Books with queer content are coming out fast and furious these days, providing lots of reading options to avid bibliophiles and casual readers alike. Each issue of QBiz highlights new releases celebrating LGBTQ+ content and authors. See below for this issue’s picks from HarperCollins!

An often funny, sometimes shocking and always powerful memoir about chasing your dreams and loving yourself from the late Candy Palmater.

On the surface, success looks easy. But everyone has a story – about the highs, the lows, the moments of doubt, the turning point when you listen to your gut and tune out all the people saying no. Candy Palmater has had some terrific success – she’s been on the radio, she starred in a new TV show after hosting her own for five seasons, and she was a regular co-host on a popular morning program. But she also made mistakes and experienced failures while running down her dream, and she shared her story so you can be inspired to chase down your own.

While you may not be a queer Mi’kmaw lawyerturned-comic raised by bikers in rural New Brunswick like Palmater, you will learn what she found we all have in common: the need to embrace our failures and believe in ourselves. For more than two decades, Candy travelled the world, speaking about the power of kindness, love and self-acceptance, and her message is captured here in her first book. So prepare to be amazed, entertained and even a little shocked at Candy Palmater’s story. But you should also be ready to be inspired, to be reminded how to love yourself and to look at your own life differently.

A fiery restaurant owner falls for her enigmatic head chef in this charming, emotional romance from LGBTQ+ author Ruby Barrett.

Amy will do anything to revive her ailing restaurant, including hiring a former reality-show finalist with good connections and a lot to prove. But her hopes that Sophie’s skills and celebrity status would bring her restaurant back from the brink of failure are beginning to wane.

Sophie just wants to cook. She doesn’t want to constantly post on social media for her dead-in-thewater reality TV career, she doesn’t want to deal with Amy’s take-charge personality, and she doesn’t want to think about what her attraction to her boss might mean.

Then, an opportunity: a new foodie TV show might provide the exposure they need. An uneasy truce is fine for starters, but making their dreams come true means making some personal and painful sacrifices. And soon, there’s more than just the restaurant at stake.

Ruby Barrett is a romance writer based in Ottawa, Canada. When she isn’t writing steamy romances about big feelings, she can be found at the gym, lifting heavy things and battling toxic masculinity one gym bro at a time.