Book picks similar to
As Long As Love Lasts by Jea Hawkins


romance
historical-fiction
lgbt
historical

Lady Knight


L.-J. Baker - 2007
    Eleanor, a wealthy widow, has given up all hero of finding passionate love and her perfect knight - until she meets Rhiannon. Aveline, a powerful priestess, needs a warrior for her secret mission of starting a holy war. She binds Rhiannon with double-edged oaths and a magical sword. A love affair worthy of troueroours' songs clashes with loyalty, intrigue, ambition, and war, tangling the three women in a web that perhaps not even Rhiannon's sword can cut through.

Best Laid Plaids


Ella Stainton - 2020
    Ainsley Graham is cultivating a reputation as an eccentric.Two years ago, he catastrophically ended his academic career by publicly claiming to talk to ghosts. When Joachim Cockburn, a WWI veteran studying the power of delusional thinking, arrives at his door, Ainsley quickly catalogues him as yet another tiresome Englishman determined to mock his life’s work.But Joachim is tenacious and openhearted, and Ainsley’s intrigued despite himself. He agrees to motor his handsome new friend around to Scotland’s most unmistakable hauntings. If he can convince Joachim, Ainsley might be able to win back his good name and then some. He knows he’s not crazy—he just needs someone else to know it, too.Joachim is one thesis away from realizing his dream of becoming a psychology professor, and he’s not going to let anyone stop him, not even an enchanting ginger with a penchant for tartan and lewd jokes. But as the two travel across Scotland’s lovely—and definitely, definitely haunted—landscape, Joachim’s resolve starts to melt. And he’s beginning to think that an empty teaching post without the charming Dr. Graham would make a very poor consolation prize indeed…

Friends Without Benefits


Dena Blake - 2018
    Grace is smart, beautiful, and most unfortunately, straight. Life would’ve been perfect if Grace had only loved her back, but when Grace gets married, Dex knows it’s time to move on. Then Dex meets Emma Lawson, and her life takes a whole new direction. Only trouble is, she never expected to have to choose between her best friend and her new love.Emma Lawson is successful and happy except when it comes to love. She’s been alone for a year and has no intention of giving love another chance, until falling for Dex changes everything. When Grace comes between them, Emma refuses to be second best. Can Emma show Dex what true love really looks like?

The Miseducation of Cameron Post


Emily M. Danforth - 2012
    Relief they'll never know that, hours earlier, she had been kissing a girl.But that relief doesn't last, and Cam is soon forced to move in with her conservative aunt Ruth and her well-intentioned but hopelessly old-fashioned grandmother. She knows that from this point on, her life will forever be different. Survival in Miles City, Montana, means blending in and leaving well enough alone (as her grandmother might say), and Cam becomes an expert at both.Then Coley Taylor moves to town. Beautiful, pickup-driving Coley is a perfect cowgirl with the perfect boyfriend to match. She and Cam forge an unexpected and intense friendship--one that seems to leave room for something more to emerge. But just as that starts to seem like a real possibility, ultrareligious Aunt Ruth takes drastic action to "fix" her niece, bringing Cam face-to-face with the cost of denying her true self--even if she's not exactly sure who that is.The Miseducation of Cameron Post is a stunning and unforgettable literary debut about discovering who you are and finding the courage to live life according to your own rules.

A Royal Romance


Jenny Frame - 2015
    When her father dies suddenly, she is called back from her Royal Navy post to assume the crown. While the people acclaim their new Queen, Great Britain’s first openly gay monarch, all George feels is the isolation of her station.Beatrice Elliot’s staunch anti-monarchist views have always been a point of gentle contention with her working class, royalty-loving parents. When Bea—director of a hospice charity—must spend six months working with Queen Georgina, her charity’s new patron, sparks fly and passion blooms. But is love enough to bridge the gap between Bethnal Green and Buckingham Palace?

The Good Girls


Teresa Mummert - 2020
    While my peers were partying, I prepared for the future. Then a tragic event destroyed everything, and I learned that while I was looking ahead, I forgot to live in the moment. Starting over seemed impossible until I met Cara McCarthy, who lived every day like it was her last. She opened my eyes to a world of chaos and disorder. I loved every minute of it. She was also dating Tristan Adams, one of the most gorgeous men I’d ever seen.The three of us became inseparable. Our parents were oblivious, and soon lines became blurred, feelings began to grow, and someone’s heart was going to get broken. I hoped it wasn’t mine.

Waking Up Gray


R.E. Bradshaw - 2011
    She found her first gray hair on the morning of her trip to Ocracoke Island, off the coast of North Carolina. Lizbeth was beginning a three-month sabbatical, on the scenic coastal island, in order to finish her Master's thesis in Linguistic Anthropology. She plans to study the Carolina Brogue spoken there. What she ends up studying is her lesbian neighbor across the street and the uncontrollable pull Lizbeth feels toward her. Lizbeth Jackson is about to find out what life has to offer, after waking up gray.

Patience & Sarah


Isabel Miller - 1969
    Ultimately, they are forced to make life-changing decisions that depend on their courage and their commitment to one another.First self-published in 1969 (titled A Place for Us) in an edition of 1,000 copies, the author hand-sold the book on New York street corners; it garnered increasing attention to the point of receiving the American Library Association's first Gay Book Award in 1971. McGraw-Hill's version of the book a year later brought it to mainstream bookstores across the country.Patience & Sarah is a historical romance whose drama was a touchstone for the burgeoning gay and women's activism of the 1960s and early 1970s. It celebrates the joys of an uninhibited love between two strong women with a confident defiance that remains relevant today.Features an appendix of supplementary materials about Patience & Sarah and the author, as well as an introduction by acclaimed novelist Emma Donoghue.

