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CELA's audiobooks and magazines are available in Direct to Player and downloadable formats. We no longer mail out CDs. Please contact us for more information.
Showing 1 - 19 of 19 items
"A YA anthology of short stories ranging in genres from horror to romance; featuring classic and original monsters and creatures;…
and highlighting authors from the LGBTQIA+ community, including Claire Kann, Kalynn Bayron, Jonathan Lenore Kastin, and H.E. Edgmon"-- Provided by publisherBy K. Ancrum. 2024
Perfect for fans of Adam Silvera and Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, this suspenseful queer YA…
romance from critically acclaimed author K. Ancrum reimagines the tale of Icarus as a star-crossed love story between a young art thief and the son of the man he’s been stealing from—think Portrait of a Thief for YA readers.Icarus Gallagher is a thief. He steals priceless art and replaces it with his father’s impeccable forgeries. For years, one man—the wealthy Mr. Black—has been their target in revenge for his role in the death of Icarus’s mother. To keep their secret, Icarus adheres to his own strict rules to keep people, and feelings, at bay: Don’t let anyone close. Don’t let anyone touch you. And, above all, don’t get caught.Until one night, he does. Not by Mr. Black but by his mysterious son, Helios, now living under house arrest in the Black mansion. Instead of turning Icarus in, Helios bargains for something even more dangerous—a friendship that breaks every single one of Icarus’s rules.As reluctance and distrust become closeness and something more, they uncover the gilded cage that has trapped both their families for years. One Icarus is determined to escape. But his father’s thirst for revenge shows no sign of fading, and soon it may force Icarus to choose: the escape he’s dreamed of, or the boy he’s come to love. Reaching for both could be his greatest triumph—or it could be his downfall.By H. A. Clarke. 2024
The Craft for Gen Z: The Feast Makers, indie bestselling author H. A. Clarke crafts an action-packed conclusion to the…
Scapegracers trilogy, as our beloved teen coven tackle college acceptances, queer romance, and a witch trial to remember for the ages. After restoring their powers, Sideways just wants to get on with senior year. But the covens have convened for the trial of Madeline Kline. When this stubborn, independent witch begs the Scapegracers to save her from a cruel and unusual punishment, Sideways knows they have to get involved. It&’s the right thing to do, even if Madeline did steal their soul and wear it for a time. Right? Making an example out of Madeline seems, strangely, just as important to the most powerful covens as divvying up the Scapegracers amongst themselves. Sideways, Jing, Daisy, and Yates are reluctant to abandon what they&’ve built together, but as the college acceptances (and rejections) roll in, the offer of a magical family beyond Sycamore Gorge becomes increasingly tempting. Unfortunately, choosing a new coven will have to wait: witchfinders are gathering in town, and some of these visitors make the Chantrys seem tame in comparison. Every witch—Scapegracer or not—is about to be in grave danger. And on top of all that, Sideways thinks they just might be in love. In H. A. Clarke&’s signature raw and explosive style, The Feast Makers brings the indie-bestselling Scapegracers trilogy to a dynamic end as Sideways, Jing, Daisy, Yates, and Shiloh tackle college acceptances, queer romance, and the meaning of justice in an ever-challenging world.By Rob Costello. 2024
An empowering cross-genre YA anthology that explores what it means to be a monster, exclusively highlighting trans and queer authors…
who offer new tales and perspectives on classic monster stories and tropes. Be not afraid! These monsters, creatures, and beasties are not what they appear. We Mostly Come Out at Night is a YA anthology that reclaims the monstrous for the LGBTQA+ community while exploring how there is freedom and power in embracing the things that make you stand out. Each story centers on both original and familiar monsters and creatures—including Mothman, Carabosse, a girl with thirteen shadows, a living house, werebeasts, gorgons, sirens, angels, and many others—and their stories of love, self-acceptance, resilience, and empowerment. This collection is a bold, transformative celebration of queerness and the creatures that (mostly) go bump in the night. Contributors include editor Rob Costello, Kalynn Bayron, David Bowles, Shae Carys, Rob Costello, H.E. Edgmon, Michael Thomas Ford, Val Howlett, Brittany Johnson, Naomi Kanakia, Claire Kann, Jonathan Lenore Kastin, Sarah Maxfield, Sam J. Miller, Alexandra Villasante, and Merc Fenn Wolfmoor.By Katie Siegel. 2024
