The Lambdas have been announced! These books are marked as the best queer fiction by the Lambda Literary Society. Both winners and nominees have been included to broaden your reading experience. Read the rainbow!
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Dead in Long Beach, California
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Coral is the first person to discover her brother Jay's dead body in the wake of his suicide. There's no note, only a drably furnished bachelor pad in Long Beach, California, and a cell phone with a handful of numbers in it. Coral pockets the phone. And then she starts responding to texts as her dead brother. Over the course of one week, Coral, the successful yet lonely author of a hit dystopian novel, Wildfire , becomes increasingly untethered from reality. Blindsided by grief and operating with reckless determination, she doubles and triples down on posing as her brother, risking not only her own sanity but her relationship with her precocious niece, Khadijah. As Coral's swirl of lies slowly closes in on her, the quirky and mysterious alien world of Wildfire becomes enmeshed in her own reality, in the process pushing long-buried memories, traumas, and secrets dangerously into the present.
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Book
Call Number:
FIC Bla
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"Bernie is a talented young photographer who has quit taking photographs in favor of drinking and drifting around Philadelphia. Leah is ambitious yet flailing grad student and journalist who must know the answer to every question. When Bernie replies to Leah's ad for a new housemate, they tentatively begin the kind of uncategorizable, queer relationship that can only flourish between two people who deeply understand each others' dreams and dissatisfactions. When Bernie's college professor dies in rural Pennsylvania and leaves her a complicated inheritance, Leah volunteers to accompany Bernie, turning the jaunt into a road trip with an ambitious mission: to document 2018 America in words and photographs. What ensues is a three-week journey through the state of Pennsylvania in which Bernie and Leah have eye-opening conversations with a wide-range of Americans, and develop a piercing intimacy that cracks each of them wide open. Ultimately, they create a joint work of genre-defying art that leaves them--and our nation--forever changed" --
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Book
Call Number:
FIC Eis
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"When Miami residents are ordered to evacuate before a hurricane, everyone in Luciana's family complies, except for her beloved yet batty grandmother, Abue. But it turns out the storm isn't the real crisis: Abue, normally glamorous and full of energy, is given a devastating medical diagnosis once danger passes. Luciana, and the rest of the family, are heartbroken, but Abue is about as interested in getting treatment as she was in evacuating. She'd rather charm the hospital staff, and then turn around and torture her family by threatening suicide if they let any more relatives come see her. Soon, Abue moves into Luciana's bedroom to recuperate, and though their approaches to life couldn't be more different, their complicated bond intensifies. Luciana would rather be roller skating, getting high, or sneaking out to Ladies Night to meet girls, but her grandmother's wild stories and unpredictable antics are a welcome distraction from her mother's conservative beliefs and obsession with appearances, or her sister Mari pulling away from the family in favor of a wealthier, whiter collegiate social circle. Forced to step into the role of caretaker, translator, and keeper of the generational secrets Abue starts to share, Luciana finds herself reluctantly facing down adulthood and rising to the occasion in her own unique way" --
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Book
Call Number:
LP FIC Mog
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"Lacey Bond has grown up in her parents' hippie New Hampshire daycare, idolizing her blasphemous, ultra-fashionable sister, Éclair, chasing baby squirrels, and contemplating trees. Then the Satanic Panic hits -- the moral hysteria that shook the United States by its shoulders in the 80s and 90s. It's the summer of 1990 when Lacey's parents are handcuffed, flung into the county jail, and faced with a torrent of jaw-dropping accusations from dozens of current and former daycare kids. The criminal trial that follows is one of several in the novel, and it marks the beginning of Lacey's relentless effort to survive after her literal and figurative guardians vanish, one by one. After the hysteria results in a devastating murder, Lacey runs away and starts over in Montreal with a new identity. But will she ever escape the constant fear of being found out and having to face the trauma of the media spotlight all over again?" --
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Book
Call Number:
FIC Thr
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For over thirty years, Old Second and Bao Mei have cobbled together a meager existence in New York City’s Chinatown. But unlike other couples, these two share an unusual past. In rural Fuzhou, before they emigrated, they frequented the Workers’ Cinema: a theater where gay men cruised for love. While classic war films played, Old Second and his countrymen found intimacy in the screening rooms. In the box office, Bao Mei sold movie tickets to closeted men, guarding their secrets and finding her own happiness with the projectionist. But when Old Second’s passion for his male lover is revealed, a series of haunting events unfold, propelling these characters toward an uncertain future in America. Spanning three timelines--post-socialist China, 1980s Chinatown, and contemporary New York--Cinema Love is a novel about men and women who find themselves in forbidden relationships; the weight of secrets; and the way memory forever haunts the present.
