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April is Autism Acceptance Month, and today is World Autism Awareness Day, and as a Press full of neurodiverse people, we accept, are aware of, and embrace our beloved autistic characters! Join us for today’s rec list of nine books with autistic queer characters (or, in Hannah Gadsby’s case, actual people).

Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle

They’ll scare you straight to hell.

Welcome to Neverton, Montana: home to a God-fearing community with a heart of gold.

Nestled high up in the mountains is Camp Damascus, the self-proclaimed “most effective” gay conversion camp in the country. Here, a life free from sin awaits. But the secret behind that success is anything but holy.

Hell Followed with Us by Andrew Joseph White

Sixteen-year-old trans boy Benji is on the run from the cult that raised him—the fundamentalist sect that unleashed Armageddon and decimated the world’s population. Desperately, he searches for a place where the cult can’t get their hands on him, or more importantly, on the bioweapon they infected him with.

But when cornered by monsters born from the destruction, Benji is rescued by a group of teens from the local Acheson LGBTQ+ Center, affectionately known as the ALC. The ALC’s leader, Nick, is gorgeous, autistic, and a deadly shot, and he knows Benji’s darkest secret: the cult’s bioweapon is mutating him into a monster deadly enough to wipe humanity from the earth once and for all.

Still, Nick offers Benji shelter among his ragtag group of queer teens, as long as Benji can control the monster and use its power to defend the ALC. Eager to belong, Benji accepts Nick’s terms…until he discovers the ALC’s mysterious leader has a hidden agenda, and more than a few secrets of his own.

The Luis Ortega Survival Club by Sonido Reyes

Ariana Ruiz wants to be noticed. But as an autistic girl who never talks, she goes largely ignored by her peers, despite her bold fashion choices. So when cute, popular Luis starts to pay attention to her, Ari finally feels seen.

Luis’s attention soon turns to something more, and they have sex at a party—while Ari didn’t say no, she definitely didn’t say yes. Before she has a chance to process what happened and decide if she even has the right to be mad at Luis, the rumor mill begins churning—thanks, she’s sure, to Luis’s ex-girlfriend, Shawni. Boys at school now see Ari as an easy target, someone who won’t say no. 

Then Ari finds a mysterious note in her locker that eventually leads her to a group of students determined to expose Luis for the predator he is. To her surprise, she finds genuine friendship among the group, including her growing feelings for the very last girl she expected to fall for. But in order to take Luis down, she’ll have to come to terms with the truth of what he did to her that night—and risk everything to see justice done. 

May the Best Man Win by Z.R. Ellor

Jeremy Harkiss, cheer captain and student body president, won’t let coming out as a transgender boy ruin his senior year. Instead of bowing to the bigots and an outdated school administration, Jeremy decides to make some noise—and how better than by challenging his all-star ex-boyfriend Lukas for the title of Homecoming King?

Lukas Rivers, football star and head of the Homecoming Committee, is just trying to find order in his life after his older brother’s funeral and the loss of his long-term girlfriend—who turned out to be a boy. But when Jeremy threatens to break his heart and steal his crown, Lukas kickstarts a plot to sabotage Jeremy’s campaign.

When both boys take their rivalry too far, the dance is on the verge of being canceled. To save Homecoming, they’ll have to face the hurt they’re both hiding—and the lingering butterflies they can’t deny.

Ten Steps to Nanette: A Memoir Situation by Hannah Gadsby

Gadsby’s unique stand-up special Nanette was a viral success that left audiences captivated by her blistering honesty and her ability to create both tension and laughter in a single moment. But while her worldwide fame might have looked like an overnight sensation, her path from open mic to the global stage was hard-fought and anything but linear.

Ten Steps to Nanette traces Gadsby’s growth as a queer person from Tasmania—where homosexuality was illegal until 1997—to her ever-evolving relationship with comedy, to her struggle with late-in-life diagnoses of autism and ADHD, and finally to the backbone of Nanette: the renouncement of self-deprecation, the rejection of misogyny, and the moral significance of truth-telling.

