Here are 100 books that Hush fans have personally recommended if you like
Hush.
Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
Every time I write a romance novel, I find myself returning to the same themes: seeing people for who they are beneath the surface, respecting others despite differences, and choosing to love those who might seem a little odd. Whether they’re angels, mermaids, or plain old humans, my characters lead lives where, despite marginalization and alienation, love and a sense of belonging are possible. My Christmas novella, Mistletoe Mishap, was a Lambda Literary Award finalist.
I love romance novels with characters who care about others who are different than themselves. In this one, an extraterrestrial crash-lands on Earth and is rescued by a human man. They’re both emotionally lost, devastated by the deaths of their respective spouses, but as the man nurses the alien back to health, they both regain the will to live. The way they protect each other, despite barely being able to communicate, is heart-wrenchingly beautiful.
Flee. Scatter. Take your mates and your offspring and run.
A new Science Fiction Romance from Angel Martinez
The escape pods fall to Earth one by one over the course of weeks, a mysterious and diverse alien diaspora, each pod containing a different alien race and leaving the world's governments scrambling to deal with this unexpected immigration. Serge Kosygin, still grieving and isolated after his husband's death, watches events with gray disinterest until one day he witnesses a pod crash for himself while driving home. Two of the alien visitors have died, but one survives, badly injured, and Serge is…
Every time I write a romance novel, I find myself returning to the same themes: seeing people for who they are beneath the surface, respecting others despite differences, and choosing to love those who might seem a little odd. Whether they’re angels, mermaids, or plain old humans, my characters lead lives where, despite marginalization and alienation, love and a sense of belonging are possible. My Christmas novella, Mistletoe Mishap, was a Lambda Literary Award finalist.
I typically don’t read YA, but I’d just finished writing a book about searching for an ancient shipwreck, so I thought, why not see what someone else did with this idea? And I’m so glad I did. Otherwise I would have missed out on this compelling inner journey of a teenager who tries on adult responsibility and explores who she wants to be: someone who flees, breaks down, acts out, steps up, reaches for meaningful connection, or (and) loves.
The Larkin family isn't just lucky -- they persevere. At least that's what Violet and her younger brother, Sam, were always told. When the Lyric sank off the coast of Maine, their great-great-great-grandmother didn't drown like the rest of the passengers. No, Fidelia swam to shore, fell in love, and founded Lyric, Maine, the town Violet and Sam returned to every summer. But wrecks seem to run in the family: Tall, funny, musical Violet can't stop partying with the wrong people. And, one beautiful summer day, brilliant, sensitive Sam attempts to take his own life.
Every time I write a romance novel, I find myself returning to the same themes: seeing people for who they are beneath the surface, respecting others despite differences, and choosing to love those who might seem a little odd. Whether they’re angels, mermaids, or plain old humans, my characters lead lives where, despite marginalization and alienation, love and a sense of belonging are possible. My Christmas novella, Mistletoe Mishap, was a Lambda Literary Award finalist.
Escape often gets a bad rap—staying and fighting or enduring your circumstances are seen as more noble—but there are times when choosing to leave a demoralizing, unhealthy environment to make a fresh start is what you need to do to save your soul. In this book, a woman tries to disappear—and finds herself. If you appreciate books where unassuming sentences land like devastating little bombs, read this.
Devastated after her lesbian lover leaves her, a research scientist clears out her home and moves across the country, where she adopts an alien persona and practices "amnesia exercises" in order to wipe out the memories of her past. A first novel.
The 14th century had it all: the 100 Years' War, near-constant famines, and, of course, the Black Plague. As a medievalist studying the art of the time, I was struck by the representations of Death that emerged from this near-perfect storm of misery. Yes, Death was often portrayed accompanied by demons and devils, lumped willy-nilly with evil. But it was more often portrayed in the Danse Macabre as a skeletal partner, leading everyone—Pope and Emperor, Lord and Laborer—on a merry dance. I know it was meant as a warning, but I found the Danse Macabre to be oddly comforting, a vision of an ultimate democracy, with Death the final partner and companion to us all.
What’s unique about Klune’s psychopomp, is that he is human.
Hugo Freeman is able to interact with the dead but unlike the usual eternal beings, he is alive, has a backstory, and the ability to empathize with the fears and regrets of his reluctant clients, most recently, the jerk-lawyer, Wallace Price.