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Book
Call Number:
FIC Tan
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Description:
It’s 2001, and twenty-four-year-old Gordon--handsome, sensitive, and eager for direction--takes a bus from Minnesota to New York City because it’s the only place for a young gay man to go. As he begins to settle into the city’s punishing rhythm, he gets a job walking rich Manhattanites’ dogs. But it isn’t until he stumbles into the West Village brownstone of two of his clients, the powerful gallery owners Phillip and Nicola, that Gordon learns how much the world has hidden from him--and what he’s capable of doing in order to get it for himself. A lush, heart-quickening novel about family and art, sex and class, and the terror of self-discovery, Thomas Grattan’s In Tongues chronicles Gordon’s perilous pursuit of belonging from the Midwest to New York and, later, to Europe and Mexico City. As he floats further into Phillip and Nicola’s exclusive universe, and as lines blur between employee, muse, lover, and mentor, Gordon’s charm, manipulation, and growing ambition begin to escape his own control, in turn threatening to unravel the lives, and lies, of those around him.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Gra
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Description:
Dave Win, the son of a Burmese man he’s never met and a British dressmaker, is thirteen years old when he gets a scholarship to a top boarding school. With the doors of elite English society cracked open for him, heady new possibilities emerge, even as Dave is exposed to the envy and viciousness of his wealthy classmates. Alan Hollinghurst’s new novel follows Dave from the 1960s on--through the possibilities that remained open for him, and others that proved to be illusory: as a working-class brown child in a decidedly white institution; a young man discovering queer culture and experiencing his first, formative love affairs; a talented but often overlooked actor, on the road with an experimental theater company; and an older Londoner whose late-in-life marriage fills his days with an unexpected sense of happiness and security.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Hol
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Description:
"Theron David Alden was there for the first two: the summer they meet in rural New Hampshire, when he's fifteen and Jake's seventeen; then seven years later in New York City, those too-short, nearly sleepless days and nights that change both their lives and end up being all they'll ever have together, the dream and the end of the dream and the longing for the dream, all in one. Theron is not there for the third one. And yet, there is so much joy and self-discovery in these pages: the glorious, stupid simplicity of a boyhood joke; the devastation of minor insecurities; the way a great song can distill a universe inside of a friendship; the limits of what we can know about each other; the mysterious, porous, ungraspable fault line between oneself and the person one loves better than oneself, that beautiful, toxic elixir of need and hope and want."--
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Tho
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Description:
"Valdin is still in love with his ex-boyfriend Xabi, who used to drive around Auckland in a ute but now drives around Buenos Aires in one. Greta is in love with her fellow English tutor Holly, who doesn't know how to pronounce Greta's surname, Vladislavljevic, properly. From their Auckland apartment, brother and sister must navigate the intricate paths of modern romance as well as weather the small storms of their eccentric Māori-Russian-Catalonian family"--
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Rei
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Description:
"Theo and Kit have been a lot of things: childhood best friends, crushes, in love, and now estranged exes. After a brutal breakup on the transatlantic flight to their dream European food and wine tour, they exited each other's lives once and for all. Time apart has done them good. Theo has found confidence as a hustling bartender by night and aspiring sommelier by day, with a long roster of casual lovers. Kit, who never returned to America, graduated as the reigning sex god of his pastry school class and now bakes at one of the finest restaurants in Paris. Sure, nothing really compares to what they had, and life stretches out long and lonely ahead of them, but -- yeah. It's in the past. All that remains is the unused voucher for the European tour that never happened, good for 48 months after its original date and about to expire. Four years later, it seems like a great idea to finally take the trip. Solo. Separately. It's not until they board the tour bus that they discover they've both accidentally had the exact same idea, and now they're trapped with each other for three weeks of stunning views, luscious flavors, and the most romantic cities of France, Spain, and Italy. It's fine. There's nothing left between them. So much nothing that, when Theo suggests a friendly wager to see who can sleep with their hot Italian tour guide first, Kit is totally game. And why stop there? Why not a full-on European hookup competition? But sometimes a taste of everything only makes you crave what you can't have" --
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC McQ
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We were the universe : a novel
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Description:
