Originally published in 1954, Dola de Jong's The Tree and the Vine was a groundbreaking portrayal of lesbian lives in Holland just before the outbreak of World War II. Bea, a shy office worker and the narrator of this story, keeps to herself and considers social activity a chore, until she meets Erica. Within weeks, they become roommates, and Bea is increasingly fascinated by her heedless new friend: Erica, a journalist, keeps strange hours and doesn't seem to sleep. Her moods vacillate. Over many months, the pair becomes close, and Bea is simultaneously obsessed and resistant to her own feelings, telling herself that independence is paramount.

As the threat of a German invasion grows, Erica gets involved with several female lovers, often in abusive relationships, while Bea plays the loyal friend always there to bail her out of trouble. On the brink of war, realizing that Erica is half Jewish and engaged in risky behaviors, Bea takes a half-step toward recognizing what they share. "She never spoke those few words again.... We've accepted it, each in our own way."

The tone of The Tree and the Vine is often elegiac; what is most important almost always goes unsaid. In a thoughtful translator's note, Gehrman mentions linguistic peculiarities of de Jong's original: Anglicisms and words and expressions from the French, for example, which Gehrman has worked to maintain, and her delicate handling of Dutch idiom. She argues that The Tree and the Vine is not just a lesbian novel but "reflective of a broader female experience." By turns emotional and restrained, this powerful story indeed offers valuable perspective on the human experience. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

The potent sights, sounds, smells and textures of Miami don't begin to compare with the vibrant, witty interior of a Colombian immigrant teen discovering herself in Juli Delgado Lopera's dazzling first novel, Fiebre Tropical.

Francisca is an unhappy 15-year-old when her single mother, Myriam, transplants the family (which includes younger sister Lucía and grandmother Alba) to Florida from Bogotá. While living in a rundown townhouse, they're swept into the evangelical currents of Iglesia Cristiana Jesucristo Redentor, along with Tía Milagros, Myriam's sister, already deeply invested in the church's social pageantry. Frustrated by the move, Francisca resists this unfamiliar brand of religion, so fixated on eternal life. Meanwhile, she watches her sister embrace it thoroughly, mother descend into depression and grandmother sink into alcohol. Nothing gives Francisca joy except for the bubbly feelings she begins having for the pastor's daughter, Carmen.

A nuanced tragicomedy, Fiebre Tropical is an outstanding work of fiction by a transdisciplinary artist who has already earned several awards for previous work, including a Lambda Literary Award for the anthology ¡Cuéntamelo! Oral Histories by LGBT Latino Immigrants. Delgado Lopera seamlessly slips between English and Spanish throughout the novel, so monolinguists may want to have a translation app handy for full comprehension. But context more often than not brings absolute clarity in this fabulous coming-of-age story, whose rejoinders like, "I wondered what exactly Mami revealed about our house to the Pastora that made her think we all wanted to spend our afterlives together," impeccably balance humor and pathos. --Dave Wheeler, associate editor, Shelf Awareness

In novels that are centered on a close friendship, it's often depicted as an overwhelmingly positive force. In The Knockout Queen, Rufi Thorpe presents a friendship that is equal parts life raft and anvil, and she shows that loyalty can be much less interesting than volatility.

The Knockout Queen's narrator, Michael Hesketh, has been living with his erratically employed aunt in Southern California's affluent North Shore since he was 11, but he doesn't meet Bunny Lampert, his next-door neighbor, until they're both in 10th grade. Bunny doesn't care that Michael is gay, and he commiserates with her about being a 6'3" giantess by the end of their junior year. They bond over having alcoholic fathers and absent mothers, and fearing that no one will ever find them beautiful.

The Knockout Queen is an unexpectedly gorgeous suburban gothic about what, if anything, we owe our nearest and dearest. Thorpe, who has also written the novels The Girls from Corona del Mar and Dear Fang, with Love, spends the first quarter of The Knockout Queen doing prep work, fruitfully gambling that her loose-limbed but assiduous characterizations will hold readers' interest until she springs her plot, which entails a series of distressing events that take place during Michael and Bunny's senior year. As Michael puts it, "Overnight, Bunny had gone from being the princess of North Shore, happy, popular, a varsity athlete, and daughter of one of the most influential men in town" to being, well, something else entirely. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

Can a tortured soul rewrite his history and free himself from the shackles that have bound him to a life of shame?