The déjà vu is strong for 25-year-old former kid detective Charlotte Illes when she lands back in Frencham Middle School…
– this time as a substitute teacher with a sideline in sleuthing – in the second zany mystery based on the much-loved TikTok web series from @katiefliesaway. For fans of &“Poker Face,&” &“Knives Out,&” Elle Cosimano&’s Finlay Donovan Series, and anyone seeking to satisfy their Harriet the Spy, Encyclopedia Brown, or Nancy Drew nostalgia! Mention &“returning to the scene of a crime,&” and people don&’t usually picture a middle school. But that&’s where kid detective Lottie Illes enjoyed some of her greatest successes, solving mysteries and winning acclaim—before the world of adult responsibilities came crashing in . . . Twentysomething Charlotte is now back in the classroom, this time as a substitute teacher. However, as much as she&’s tried to escape the shadow of her younger self, others haven&’t forgotten about Lottie. In fact, a fellow teacher is hoping for help discovering the culprit behind anonymous threats being sent to her and her aunt, who&’s running for reelection to the Board of Education. At first, Charlotte assumes the messages are a harmless prank. But maybe it&’s a good thing she left a detective kit hidden in the band room storage closet all those years ago—just in case. Because the threats are escalating, and it&’s clear that untangling mysteries isn&’t child&’s play anymore . . .By Logan-Ashley Kisner. 2024
Two transgender teens end up in a small, isolated town, where they must escape the locals who plan to sacrifice…
one of them to an ancient monster that only eats girls. A pulse-pounding thriller perfect for fans of Midsommar and Hell Followed with Us!Erin and Max are two transgender teens trying to get to California. Max is desperate to finally transition, and Erin is longing to understand why she&’s on this trip to begin with. The last she spoke to Max was when he suddenly broke up with her two years ago.But when they find themselves stranded in the middle of the woods in a small Kentucky town, they realize they have much bigger problems. The locals need a female sacrifice for the monster that lives in the woods—according to them, the sun won&’t come up again until the monster eats a girl . . . and it only eats what it kills. Fighting back is futile; no one selected as the offering has ever survived the night. When the two strangers show up, the locals believe they have the perfect candidate. The irony of the situation is almost too much to fathom.The thing is, the locals don&’t know who they just trapped as their sacrifice. They don&’t know Erin&’s and Max&’s secrets, which could be a death sentence on a good day. And the monster that lives in their woods has never faced prey who have already fought so hard to live.By Marieke Nijkamp. 2024
“An essential middle grade fantasy where all readers will find heroes to love and to cheer!” —Alex London, author of…
Battle Dragons and The Princess Protection Program“Every kid deserves to see themselves as princesses or knights or whatever role they wish to play, and Nijkamp carves out the space for them to do so. Thoughtful, inclusive, and an outright joy, Splinter & Ash shines; a new classic that belongs on the shelves of every fantasy reader.” —Nicole Melleby, author of Hurricane Season and coeditor of This Is Our Rainbow“Splinter & Ash is a rare gem: a shining example of a fantasy novel that will engage readers of any age.” —A. J. Sass, award-winning author of Ellen Outside the Lines and Ana on the EdgeNew York Times bestselling author Marieke Nijkamp's middle grade prose debut is an immersive medieval fantasy starring queer and disabled young heroes. For two young misfits, a dangerous quest to save their kingdom will also mean saving each other. For fans of B. B. Alston’s Amari and the Night Brothers, Soman Chainani’s School for Good and Evil, and Tamora Pierce’s Tortall books.Ash—or Princess Adelisa—is the youngest child of the queen, recently returned to the city of Kestrel’s Haven after spending six years on the other side of the country. Ash was hoping for a joyous reunion, but the reality is far from it. Her mother is holding the kingdom together by a thread; her brother has only taunts and jibes for her; and court is full of nobles who openly mock and dismiss Ash, who uses a cane and needs braces to strengthen her joints.Splinter is the youngest child of one of Haven’s most prominent families. She’s fierce, determined, and adventurous, and she has her sights set on becoming a knight just like her older brother. Even if everyone says she can’t because she’s not a boy. So what? She’s not a girl, either.A chance encounter