"The trip was supposed to be fun. When Kit's best friend gets dumped by his boyfriend, he begs her to ditch her family responsibilities for an idyllic weekend in the Montana mountains. They'll soak in hot springs, then sneak a vape into a dive bar and drink too much, like old times. Instead, their getaway only reminds Kit of everything she's lost lately: her wildness, her independence, and--most heartbreaking of all--her sister, Julie, who died a few years ago. When she returns home to the Dallas suburbs, Kit tries to settle in to her routine--long afternoons spent caring for her irrepressible daughter, going on therapist-advised dates with her concerned husband, and reluctantly taking her mother's phone calls. But in the secret recesses of Kit's mind, she's reminiscing about the band she used to be in--and how they'd go out to the desert after shows and drop acid. She's imagining an impossible threesome with her kid's pretty gymnastics teacher and the cool playground mom. Keyed into everything that might distract from her surfacing pain, Kit spirals. As her already thin boundaries between reality and fantasy blur, she begins to wonder: Is Julie really gone?" --
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Par
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Description:
Everything is changing--but everything is also exactly the same. Ingken can't ignore it: ice caps stained brown from forest fires, pipeline construction, drought... the whole world somehow persists despite the slow erosion of stability. After a trip to Paris, Ingken returns home ready for a break from drugs. Their supportive partner, Lily, is flushed, excited about a new connection she's made. Although Ingken wants to be happy for her, there's a discomfort they can't shake. Sleepless nights fill with an endless scroll of images and headlines about climate disaster. A vague dysphoria simmers under their skin; they are able to identify that like Lily, they are changing, but they're not sure exactly how and at what pace. Everyone keeps telling them to burn themself to the ground and build themself back up but they worry about the kind of debris that fire might leave behind.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Bul
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Djuna : the extraordinary life of Djuna Barnes
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Description:
"Djuna Barnes lived in a dazzling world filled with literary salons, innovative writing, and daring new art styles. But it didn't come easily. She managed to work her way out of an abusive childhood growing up in a polygamous rural utopian community on Long Island. She was determined to live an extraordinary life, and found herself socializing with the likes of James Joyce, Natalie Barney, Peggy Guggenheim, and T.S. Eliot in 1920s literary Paris. Called the most famous unknown of the century, Djuna Barnes stood out for her brilliant writing, her biting wit, and her unique style. Her novel, Nightwood is considered by some to be one of the greatest lesbian love stories ever written. But as the stock market crashed and the Lost Generation left Paris, her life began to unwind. A fascinating window into the life of a woman whose enormous literary talent and provocative attitude were both celebrated and disdained by the world" --Amazon.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Mac
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You get what you pay for : essays
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Description:
"Dubbed a voice of her generation, poet and writer Morgan Parker has spent much of her adulthood in therapy, trying to square the resonance of her writing with the alienation she feels in nearly every aspect of life, from her lifelong singleness to her battle with depression. She traces this loneliness to an inability to feel truly safe with others and a historic hyper-awareness stemming from the effects of slavery. In this collection of sharp, reflective essays, Parker examines America's cultural history and relationship to Black Americans through the ages, through such topics as the Church's role in propagating segregation through scriptural misreadings, the implications of Bill Cosby's fall from grace in a culture predicated on acceptance through respectability, and the pitfalls of visibility as seen through the mischaracterizations of Serena Williams as alternately iconic and too ambitious"--
Format:
Book
Call Number:
305.896 Par
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American teenager : how trans kids are surviving hate and finding joy in a turbulent era
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Description:
Media coverage tends to sensationalize the fight over how trans kids should be allowed to live, but what is incredibly rare are the voices of the people at the heart of this debate: transgender and gender nonconforming kids themselves. For their groundbreaking new book, journalist Nico Lang spent a year traveling the country to document the lives of transgender, nonbinary, and genderfluid teens and their families. Drawing on hundreds of hours of on-the-ground interviews with them and the people in their communities, American Teenager paints a vivid portrait of what it's actually like to grow up trans today.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
306.76 Lan
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Make it count : my fight to become the first transgender Olympic runner
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Description:
