Fall is well underway. The leaves have changed colors. The temperatures have dropped. Summer flings have been deleted and forgotten about. It’s time to get serious, people. And what better way to prove that you’re a serious person than by reading a serious book?
Related: Bro-Jobs, Beards, And Obama: 11 Great Fall Reading Recommendations For Book Nerds
Whether you’re in the mood for a salacious look at a soccer star’s gay-for-pay porn past, the true tale of a jilted pastor’s wife whose husband left her for another man, or a New Orleans thriller inspired by the unsolved murder of six-year-old beauty queen Jean Benet Ramsey, we’ve got a little something for everyone.
Here are 10 fall reading recommendations. Happy reading!
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Out of Control: How My Addiction Almost Killed Me by Cathal McCarron
The Irish soccer star writes candidly about how the gambling addiction that led him into a world of gay-for-pay porn, the affect it had on his blossoming athletic career, and how he overcame one of the lowest moments in his life.
Love Notes to Men Who Don’t Read by
Between London and Los Angeles, the gym and the gay scene, Instagram and Grindr, what it means to be a gay man has never been so bisected. North Morgan’s third novel moves beyond the confines of fiction to examine how homosexuality’s acceptance into society has created a new breed of demons for a generation of men born as outsiders yet living at the forefront of popular culture.
The Gilded Razor: A Memoir by Sam Lansky
This coming-of-age memoir follows a young man’s fall from a promising student at an elite New York City prep school to a pill-popping sex addict with an affinity for much older men as he embarks on a cross-country journey of self-discovery and redemption.
Garden City Gothic by Greg Herren
Gay author Greg Herren is back with another hot New Orleans thriller, this one about the murder of a six-year-old beauty queen found strangled in the carriage house behind her family’s Garden District mansion. Thirty years after the crime, her brother sets out to finally find his baby sister’s killer.
No Tea, No Shade: New Writings in Black Queer Studies edited by
This collection of writings consists of 19 essays from the next generation of activists, scholars, and community leaders. Topics include “raw” sex, pornography, gentrification, gender nonconformity, social media, and more, with the aim to help push black queer studies into a new and exciting direction.
Jazz Moon by Joe Okonkwo
A Gatsby-esque novel set against the backdrop of the Harlem Renaissance and a glittering Jazz Age Paris. It follows a young poet as he embarks on an emotional and artistic awakening. From chic Parisian cafés to seedy opium dens, his odyssey will bring new love, trials, and heartache, even as echoes from the past urge him to decide where true fulfillment and inspiration lie.
The Gay Preacher’s Wife: How My Gay Husband Deconstructed My Life and Reconstructed My Faith by Lydia Meredith
After being married to Reverend Dennis A. Meredith for almost thirty years and raising three children together, Lydia Meredith discovers a shocking truth: the love of her life left her for a man. Now, she opens up how that revelation shattered her world but strengthened her faith.
Dark Reflections by
Winner of the Stonewall Book Award, Samuel R. Delaney’s latest novel centers around Arnold Hawley, a black gay poet struggling to come to terms with his outsider status. Arnold’s poetry is eventually met with modest acclaim, but only after decades of striving. Romance and friendship are also elusive. Eventually, however, he is able to find a meaningful existence, if not exactly how he had hoped or planned.
Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor, 1980-1983 by Tim Lawrence
Step back in time to New York’s post-disco party scene of the early ’80s. Tim Lawrence interviews DJs, party hosts, producers, musicians, artists, and dancers who helped make up the club scene before gentrification, Reaganomics, corporate intrusion, and the spread of AIDS brought this thriving time in American underground culture to an early end.
What Belongs to You by
On an unseasonably warm autumn day, an American teacher enters a public bathroom beneath Sofia’s National Palace of Culture. There he meets Mitko, a charismatic young hustler, and pays him for sex. He returns to Mitko again and again over the next few months, drawn by hunger and loneliness and risk, and finds himself ensnared in a relationship in which lust leads to mutual predation, and tenderness can transform into violence.
