GIRL FROM MARS
by Tamara Bach
Miriam dreams of escaping from her boring small-town life and going to the big city to start her own life, especially when she develops romantic feelings for a girl named Laura and forms a new outlook after a weekend in the city.

I AM J
by Cris Beam
J always felt different. He was certain that eventually everyone would understand who he really was: a boy mistakenly born as a girl. Yet as he grew up, his body began to betray him; eventually J stopped praying to wake up a "real boy" and started covering up his body, keeping himself invisible—from his family, from his friends...from the world. But after being deserted by the best friend he thought would always be by his side, J decides that he's done hiding—it's time to be who he really is.

QUEER: THE ULTIMATE LGBT GUIDE FOR TEENS
by Kathy Belge and Marke Bieschke
A guide that helps LGBT teens come out to friends and family, navigate their new LGBT social life, figure out if a crush is also queer, and rise up against bigotry and homophobia.

MY INVENTED LIFE
by Lauren Bjorkman
During rehearsals for Shakespeare's "As You Like It," sixteen-year-old Roz, jealous of her cheerleader sister's acting skills and heartthrob boyfriend, invents a new identity, with unexpected results.

GENDER OUTLAWS: THE NEXT GENERATION
by Kate Bornstein and S. Bear Bergman
Part coming-of-age story, part mind-altering manifesto on gender and sexuality, coming directly to you from the life experiences of a transsexual woman, Gender Outlaw breaks all the rules and leaves the reader forever changed.

DEBBIE HARRY SINGS IN FRENCH
by Meagan Brothers
When Johnny completes an alcohol rehabilitation program and his mother sends him to live with his uncle in North Carolina, he meets Maria, who seems to understand his fascination with the new wave band Blondie, and he learns about his deceased father's youthful forays into "glam rock," which gives him perspective on himself, his past, and his current life.

THE VAST FIELDS OF ORDINARY
by Nick Burd
It’s Dade’s last summer at home. He has a crappy job at Food World, a “boyfriend” who won’t publicly acknowledge his existence, and parents on the verge of a divorce. College is Dade’s shining beacon of possibility, a horizon to keep him from floating away.

SOMEDAY THIS PAIN WILL BE USEFUL TO YOU
by Peter Cameron
Eighteen-year-old James, living in New York City with his older sister and divorced mother, struggles to find a direction for his life.

HOW BEAUTIFUL THE ORDINARY: TWELVE STORIES OF IDENTITY
edited by Michael Cart
Presents twelve stories by contemporary, award-winning young adult authors, some presented in graphic or letter format, which explore themes of gender identity, love, and sexuality.

NAOMI AND ELY'S NO KISS LIST
by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
Although they have been friends and neighbors all their lives, straight Naomi and gay Ely find their relationship severely strained during their freshman year at New York University.

OF ALL THE STUPID THINGS
by Alexandra Diaz
When Tara learns that her boyfriend may be gay, she is devastated. But then—when she finds herself attracted to a new girl, Riley—she is forced to examine her own sexuality.

TILLMON COUNTY FIRE
by Pamela Ehrenberg
Eight teens give their perspectives about an anti-gay hate crime that ignites fear, homophobia, grief and loss.

WITH YOU OR WITHOUT YOU
by Brian Farrey
When eighteen-year-old best friends Evan and Davis of Madison, Wisconsin, join a community center group called "chasers" to gain acceptance and knowledge of gay history, there may be fatal consequences.

KEESHA'S HOUSE
by Helen Frost
Seven teens facing such problems as pregnancy, closeted homosexuality, and abuse each describe in poetic forms what caused them to leave home and where they found home again.

ANNIE ON MY MIND
by Nancy Garden
Liza tries to put aside her feelings for Annie after the disaster at Foster Academy, but eventually she allows love to triumph over the ignorance of others.

WILL GRAYSON, WILL GRAYSON
by John Green and David Levithan
On a cold Chicago night, two sixteen-year-olds—one gay and one not—meet and discover they have one big thing in common, their name. From then on, their lives, their friends and their loves intertwine and culminate in the staging of one of the funniest high school musicals ever.

GEOGRAPHY CLUB
by Brent Hartinger
A group of gay and lesbian teenagers finds mutual support when they form the "Geography Club" at their high school.

