as wholeheartedly as he embraces his new home, but not without a sense of loss. As he grows, his relationship with his mother becomes fraught, tangled, a love so intense that it borders on vivid pain but is also the axis around which his every decision revolves. She may have once forgotten him, disappeared, but she is always on his mind.He moves to New York, ducking in and out of bed with different men as he seeks out something, someone, to make him whole again. When his mother invites him to visit family in Colombia with her, he returns to the country as a young man, trying to find peace with his father, with his homeland, with who he's become since he left, and with who his mother is: finally we come to know her and her secrets, her complex ambivalence and fierce love.Hombrecito—“little man”—is a moving portrait of a young person between cultures, between different ideas of himself. From an extraordinary new talent, this is a story told with startling beauty and intensity, a story for anyone searching for home, searching for a way to love.

Short stories that follow unexpected connections and tell of queer life in America. Winner of the 2023 Autumn House Fiction Prize, Near Strangers is a collection of eight tightly crafted short stories filled with unexpected connections and set against the backdrop of everyday life. These stories center on resilient female protagonists and offer a view into queer life in America outside of its major coastal cities. The characters in Marian Crotty's collection are searching—for understanding, acceptance, or forgiveness. In the title story, an elderly rape crisis volunteer's advocacy for a survivor leads her to reexamine her role in estrangement from her son; in “Halloween,” a queer teen is counseled through heartbreak by her unlucky-in-love grandmother; and in “Family Resemblance,” a group of families whose children share the same sperm donor is disrupted by the arrival of a minor celebrity. While marginalization, loneliness, and bigotry hover in the distance of Near Strangers, the book's tone is hopeful and invites readers to reflect on our shared human experience with empathy.

Virginia Woolf's satirical, prescient novel Orlando, published in 1928, is a groundbreaking work that explores themes of gender, identity, and time. The narrative features a nobleman named Orlando who lives over three centuries, beginning in the Elizabethan era and ending in the twentieth century, and, remarkably, changes from man to woman at the midpoint. With its fusion of masculinity and femininity, this transformation allows Woolf to critique societal norms and expectations tied to gender and class in different periods. Through Orlando's unique life span and gender fluidity, Woolf suggests that gender is not fixed or binary, challenging the traditional concepts of gender roles and stereotypes. A complex and multilayered novel that defies easy categorization, Orlando is lauded for its rich prose and its pioneering representation of gender and queer identity. It is a work of literature that continues to resonate with readers today.

From debut author Maiga Doocy comes the charming tale of an impulsive sorcerer and his curmudgeonly rival as they venture deep into a magical forest in search of a counterspell that can break the curse between them—only to discover that magic might not be the only thing pulling them together. Leovander Loveage is a master of small magics. He can summon butterflies with a song or turn someone's hair pink by snapping his fingers. Though such minor charms don't earn him much respect, anything more elaborate always blows up in his face, and so Leo vowed long ago never to use powerful magic again. That is, until a mishap with a forbidden spell binds Leo to obey the commands of his longtime rival, Sebastian Grimm. Grimm is Leo's complete opposite—respected, exceptionally talented, and absolutely insufferable. The only thing they can agree on is that revealing the curse between them would mean the end of their respective magical careers. They need a counterspell, and fast. Chasing rumors of a powerful sorcerer with a knack for undoing curses, Leo and Grimm enter the Unquiet Wood, a forest infested with murderous monsters and dangerous outlaws alike. To break the curse, they will have to uncover the true depths of Leo's magic, set aside their long-standing rivalry, and—much to their horror—work together. Even as an odd spark of attraction flares between them.