throws Ash and Splinter into each other’s orbits and changes the course of the kingdom's history. The princess and her new squire will face bullies, snobs, gossips, and their own disapproving families. But when they uncover a shadowy group of nobles plotting to overthrow the queen, they will show everyone how legends are born. Together.The first in a trilogy, bestselling author Marieke Nijkamp’s medieval fantasy is an action-packed love letter to nonbinary, queer, and disabled kids. Splinter & Ash evokes the classic adventure and atmosphere of fantasies by Lloyd Alexander and Tamora Pierce and the fresh, inclusive lens of writers such as Rick Riordan, Angie Thomas, and Soman Chainani. It invites everyone—no matter who they are or what they look like—to fight for what they believe in.By Caro De Robertis. 2024
&“It&’s a literary gift to see gender expansiveness depicted in an ancient myth with such grace and ease.&” —Electric Literature…
Fans of Circe and Black Sun, &“prepare to be astonished&” (R.O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries) with this bold and subversive feminist and queer retelling of the Greek myth of Psyche and Eros.Young, headstrong Psyche has captured the eyes of every suitor in town with her tempestuous beauty, which has made her irresistible as a woman yet undesirable as a wife. Secretly, she longs for a life away from the expectations of men. When her father realizes that the future of his family and town will be forever cursed unless he appeases an enraged Aphrodite, he follows the orders of the Oracle, tying Psyche to a rock to be ravaged by a monstrous husband. And yet a monster never arrives. When Eros, nonbinary deity of desire, sees Psyche, she cannot fulfill her promise to her mother Aphrodite to destroy the mortal young woman. Instead, Eros devises a plan to sweep Psyche away to a palace, hidden from the prying eyes of the gods and outside world. There, Eros and Psyche fall in love. Each night, Eros visits Psyche under the cover of impenetrable darkness, where they both experience untold passion and love. But each morning, Eros flies away before light comes to break the spell of the palace that keeps them safe. Before long, Psyche&’s nights spent in pleasure turn to days filled with doubts, as she grapples with the cost of secrecy and the complexities of freedom and desire. Restless and spurred by her sisters to reveal Eros&’s true nature, she breaks her trust and forces a reckoning that tests them both—and transforms the very heavens in this &“brilliant and luminous&” (Madeline Miller, New York Times bestselling author) epic.By Ben Grossberg. 2024
The James Alan McPherson Prize for the Novel, AWP Award Series Winner It&’s not easy for anyone to find love,…
let alone a middle-aged gay man in small-town America. Mike Breck works multiple part-time jobs and bickers constantly with his father, an angry conservative who moved in after Mike&’s mother died. When he&’s not working or avoiding his father, Mike burns time on hookup apps, not looking for anything more. Then he meets a local guy, Dave, just as lonely as he is, and starts to think that maybe he doesn&’t have to be alone. Mike falls hard, and in a moment of intimacy, his pent-up hopes for a relationship rush out, leading him to look more honestly at himself and his future. Winner of the James Alan McPherson Prize for the Novel, Ben Grossberg&’s The Spring before Obergefell is about real guys who have real problems, yet still manage to find connection. Funny, serious, meditative, and hopeful, The Spring before Obergefell is a romance—but not a fairytale.By August Clarke. 2024
For fans of The Princess Bride and Gideon the Ninth: a bloody lesbian revenge tale and political fantasy set in a glittering world transformed…
by industrial change – and simmering class warfare. Ichorite is progress. More durable and malleable than steel, ichorite is the lifeblood of a dawning industrial revolution. Yann I. Chauncey owns the sole means of manufacturing this valuable metal, but his workers, who risk their health and safety daily, are on strike. They demand Chauncey research the hallucinatory illness befalling them, a condition they call &“being lustertouched.&” Marney Honeycutt, a lustertouched child worker, stands proud at the picket line with her best friend and family. That&’s when Chauncey sends in the guns. Only Marney survives the massacre. She vows bloody vengeance. A decade later, Marney is the nation&’s most notorious highwayman, and Chauncey&’s daughter seeks an opportune marriage. Marney&’s rage and the ghosts of her past will drive her to masquerade as an aristocrat, outmaneuver powerful suitors, and win the heart of his daughter, so Marney can finally corner Chauncey and satisfy her need for revenge. But war ferments in the north, and deeper grudges are surfacing. . . H. A. Clarke&’s adult fantasy debut, writing as August Clarke, Metal from Heaven is a punk-rock murder ballad tackling labor issues and radical empowerment against the relentless grind of capitalism.By Casey McQuiston. 2024
