It’s Pride Month, and you know what that means: it’s the perfect excuse to buy a bunch of new queer books. To get you started, I’ve highlighted seven queer books that check off 2026 Read Harder Challenge tasks, including a nonfiction book about resistance, a recent gothic novel, a fabulist book, a book about a cult, a book set in space, a horror novel in translation, and a book by an African author.
Task #5: Read a nonfiction book about resistance
Our Work is Everywhere by Syan RoseReading this beautiful collection of oral histories and interviews feels likes sitting down with a bunch of rad queer and trans artists, healers, and activists, and listening to them talk about what inspires them, angers them, fuels them. The art is truly unique — each page feels like its own work of art. Here you’ll find stories about ancestral wisdom, the power of queer tarot, mutual aid organizations, community gardening initiatives, radical wealth redistribution, and so much more more. It’s an inspiring book spilling over with LGBTQ+ brilliance and creativity. —Laura Sackton |
Task #6: Read a gothic novel published in the last ten years
 The Salvage by Anbara SalamIn this sapphic gothic novel, when marine archeologist Marta Khoury is called to a remote Scottish isle to explore a recently uncovered Victorian shipwreck, she expects salvage to be the most interesting thing she finds. Instead, she’s snowed in as the Cuban Missile Crisis rages halfway across the globe and becomes convinced a shadowy figure stalks her every step, even as she searches for the ship’s artifacts, which have, mysteriously, disappeared. —Rachel Brittain |
All Access members, read on for five more queer books that check off 2026 Read Harder Challenge tasks.
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Bengali (Bangladesh) · 
English (United States) ·