SHADOW WALKERS
by Brent Hartinger
Living with his grandparents on a tiny island off the Washington coast, Zach feels cut off from the world, but when his little brother, Gilbert, is kidnapped Zach and a new friend, Emory, seek him in the astral realm, where a centuries-old creature hungers for Zach's soul.

A LOVE STORY STARRING MY DEAD BEST FRIEND
by Emily Horner
As she tries to sort out her feelings of love, seventeen-year-old Cass, a spunky math genius with an introverted streak, finds a way to memorialize her dead best friend.

JUMPSTART THE WORLD
by Catherine Ryan Hyde
Sixteen-year-old Elle falls in love with Frank, the neighbor who helps her adjust to being on her own in a big city, but learning that he is transgendered turns her world upside-down.

ALMOST PERFECT
by Brian Katcher
With his mother working long hours and in pain from a romantic break-up, eighteen-year-old Logan feels alone and unloved until a zany new student arrives at his small-town Missouri high school, keeping a big secret.

MY MOST EXCELLENT YEAR: A NOVEL OF LOVE, MARY POPPINS, AND FENWAY PARK
by Steve Kluger
Three teenagers in Boston narrate their experiences of a year of new friendships, first loves, and coming into their own.

NINA HERE NOR THERE: MY JOURNEY BEYOND GENDER
by Nick Krieger
Krieger was born a girl but inside he was always male. It wasn't until he moved to San Francisco's Castro district that he was able to come to terms with his gender identity and make the physical transformation to match. This book is Krieger's memoir of his transition between gender identities and the social hardships that often accompany such transformations.

BOY MEETS BOY
by David Levithan
In this school, the gay kids and the straight kids all get along just fine, the quarterback is a cross-dresser, and the cheerleaders ride Harleys–yet the road to true love is still a strange and winding path, as Paul discovers when he meets the boy of his dreams.

ASH
by Malinda Lo
In this variation on the Cinderella story, Ash grows up believing in the fairy realm that the king and his philosophers have sought to suppress, until one day she must choose between a handsome fairy cursed to love her and the King's Huntress whom she loves.

HUNTRESS
by Malinda Lo
Seventeen-year-olds Kaede and Taisin are called to go on a dangerous and unprecedented journey to Tanlili, the city of the Fairy Queen, in an effort to restore the balance of nature in the human world.

MY TIKI GIRL
by Jennifer McMahon
Fifteen-year-old Maggie, still grieving the loss of her mother in an accident that also gave her a limp, has turned her back on old friends but connects with a new student, Dahlia, who makes Maggie part of her unconventional family and plans their future together as roving musicians and lovers.

SHINE
by Lauren Myracle
When her best friend falls victim to a vicious hate crime, sixteen-year-old Cat sets out to discover the culprits in her small North Carolina town.

KISSING KATE
by Lauren Myracle
Sixteen-year-old Lissa's relationship with her best friend changes after they kiss at a party and Lissa does not know what to do, until she gets help from an unexpected new friend.

SPROUT: OR MY SALAD DAYS, WHEN I WAS GREEN IN JUDGEMENT
by Dale Peck
Moving from Long Island to Kansas after his mother dies, a teenaged boy nicknamed Sprout is surprised to find new friends, a fascinating landscape, and romantic love.

KEEPING YOU A SECRET
by Julie Anne Peters
As she begins a very tough last semester of high school, Holland finds herself puzzled about her future and intrigued by a transfer student who wants to start a Lesbigay club at school.

RAGE: A LOVE STORY
by Julie Anne Peters
Johanna is steadfast, patient, reliable – the go-to girl, the one everyone can count on. But always being there for others can’t give Johanna everything she needs, it can’t give her Reeve Hartt. Reeve is fierce, beautiful, wounded, elusive; a flame that draws Johanna. Johanna is determined to get her, against all advice, and to help her, against all reason. But love isn’t always reasonable, right?

SCARS
by Cheryl Rainfield
Fifteen-year-old Kendra is a budding artist who has far too many secrets. Not only does she cut herself, she is grappling with her childhood sexual abuse and her burgeoning sexuality.

EMPRESS OF THE WORLD
by Sara Ryan
While attending a summer institute, fifteen-year-old Nic meets another girl named Battle, falls in love with her, and finds the relationship to be difficult and confusing.

