If Daisy Jones brought you to Taylor Jenkins Reid and Evelyn Hugo made you love her, then Atmosphere can only be described as Taylor Jenkins Reid at her very best. It’s a romance and a character study, exploring what life was like during a particular moment for a very particular set of people: queer women working on the space shuttle program at NASA in the 1970s and 80s. It’s beautiful, moving, and, at times, heart-stopping. Whether describing moments of Joan’s life in triumph or disaster, Reid will have you wrapped around her finger. You won’t be able to look away—and you’d never want to. —Rachel Brittain

This isn’t just another biography about James Baldwin, acclaimed writer and civil rights activist. In Baldwin: A Love Story, Nicholas Boggs set out to explore James Baldwin’s life and works through his intimate relationships: his mentor, the painter Beauford Delaney; Lucien Happersberger, a Swiss painter who was Baldwin’s lover and muse; and his collaborators, actor Engin Cezzar and the French artist Yoran Cazac. “From the very beginning,” Boggs writes that he knew this book was “a love story.” —Emily Martin

I’ve been chasing the high of reading How Far the Light Reaches since 2022, and I finally found that queer science joy again in Forest Euphoria. Mycologist and writer Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian found acceptance and a place to explore in the natural landscapes of her childhood home in the Hudson Valley. As an adult studying science, she found representation of her queerness and neurodivergence in the plants, animals, and fungi she researched. Forest Euphoria is a gentle, poignant exploration of finding queer experiences reflected in nature, from mushroom community building to intersex courtship in slugs to trans identity in eels. Kaishian weaves together her deeply personal memories, nature and science writing, and queer theory in this gorgeous, life-affirming book. —Susie Dumond

In 1972 Newcastle, Australia, a teenage girl makes a decision that will change the rest of her life: whether to accept her queerness or repress it. What follows is two versions of her life. In one, she is caught kissing her best friend and is kicked out of her home, ending up in a queer communal home. In the other, she hides her queerness and goes to university to study English. These two sliding-doors versions of her life diverge and reconnect, including both meeting the love of her life at a 1977 protest, and eventually, they collide. —Danika Ellis

This is one of the biggest literary fiction releases of the year, and it’s a finalist for the National Book Award. The unnamed main character of Palaver moved to Japan partly to escape his family: his homophobic brother and the mother who takes his side. He’s built a found family in his new home, though his love life is complicated: he’s sleeping with a married man. Ten years since he last spoke to his estranged mother, she shows up at his door, wanting to make amends. Slowly, over many difficult conversations, they begin to see each other more clearly. —Danika Ellis