The action is circumscribed, taking place entirely within Charon’s Crossing, which serves as a teahouse for the living and a waystation for the dead. And as any fan of Klune’s work will anticipate, the hearth that gathers a found family.
When a reaper comes to collect Wallace Price from his own funeral, Wallace suspects he really might be dead. Instead of leading him directly to the afterlife, the reaper takes him to a small village. On the outskirts, off the path through the woods, tucked between mountains, is a particular tea shop, run by a man named Hugo. Hugo is the tea shop's owner to locals and the ferryman to souls who need to cross over. But Wallace isn't ready to abandon the life he barely lived. With Hugo's help, he finally starts to learn about all the things he…
I think Mother Goose got it all wrong. I have been creating books and coloring books for LGBTQ families for over two decades. I believe we deserve stories about LGBTQ children that are jubilant and adventurous; that are about love, mystery, time travel, and all the things everyone else treasures in their favorite books without being lesson books about bullying or being “different.” I have closed many children's books as soon as I get to the part where they are beaten up and made fun of for being gender non-conforming. I am also a visual artist and I love well-written books that are beautiful to look at.
This book was published by Lollipop Power Press, an iconic feminist publishing house formed in 1969. I have a soft spot for old-school one-color illustrations (these ones are forest green against an off-white background). Emily is raised in an intentional community of four women. One mom is studying to be an electrician. Another is a healer. Vicki drives a school bus. Annie Jo is a carpenter who loves to cook. No one at school believes that Emily has so many mothers, but that all changes when she falls on the playground and her amazing parents get called into school. Suddenly it's très cool to have so many moms. I want this book to have a revival. It’s so good.
As part of the LGBTQ+ rainbow, I know firsthand what it is to be othered, and I grew up desperately wanting to read about and watch characters like me in books and movies. Now that I’ve found a genre of books that celebrates LGBTQ+ lives, I can’t help but want to read and write the stories I’ve always wanted to see and experience in the world of fiction and romance. Everyone deserves love, and I want to share that love with as many people as I can.
Jordan L. Hawk took a tired kind of trope and turned it into something amazing. I love paranormal stories, but with vampires, I need to be convinced. By the end of the first chapter, Jordan had me convinced. He took an opposites-attract story, threw a cranky vampire in the middle of it, and turned it into a love story that I now cannot wait for when each new installment is published. It’s fresh, exciting, and I’m still coming back for more. Jordan’s one of my auto-buy authors, and this is one of my favorites of his series. Hands down. The characters are vivid, the adventures unique, and their love story is one for the ages. There’s nothing ordinary about this book.
From best-selling author Jordan L. Hawk, the first half of the SPECTR series is now in a box set!
SPECTR: Volume 1 contains: Hunter of Demons Master of Ghouls Reaper of Souls
All for less than the separate retail price!
What happens when an exorcist falls in love with the demon he’s supposed to destroy?
Unregistered paranormal Caleb Jansen only wants a normal life. But when a demon murders his brother, Caleb must avenge Ben’s death, no matter what the cost. Unfortunately, his only allies belong to an extremist group who would kill Caleb if they found out about his…
Thirteen years ago, when my partner and I started our family, we didn’t know any other LGBTQ+ parents. We decided to learn all we could about the experiences of LGBTQ+ families. Our interviews with more than 70 families grew into an LGBTQ+ parenting guide called Pride and Joy. These real-life stories blew us away with their diversity; made us laugh, cry and gasp as we saw how families thrived, often against the odds. Yet we rarely saw families like these in the books our children read, so I started writing stories of my own. Thankfully, there are now many more - you’ll find some of my favourites on this list.
Twins Sam and Sam (yes, their two mums, both psychologists, did decide to give them the same name) are not quite teenagers. They both struggle with fears and friendships on the brink of high school. I love this book because the humour is so subtle but spot on, the characters are so well-drawn, and the twins’ different anxieties about an impending school trip are so relatable. The fact that Sam and Sam have two mums makes their family distinctive, and the mums’ relationship is warm and believable, but is not the main element of the story.
Sam likes being a twin. He likes having two mums. He likes cheese sandwiches and his dog and drawing comics with his friend Pea. He does not like humus - or heights ...His twin sister Sammie likes being a twin too. She knows that she's perfect best friend material for somebody - the girls in her class just haven't realised yet. And she knows that she's the best Sam - Sam A. Both Sam and Sammie - and everybody in their lives seems to be keeping secrets - which ones will come out? Meet the very different twins and their…
I grew up attending Catholic school in conservative Indiana. Sex—especially if it was of the homosexual variety—was the ultimate taboo. I can’t overstate how damaging it is to believe that one of your natural urges is proof of your depravity. Books that depict queer sexual relations, be they fleeting or romantic, gave me my first glimpse of a wider world where my sexual identity could be expressed. These books liberated me. Even now, I find that sexy and subversive novels help me understand parts of myself that can still be difficult to discuss in polite company. We all need our boundaries pushed.
