Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

This novel challenges your assumptions about gender and physical bodies as necessary to identity. As you get to know the characters, you will be surprised at the misconceptions and biases you hold that affect how you see the characters and their world.

Dawn by Octavia E. Butler

This book asks what is essential to be considered fully human after an alien race seeks to restore the planet and rebuild the human race by interbreeding with them after the last war brings an apocalypse. At what point do you go from accepting help to make reasonable adaptations to survive, and when do those adaptations make you complicit in your own destruction?

Elysium by Jennifer Marie Brissett

An intriguing and mesmerizing series of vignettes about two people whose gender and relationship changes and gets more complex as you learn who they are. You may want to re-read it immediately upon finishing it to experience it more deeply.

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

The stories in this collection show the complexity of women’s relationships to their bodies and how those bodies are treated by others. From the ordinary to not so ordinary, the loving to abusive, light to dark, these stories speak to the mundane and the horrific. I recommend you read only one in a sitting to allow the full impact of each to sink in.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin

Jemisin’s first novel about an unwanted barbarian relation who gets caught in a twisted power struggle with powerful cousins who seek to control the gods questions the boundaries between mortals and gods and redefines the fantasy genre.

Lady Astronaut of Mars by Mary Robinette Kowal

You’ve probably heard about the Lady Astronaut series of books, now read an early novelette about an older lady astronaut that has to choose between staying on Earth with her dying husband or take what could be her last chance to go back into space. For anyone who has ever had to make a choice between a loved one or a career, between caring for someone else or for yourself, this story will break you.

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

Like all well-intentioned missions, this team of scientists and Jesuit priests destroy that which they sought to save. Each of the characters in this narrative has a fully developed story, but it is the struggle with faith of the priest at the center of the story that will have even the most religious reader question just how much can we be expected to suffer and still survive. If I were exiled to a desert island and could only take three books with me, this would be one of them. This is the most painful book I’ve ever read. I recommend it to everyone.