Sam is a 28-year-old gay man in Los Angeles, the author of a memoir about drug addiction and several years sober. Despite these accomplishments, Sam lives in a prison of his own mind--an imposter yoked by self-obsession, dissatisfaction with his body and paralyzed by the belief that he is undeserving of true happiness. He doesn't want to die, but rather "coast into a static condition of un-being.... Certainly," Sam fantasizes, "that had to be better than sustained consciousness." When he overhears someone at a party say, "He fixes everything that's wrong with you in three days," Sam figures he has little to lose.

The "he" in question is Jacob, a practitioner of "transdimensional intercession," who uses ayahuasca as the vehicle for transformation. Accompanied by Jacob's chanting and drumming, Sam drinks hallucinogenic tea and embarks on three days of intense self-reflection. The memories that occupy him show flashes of elusive happiness, but more often he's debilitated by shame of his body and the unattainable demands that drove away the men he was close to, especially his true love, Charles. Incapacitated, will Sam find the strength to challenge the stories he's told himself and achieve the happiness that has eluded him?

Lansky's memoir, The Gilded Razor, chronicled his battle with addiction, and he successfully transitions to auto-fiction with Broken People. He disarms readers with incisive observations and sharp humor to counter the constant drumbeat of negative thoughts, and provides hope for those consumed by destructive self-importance. --Frank Brasile, librarian

A shared laugh on the red carpet is all it takes to ignite rumors in Meryl Wilsner's charming romance debut, Something to Talk About. Chinese American screenwriter and former starlet Jo has a great working relationship with her much younger Jewish assistant, Emma, but is it more than that? The media, fed by tips from an on-set leak, surely seem to think so.

As they try to keep a professional distance while working in close proximity, the rumors have Jo and Emma seeing each other differently--a situation that becomes ever more awkward as their relationship evolves: "The rumors would have kicked right back up if people saw them like this, looking like lesbian aunts cheering on their siblings' kids. Emma was even wearing plaid."

Over the course of a year, the two women navigate their age gap and power imbalance, a sexual harassment incident with another character and the hazards of figuring all of this out in the public eye. Wilsner takes care with both the power dynamics between Emma and Jo and the sexual harassment subplot, but makes sure to add enough banter and behind-the-scenes Hollywood tidbits to keep the narrative from feeling too heavy.

Something to Talk About is primarily a slow-burning romance, and Wilsner keeps readers invested through strong characterization, a cast of endearing secondary characters and a healthy dose of humor. Readers looking for two smart, ambitious and big-hearted women will find a lot to talk about in this sapphic story. --Suzanne Krohn, editor, Love in Panels

For Meredith Talusan, transformation looks like this: "Sun Child," "Harvard Man," "Lady Wedgwood." In the nimbly titled Fairest, award-winning journalist Talusan shares an unflinching exploration of identity. "Mirrors were not just mirrors to me," she writes in her prologue, "but bridges made of light to fantastic destinations, where I could be different than myself and lead a better life."

Born in the Philippines, Talusan had blonde hair and blue eyes that marked her as an "anak araw, a sun child." Assigned male at birth, her albinism made her "fair and beautiful," pampered by her grandmother, who was her primary support. At 14, her estranged parents and younger brother posed as a family unit for immigration approval to California. In becoming American, "I perceived myself to be a white person of European descent when I looked in the mirror." Despite impossible obstacles, she arrived at Harvard, joining the class of 1997: "Maybe this was the place where I could erase everything about me that didn't add up or make sense, the place where I could finally belong."

As a "Harvard man," Talusan explored sexuality, inspired by one of her first classes, "Topics in Gay Male Representation." While she eschewed lasting love as an undergraduate, she fell into a committed relationship with an MIT professor--nearly Prince Charming with his British title and inherited wealth--and considered life as "Lady Wedgwood." Her eventual transition to Meredith, "released after a lifetime of hibernation," will be what leaves her "finally satisfied with staying put." Confronting race, colonization, gender and sexuality, Talusan's fierce quest for acceptance becomes an evolving odyssey navigating contemporary queer identity. --Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon

Stephen Rebello (Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of "Psycho" and Bad Movies We Love) is the perfect author to chronicle how Jacqueline Susann's 1966 novel Valley of the Dolls and the 1967 film adaptation overcame universally negative reviews to become one of the top-selling novels of all time and a beloved celluloid camp classic. Rebello succinctly sketches Susann's hardships and triumphs. Prior to writing Valley, she had a son with severe autism, and she received a cancer diagnosis resulting in a radical mastectomy. Thanks to relentless and imaginative self-promotion, Valley stayed on the New York Times bestseller list more than a year and, at its peak, sold 100,000 copies a day. Rebello explains how Susann's "mink-and-mascara-lined kitsch milestone" tapped an audience who didn't normally read books.