In #1 New York Times bestselling author Casey McQuiston's latest romantic comedy, two bisexual exes accidentally book the same European…
food and wine tour and challenge each other to a hookup competition to prove they're over each other—except they're definitely not.Theo and Kit have been a lot of things: childhood best friends, crushes, in love, and now estranged exes. After a brutal breakup on the transatlantic flight to their dream European food and wine tour, they exited each other's lives once and for all.Time apart has done them good. Theo has found confidence as a hustling bartender by night and aspiring sommelier by day, with a long roster of casual lovers. Kit, who never returned to America, graduated as the reigning sex god of his pastry school class and now bakes at one of the finest restaurants in Paris. Sure, nothing really compares to what they had, and life stretches out long and lonely ahead of them, but—yeah. It's in the past.All that remains is the unused voucher for the European tour that never happened, good for 48 months after its original date and about to expire. Four years later, it seems like a great idea to finally take the trip. Solo. Separately.It's not until they board the tour bus that they discover they've both accidentally had the exact same idea, and now they're trapped with each other for three weeks of stunning views, luscious flavors, and the most romantic cities of France, Spain, and Italy. It's fine. There's nothing left between them. So much nothing that, when Theo suggests a friendly wager to see who can sleep with their hot Italian tour guide first, Kit is totally game. And why stop there? Why not a full-on European hookup competition?But sometimes a taste of everything only makes you crave what you can't have.By Maggie Thrash. 2024
“I've loved Maggie Thrash's work for years, and Rainbow Black is going to set so many new hearts aflame—murder, intrigue, queer love,…
dark humor AND satanic panic? Welcome to the Maggie Thrash Fan Club, world!”—Emma Straub, New York Times bestselling author of This Time TomorrowFor readers of Donna Tartt and Ottessa Moshfegh comes a brilliant, deliriously entertaining novel from the acclaimed author of Honor Girl. Rainbow Black is part murder mystery, part gay international fugitive love story—set against the ’90s Satanic Panic and spanning 20 years in the life of a young woman pulled into its undertow.Lacey Bond is a 13-year-old girl in New Hampshire growing up in the tranquility of her hippie parents’ rural daycare center. Then the Satanic Panic hits. It’s the summer of 1990 when Lacey ’s parents are handcuffed, flung into the county jail, and faced with a torrent of jaw-dropping accusations as part of a mass hysteria sweeping the nation. When a horrific murder brings Lacey to the breaking point, she makes a ruthless choice that will haunt her for decades. As an adult, Lacey mimes a normal life as the law clerk of an illustrious judge. She has a beautiful girlfriend, a measure of security, and the world has mostly forgotten about her. But after a tiny misstep spirals into an uncontrolled legal disaster, the hysteria threatens to begin all over again. Rainbow Black is an addictive, searing, high-octane triumph, an imaginative tour de force about one woman’s tireless desire to be free.By Taylor Tracy. 2024
* A Stonewall Award Honor Book * ALA Notable Book *Perfect for fans of Rebecca Stead, Natalie Lloyd, and Jasmine…
Warga, this beautiful novel in verse explores one girl's struggle to regain her magic after a hurricane forces her to move away from her beloved ocean that, she believes, has given her special powers. Bighearted and observant twelve-year-old Murray O’Shea loves the ocean. Every chance she gets, she’s in it. It could be because the ocean never makes her apologize for being exactly who she is—something her family refuses to do—but it could also be because of the secret magic that Murray shares with the ocean. Though she can’t explain its presence, the electric buzz she feels from her fingertips down to her toes allows her to become one with the ocean and all its creatures, and it makes Murray feel seen in a way she never feels on land.But then a hurricane hits Murray’s Jersey Shore home, sending the O'Sheas far inland to live with relatives. Being this far from the ocean, Murray seems to lose her magic. And stuck in a house with her family, she can no longer avoid the truths she’s discovering about herself—like how she feels in the clothes her mom makes her wear, or why she doesn't have boys on the brain like other girls her age.But it’s not all hurricanes and heartache. Thankfully, Murray befriends a boy named Dylan, who has a magic of his own. When Murray agrees to partner with him for a youth roller-rama competition in exchange for help getting her magic back, the two forge an unstoppable bond—one that shows Murray how it's not always the family you were given that makes you feel whole...sometimes it's the family you build along the way.By Muriel Leung. 2024