Equal parts harrowing and hilarious, Ten Steps to Nanette continues Gadsby’s tradition of confounding expectations and norms, properly introducing us to one of the most explosive, formative voices of our time.

Skullrunner by Vyvre Argent

During the revolution, Commander Gavon slew the tyrannical god of memory and claimed his power. He then built the fair and democratic Golden Republic. But the Republic has terrible flaws, and anyone who fights for change might wake up one day with all memory of their identity stolen from them. Such a thing happened to pirate captain Cevette Zarcanzi. She plans to sail throughout the Seaward Isles, stealing memories trapped in physical form from the Republic’s secret archives, and burning them in hopes she might one day set her lost past free.

Evazina Gavon, the commander’s foster daughter, is an embodied fragment of the shattered soul of the goddess of death. Women like her, known as echoes, are feared and hated in the Golden Republic, and Commander Gavon has only kept her safe because the sacrifice of echoes is what fuels his memory magic. When she joins Cevette’s crew, Eva believes returning the memories to the citizens of the Golden Republic will lead them to speak out and peacefully remove her father from power. But, as Eva and Cevette sail to strange and remote islands, as their feelings for each other deepen, they discover that, to live freely, they must turn their ship around and fight.

Free from Falling by E.L. Massey

Justin “Matts” Matthews is good at a lot of things: Rubik’s Cubes, playing guitar, herding cattle, and most importantly for his career in the NHL, hockey. He’s not good at human interactions or social cues, especially when it comes to women. This deficiency is an annoyance rather than a problem, right up until he meets Sydney Warren. If it’s not love at first sight, it’s sure something close.

Sydney Warren, frontwoman for up-and-coming rock band Red Right Hand, is fierce, driven, and she doesn’t do relationships. Being an out trans woman in the music industry is more than enough pressure—a romantic entanglement would be added stress she doesn’t need. A romantic entanglement with a professional hockey player who, to all accounts, is only just learning to be an ally is definitely not what she needs. And yet.

After a chance encounter, Matts and Sydney become unlikely friends. However, in the stolen moments of their busy schedules––late-night phone calls between NHL games and concert tour dates—they start to question if maybe “friendship” isn’t so apt a description for whatever this is between them.

But can they overcome the outside pressures from family and media that would rather their relationship end before it has a chance to start?

Ellen Outside the Lines by A.J. Sass

Thirteen-year-old Ellen Katz feels most comfortable when her life is well planned out and people fit neatly into her predefined categories. She attends temple with Abba and Mom every Friday and Saturday. Ellen only gets crushes on girls, never boys, and she knows she can always rely on her best-and-only friend, Laurel, to help navigate social situations at their private Georgia middle school.

Laurel has always made Ellen feel like being autistic is no big deal. But lately, Laurel has started making more friends, and cancelling more weekend plans with Ellen than she keeps. A school trip to Barcelona seems like the perfect place for Ellen to get their friendship back on track.  Except it doesn’t.

Toss in a new nonbinary classmate whose identity has Ellen questioning her very binary way of seeing the world, homesickness, a scavenger hunt-style team project that takes the students through Barcelona to learn about Spanish culture and this trip is anything but what Ellen planned.

Making new friends and letting go of old ones is never easy, but Ellen might just find a comfortable new place for herself if she can learn to embrace the fact that life doesn’t always stick to a planned itinerary.

The Many Half-Lived Lives of Sam Sylvester by Maya MacGregor

Sam Sylvester’s not overly optimistic about their recent move to the small town of Astoria, Oregon after a traumatic experience in their last home in the rural Midwest.

Yet Sam’s life seems to be on the upswing after meeting several new friends and a potential love interest in Shep, the pretty neighbor. However, Sam can’t seem to let go of what might have been, and is drawn to investigate the death of a teenage boy in 1980s Astoria. Sam’s convinced he was murdered–especially since Sam’s investigation seems to resurrect some ghosts in the town.

Threatening notes and figures hidden in shadows begin to disrupt Sam’s life. Yet Sam continues to search for the truth. When Sam discovers that they may be closer to a killer than previously known, Sam has a difficult decision to make. Would they risk their new life for a half-lived one?