"CeCé Telfer is a warrior. The first openly transgender woman to win an NCAA championship, she has contended with transphobia on and off the track since childhood. Now, she stands at the crossroads of a national and international conversation about equity in sports, forced to advocate for her personhood and rights at every turn. After spending years training for the 2024 Olympics, Telfer has been sidelined and silenced more times than she can count. But she's never been good at taking no for an answer. MAKE IT COUNT is Telfer's raw and inspiring story. From coming of age in Jamaica, where she grew up hearing a constant barrage of slurs, to beginning her new life in Toronto and then New Hampshire, where she realized what running could offer her, to living in the backseat of her car while searching for a coach, to Mexico, where she trained for the US Trials, this book follows the arc of Telfer's Olympic dream. But it's also the story of resilience and athleticism, of a runner who found a clarity in her sport that otherwise eluded her--a sense of being simply alive on this earth, a human moving through space. Finally, herself." --
Format:
Book
Call Number:
796.42092 Tel
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Description:
"By a prize-winning, young Black trans writer of outsized talent, a fierce and disciplined memoir about queerness, masculinity, and race. Even as it shines light on the beauty and toxicity of Black masculinity from a transgender perspective--the tropes, the presumptions--Pretty is as much a powerful and tender love letter as it is a call for change. "I should be able to define myself, but I am not. Not by any governmental or cultural body," Brookins writes. "Every day, I negotiate the space between who I am, how I'm perceived, and what I need to unlearn. People have assumed things about me, and I can't change that. Every day, I am assumed to be a Black American man, though my ID says 'female,' and my heart says neither of the sort. What does it mean - to be a girl-turned-man when you're something else entirely?" Informed by KB Brookins's personal experiences growing up in Texas, those of other Black transgender masculine people, Black queer studies, and cultural criticism, Pretty is concerned with the marginalization suffered by a unique American constituency-- whose condition is a world apart from that of cisgender, non-Black, and non-masculine people. Here is a memoir (a bildungsroman of sorts) about coming to terms with instantly and always being perceived as "other""--
Format:
Book
Call Number:
305.38896 KB
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Radiant : the life and line of Keith Haring
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Description:
"A stunning life of the iconic American artist, Keith Haring, by the acclaimed biographer Brad Gooch. In the 1980s, the subways of New York City were covered with art. In the stations, black matte sheets were pasted over outdated ads, and unsigned chalk drawings often popped up on these blank spaces. These temporary chalk drawings numbered in the thousands and became synonymous with a city as diverse as it was at war with itself, ravaged by poverty and oppression but alive with art and creative energy. And every single one of these drawings was done by Keith Haring. Keith Haring was one of the most emblematic artists of the 1980s, a figure described by his contemporaries as "a prophet in his life, his person, and his work." Part of an iconic cultural crowd that included Andy Warhol, Madonna, and Basquiat, Haring broke down the barriers between high art and popular culture, creating work that was accessible for all and using it as a means to provoke and inspire radical social change. Haring died of AIDS in 1990. To this day, his influence on our culture remains incontrovertible, and his glamorous, tragically short life has a unique aura of mystery and power. Brad Gooch, noted biographer of Flannery O'Connor and Frank O'Hara, was granted access to Haring's extensive archive. He has written a biography that will become the authoritative work on the artist. Based on interviews with those who knew Haring best and drawing from the rich archival history, Brad Gooch sets out to capture the magic of Keith Haring: a visionary and timeless icon"--
Format:
Book
Call Number:
B Har
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When the band played on : the life of Randy Shilts, America's trailblazing gay journalist
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Description:
"Randy Shilts was the preeminent LGBTQ+ reporter of his generation. He was the first openly gay reporter assigned to a gay beat at a mainstream paper and one of the nation's most influential chroniclers of gay history, politics, and culture. Shilts wrote three seminal works on the community: The Mayor of Castro Street, on the life, assassination, and legacy of Harvey Milk; And the Band Played On, detailing the failure of politics as usual during the early AIDS epidemic; and Conduct Unbecoming, a history of the US military's mistreatment of LGBTQ servicemembers. Yet the intimate life story of Randy Shilts has been left unwritten. When the Band Played On tells that story, recognizing his legacy as a trailblazing figure in gay activism, journalism, and public policy."--Dust jacket.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
B Shi
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Description:
"Winner of The 2023 Clay Reynolds Novella Prize, selected by Michael Martone. The Mary Years is a nonfiction novella that chronicles one young woman's quarter-century love affair with The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Part bildungsroman and part televisual ekphrasis, this is the story of Mary Richards re-seen through the eyes of Julie Marie Wade"--
Format:
Book
Call Number:
813.6 Wad
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Gender explained : a new understanding of identity in a gender creative world
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Description:
"An essential primer on gender literacy from leading experts on the front line of the cultural and political debate"--
Format:
Book
Call Number:
305.3 Ehr