Faggots pissed off a lot of people in the LGBTQ+ community when it was published in 1978, and Larry Kramer was accused of vilifying gay men for indulging in anonymous sex and recreational drugs. Unfortunately, the subsequent AIDS crisis, linked to unprotected sex and intravenous drug use, made the novel look like a prescient warning.
But the initial uproar and the retroactive clairvoyance attached to Faggots had no bearing on me when I read the novel in the 2000s. To me, there was a doomed innocence to these gay men. I didn’t begrudge them the joys of hot sex and exhilarating drugs. They didn’t know what was coming; they didn’t deserve what was coming. Books can take on new meaning across generations, and Faggots became a time capsule I cherish.
“A book of major historical importance—the first contemporary novel to chronicle gay life with unsparing honesty and wild humor.”—Erica Jong
In print since its original publication in 1978, Larry Kramer’s Faggots has become one of the bestselling novels about gay life ever written. The book is a fierce satire of the gay ghetto and a touching story of one man’s desperate search for love there, and reading it today is a fascinating look at how much, and how little, has changed.
“As a documentation of an era, as savage and savagely funny social parody, as a cry in the wilderness,…
Allan D. Hunter came out as genderqueer in 1980, more than 20 years before “genderqueer” was trending. His story is autobiographical: the story of a different kind of male hero, a genderqueer person's tale. It follows the author from his debut as an eighth grader in Los Alamos, New Mexico until his unorthodox coming out at the age of twenty-one on the University of New Mexico campus in Albuquerque.
Here’s a story focused on a gender-atypical main character where the book isn’t about being genderqueer or being nonbinary or whatever.
Birdie’s gender characteristics are just there, the same way that a book set in Manhattan can have Manhattan in the foreground without being a book about Manhattan. I like the way that being gay and being trans are discarded as not really applicable to Birdie without some other replacement identity being pushed forward instead.
An emotional and uplifting debut about a girl named Jack and her gender creative little brother, Birdie, searching for the place where they can be their true and best selves.
After their mama dies, Jack and Birdie find themselves without a place to call home. And when Mama's two brothers each try to provide one--first sweet Uncle Carl, then gruff Uncle Patrick--the results are funny, tender, and tragic.
They're also somehow . . . spectacular.
With voices and characters that soar off the page, J. M. M. Nuanez's debut novel depicts an unlikely family caught in a situation none of…
As a retired family therapist, I find that writing and reading stories about emotional journeys no matter our sexual identity, ethnicity, or class has the potential to transform us. A protagonist under threat of persecution who finds healing in the power of love, of family, of community can help us fix ourselves where we are broken. I believe stories can help us sever unhealthy ties to the patterns of past generations. My mother was a closeted lesbian with no family who died when I was nine. Writing how I wished her life could have been helped me heal from childhood trauma. Our ancestors passed the talking stick. We have books.
I chose this book for its honest look at the fragility of love when the push and pull of church doctrine clashes in a family with twins.
One twin at 17 knows she is lesbian, and the other is a member of BOCK (Brides of Christ’s Kingdom). The story weaves lessons about the effects of homophobia and heartbreak with loss and love, forgiveness and acceptance in a small bible-belt town in Minnesota. It’s a serious subject told with wit, humor, and honesty.
A baby born helps to heal family rifts, but it’s the pull of loss and the power of love from everyone that brings a homophobic mother to acceptance that allows a young woman to follow her heart.
Lorraine Tyler is the only queer person in Bend, Minnesota. Or at least that’s what it feels like when the local church preaches so sternly against homosexuality. Which is why she’s fighting so hard to win the McGerber scholarship—her ticket out of Bend—even though her biggest competition is her twin sister, Becky. And even though she’s got no real hope—not with the scholarship’s morality clause and that one time she kissed the preacher’s daughter.
Everything changes when a new girl comes to town. Charity is mysterious, passionate, and—to Lorraine’s delighted surprise—queer too. Now Lorraine may have a chance at freedom…