A dark and tender debut set against a writhing backdrop of postapocalyptic New York City.Acid rainstorms have transformed New York…
City into a toxic wasteland, cutting its remaining citizens off from one another. In one apartment building, an unlikely family of humans and ghosts survives. Mira reels from a devastating breakup with her partner, Mal, whose whereabouts are unknown, while her mother is plagued by furious dreams and her grandfather, Grandpa Why, stakes his claims as a rambunctious ghost. Across the hall, the cockroach Shin, also a ghost. As the world around them worsens, each character must learn to redefine what it means to live, die, and love at the end of the world.By August Thompson. 2024
Longlisted for The Center For Fiction's 2024 First Novel Prize • Named a Best Book of 2024 by Elle, Vogue,…
and Debutiful&“This new novel is a real heart-squeezer. Beautiful, one of a kind and perfectly titled.&” —Matt Berninger, The National&“Anyone&’s Ghost is about so very many things: the pains of growing up, friendship and pining, drugs, sex, the frustrations of masculinity and the thrill of testing death itself. But more than any of that, it is an overwhelmingly beautiful love story. This book will make you cry.&” —Jonathan Safran FoerAn extraordinary debut novel in which the transforming love and friendship between two young men during one unforgettable teenage summer in rural New England haunts them into adulthoodIt took three car crashes to kill Jake.Theron David Alden is there for the first two: the summer they meet in rural New Hampshire, when he&’s fifteen and anxious, and Jake&’s seventeen and a natural; then six years later in New York City, those too-short, ecstatic, painful nights that change both their lives forever—the end of the dream and the longing for the dream and the dream itself, all at once.Theron is not there for the third crash.And yet, their story contains so much joy and self-discovery: the glorious, stupid simplicity of a boyhood joke; the devastation of insecurity; the way a great song can distill a universe; the limits of what we can know about each other; the mysterious, porous, ungraspable fault line between yourself and the person you love better than yourself; the beautiful, toxic elixir of need and hope and want.Brimming with rare, radioactive talent, August Thompson has written a love story that is electrically alive and exquisitely tuned.In the words of Jonathan Safran Foer, &“This book will make you cry.&”By Thomas Grattan. 2024
Longlisted for the 2024 Joyce Carol Oates Prize. Named one of the Best Books of 2024 by Glamour and one…
of them's Best LGBTQ+ Books of 2024. RuPaul and Eric Cervini's Allstora Book Club Pick for June.“A novel that should become the touchstone of a whole generation.” —Edmund WhiteIt’s 2001, and twenty-four-year-old Gordon—handsome, sensitive, and eager for direction—takes a bus from Minnesota to New York City because it’s the only place for a young gay man to go. As he begins to settle into the city’s punishing rhythm, he gets a job walking rich Manhattanites’ dogs. But it isn’t until he stumbles into the West Village brownstone of two of his clients, the powerful gallery owners Philip and Nicola, that Gordon learns how much the world has hidden from him—and what he’s capable of doing in order to get it for himself.A lush, heart-quickening novel about family and art, sex and class, and the terror of self-discovery, Thomas Grattan’s In Tongues chronicles Gordon’s perilous pursuit of belonging from the Midwest to New York and, later, to Europe and Mexico City. As he floats further into Philip and Nicola’s exclusive universe, and as lines blur between employee, muse, lover, and mentor, Gordon’s charm, manipulations, and growing ambition begin to escape his own control, in turn threatening to unravel the lives, and lies, of those around him.Anchored by winsome lyricism, glinting intellect, and a main character whose yearnings and mistakes come to feel like our own, In Tongues crackles with fierce longing and pointed emotion, further confirming Thomas Grattan as a rare chronicler of young adulthood’s joys and devastations.By Chuck Tingle. 2024
