• I loved Tom Crewe’s debut novel The New Life (Vintage) set in London in 1894. After a lifetime of navigating his desires, John has finally found a man who returns his feelings. Meanwhile, Henry is convinced that his unconventional marriage to Edith offers a new way of life. United by a shared vision, John and Henry begin work on a revolutionary book arguing for the legalisation of homosexuality. But when the Oscar Wilde trial ignites public outcry, everything they long for is threatened.

• K Patrick’s Mrs S (4th Estate) is set in an elite English boarding school, where a young Australian woman takes up the antiquated role of “matron”. Within this landscape of privilege, she finds herself unsure of her role, her accent and her body, until she meets Mrs S, the headmaster’s wife, a woman who is confident, sophisticated, and a paragon of femininity. Over the course of a long, restless heatwave, the matron finds herself irresistibly drawn into Mrs S’s world and their unspoken desire blooms into an illicit affair.

• From the Welsh valleys to the nightclubs of Cardiff, London and Manchester, Rachel Dawson’s Neon Roses (John Murray) is a queer coming-of-age story with a cracking 80s soundtrack. Eluned Hughes is stuck. It’s 1984 and the miners’ strike is ravaging her South Wales community; When the fundraising group, Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, comes down from London, she meets June, an artist and an activist, living in a squat in Camden. Suddenly, Eluned is in freefall.

• Published next month, Jason Okundaye’s Revolutionary Acts (Faber) seeks to reconcile the Black and gay narratives of Britain. He meets an elder generation of Black gay men and finds a spirited community hungry to tell its past – of nightlife, resistance, political fights, loss, gossip, sex, and romance. Tracing these men’s journeys and arrivals in London from the seventies to the present day, Okundaye relays their stories and how they endured and fought against the peak of the Aids epidemic, built social groups and threw underground parties, went to war with institutions (and with each other) and created meaning within a society which was often indifferent to their existence.

• In Matt Cain’s One Love (Headline), Danny and Guy meet at Manchester University. Twenty years later, the friends return to the confetti-covered streets of the Gay Village for Manchester Pride. After years of shared adventures and lost dreams, Danny finally plans to tell Guy of his love. Could this weekend be the end of a twenty-year friendship, or the start of something new.

• Queerbook (Harper Collins) by Malcolm Mackenzie celebrates queer joy, past and present. It’s a whistlestop tour of all the fun (and serious) queer stuff that straight culture drowns out: heroes and histories, science and stories, art, spaces, music, film, TV, fashion – along with jargon-free break­downs of terms from sexuality and gender identity, to code-switching, intersectionality, bi-erasure, straightwashing, and more.

• From international drag superstar and pop culture icon RuPaul comes a brutally honest and intimate memoir of growing up Black, poor, and queer in a broken home to discovering the power of performance and self-acceptance. Published next month, The House of Hidden Meanings (4th Estate) is a profound introspection of RuPaul life, relationships, and identity and his journey to become producer of one of the world’s largest television franchises.

• The Ancient Greeks relationship with queer folk is a lot more complicated than at first glance. In All the Violet Tiaras (404ink) historian Jean Menzies explores the world of queer retellings and the Greek myths being told anew by LGBTQ+ writers. From gender and identity across millennia, to celebrating queer love in its many forms, Menzies invites readers to discover the power to be found in remaking these myths, carving a space for queer stories to be told with all the complexity they deserve.

• The LGBTQ community in Nigeria face oppression, violence, discrimination and the Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Law. Love Offers No Safety: Nigeria’s Queer Men Speak (Cassava Republic) is an important collection of 25 first-person narratives that explore the diverse experience of queer Nigerian men. Their stories cut across age, class, religion, ethnicity, family and relationships, offering a glimpse into what it means to survive as a queer man in Nigeria.