GEMINI BITES
by Patrick Ryan
When their parents announce they are taking in a fellow student for a month, sixteen-year-old twins Kyle and Judy sit up and take notice. Kyle has just come out of the closet to his family and fears he'll never know what it is like to date a guy. Judy is pretending to be born-again to attract a boy who heads a Bible study group. And Garret Johnson is new in town – a mysterious loner who claims to be a vampire. Both twins are intrigued.

BOYFRIENDS WITH GIRLFRIENDS
by Alex Sanchez
When Lance begins to date Sergio, who is bisexual, he is not sure that it will work out, and when his best friend Allie, who has a boyfriend, meets Sergio's lesbian friend, she has unexpected feelings which she struggles to understand.

SWIMMING IN THE MONSOON SEA
by Shyam Selvadurai
Fourteen-year-old Amrith is caught up in the life of the cheerful, well-to-do household in which he is being raised by his vibrant Auntie Bundle and kindly Uncle Lucky. He tries not to think of his life "before," when his doting mother was still alive. Amrith's holiday plans seem unpromising: he wants to appear in his school's production of Othello and he is learning to type at Uncle Lucky's tropical fish business. Then, like an unexpected monsoon, his cousin arrives from Canada and Amrith's ordered life is storm-tossed. He finds himself falling in love.

THE QUESTIONS WITHIN
by Teresa Schaeffer
Constance is not like the other girls, and her school days are a journey through loneliness, shame and anger.

THE HOOKUP ARTIST
by Tucker Shaw
As a good-natured gay teenager, Lucas happily serves as his high school's matchmaker, but finding true love for himself is proving to be much more difficult.

TALE OF TWO SUMMERS
by Brian Sloan
Even though Hal is gay and Chuck is straight, the two fifteen-year-olds are best friends and set up a blog where Hal records his budding romance with a young Frenchman and Chuck falls for a summer theater camp diva.

FREAK SHOW
by James St. James
Having faced teasing that turned into a brutal attack, Christianity expressed as persecution, and the loss of his only real friend when he could no longer keep his crush under wraps, seventeen-year-old Billy Bloom, a drag queen, decides the only to become fabulous again is to run for Homecoming Queen at his elite, private school near Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

SKIM
by Mariko Tamaki
When her classmate Katie is dumped by her boyfriend, who then kills himself, the entire school goes into mourning overdrive. The popular clique starts a club to boost school spirit, but Skim sinks into an ever-deepening depression.

PINK
by Lili Wilkinson
Sixteen-year-old Ava does not know who she is or where she belongs, but when she tries out a new personality – and sexual orientation – at a different school, her edgy girlfriend, potential boyfriend, and others are hurt by her lack of honesty.

ORANGES ARE NOT THE ONLY FRUIT
by Jeanette Winterson
The narrator, Jeanette, cuts her teeth on the knowledge that she is one of God’s elect, but as this budding evangelical comes of age, and comes to terms with her preference for her own sex, the peculiar balance of her God-fearing household crumbles.

PARROTFISH
by Ellen Wittlinger
Grady, a transgendered high school student, yearns for acceptance by his classmates and family as he struggles to adjust to his new identity as a male.

LOVE & LIES: MARISOL'S STORY
by Ellen Wittlinger
When Marisol, a self-confident eighteen-year-old lesbian, moves to Cambridge, Massachusetts to work and try to write a novel, she falls under the spell of her beautiful but deceitful writing teacher, while also befriending a shy, vulnerable girl from Indiana.

PUTTING MAKEUP ON THE FAT BOY
by Bil Wright
Sixteen-year-old Carlos Duarte is on the verge of realizing his dream of becoming a famous make-up artist, but first he must face his jealous boss at a Macy's cosmetics counter, his sister's abusive boyfriend, and his crush on a punk-rocker classmate.

SERIES

RAINBOW TRILOGY
BOOK ONE: RAINBOW BOYS
by Alex Sanchez
Three high school seniors, a jock with a girlfriend and an alcoholic father, a closeted gay, and a flamboyant gay rights advocate, struggle with family issues, gay bashers, first sex, and conflicting feelings about each other.

WANDERING SON SERIES
VOLUME 1
by Takako Shimura
The fifth grade. The threshold to puberty, and the beginning of the end of childhood innocence. Shuichi Nitori and his new friend Yoshino Takatsuki have happy homes, loving families, and are well-liked by their classmates. But they share a secret that further complicates a time of life that is awkward for anyone: Shuichi is a boy who wants to be a girl, and Yoshino is a girl who wants to be a boy.

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