Lee Mandelo Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Conversation Pieces Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Lee Mandelo
Lee Mandelo is a critic, writer, and occasional editor whose fields of interest include queer and speculative fiction, particularly when the two coincide.

Other work of Lee’s can be found in magazines like Nightmare, Tor.com, and Uncanny, and his work has been reprinted in collections like Transcendent 2: The Year’s Best Transgender Speculative Fiction, ed. Bogi Takacs. He’s been a past nominee for various awards such as the Hugo, Nebula, and Lambda. The Lambda was for Transgender Fiction.

As far as nonfiction and criticism goes, he is a regular contributor to Tor.com too, and not just the QSFF series, but also book reviews, and essay cycles such as “Safe as Life: A Four Part Essay on Maggie Stiefvater’s Raven Cycle”, and more.

Lee also appears as a speaker for events for the lecture series Out to Lunch at the University of Connecticut once every great while.

Besides a short stint spent overseas learning to speak Scouse, Lee’s spent his life ranging across Kentucky, living in Lexington and getting a PhD at the University of Kentucky.

Growing up in Bullitt Co., Kentucky alongside the evolution of the internet, he spent his early years hunting down questionable fansubs on dial-up, reading all of the gay comics he could get his hands on. He also experimented with fashion that ranged from sporty femmeboy to ambiguous goth.

Fashion has always been part of Lee’s life from baby-goth phase on. However he also grew up poor and has spent much of his adulthood on graduate school salaries, so he is a promiscuous shopper where the bottom line ends up being just how on sale is something? Consignment stores, vintage or thrifting, the discount rack: all of it is good to Lee. Lee gets such a true victorious satisfaction when he is able to find something rather decadent for dirt cheap.

Lee’s exploration of gender through the years has been fairly public, as he started writing a column “Queering SFF”, for Tor.com in the year 2010, when he was nineteen years old. Over a decade later, Lee considers himself a gender-nonconforming guy, but genderqueer is a word that still holds a warm place in his heart.

As for Lee’s academic career, he has pursued degrees in Contemporary Literature and English, including on a Master’s granted on fellowship to the University of Liverpool in the year 2014.

After a five year stint spent holding down traditional jobs that ranged from law to distance education, Lee returned to the world of scholarship to get a PhD in Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of Kentucky with research that was focused on queer theory, transgender masculinities, and sexuality. Over the course of this program, Lee’s also been awarded the Wimberly C. Royster Graduate Excellence Awards in Arts and Sciences grant.

Splitting time between teaching courses on power and gender, his prose work, and engaging with as many queer materials possible from horny fanfiction to contemporary visual art, their daily life in Lexington involves quite a bit of reading-induced eye strain.

Even though Lee enjoys visiting such larger cities like Chicago as often as possible, for all of the Culture, there is just something about Kentucky which always pulls Lee back. Whether it is the hills and the trees, his own chosen family, or the vibrant tiny communities made up of queers and writers he always finds, or a combination of all of it.

Favored hobbies include lifting weights, petting dogs, cooking, and taking far too many pictures. As well as attending LGBTQ+ community events and local drag shows.

Lee doesn’t tend to actually start the writing process, especially with short fiction, until he is confident in his material first. He journals and sketches and outline a ton before getting around to the actual writing.

Lee’s debut novel, called “Summer Sons”, was released in the year 2021. His work is from the horror genre.

“Summer Sons” is the first stand alone novel and was released in the year 2021.
This debut is a sweltering, queer Southern Gothic which crosses academic intrigue with Appalachian street racing, all being haunted by this hungry ghost.

Eddie and Andrew did it all together, best buddies bonded more deeply than brothers, until Eddie leaves Andrew behind so that he can begin his graduate program at Vanderbilt. Six months later, just days before Andrew was set to join him Nashville, Eddie dies of what seems to be a suicide. He leaves Andrew a terrible inheritance: this roommate that he does not know, a gruesome phantom that hungers for him, and friends that he never asked for.

While Andrew searches for the truth behind Eddie’s death, he reveals the secrets and lies the person he trusted the most left behind, finding a family history soaked in death and blood. Whirling between the circle of fast cars, hot guy, and hard drugs that ruled Eddie’s nights and the backstabbing academic world that Eddie spent his days in, the walls Andrew has built against the world start crumbling. And there is something rather awful lurking, just waiting for those walls to fall.

This novel is a perfect example of a slow burn, with a lot of unsettling and creeping circumstances which build on one another gradually until you feel like you’re being suffocated by them. Lee also does a great job of slowly dribbling information out to the reader, so even if it feels like not too much is going on, you still are compelled to read on, peel back one more layer and see what is festering beneath.

The cars and characters each feel real, and Lee nails the setting, which is right at this very specific intersection of Appalachia and collegiate uncertainty: the drinks, the heat, the casual physicality, and the habits which are borne from rural poverty that city-living and recent affluence cannot erase entirely. And his ghostly and magical elements, despite being disturbing, still feel organic.

The emphasis on the land itself, on bloody and old secrets, on the lonesome roads, and flexible families all combine together for an honest and particular background so rarely seen in speculative fction.