English language LGBT Book Club Zurich

Note from Callie: Originally a web serial - can be read on Royal Road or bought as an ebook in three volumes.

Hannah has a routine. Wake up, take a shower, go to school, go to work, come home, and pass out. It's a perfectly normal routine for a perfectly normal girl who does not have to remember how her limbs work every morning because of haunting nightmares of being a very different creature in a very different world.

But that's all she thinks they are—nightmares—until one night they're all too lucid, and her body on Earth starts to change. Slowly, Hannah's humanity starts to slip away... but surely she can continue just sticking to routine, right? It'll be fine. It has to be.

A mix of urban and traditional fantasy, Bioshifter is a story in two worlds, with magic leaking in from one to the other. It's a story about love, self-acceptance, neurodivergency, and a whole lot of trauma. Strap in and enjoy!

** The event takes place in the Library of the Regenbogenhaus, which is open from 15h00-19h00 on Wednesdays. You're welcome to visit the library, before the book discussion in the House of Colour **

** Reminder: The Sci-Fi & Fantasy books group meets monthly, and has a limit of 12 persons (due to venue size at the Regenbogenhaus).
The Sci-Fi Fantasy group has a Whatsapp Group chat, and Excel sheet for suggesting and voting on books to read.

Suggest books and vote here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1M23Vst0aClZS5SOZN-CGDcaQRsQtO8_h18l7xChf1no/edit?gid=966314652#gid=966314652

The author, Lucian S., who is of Syrian descent and lives in Switzerland, will be joining us at for this event.

"The President" is his second book, and the first of fiction. His first book is a memoir titled "Stripped".
Both are available at Orrel Füssli, ex Libris and on amazon, in case you want to read both.

Description of The President:
What if a regime that once called your love a crime suddenly declared it a right? What if your mother were a mirror of your country, beautiful, powerful, and determined to erase you?

Anmar has always been told who to be. Obedient son. Future man. But beneath his measured smiles, he is unraveling, haunted by desire, burdened by shame, and starving for the freedom to love without fear.
Exiled to an elite boys' school run by the regime, Anmar finds both cruelty and connection. Daniyal, the boy who speaks to the self Anmar buried. And Haroon, the dream that love could be safe, seen, even sacred.

Set in the near future, The President is a fiercely intimate and politically charged coming-of-age queer utopia about what it means to be queer under authoritarian rule. With poetic force and emotional precision, Lucian S. explores how love, identity, and resistance survive even in the darkest corners of repression.

For readers who crave tenderness in tension, who have loved in silence, and who know the quiet revolution of becoming yourself. For every queer soul who's ever been told they're too much, too soft, too wrong, this book sees you. And it burns for you.

Suggest and vote for future books in this google sheets document:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lIdNT7Z_nyzkpSq9jjnQe_jZoZDEHU0dACEFEvLaf40/edit?gid=855607985#gid=855607985

** Our venue, Cranberry in Zurich, do not charge us to use their space - therefore I would like to request that everyone buys at least one drink and / or food from Cranberry, so that they continue to be happy to have us be there. **

Carolyn knows she's a little bit... odd. But she figures that's only natural when she's spent her life locked away in an infinite Library, forced to study at the feet of the man who might be God. She's seen her share of terrible things in those years, even died a few times herself.

Steve tries hard to be an ordinary guy, and he's been doing a pretty good job at it—until Carolyn shows up in his life with a tempting offer, a pair of red rubber galoshes, and exactly $327,000. Soon, he finds himself swept up in a war waged on a scale he can barely comprehend, as powerful forces battle for control of the Library and the future of the universe itself.

Brilliantly plotted, blackly funny, truly epic in scope—and featuring a cast of characters that includes a tutu-clad psychopath, a malevolent iceberg, and a lion named after an atomic bomb—The Library at Mount Char is the year's most ambitious and acclaimed fantasy debut and a ride like none you've ever been on.

** The event takes place in the Library of the Regenbogenhaus, which is open from 15h00-19h00 on Wednesdays. You're welcome to visit the library, before the book discussion in the House of Colour **

** Reminder: The Sci-Fi & Fantasy books group meets monthly, and has a limit of 12 persons (due to venue size at the Regenbogenhaus).
The Sci-Fi Fantasy group has a Whatsapp Group chat, and Excel sheet for suggesting and voting on books to read.

Suggest books and vote here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1M23Vst0aClZS5SOZN-CGDcaQRsQtO8_h18l7xChf1no/edit?gid=966314652#gid=966314652