Here are 100 books that The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal fans have personally recommended if you like
The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal.
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Two people (or more!) who find a home in each other when they don't have a home in the world make my heart leap. I love romance, and I've been writing and drawing them professionally for over 20 years. I got my start writing and drawing sexy comics when I was out of college, my work has been featured in the Museum of Sex in NYC and various anthologies focused on queer and intersectional feminist stories about love and sex. I love stories about queer people, or outcasts, or people who don't quite understand themselves yet.
I love stories about outcasts, persistent f*ck-ups, people who’ve been told a story about themselves their whole lives that somewhere along the line they started to believe. I love when they find someone who’s been told a similar story, and they help each other to not believe in those stories anymore.
Lawrence Browne, the Earl of Radnor, is mad. At least, that’s what he and most of the village believes. A brilliant scientist, he hides himself away in his family’s crumbling estate, unwilling to venture into the outside world. When an annoyingly handsome man arrives at Penkellis, claiming to be Lawrence’s new secretary, his carefully planned world is turned upside down.
A swindler haunted by his past . . .
Georgie Turner has made his life pretending to be anyone but himself. A swindler and con man, he can slip into an…
Two people (or more!) who find a home in each other when they don't have a home in the world make my heart leap. I love romance, and I've been writing and drawing them professionally for over 20 years. I got my start writing and drawing sexy comics when I was out of college, my work has been featured in the Museum of Sex in NYC and various anthologies focused on queer and intersectional feminist stories about love and sex. I love stories about queer people, or outcasts, or people who don't quite understand themselves yet.
This is a book I press to my heart. The art style, the sense of humor, and the facial expressions leave me kicking my feet every time I read it, and I’ve read it quite a few times.
There is poetry in the way the world slowly unfolds. There is mystery and darkness in the vampires and the world they’ve built, there is the pressure of the Night Court and the terrifying will of the god they worship. The softness between Lucardo and Ed feels so easy and true.
Ed Fiedler is an aging scribe in a royal palace. Lucardo von Gishaupt is a forever-young aristocrat, and member of the mysterious and powerful Night Court. When the two develop feelings for one another, both are forced to contend with the culture shock of a mortal man's presence among the deathless.
Two people (or more!) who find a home in each other when they don't have a home in the world make my heart leap. I love romance, and I've been writing and drawing them professionally for over 20 years. I got my start writing and drawing sexy comics when I was out of college, my work has been featured in the Museum of Sex in NYC and various anthologies focused on queer and intersectional feminist stories about love and sex. I love stories about queer people, or outcasts, or people who don't quite understand themselves yet.
The colors and compositions sweep me off my feet, make me feel drunk. There is so much fluidity of line I can almost see the characters moving across the page.
This book is so charming, so inventive, such a lightning bolt to my heart and brain.
Two people (or more!) who find a home in each other when they don't have a home in the world make my heart leap. I love romance, and I've been writing and drawing them professionally for over 20 years. I got my start writing and drawing sexy comics when I was out of college, my work has been featured in the Museum of Sex in NYC and various anthologies focused on queer and intersectional feminist stories about love and sex. I love stories about queer people, or outcasts, or people who don't quite understand themselves yet.
There are so many lovely, soft moments in this book that I adore. Catherine blushed on the other side of a closed door, unable to make a decision. Best friends sitting so close, knowing each other’s secrets.
I love the subtle humor, the incredible warmth, and the depth of each character’s angst and heartache.
The whole town is whispering about how Catherine Benson lost her virtue, though they can never agree on the details. Was it in the public garden? Or a moving carriage?
Only a truly desperate man would want her now - and that's exactly what Andrew Davener is. His family's estate is in disrepair, but Catherine's sizeable dowry could set it to rights.
After the two wed, Catherine finds herself inexplicably drawn to Andrew. But could falling in love with her husband tear her marriage apart? In this richly detailed Regency romance, duty and passion collide in a slow-burn tale of…
I have a passion for the themes and moods of this list because they explore so many parts of my emotions. They rile me, they work me up into a hot frenzy, they turn me on, they fascinate me, they bruise me, they heal me. I see myself in these books, and I feel that I understand other people. I’ve enjoyed (and still enjoy) reading these books published for free on blogs online, but now I want to write more and read more than I’ve done before. This list is a starting point, and I hope you enjoy them!
