A Comprehensive List Of The Best LGBTQ Books To Read In Pride Month And Beyond

From fiction to non-fiction and memoirs, we've got you covered.

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Happy Pride month! While next year will mark 60 years since homosexuality was decriminalised in the UK, last year saw the UK fall to its lowest ever ranking on the European Rainbow Index.

While there has been leaps and bounds of progress for queer rights in this century alone, the last decade has seen a wave of anti-LGBTQ sentiment.

Across the UK, more and more Pride parades have had funding withdrawn, while last month the EHRC published guidance that excludes trans folk from public services and social spaces off the back of last year’s Supreme Court ruling.

Not to mention that attacks on LGBTQ rights have made their way into media, with queer TV shows like the BBC’s I Kissed A Girl being cancelled, and Reform banning LGBTQ books from public libraries.

As this sentiment creeps into the mainstream, Pride month is a reminder to continue to support queer authors and publishing.

To help you celebrate and uplift queer experiences in Pride month and beyond, we’ve consulted colleagues, friends, and family to round up the best LGBTQ books to read, including a mix of fiction, non-fiction, and memoirs, spanning genres from classics, to fantasy, and coming-of-age stories.

The best LGBTQ books to read 2026

Nova Scotia House – Charlie Porter

Johnny Grant faces stark life decisions. Seeking answers, he looks back to his relationship with Jerry Field. When they met, nearly thirty years ago, Johnny was 19, Jerry was 45. They fell in love and made a life on their own terms in Jerry’s flat: 1, Nova Scotia House. Johnny is still there today – but Jerry is gone, and so is the world they knew.As Johnny’s mind travels between then and now, he begins to remember stories of Jerry’s youth: of experiments in living; of radical philosophies; of the many possibilities of love, sex and friendship before the AIDS crisis devastated the queer community. Slowly, he realizes what he must do next—and attempts to restore ways of being that could be lost forever.Nova Scotia House takes us to the heart of a relationship, a community and an era. It is both a love story and a lament; bearing witness to the enduring pain of the AIDS pandemic and honouring the joys and creativity of queer life. Intimate, visionary, and profoundly original, it marks the debut of a vibrant new voice in contemporary fiction, and a writer with a liberating new story to tell.

Disappoint Me – Nicola Dinan

A funny, moving and poignant exploration of modern romance and the allure of domesticity from the Polari-prize-winning author of Bellies.

Max didn’t mean to fall for Vincent – a corporate lawyer and hobby baker whose trad friendship group are a world away from her life as a trans woman. But after years of bad dates and dysphoria he’s a breath of fresh air. Their connection seems genuine, his care feels real.

But Vincent is carrying his own baggage. On his gap year in Thailand a decade prior, he vies for the attention of a gorgeous traveller, Alex, with secrets of her own. Is Vincent really the new face of the Enlightened Man, or will the ghosts of his past sabotage his and Max’s happiness?

The Safekeep – Yael van der Wooden

It is fifteen years after the Second World War, and Isabel has built herself a solitary life of discipline and strict routine in her late mother's country home, with not a fork or a word out of place. But all is upended when her brother Louis delivers his graceless new girlfriend, Eva, at Isabel's doorstep - as a guest, there to stay for the season…In the sweltering heat of summer, Isabel's desperate need for control reaches boiling point. What happens between the two women leads to a revelation which threatens to unravel all she has ever known.

Go the Way Your Blood Beats – Emmett de Monterey

When Emmett de Monterey is eighteen months old, a doctor diagnoses him with cerebral palsy. Words too heavy for his twenty-five-year-old artist parents and........

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