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Pride Month 2023

This pride month, we’re diving into the colorful world of LGBTQ+ literature, where pages come alive with diverse characters, inspiring journeys, and powerful narratives that reflect the human experience in all its beautiful diversity.

Let the books be our guide as we embark on a literary adventure that embraces love, embraces pride, and embraces the power of storytelling. Our list contains titles from writers of iconic classics to contemporary gems just waiting to be found.

Here’s why you need to include these titles in your relevant carousels and thematic lists this pride month:  

  • “A provocative, raw, and soulful book… An unflinching and visionary read.” – Difference is Born on the Lips: Reflections on Sexuality, Stigma and Society by Michael Handrick
     
  • A multi-stranded story of queer redemption spanning multiple generations, told with precision-tooled prose, sharply-imagined settings and compassionately-observed characterization. – I Am Not Raymond Wallace by Sam Kenyon
     
  • Cruelly beautiful, utterly authentic – introducing a searingly talented new Queer writer. A novel for fans of ‘A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing’ by Eimear McBride, ‘Peach’ by Emma Glass and ‘Box Hill’ by Adam Mars-Jones. – The Whale Tattoo by Joe Ransom 

See the full list of metadata by downloading below.

Audiobook Cover for The Whale Tattoo book

The Whale Tattoo by Jon Ransom

Format: Audiobook
ISBN: 9788728280638
Narrated by Luke R. Francis

When a giant sperm whale washes up on the local beach and tells Joe Gunner that death will follow him wherever he goes. Joe knows that the place he needs to go is home.

Having stormed out two years ago, it won’t be easy. Nor will returning to the river alongside the house where words ripple beneath the muddy black water washing up all sorts of memories and disturbing prophecies.

Joe turns to his sister, Birdee, the only person who has ever listened and to Tim Fysh, a local fisherman and longtime lover – but reviving their bond leads to trouble.

Joe tells himself that the whale’s predictions are wrong but the river is relentless. As the waters settle, Joe learns the truth and finds that all of us can hate, but we can make a choice not to.

Ransom’s fractured, distinctive prose highlights the beauty and brutality of his story. His extraordinarily vivid sense of place saturates the reader with the wet of the river, and the salty tang of the heaving sea.

This novel contains adult themes, strong language, and some scenes that might be upsetting to listeners.

Difference is Born on the Lips: Reflections on Sexuality, Stigma and Society by Michael Handrick

Format: Audiobook
ISBN: 9788728570814
Narrated by George Naylor

Raw and stunningly written, Handrick takes us on a journey through his experiences as a gay working-class man, confronting the toxic narratives and myths that society has built up around masculinity, class, and sexuality.

Much more than just a personal story, Handrick’s book delves deep into the heart of a crisis facing the gay community today: a mental health epidemic that shows no signs of slowing down. With shocking statistics and hard-hitting research, Handrick reveals the dark reality of what it means to be a gay man in a world that still clings to outdated and harmful stereotypes.

Yet despite the challenges, Handrick’s message is one of hope. Through his personal struggles and his deep understanding of the root causes of the crisis facing the gay community, he calls on us all to come together and create a new conversation. A conversation that confronts the systemic inequalities and discrimination that should have never existed in the first place.

Lifting the Fire Hydrant Lid: a Female Firefighter Memoir by Kate Fullen

Format: Audiobook
ISBN: 9788728187500
Narrated by Colleen Prendergast

A raw, eye-opening memoir from a North East firefighter, charting her journey into the male dominated heart of the British Fire and Rescue Service.

Lifting the Fire Hydrant Lid follows young, idealistic recruit, Kate Fullen, as she negotiates training school and settles into life on the watch. With incidents and routine tasks woven into the fabric of the story, it describes the consuming pressure, emotional turmoil and unpredictable nature of the job.

Utilising the rare perspective of a northern, queer, working-class female firefighter, Lifting the Fire Hydrant Lid examines the more intricate difficulties experienced by minority groups and gives a voice to a profession that is seldom heard and rarely seen.

Sam Kenyon I Am Not Raymond Wallace abook 2 (1)

I Am Not Raymond Wallace by Sam Kenyon

Format: Audiobook
ISBN: 9788728334744
Narrated by Alex Wingfield

Two worlds, two timelines and one person’s impact.

Manhattan, 1963: weeks before the assassination of President Kennedy, fresh-faced Raymond Wallace lands in the New York Times newsroom on a three-month bursary from Cambridge University.

He soon discovers his elusive boss, Bukowski, is being covertly blackmailed by an estranged wife, and that he himself is to assist the straight-laced Doty on an article about the ‘explosion of overt homosexuality’. On an undercover assignment, a secret world is revealed to Raymond: a world in which he need no longer pretend to be something or someone he cannot be; a world in which he meets Joey.

Like so many men of his time and of his kind, Raymond faces a choice between conformity, courage and compartmentalization. The decision he makes will ricochet destructively through lives and decades until—in another time, another city; Paris, 2003—Raymond’s son Joe finally meets Joey. And the healing begins.

I Am not Raymond Wallace is a multi-stranded story of queer redemption spanning multiple generations, told with precision-tooled prose, sharply-imagined settings and compassionately-observed characterization.

A Convenient Marriage by Jeevani Charika

Format: Audiobook
ISBN: 9788726700084
Narrated by Nikki Patel

It was the perfect marriage… until they fell in love.

After attending Oxford University, Chaya is torn between her duty to family and her life in the UK since her traditional Sri Lankan parents want her to settle down.

Gimhana is hiding his sexuality from his family, and it’s getting harder and harder to turn down the potential brides his parents keep finding for him.

When Chaya and Gimhana meet, a marriage of convenience seems like the perfect solution. Together they have everything – friendship, stability, and parental approval. But when both Chaya and Gimhana find themselves falling in love with other people, they’re left with an impossible decision – risk everything they’ve built together or finally follow their heart?

For more information about these titles, or our full English catalogue contact Nadia on – nadia.lamond@sagaegmont.com or simply book a meeting.

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