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The other Olympians : fascism, queerness, and the making of modern sports
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Description:
"The story of the groundbreaking trans athletes and Olympic bureaucrats who set the stage for today's culture wars"--
Format:
Book
Call Number:
796.0867 Wat
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Glenn Burke, game changer : the man who invented the high five
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Description:
"An inspiring picture book biography about Glenn Burke, the first Major League Baseball player to come out as gay, and the story of how he created the high five, the world's most recognizable handshake. Playing for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Glenn Burke could do it all--hit, throw, run, field. He was the heart of the clubhouse who energized his teammates with his enthusiasm and love for the game. It was that energy that led Glenn to invent the high five one October day back in 1977--a spontaneous gesture after a home run that has since evolved into our universal celebratory greeting. But despite creating this joyful symbol, Glenn Burke, a gay Black man, wasn't always given support and shown acceptance in return. This moving picture book biography recognizes the challenges Burke faced while celebrating how his bravery and now-famous handshake made him a true pioneer"--
Format:
Book
Call Number:
JB Bur
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"When a snowstorm prevents all the relatives from coming in for the holidays, a family has to adapt their traditions and find new ways to celebrate."--
Format:
Book
Call Number:
E Gri
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Description:
"Mallory Marsh is an expert at molding into whatever other people want her to be. Her true thoughts and feelings only come out in her sci-fi webcomic, which she publishes anonymously as Dr. BotGirl. But juggling all the versions of herself gets tricky, especially when Mal's mom signs her up for swim team. Instead of being honest about hating competitive swim, Mal skips out on practice and secretly joins the library's comic club. There Mal meets Noa, a cute enby kid who is very sure of who they are. As she helps Noa plan a drag queen story time, Mal tries to be the person she thinks Noa wants her to be--by lying about her stage fright. Then Mal's webcomic goes viral, and kids at school start recognizing the unflattering characters based on Mal's real-life friends. With negative pushback threatening the drag queen story time and Dr.BotGirl's identity getting harder to hide, Mallory must reckon with the lies she has told. If she reveals her full self, will her friends, her parents, and her new crush accept the real Mallory Marsh?"--Provided by publisher.
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Book
Call Number:
J FIC Lea
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Bighearted and observant twelve-year-old Murray O’Shea loves the ocean. Every chance she gets, she’s in it. It could be because the ocean never makes her apologize for being exactly who she is—something her family refuses to do—but it could also be because of the secret magic that Murray shares with the ocean. Though she can’t explain its presence, the electric buzz she feels from her fingertips down to her toes allows her to become one with the ocean and all its creatures, and it makes Murray feel seen in a way she never feels on land. But then a hurricane hits Murray’s Jersey Shore home, sending the O'Sheas far inland to live with relatives. Being this far from the ocean, Murray seems to lose her magic. And stuck in a house with her family, she can no longer avoid the truths she’s discovering about herself—like how she feels in the clothes her mom makes her wear, or why she doesn't have boys on the brain like other girls her age.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
J FIC Tra
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Description:
In this cute and queer contemporary middle grade comedy about friendship, first crushes, and first kisses, twelve-year-old Noah Frye comes up with a foolproof plan to teach herself how to have a crush on a boy to fit in better with her friends--only to discover she's been looking in the wrong place, and her crush was right beside her all along...
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Book
Call Number:
J FIC Hor
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Description:
"A chance encounter throws Ash and Splinter into each other's orbits, and they find friendship in their shared loneliness and their desires to prove themselves"--
Format:
Book
Call Number:
J FIC Nij
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Description:
"Icarus Gallagher is a thief. He steals priceless art and replaces it with his father's impeccable forgeries. For years, one man--the wealthy Mr. Black--has been their target in revenge for his role in the death of Icarus's mother. To keep their secret, Icarus adheres to his own strict rules to keep people, and feelings, at bay: Don't let anyone close. Don't let anyone touch you. And, above all, don't get caught. Until one night, he does. Not by Mr. Black but by his mysterious son, Helios, now living under house arrest in the Black mansion. Instead of turning Icarus in, Helios bargains for something even more dangerous--a friendship that breaks every single one of Icarus's rules. As reluctance and distrust become closeness and something more, they uncover the gilded cage that has trapped both their families for years. One Icarus is determined to escape. But his father's thirst for revenge shows no sign of fading, and soon it may force Icarus to choose: the escape he's dreamed of, or the boy he's come to love" --
Format:
Book
Call Number:
YA FIC Anc