Enter the Aardvark


Jessica Anthony - 2020
    Inside is a gigantic taxidermied aardvark. This outrageous, edge-of-your-seat novel hurtles between contemporary Washington, DC, where Wilson tries to get rid of the unsightly beast before it destroys his career, and Victorian England--where we meet Titus Downing, the taxidermist who stuffed the aardvark, and Richard Ostlet, the naturalist who hunted her. Our present world, we begin to see, has been shaped in profound and disturbing ways by the secret that binds these men.

The House of Impossible Beauties


Joseph Cassara - 2018
    Burned by her traumatic past, Angel is new to the drag world, new to ball culture, and has a yearning inside of her to help create family for those without. When she falls in love with Hector, a beautiful young man who dreams of becoming a professional dancer, the two decide to form the House of Xtravaganza, the first-ever all-Latino house in the Harlem ball circuit. But when Hector dies of AIDS-related complications, Angel must bear the responsibility of tending to their house alone.As the mother of the house, Angel recruits Venus, a whip-fast trans girl who dreams of finding a rich man to take care of her; Juanito, a quiet boy who loves fabrics and design; and Daniel, a butch queen who accidentally saves Venus’s life. The Xtravaganzas must learn to navigate sex work, addiction, and persistent abuse, leaning on each other as bulwarks against a world that resists them. All are ambitious, resilient, and determined to control their own fates, even as they hurtle toward devastating consequences. Told in a voice that brims with wit, rage, tenderness, and fierce yearning, The House of Impossible Beauties is a tragic story of love, family, and the dynamism of the human spirit.

Falling into Her


Erin Zak - 2017
    She has friends, money, a job—everything she needs to survive. Except, of course, love, which, after getting her heart broken, she avoids like the plague. Pam Phillips, on the other hand, just buried the love of her life—her husband of twenty-one years. The last thing she wants is a new friend, let alone a new love interest. When the two women meet and swap witty banter, things start to change. Kathryn can feel that familiar tug of desire in her chest as she suggests—in a smooth as silk way—that they meet up again someday. In a moment of pure insanity—or desperation—Pam decides to take a chance. What happens next changes Pam’s life forever.

Welcome to Ruby's


K.C. Luck - 2018
    The bar is where they all go to commiserate over drinks about crappy jobs, wrecked relationships, and life in general. Everyone is family and everyone comes to Ruby’s. Even though her job sucks, Allie’s life appears to be taking an especially good turn when a gorgeous dark-haired stranger comes walking into Ruby’s and sweeps her off her feet. As much as she wants to deny how she feels, the chemistry between them is an eleven on a scale of one to ten. Struggling through a nasty divorce, Vivian Wade is not looking for any more complications in her already crazy life, but when she goes north to Portland to check on business, she sees a blonde woman who takes her breath away. Although a relationship is the last thing she wants, she cannot deny what her body is telling her. When their worlds collide, all starts perfectly, until Allie learns Ruby’s has been sold to an investor. A woman from Los Angeles, named Vivian, who plans to change everything.

Days Without End


Sebastian Barry - 2016
    Army in the 1850s. With his brother in arms, John Cole, Thomas goes on to fight in the Indian Wars—against the Sioux and the Yurok—and, ultimately, the Civil War. Orphans of terrible hardships themselves, the men find these days to be vivid and alive, despite the horrors they see and are complicit in. Moving from the plains of Wyoming to Tennessee, Sebastian Barry’s latest work is a masterpiece of atmosphere and language. An intensely poignant story of two men and the makeshift family they create with a young Sioux girl, Winona, Days Without End is a fresh and haunting portrait of the most fateful years in American history and is a novel never to be forgotten.

Of Iron and Gold


Lexa Luthor - 2020
    Princess Kinsey has been given four Alpha slaves, and she must choose one to impregnate her.Aubrey, a She-Alpha, was sold into slavery at an early age due to her misunderstood "degenerate" nature. Trapped in the Tharnstone Castle, Aubrey has a chance to win her freedom, if she can show her Alpha's worthiness and be chosen to impregnate the princess. But when she learns the Alpha will be forbidden to see the child, she considers the real cost of freedom.Kinsey will one day be the Omega queen of her father's kingdom, but first she must provide an heir for the House of Wymarc. All she must do is pick an Alpha, despite her aversion towards them. But she soon discovers there's more to some Alphas, than the volatile, dull beasts she's used to.Now, the choice isn't so simple.

The Sublime and Spirited Voyage of Original Sin


Colette Moody - 2009
    Together with Gayle Malvern, daughter of wounded pirate captain Madman Malvern, Celia becomes a reluctant participant in an unexpectedly thrilling journey through the Caribbean. For Gayle, Celia's presence is at first a welcome and shapely distraction, but as her attraction to the seamstress deepens, she realizes that Celia comes to mean more to her than is almost certainly prudent. As Celia and Gayle navigate the perilous territories of gypsies, prostitutes, mercenaries, and slave-traders, they forge a partnership born of necessity that Gayle soon hopes will veer away from insurmountable danger and instead detour directly to her bed.