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Pride sale extended! ♥ 30% off + FREE shipping on any & all LGBTQ2S+ titles.* Use this code at checkout: PRIDE

(*Minimum order $25. Free shipping to Canada & the US, regular postal rates only. Offer expires on Tuesday, August 6, 2024, at 11:59 p.m. PT.)

Heart-Thumping Pride Reads

Part 2: Adult Content

Books featuring queer sex, kink, sex work & horny ghosts

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At Arsenal Pulp Press we f*ck with LGBTQ2S+ books, especially those that celebrate queer desire, sex work, kink, and sexual expression!

Whether you’re into seductive verse, kinky dungeon dalliances, or hot & heavy hookups on dating apps, we’ve got a seductive read ready to slide right onto your bedside TBR pile.

TRANSLAND: CONSENT, KINK & PLEASURE
Mx. Sly

*Lambda Literary Award finalist for Transgender Non-Fiction*

With a structure influenced by Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City, Transland is a memoir about sex, shifting relationships, and coming-of-age journeys set in queer and trans kink scenes in Toronto, Vancouver, Darwin, and Bangkok.

In an author Q&A with APP, Mx. Sly explains, “My goal in Transland was to balance writing about kink in a way that would feel visceral and authentic to those in the scene without being too opaque or esoteric to be accessible to other readers.

“The book isn’t intended to be an intro to fetish, but I do try to offer enough insight into BDSM that one can have nuanced understandings of concepts like submission, subspace, and postplay drop without having experienced them. In the book, I strive to make the play feel real but also relatable.”

THIS IS MY REAL NAME: A STRIPPER’S MEMOIR
Cid V Brunet

A beautifully worded blurb from beloved Arsenal Pulp Press author Amber Dawn (more on AD below!) elucidates exactly what drew our editors to Brunet’s deft and detailed memoir about the ten years they danced in strip clubs:

“I am thrilled to help welcome This Is My Real Name to the ever-growing and utterly necessary genre of sex worker–authored memoir. Early in the book, Brunet observes the pragmatic motivation to leave underpaid restaurant kitchens and dangerous roofing jobs and become a dancer. Their passage from rough labour to sex work is one that, in spite of the stigma, secures them an above–minimum wage income. But what is it like to work in the heavily veiled career of stripping? With uncompromising detail, Brunet tours us through both the labyrinthine and the mundane. Pay particular attention to their acute use of dialogue. What is said in the club reveals binary gender–performance, toxic masculinity and fragility, as well as feminist understandings, labour justice, and an overall nimble emotional intelligence.”

ANY OTHER CITY
Hazel Jane Plante

*Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize finalist (BC Book Prizes)*

Music critic and author Andrea Warner’s blurb is the perfect introduction to Hazel Jane Plante’s brilliant, sexy, sophomore novel chronicling the life and times of trans indie rock musician Tracy St. Cyr:

“Hazel Jane Plante’s Any Other City is absorbing, funny, hot, tender, and punk AF… Heartbreak and pain drive some of the plot, but Plante also ensures that pleasure and creativity and creation are given equal space. Gloriously visceral sex scenes abound, provocative art installations are genuinely immersive and thrilling, and there’s tangible exhilaration and exhaustion in the fits and stops of songwriting (and finding ways back to ourselves through our art). Any Other City will get inside your head and your heart, and it will change you in the best possible ways.”

HUSTLING VERSE: AN ANTHOLOGY OF SEX WORKERS’ POETRY
Edited by Amber Dawn & Justin Ducharme

In a variety of forms ranging from lyrics to list poems to found poetry to hybrid works, these authors express themselves with the complexity, agency, and honesty that sex workers are rarely afforded. Contributors from Canada, the US, Europe, and Asia offer gorgeous groundbreaking verse that explores intimacy, transactional sex, identity, healing, and resilience. This exceptional anthology has sold over 5,000 copies to date—that’s a poetry bestseller 10x over!

Did you participate in the Saltburn discourse? Did you send a screenshot of Kristen Stewart casually reading Macho Sluts in Love Lies Bleeding to the group chat? Whether you loved or hated Emerald Fennell’s exploration of chaotic bisexuality and obsession, and whatever your feelings on Stewart’s Variety photoshoot, if you’re hot for lust/romance meets queer horror, we’ve got some provocative reads for you:

QUEER LITTLE NIGHTMARES: AN ANTHOLOGY OF MONSTROUS FICTION & POETRY
Edited by David Ly & Daniel Zomparelli

In Queer Little Nightmares, creatures of myth and folklore seek belonging and intimate connection, cryptids challenge their outcast status, and classic movie monsters explore the experience of coming into queerness. The characters in these stories and poems—the Minotaur camouflaged in a crowd of cosplayers, a pubescent werewolf, a Hindu revenant waiting to reunite with her lover, a tender-hearted kaiju, a lagoon creature aching for the swimmers above him, a ghost of Pride past—relish their new sparkle in the spotlight. Pushing against tropes that have historically been used to demonize, the queer creators of this collection instead ask: What does it mean to be (and to love) a monster?

SODOM ROAD EXIT
Amber Dawn

Down-on-her-luck Starla reluctantly returns home to her mother in Crystal Beach, home of a once legendary and now shuttered amusement park. What Starla finds—tough and tender allies and a villain in the form of a flirtatious, charismatic, and vengeful ghost—make this queer Gothic horror exploring personal and community trauma a thrilling roller coaster of a read.

EVERYTHING IS AWFUL AND YOU’RE A TERRIBLE PERSON
Daniel Zomparelli

Does the search for the One in the digital age of dating make monsters of us all? Zomparelli’s debut collection of stories explores the horrors of seeking in-person hookups, connections, and lasting love through the medium of apps, websites, vlogs, and—in some stories—the spirit realm.

Craving a wholesome palette cleanser between one-handed reads? For some all-ages queer love content, check out our roundup of queer YA fiction and graphic novels.