To celebrate LGBT+ Pride Month is month this June, check out our list of the 10 best books to read this month that reflect and celebrate the diversity of the modern LGBTQ+ experience.

From ground-breaking autobiographies and books by prominent Queer authors to the newest Love comedies on TikTok, and from definitive works on activism and allyship to perfect introductions on inclusivity and LGBTQ+ issues for children.

• The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida – Shehan Karunatilaka
  
  
  Winner of The Booker Prize 2022

  A searing satire set amid the murderous mayhem of Sri Lanka beset by civil war Colombo, 1990. Maali Almeida, war photographer, gambler and closet gay, has woken up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office. His dismembered body is sinking in the serene Beira lake and he has no idea who killed him.

  At a time where scores are settled by death squads, suicide bombers and hired goons, the list of suspects is depressingly long, as the ghouls and ghosts with grudges who cluster round can attest. But even in the afterlife, time is running out for Maali. He has seven moons to try and contact the man and woman he loves most and lead them to a hidden cache of photos that will rock Sri Lanka.

‘Shehan Karunatilaka’s epic novel is a powerful evocation of Sri Lanka’s dark and brutal past’ – Lucy Popescu, The Financial Times

• The Queer Film Guide: 100 great movies that tell LGBTQIA+ stories – Kyle Turner

  Beginning with early trailblazers like Different from the Others, Kyle Turner has selected 100 of cinema’s greatest queer films to guide you through the eras.

  From Hitchcock’s Rope and cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show through the New Queer Cinema movement of the 90s to the present day, where LGBTQIA+ narratives have increasingly made their way into the mainstream and dominated award seasons with films like Carol, Tangerine, and Moonlight.

  From scrappy auteurs to Academy Award winners, The Queer Film Guide celebrates LGBTQIA+ stories and artists, offering a fresh take on what defines great cinema, and lending a voice to the diverse creators and characters who have shaped the artform.

• Young Mungo – Douglas Stuart
   

  From the Booker-prizewinning author of Shuggie Bain, Douglas Stuart, an extraordinary, page-turning second novel, a vivid portrayal of working-class life and a highly suspenseful story of the dangerous first love of two young men: Mungo and James.

  Born under different stars, Protestant Mungo and Catholic James live in the hyper-masculine and violently sectarian world of Glasgow’s housing estates. They should be sworn enemies if they’re to be seen as men at all, and yet they become best friends as they find a sanctuary in the pigeon dovecote that James has built for his prize racing birds. As they find themselves falling in love, they dream of escaping the grey city, and Mungo works especially hard to hide his true self from all those around him, especially from his elder brother Hamish, a local gang leader with a brutal reputation to uphold.

  But the threat of discovery is constant and the punishment unspeakable. When Mungo’s mother sends him on a fishing trip to a loch in Western Scotland with two strange men whose drunken banter belies murky pasts, he will need to summon all his inner strength and courage to get back to a place of safety, a place where he and James might still have a future.

  Imbuing the everyday world of its characters with rich lyricism and giving full voice to people rarely acknowledged in literary fiction, Douglas Stuart’s Young Mungo is a gripping and revealing story about the bounds of masculinity, the push and pull of family, the violence faced by so many queer people, and the dangers of loving someone too much.

• Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender – Dr Kit Heyam
  
  
  Across the world today, people of all ages are doing fascinating, creative, messy things with gender. These people have a rich history – but one that is often left behind by narratives of trans lives that focus on people with stable, binary, uncomplicated gender identities. As a result, these stories tend to be recent, binary, stereotyped, medicalised and white.

  Before We Were Trans is a new and different story of gender, that seeks not to be comprehensive or definitive, but – by blending culture, feminism and politics – to widen the scope of what we think of as trans history by telling the stories of people across the globe whose experience of gender has been transgressive, or not characterised by stability or binary categories.

  Transporting us from Renaissance Venice to seventeenth-century Angola, from Edo Japan to North America, the stories this book tells leave questions and resist conclusions. They are fraught with ambiguity, and defy modern Western terminology and categories – not least the category of ‘trans’ itself. But telling them provides a history that reflects the richness of modern trans reality more closely than any previously written.

• Great LGBTQ+ Speeches: Empowering Voices That Engage And Inspire –Tea Uglow
  
  
  From pioneering nineteenth-century voices to present day trans rights allyship, this essential volume of influential and inspiring LGBTQ+ speeches ranges across topics as diverse as the AIDS epidemic, equal marriage and more.

• Gwen and Art Are Not in Love – Lex Croucher
  
  
  Gwen, the quick-witted Princess of England, and Arthur, future duke and general gadabout, have been betrothed since birth. Unfortunately, the only thing they can agree on is that they hate each other.
  
  When Gwen catches Art kissing a boy and Art discovers where Gwen hides her diary (complete with racy entries about Bridget Leclair, the kingdom’s only female knight), they become reluctant allies.
  
  By pretending to fall for each other, their mutual protection will be assured. But how long can they keep up the ruse? With Gwen growing closer to Bridget, and Art becoming unaccountably fond of Gabriel, Gwen’s infuriatingly serious, bookish brother, the path to true love is looking far from straight…
  
  

  ‘Gwen and Art was exactly what I need right now – a delightful, heart-warming, hilarious historical romp, overflowing with queer panic and terrible jokes. I loved it.’ – Alice Oseman

• Jamie – L.D. Lapinski
  
  
  

  Quietly groundbreaking in its treatment of themes surrounding non-binary children, this uplifting and inclusive novel focuses on the titular child and their concern about starting at a new school.
  
  Jamie Rambeau is a happy 11-year-old non-binary kid who likes nothing better than hanging out with their two best friends Daisy and Ash. But when the trio find out that in Year Seven they will be separated into one school for boys and another for girls, their friendship suddenly seems at risk…

• Pageboy: A Memoir – Elliot Page
  
  
  The acclaimed actor and noted trans activist reflects on gender, mental health, Hollywood and much more in this thoughtful, passionate memoir.
  
  

  ‘The emergence of our true selves is all of our life’s work. Pageboy helps chart the course.’ -Jamie Lee Curtis

• DC Pride: The New Generation 
  
  
  The highly anticipated sequel to the Ringo Award-winning DC Pride 2021, DC Pride: The New Generation features more stories, more characters, and more pride than ever before!
  
  DC celebrates Pride with this incredible collection starring fan-favorite LGBTQIA+ characters like Superman, Nubia, Tim Drake, Kid Quick, Aquaman, Green Lantern, Alysia Yeoh, the Ray, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, Batwoman, and more!

• Heartstopper Volume 1 – Alice Oseman
  

  
  Boy meets boy. Boys become friends. Boys fall in love. An LGBTQ+ graphic novel about life, love, and everything that happens in between.

  Charlie and Nick are at the same school, but they’ve never met … until one day when they’re made to sit together. They quickly become friends, and soon Charlie is falling hard for Nick, even though he doesn’t think he has a chance.

  But love works in surprising ways, and Nick is more interested in Charlie than either of them realised.

  Heartstopper is about love, friendship, loyalty and mental illness. It encompasses all the small stories of Nick and Charlie’s lives that together make up something larger, which speaks to all of us.

  This is the first volume of the Heartstopper series with a fifth volume due for release later this year as-well as a second and third season of the hit Netflix show.

Horror and the LGBT community