Philly AIDS Thrift @ Giovanni's Room

A magic-infused YA novel about friendship, first love, and feeling out of place that will bewitch fans of Rainbow Rowell and Maggie Stiefvater.

From rising comedy star Cameron Esposito, a memoir that is “as hilarious and honest as she is on the stage,” tackling the big issues explored in her comedy, including gender, sexuality and feminism – and how her Catholic childhood prepared her for a career as an outspoken lesbian comedian in ways the Pope could never have imagined (Abby Wambach).
Cameron Esposito wanted to be a priest and ended up a stand-up comic. Now she would like to tell the whole queer as hell story. Her story. Not the sidebar to a straight person’s rebirth-she doesn’t give a makeover or plan a wedding or get a couple back together. This isn’t a queer tragedy. She doesn’t die at the end of this book, having finally decided to kiss the girl. It’s the sexy, honest, bumpy, and triumphant dyke’s tale her younger, wasn’t-allowed-to-watch-Ellen self needed to read. Because there was a long time when she thought she wouldn’t make it. Not as a comic, but as a human.

SAVE YOURSELF is full of funny and insightful recollections about everything from coming out (at a Catholic college where sexual orientation wasn’t in the nondiscrimination policy) to how joining the circus can help you become a better comic (so much nudity) to accepting yourself for who you are-even if you’re, say, a bowl cut-sporting, bespectacled, gender-nonconforming child with an eye patch (which Cameron was). Packed with heart, humor, and cringeworthy stories anyone who has gone through puberty, fallen in love, started a career, or had period sex in Rome can relate to, Cameron’s memoir is for that timid, fenced-in kid in all of us-and the fearless stand-up yearning to break free.

With buoyant humor and incisive, cunning prose, Rahul Mehta sets off into uncharted literary territory. The characters in Quarantine–openly gay Indian-American men–are Westernized in some ways, with cosmopolitan views on friendship and sex, while struggling to maintain relationships with their families and cultural traditions.

From Stonewall and Lambda Award-winning author Kacen Callender comes a revelatory YA novel about a transgender teen grappling with identity and self-discovery while falling in love for the first time.