“Someone has to ask you a question before you can answer it. But it’s so seldom you find anyone who’ll ask the right questions. Most people aren’t that much interested.…”
I love this book because it shines a spotlight on loneliness and isolation in a way that most books really struggle to do. It provides you with a sense of what it is to be an outsider. I love this because it balances the melancholy with warmth and hope so so well.
Isherwood's short, poignant novel is a tender and wistful love story
Celebrated as a masterpiece from its first publication, A Single Man is the story of George, an English professor in suburban California left heartbroken after the death of his lover, Jim. With devastating clarity and humour, Isherwood shows George's determination to carry on, evoking the unexpected pleasures of life as well as the soul's ability to triumph over loneliness and alienation.
'A virtuoso piece of work...courageous...powerful' Sunday Times
'This mix of humour and stoicism in the face of pent-up grief is essential Isherwood' Guardian
I’ve always loved cartoons and anime. I’m also bisexual and non-binary. Growing up, gay representation was hard to come by, so when we did get it, we were always super excited, whether it was good or not so good. Luckily, I’ve gotten to watch the world change and grow more accepting, but sometimes it’s still difficult to find good rep when you don’t know where to look. I try to fill my books with good representation so that my readers can feel seen in a way I didn’t, and I want to spread the word about some great LGBT manga that I love and made an impact on me.
I still remember when this book came out my senior year of high school, and how ridiculously excited my friends and I were to find out about it. It was probably one of my first times finding some good, wholesome gay representation in manga.
An unknown brother-in-law traveling from Canada to Japan to meet his husband’s family, with personal character growth about gay acceptance? Sign me up!
I feel like I’m always down to read more about family dynamics that aren’t your typical nuclear setup, so this is just a win-win for me.
One of Amazon.com's Top 10 Graphic Novels of the year
'[My Brother's Husband] arrives in the UK garlanded with praise from, among others, Alison Bechdel. It's not hard to see why. Not only is it very touching; it's also, for the non-Japanese reader, unexpectedly fascinating' Rachel Cooke, Observer, Graphic Novel of the Month
'When a cuddly Canadian comes to call, Yaichi - a single Japanese dad - is forced to confront his painful past. With his young daughter Kana leading the way, he gradually rethinks his assumptions about what makes a family. Renowned manga artist Gengoroh Tagame turns his stunning…
For too long, single life has been characterized as a lesser life. As a 70-year-old who has been happily single my whole life, I want that to end. As I said in my book, “In the enlightened world that I envision, every child will understand, as a matter of course, that living single is a life path that can be just as joyful and fulfilling as any other—and for some people, the best path of all. Every adult will forsake forever the temptation to pity or patronize single people and will instead appreciate the profound rewards of single life."
The stars of this book are “solitaries,” people who choose to live alone or spend substantial stretches of time alone. Upending the demeaning caricatures of people who spend a lot of time alone, Johson shows that some of the most renowned artists and authors have been solitaries.
They have rich inner lives and contribute meaningfully to society. Even unknown solitaries are artists–they design their own lives. Solitaries value friendship and do not see romantic relationships as sitting atop a relationship hierarchy. Free of a conventional focus on The One, they are more open to more different people and the world.
Fenton Johnson's lyrical prose and searching sensibility explore what it means to choose solitude and to celebrate the notion that solitude is a legitimate and dignified calling. He delves into the lives and works of nearly a dozen iconic solitaries he considers his kindred spirits, from Thoreau at Walden Pond and Emily Dickenson in Amherst, to the fiercely self-protective Zora Neale Hurston. The bright wakes these figures have left behind illuminate Fenton Johnson's journey from his childhood in rural Kentucky to his solitary travels in America, France, and India. Woven into his musings about better-known solitaries are stories of friends…
Incarceration is a gigantic problem in the US, especially because of its connection to racial injustice. I have no firsthand experience with prison or the system, and yet it looms large in my imagination and my deepest fears. That should not be the case merely because I’m a Black gay American, but here we are. I feel that with the help of my mother and others, I have managed to sidestep a lot of the potential pitfalls of people’s misguided perception of my identity, but I have an active, paranoid imagination and profound survivor guilt, so I gravitate toward stories about people at who are odds with our society in ways that reflect that precarious status which allows me to explore a wide range of human experiences.
