This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Sure, there’s still plenty of 2025 left, but before we’ve even gotten to the biggest publishing season of the year, we’re already getting buzz around 2026 releases. I’ll be talking about them a lot more once we approach their release dates, but today I have five of the most-anticipated queer books of next year for you to preorder now. These are all from beloved authors, and they include a sci-fi story that promises to be “sapphic Moby Dick in space!”, the sequel to Cemetery Boys, and a novel about a queer librarian fighting book bans.
Is This a Cry for Help? by Emily Austin (January 13, 2026)
The author of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead, Interesting Facts About Space, and We Could Be Rats is back with another queer literary novel about a messy main character. Darcy is living the dream as a librarian married to her bookbinder wife, complete with an overflowing book collection and two cats. But when she learns about her ex-boyfriend’s death, she spirals. When she returns from medical leave, she is faced with growing anti-DEI protests and book bans.
Last First Kiss by Julian Winters (January 27, 2026)
Julian Winters is well known for both his queer YA books, like Running with Lions, and his adult M/M romances, like I Think They Love You. In this second-chance adult M/M romcom, Jordan is planning a high-profile wedding when he discovers the man of honor is Jamie, the guy who broke his heart as a teen. Despite his best efforts—and the fact that he’s still questioning his identity and labels—Jordan can’t stay away, and soon their verbal sparring turns into hook-ups. Early reviews say this is a gorgeous love story with great demisexual representation!
Hell’s Heart by Alexis Hall (March 26, 2026)
The successor to Gideon the Ninth‘s “lesbian necromancers in space” tagline is here: this is “sapphic Moby Dick in space!” You likely know Alexis Hall from their queer romances, like Boyfriend Material and A Lady for a Duke, and this is their sci-fi debut. As you’d expect from that tagline, it follows someone hunting down a space monster. In this post-Earth universe, they rely on these creatures for fuel. I’ll just quote author Ruthanna Emrys’s review: “This is Hall’s best, weirdest, and most snarkily delightful book yet. Whether you like even-more-queer Moby Dick retellings, space whales, disaster bi drama, Jovian gaslamp science fiction, razor-sharp satire of capitalist theology, Locked-Tomb-style obscure jokes, Cthulhu cultist crew members, thematically-important infodumps about xenobiology—or better yet all of those things tied together in intricate perfection—this will be your jam.”
Summer Official by Rebekah Weatherspoon (April 14, 2026)
Beloved romance author Rebekah Weatherspoon is gifting us with another sapphic YA romance! Saylor broke her arm at basketball camp while distracted by her mother’s viral video about Saylor’s coming out. The last thing she wants to do is spend the summer at home with a camera shoved in her face. She finds escape in Heaven, who wants Saylor’s help to build a social media following for Heaven’s future career as a tattoo artist. Despite their differences, sparks fly between them, but can their relationship survive the threat of social media surveillance?
Espíritu (Cemetery Boys #2) by Aiden Thomas (September 16, 2026)
This one was originally scheduled to come out in 2025, but it’s been pushed to 2026. Cemetery Boys, a fantasy book about a trans brujo who accidentally summons the wrong ghost, is one of the most popular queer YA books out there, and it’s getting a sequel! I really can’t describe the plot of this one without spoiling book one, but suffice it to say it follows the characters you loved from book one as well as a nonbinary brujx named Ángel who uses “ruthless methods” to help the dead move on.
Join All Access to read this article
Get access to exclusive content and features with an All Access subscription on Book Riot.
- Unlimited access to exclusive bonus content
- Community features like commenting and poll participation
- Our gratitude for supporting the work of an independent media company
The comments section is moderated according to our community guidelines. Please check them out so we can maintain a safe and supportive community of readers!
