356 pages. Selected by Kirkus Reviews for Best Books of 2022. It's 1991. Young gay American Conner has found refuge in Tokyo after a rough coming out in Los Angeles. But a spectacular economic meltdown has crushed Japan's high-flying dreams, and now Tokyo is going sour for Conner, too. He's turned to crime to bail out an ex-boyfriend, he's alienating friends and he's started sleeping with a woman. When his crime scheme goes south, he scours Tokyo's...

Blackjack dealer and stripper Adrian West has lived in Las Vegas long enough to be numb to beggars on the Strip. Their destitution is a sad, ugly part of reality in a city where people win or lose it all at the tables every single day. So he's at a loss to explain why the homeless man in the suit catches his eye. Why he can't just keep on walking like he always does. Former advertising executive Max Reynolds is a Las Vegas cliché. After a run of...

"Despite his ability to control the ambient digital cloud, a foster teen falls for a clever con man. Luring bullies to a quarry, a boy takes revenge through unnatural powers of suggestion. After an alien invasion, a survivor fears that he brought something infectious back from the Arctic. A rebellious group of queer artists create a new identity that transcends even the anonymity of death. In Shirley Jackson and Nebula Award-winning author Sam J....

Growing up on an isolated island in the middle of Lake Erie, Aaron Sheftall learned to skate as a young child when extreme weather would cut his off his small community — and its legends about a lost colony of seals — from the rest of the world. Now an elite figure skater, Aaron dreams of getting to the Olympics. Yet competition is fierce and in a sport filled with injuries and drama, careers are short. But when a fluke accident changes

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"This first book by Rae Spoon [who uses "they" as a pronoun], a transgender indie singer-songwriter, is a candid, powerful story about a young person growing up queer in a strict Pentecostal family in Alberta. The narrator attends church events and Billy Graham rallies faithfully with their family before discovering the music that becomes their salvation and means of escape. As their father's schizophrenia causes their parents' marriage to unravel,...

A high school swimmer, intent on being scouted and awarded a scholarship, tries to deal with the pressure of it all while feeling a strange, dark suspicion that she is actually a mermaid.

Under the Almond Trees is the story of three ordinary women in California who lived extraordinary lives. It starts with a falling tree branch that kills Ellen VanValkenburgh’s husband in 1862, forcing her to assume leadership of his paper mill, something women weren’t allowed to do. Women weren’t allowed to vote yet, either. Ellen decided that had to change, and became a suffragette. In 1901, Emily Williams, Ellen’s daughter-in-law, became...

Adding to his growing list of problems, Leon becomes inexplicably linked to the ghost of a queer punk rocker named Cody, and as the two investigate Cody's mysterious death they also explore the complexities of life, death, love, and their shared love of music.

Two battle buddies. One fateful deployment. Two vastly different sets of wounds. One friendship changed forever. A childhood in foster care taught Carey Everett to hold tight to what he has. Enlisting in the Marines gave him purpose, but a life-threatening injury ended his career-and took his leg. Now fully recovered, Carey's happier than he's ever been. He has a fulfilling job, a chosen family and, best of all, a cherished friendship with Jase DeSantis,...

A story told from two perspectives: Erik is a religious boy who begins to question his sexuality and beliefs after he is propositioned by a male classmate. Nicholas is an attractive, though somewhat self-absorbed, young man whose life is uprooted when his mother announces her bitter divorce from his father. When the two boys meet, things become increasingly complicated as they strike up a friendship, which quickly develops into something neither party...