2023 Bestsellers & Collective Picks

Thomas writes in a musical, incantatory style that approaches poetry. Their stories aren’t linear, but a series of memoiristic recollections that fit together like beads on a string... These breathlessly imaginative stories are all the more remarkable for the elegant, organic ways in which the author unhooks language from its entrenched assumptions about men and women.
—Claire Oshetsky, author of Chouette

Rebecca Beyer’s fresh, can’t-miss book Mountain Magic is a love letter to the traditions, folklore, and people of Appalachia. A mix of a history and an occult guidebook, Mountain Magic is intent on dispelling negative stereotypes about Appalachia and reminding the world of the traditional folk magic of the Appalachian people, who blended African, European, and Indigenous lore and practices into a methodology all their own.
—Danielle Ballantyne, Forward

I love a snappy little thriller in a reading slump, but I can almost never recommend them, rife as they so often are with copaganda, deeply unlikeable characters, gratuitous sexual violence, and lackluster reveals. You won't find any of that here—instead, a taut genre-bender exploring themes of trauma, motherhood, and self, with dystopian flair and a hefty serving of domestic suspense.
—Beck, The Firestorm Collective

Within these pages, you’ll find the finest elements of Native storytelling on full display. These stories are sprinkled with incisive social commentary seamlessly woven into the narrative without drifting into preachiness... But perhaps most crucially, these are just scary ass stories from Natives that are done exceptionally well.
—Kevin Chuculate, A Tribe Called Geek

This beautiful and thought-provoking collection of essays brings together reflections on the role of food in Indigenous land defense, immigrant ritual, international social centers, queer belonging, and so much more. I finished the book reinvigorated to bring radical attention to the ways in which our meals truly make our movements. Nourishing Resistance reminds us that any project toward liberation has a common root: the need for nourishment.
—Raechel Anne Jolie, author of Rust Belt Femme

While words and phrases related to abolition and emergent strategy circulate widely these days, their meanings have become elusive. Andrea firmly grounds Practicing New Worlds in the collaborative practices that people are engaging in right now to dismantle state violence, showing us why making our work local, decentralized, interdependent, nimble, responsive, relational, and adaptive is the way forward for survival and liberation.
—Dean Spade, author of Mutual Aid

A home repair manual is an unlikely candidate for a Firestorm bestseller, but Safe and Sound is a unique resource aimed at empowering renters—especially queer renters. With humor and care, author Mercury Stardust teaches not only repairs and improvements, but also how to create a safe and comfortable space, deal with contractors, read a lease, and defend your rights. A copy of this book should be issued to every new renter!
—Libertie, The Firestorm Collective

A riveting debut from a remarkable new voice! Trang Thanh Tran weaves an impressive gothic mystery in which Jade's father is determined to restore a decrepit home to its former glory and Jade is the only person who feels the soul-crushing devastation of colonialism lingering within its walls.
—Angeline Boulley, author of The Firekeeper's Daughter

[A] deeply queer story about a haunted house... This visceral and haunting narrative shows us the ways fascism seeps into our relationships, how no identity is immune to its creeping, and how while the foundations of imperial, colonial societies are built upon violent and oppressive histories and ideologies nothing built on top will ever heal what lays beneath. The foundation itself must be destroyed.
—ThreeWayFight

Michelle Johnson offers her decades of experience, her listening spirit, and her open heart to this work. This book offers us tangible ways to act on our deep longing to hold each other and be held in transformation. This book lets us live inside a basic truth: we need each other.
—Alexis Pauline Gumbs, author of Dub: Finding Ceremony

If you ever want to know what is really up, talk to a sex worker. Working It is chock-full of harsh realities, hopeful activism, hot takes, sharp writing, electric intellects, dark humor—all from the culture heroes making their dollars at the intersection of all our country's worst problems. This is true outlaw writing, and the stories inside are of crucial importance for us all.
—Michelle Tea, author of Rent Girl

Chapter by chapter, Gordon challenges the roots of anti-fat rhetoric with her signature mixture of clearheaded reasoning and deep compassion. Bad science doesn't stand a chance as Gordon eviscerates flawed studies and baseless ‘common sense’ that have become foundational to mainstream conversations around fatness.
—Esmé, The Firestorm Collective