Find these and other books on our Goodreads book shelf, grab our Pagebound.co list, or buy them through the Duck Prints Press Bookshop.org affiliate page.

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I promise it is not an April Fool’s joke that April 1st is also Reading is Funny! Day! We put together a list of queer books that made us laugh. Note that this doesn’t guarantee that they’re comedies, or that there’s not some dark mixed in, but all in all, these books all brought a smile to us, and we hope they’ll do the same for you! The contributors to the list are: Sebastian Marie, JD Rivers, Adrian Harley, jumblejen, Evangeline Giaconia, Nova Mason, Tryan A Bex, Nina Waters, E. C., boneturtle, Shea Sullivan, Linnea Peterson.

• Running Close to the Wind by Alexandra Rowland
• Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die by Greer Stothers
• Here for It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America by R. Eric Thomas
• ¡Hola Papi!: How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons by John Paul Brammer
• The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
• The Affair of the Mysterious Letter by Alexis Hall
• The Very Nice Box by Eve Gleichman & Laura Blackett
• Ten Steps to Nanette: A Memoir Situation by Hannah Gadsby
• The Disabled Tyrant’s Beloved Pet Fish by Xue Shan Fei Hu
• The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu
• Cherry Magic! Thirty Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard?! by Yuu Toyota
• Check, Please! by Ngozi Ukazu
• Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall
• All Systems Red by Martha Wells
• Nicked by M.T. Anderson
• Behooved by M. Stevenson

Find these and other books on our Goodreads book shelf, buy them through the Duck Prints Press Bookshop.org affiliate page, or check out our list on pagebound.co.

Join our Book Lover’s Discord server to chat books, fandom, and more!

1. What are you currently reading?

• The Beauty's Blade by Feng Ren Zuo Shu: I'm pretty meh on the pacing and character development, which is making this not that enjoyable. Like I genuinely can't think of a single reason that Yu Shengyan would even tolerate Fu Wanqing, much less fall in love with her. I think it'd help if we had more about Yu Shengyan other than "quiet" and "uses an unseen flexible sword" and "leader of a demonic sect even tho she doesn't seem demonic." If she had more displayed personality her preferences would certainly make more sense.
• Yona of the Dawn vol. 25 by Mizuho Kusanagi: the end of vol. 24 was Too Cliffhanger for me not to grab the next and read part of it, but I was too tired and it was too late for me to read it all. I'll probably finish today.
• 盗墓笔记 vol. 2 by 南派三叔: just celebrating that I crossed 100 pages today!

2. What have you recently finished reading?

• Yona of the Dawn vol. 24 by Mizuho Kusanagi
• Sakamoto Days vol. 20 by Yuto Suzuki
• Yuri Espoir vol. 2 by Mai Naoi: didn't like it as much as vol. 1 but it was fine.
• Hello, Sunshine by Keezy Young: easily one of the best graphic novels I've read as part of my "read all the queer graphic novels I can find." Absolutely fantastic modern-fantasy-horror story about queerness, fear, intergenerational trauma, and schizophrenia.
• sick by Tomo Kurahashi: modern BL, I didn't particularly like how passive the bottom was.
• Motherlover by Lindsay Ishihiro: I liked the focus on women with families getting second chances and the bi4les, but I didn't like how the kids really felt like plot devices and ceased to matter the moment they weren't essential to moving events forward.
• We're Not Cut Out to Be Lovers vol. 1 and 2 by Kou Hirokawa: cute duology about a mechanic and his livestreamer neighbor. Modern m/m. Fairly porny.
• Just Like Mona Lisa vol. 2 by Tsumuji Yoshimura: I think the uncomfortable gender stuff is on purpose. But it's still uncomfortable gender stuff.

3. What will you read next?

Novel: Winter's Orbit by Everina Maxwell is next on my novel tbr.

Physical Graphic Novels (from the Library): Daybreak vol. 2 by Moosopp is next on my pile.

Digital Graphic Novels (on Libby):  idk nothing is due in under 7 days so I'll just pick based on mood and ~vibes~. Maybe Dinosaur Sanctuary vol. 7?