This book has a provenance that’s almost like a prison
sentence: released in 1953 under the title Cast the First Stone, it
would have been Himes’ first novel, but its frankness about homosexual
relationships in prison and the fact that a Black writer had written white
main characters, made publishers shit their pants and doctor the life out of it
to make it conform to 50s market expectations. Of course, in the process, they
ruined it.
But in 1998, Old School Books released Himes’ "director’s cut,” a much different, more beautiful, raw, and thoughtful book that’s as much about prison life as it is about the prison of masculinity. Paradoxically, prison
seems to be a place where people indulge homosexual desires, though the
atmosphere somehow remains homophobic.
Reading this book could foster more
compassion for queer desires, whether those of prisoners who identify as
LGBTQIA+, or those who claim…
A classic restored-the complete and unexpurgated text of a great African-American writer's brutal and lyrical novel of prison life. First published in reduced and bowdlerized form in 1952 as Cast the First Stone, Yesterday Will Make You Cry was Chester Himes's first, most powerful, and autobiographical novel. This Old School Books edition presents it for the first time precisely as Himes wrote it, a sardonic masterpiece of debasement and transfiguration in an American penitentiary and one of his most enduring literary achievements.
I’ve always loved cartoons and anime. I’m also bisexual and non-binary. Growing up, gay representation was hard to come by, so when we did get it, we were always super excited, whether it was good or not so good. Luckily, I’ve gotten to watch the world change and grow more accepting, but sometimes it’s still difficult to find good rep when you don’t know where to look. I try to fill my books with good representation so that my readers can feel seen in a way I didn’t, and I want to spread the word about some great LGBT manga that I love and made an impact on me.
I’m always a sucker for something sweet, wholesome, and low-to-no stakes when it comes to my gay manga.
It’s a sweet and wholesome story about a mom who realizes her eldest son is gay, but gives him the space, respect, and privacy to come out in his own time. She also makes a point to defend her son’s sexuality without outing him to others. It made me crack up because I remember being that eldest son - thinking I was slick at hiding my sexuality, when I really wasn’t.
I also love how the mom gives her son the space he needs and respects his privacy. A super mom, for sure!
A doting mother and her two beloved sons, one of whom she thinks is probably gay, go about their daily lives in this hilarious and heartwarming LGBTQIA+-friendly family comedy!
Despite belonging to a family of four, the Aoyama residence is typically home to three, with Dad away for work. Mom Tomoko and her two darling sons, Hiroki and Yuri, go about their everyday lives with little to disturb their gentle routines.
But as Hiroki begins his first year of high school, Tomoko can’t help but wonder if her eldest has fallen for another boy. Though Tomoko is content to cheer…
I’m a long-time writer who recently published my first two books in a genre I’ll call urban fantasy/queer historical romance. I also co-host a history podcast. It’s made me much more interested in how time and place figure into fiction! I also love a good love story, but after devouring a ton of romance novels, I realized I want a good plot to go along with the googly eyes and tender declarations of eternal devotion.
The tagline for this book is “Agatha Christie but make it gay.” But Cat Sebastian does something better than that; although like Christie, everyone is concealing a secret, in Hither, Page almost everyone’s secret is being kept for a good reason—to prevent hurting someone they care about. In this book, Leo, a jaded, world-weary spy, is sent to investigate a murder in a small village. It's just after the end of WWII, and everyone is exhausted and wishes life would just get back to normal already, none more so than James, a local doctor with a touch of PTSD who needs nothing less than to get involved with espionage and smuggling. And then he meets Leo. (Spoiler: things go better than you'd think for the two of them.)
Reading this book is like someone you care about bringing you a bowl of tomato soup on a rainy day.
A jaded spy and a shell-shocked country doctor team up to solve a murder in postwar England.
James Sommers returned from the war with his nerves in tatters. All he wants is to retreat to the quiet village of his childhood and enjoy the boring, predictable life of a country doctor. The last thing in the world he needs is a handsome stranger who seems to be mixed up with the first violent death the village has seen in years. It certainly doesn't help that this stranger is the first person James has wanted to touch since before the war.…