The instant USA Today bestseller by Chuck Tingle about what it takes to succeed in a world that wants you…
dead. Named one of the Best Horror Books of 2024 (Esquire, Parade, and Library Journal)! A Locus Award Finalist!Misha knows that chasing success in Hollywood can be hell.But finally, after years of trying to make it, his big moment is here: an Oscar nomination. And the executives at the studio for his long-running streaming series know just the thing to kick his career to the next level: kill off the gay characters, "for the algorithm," in the upcoming season finale. Misha refuses, but he soon realizes that he’s just put a target on his back. And what’s worse, monsters from his horror movie days are stalking him and his friends through the hills above Los Angeles. Haunted by his past, Misha must risk his entire future—before the horrors from the silver screen find a way to bury him for good."Brilliantly bloody, wildly fun, and extremely scary, Bury Your Gays brings a sledgehammer down on tired tropes and makes a masterpiece of their guts."—Rachel Harrison, national bestselling author of Black SheepAlso by Chuck TingleLucky DayCamp DamascusStraightAt the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.By Kimberly King Parsons. 2024
A TIME MUST-READ BOOK OF THE YEAR • A young mother, in denial after the death of her sister, navigates the…
dizzying landscapes of desire, guilt, and grief in this darkly comic, highly anticipated debut novel from Kimberly King Parsons, author of the story collection, Black Light (long-listed for the National Book Award)."Kimberly King Parsons sings the lushest, cruelest, kindest, weirdest, darkest and most hilarious songs on paper; I want to hang these sentences in my house and admire them like the interdimensional multisensory illuminated artworks they truly are." —Karen Russell, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Swamplandia!The trip was supposed to be fun. When Kit&’s best friend gets dumped by his boyfriend, he begs her to ditch her family responsibilities for an idyllic weekend in the Montana mountains. They&’ll soak in hot springs, then sneak a vape into a dive bar and drink too much, like old times. Instead, their getaway only reminds Kit of everything she&’s lost lately: her wildness, her independence, and—most heartbreaking of all—her sister, Julie, who died a few years ago.When she returns home to the Dallas suburbs, Kit tries to settle in to her routine—long afternoons spent caring for her irrepressible daughter, going on therapist-advised dates with her concerned husband, and reluctantly taking her mother&’s phone calls. But in the secret recesses of Kit&’s mind, she&’s reminiscing about the band she used to be in—and how they&’d go out to the desert after shows and drop acid. She&’s imagining an impossible threesome with her kid&’s pretty gymnastics teacher and the cool playground mom. Keyed into everything that might distract from her surfacing pain, Kit spirals. As her already thin boundaries between reality and fantasy blur, she begins to wonder: Is Julie really gone?Neon bright in its insight, both devastating and laugh-out-loud funny, We Were the Universe is an ambitious, inventive novel from a revelatory new voice in American fiction—a fearless exploration of sisterhood, motherhood, friendship, marriage, psychedelics, and the many strange, transcendent shapes love can take.By Lev Ac Rosen. 2024
Set in atmospheric 1950s San Francisco, Rough Pages asks who is allowed to tell their own stories, and how far…
would you go to seek out the truth.Private Detective Evander “Andy” Mills has been drawn back to the Lavender House estate for a missing person case. Pat, the family butler, has been volunteering for a book service, one that specializes in mailing queer books to a carefully guarded list of subscribers. With bookseller Howard Salzberger gone suspiciously missing along with his address book, everyone on that list, including some of Andy's closest friends, is now in danger.A search of Howard’s bookstore reveals that someone wanted to stop him and his co-owner, Dorothea Lamb, from sending out their next book. The evidence points not just to the Feds, but to the Mafia, who would be happy to use the subscriber list for blackmail.Andy has to maneuver through both the government and the criminal world, all while dealing with a nosy reporter who remembers him from his days as a police detective and wants to know why he’s no longer a cop. With his own secrets closing in on him, can Andy find the list before all the lives on it are at risk?Dive into the full Evander Mills series: Lavender HouseThe Bell in the FogRough PagesAt the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.