When 20th Century Fox bought the movie rights, it hired a top director, two award-winning screenwriters and several Oscar-winning actors. How the movie went so terribly wrong fills the majority of the book with deliciously juicy firsthand observations. It was, according to Rebello, "a production riddled with infighting, feuding, tension, tragedies, missteps, and double dealing." Judy Garland was hired and fired after 10 days of shooting yielded only 90 seconds of usable footage. Patty Duke later quipped, "I realized another month into the filming that Judy was the one who got off easy." Like the novel, the film was critically drubbed but a massive hit. Against all logic (and Susann's lawsuit), the studio began working on a sequel.

Delectable gossip and exhaustive research combine to make Dolls! Dolls! Dolls! delight and sparkle! --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant

Alex Sanchez (Rainbow Boys) and Julie Maroh (Blue Is the Warmest Color) team up for a gorgeously rendered graphic novel that reimagines the origin story of DC's Aqualad. Part coming-out romance, part superpower discovery tale, this exploration of identity portrays loved ones lending each other incredible strength.

High school senior Jake Hyde dreams of the ocean but lives in the New Mexico desert. His mother has forbidden him to go near water since his father drowned. Overprotective to a fault, she wishes Jake would abandon plans to study oceanography and apply in-state with his best friend, Maria Mendez. Secretly, Maria hopes that if Jake stays, they'll date. No one knows that Jake is gay and crushing on swim team captain Kenny Liu. On a long hike, Jake musters his courage and comes out to Kenny, confiding in him about everything--even his strange skin markings that glow in water. When a flash flood threatens to drown them both, Jake saves the day. But how?

You Brought Me the Ocean masterfully conveys the conflicting emotions behind coming out and self-discovery. By pairing Jake's readiness to pursue a romantic relationship with a boy with the manifestation of his hydrokinesis, Sanchez delivers the vital message that there is more to every member of the LGBTQIAP+ community than their sexual identity. Limiting their art palette to oceanic and earth tones, Maroh adds multiple layers to Sanchez's story: by strategically washing out the desert environment, they let the reader experience Jake's worldview; pops of blues and greens draw the eye to the details Jake values. Depicting the hard-won confidence of a newly out gay teen superhero, You Brought Me the Ocean adds fresh voices from the LGBTQIAP+ community to the DC Universe. --Samantha Zaboski, freelance editor and reviewer

Ciara Smyth triumphs in The Falling in Love Montage, which features 17-year-old Saoirse Clarke, who orchestrates an experiment to live out her own romantic-comedy fantasy amid a real world of uncertainty and heartbreak.

When Saoirse falls for cute, single Ruby, she decides she needs "a way of protecting myself from getting my heart splattered again." Saoirse insists that their newfound relationship resemble a classic romantic comedy montage, with only the fun parts and absolutely no serious conversations, sappiness or "we-ing, as in we love this, we are cat people, we are going to live happily ever after." But accompanying the Ferris wheel rides and flirty banter are Saoirse's deep personal secrets. She describes her life "like emotional dodgeball and I kept getting hit." Juxtaposed with Ruby, who is transparent about her own family struggles, Saoirse's pain is deep as she refuses to acknowledge her own demons out of fear her vulnerability will expose itself. Instead, she lashes out with quick wit and biting remarks.

Smyth's story focuses on a lesbian teenage relationship in which queerness is not a major plot point. Saoirse even notes, "Sometimes I forget that I'm a lesbian. As in I forget that it's statistically unusual and that some people have strong feelings about it." The result? A true-to-life protagonist secure in her marginalized sexual identity yet acutely aware of how her gay relationships may be negatively perceived by strangers. While Smyth deftly depicts the painful toll trauma can have on a child, she brings levity and balance to the narrative with hilarious rapid-fire exchanges and hijinks as the girls complete their rom-com bucket list. --Kieran Slattery, freelance reviewer, teacher, and co-creator, Gender Inclusive Classrooms