The Education of Harriet Hatfield


May Sarton - 1989
    And when the Boston Globe reports "Lesbian Bookstore Owner Threatened", her education in the narrow-mindedness of her fellow man—and woman—begins.

Worth Every Step


K.G. MacGregor - 2009
    The small-town Southerner follows her imagination on a quest to Africa, refusing the escort of her boyfriend. His marriage ultimatum echoes in her ears, but she's not going to think about that until she has climbed the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro.Addison Falk also wants an adventure--and a vacation from her real life. Fresh from her MBA program, she is being lured from Miami to London for a job in her father's investment firm. For all the glitz and excitement a life in lesbian-rich Soho promises, Addison can't bring herself to take that next step without first adding her name to the rolls of those who have stood on Africa's highest peak.Their mutual undertaking challenges not just daily survival, but also the plans each woman has made for her future. Finding their way back to earth--and back to their lives--may be the most difficult journey of all.Lambda Award Winner KG MacGregor (Out of Love, Mulligan), with her trademark humor and insight, weaves a captivating story of high adventure and romance.

Skin Deep


Kenna White - 2007
    She is given an assignment to track down and interview one-time nationally renowned broadcast journalist, Reece McAllister who has been living a secretive and reclusive life.To get the story, Jordan follows Reece deep into the backwoods of Washington State. To her surprise, Jordan comes away with far more than just a story.Should she betray a trust or deny her journalistic conscience? Their future together depends on her making the right choice.

Crybaby Butch


Judith Frank - 2004
    With a disparate group of adult learners as the backdrop, Frank examines, with warmth and wit, the relationship between education and gender, class, and racial identity. With Crybaby Butch, Judith Frank creates a deeply human, bravely unsentimental story while at the same time investigating the meaning of butch identity as it reinvents itself from one generation to the next. ~ Carol Anshaw Fearless and unflinching, Crybaby Butch rigorously explores butch/femme dynamics over two generations. Judy Frank's debut novel is searing and memorable. ~ Claire Messud

The Night Stages


Jane Urquhart - 2015
    Tam, an English woman in her thirties, has been living in this harshly beautiful region since shortly after the war, in which she served as an auxiliary pilot. She is now leaving her lover, Niall, who, like his father before him, is a meteorologist.The airliner she is travelling on becomes grounded by fog at Gander Airport, Newfoundland. As she waits, she regards an enigmatic mural, and revisits not only the circumstances that brought her to Ireland but her intense relationship with Niall and his growing despondency over his younger brother Kieran’s disappearance years before.We learn of Kieran’s troubled childhood and the tragedy that caused him as a boy to be separated from home and taken in by a widowed countrywoman who lives in the mountains behind the town. He comes to know the local people, among them a tailor, a fisherman-teacher, and a sheep farmer who is a great philosopher. There is also the jeweller’s daughter, a young woman who will come to change the course of several lives.Running parallel is the story of Canadian artist Kenneth Lochhead and how he created the mural that is Tam’s only companion through three long days and nights. An elegiac novel of emotional depth that vividly evokes a time and a place, The Night Stages explores the meaning of separation, the sorrows of fractured families, and the profound effect of home in a world where a way of life is changing. It is Jane Urquhart’s richest, most rewarding novel to date.

The Creamsickle


Rhiannon Argo - 2009
    Georgie--a hopeless romantic with a weakness for punk-rock-girls even if they consistently trample her heart. Cruzer--a Mexican-American photographer, the tough kid, who chases love all the way to the East Coast. Soda--a gender queer heartthrob from the Midwest, who dreams of pirate ships, moustaches and femme foxes. Welcome to The Creamsickle, the ultimate bachelor pad, a lopsided Victorian in the Mission District, home to this rascally crew of charming skater bois who hop from one bed to another in pursuit of sex, love or just the next new thrill. This is a San Francisco you have never seen, an eclectic landscape of dyke clubs and dyke havens, along with the exotic Minxy, a wonderland where baby butch Georgie enters the femme-centric world of strippers for the most comical gender-bending education of all. Discover today's world of young queers, a world where personal identity is in constant flux, where gender exploration can be performance--or a life saving transition. Beneath the sex, music, drugs and drama, you'll find something true and timeless: a search for love, for queer family, for meaning, for connection, and affirmation.

About a Girl


Joanne Horniman - 2010
    She was all warmth and sparking light. When I was with her, my skin sighed that the center of the world was precisely here.Anna is afraid she must be unlovable—until she meets Flynn. Together, the girls swim, eat banana cake, laugh, and love. Some days Flynn is unreachable; other days she's at Anna's door—but when Anna discovers Flynn's secret, she wonders if she knows her at all. This beautifully crafted novel explores the tension between the tender moments that pull people together and the secrets that push them apart.

Liminal


Jordan Tannahill - 2018
    on January 21st, 2017, Jordan opens the door to his mother’s bedroom. As his eyes adjust to the half-light, he finds her lying in bed, eyes closed and mouth agape. In that instant he cannot tell whether she is asleep or dead. The sight of his mother's body, caught between these two possibilities, causes Jordan to plunge headlong into the uncertain depths of consciousness itself.From androids to cannibals to sex clubs, an unforgettable personal odyssey emerges, populated by a cast of sublime outsiders in search for the ever-elusive nature of self. Part ontological thriller, part millennial saga, Liminal is a riotous and moving portrait of a young man in volatile times, a generation caught in suspended animation, and a son’s enduring love for his mother.

(You) Set Me on Fire


Mariko Tamaki - 2012
    So far, she's been in love once (total catastrophe) and on fire twice (also pretty bad). Both love and fire have left their scars.Looking a little more burnt chicken and a little less radiant phoenix, Allison takes up residence in Dylan Hall (a.k.a. Dyke Hall) at St. Joseph's College, where she discovers the true gift of freshman year: the opportunity to reinvent yourself. Miles away from the high school she's happy to leave behind, her all-female dorm is a strange new world, home to new social circles and challenges. Allison still feels like the odd girl out ... until Shar appears. Beautiful and blinding, Shar quickly becomes the sun at the centre of Allison's universe, drawing her in with dangerous allure.Will Allison get burned again? And, if she does, what kind of scars will she earn this time?

Landing


Emma Donoghue - 2007
    Síle is a stylish citizen of the new Dublin, a veteran flight attendant who's traveled the world. Jude is a twenty-five-year-old archivist, stubbornly attached to the tiny town of Ireland, Ontario, in which she was born and raised. On her first plane trip, Jude's and Síle's worlds touch and snag at Heathrow Airport. In the course of the next year, their lives, and those of their friends and families, will be drawn into a new, shaky orbit. This sparkling, lively story explores age-old questions: Does where you live matter more than who you live with? What would you give up for love, and would you be a fool to do so?

Complementary and Acute


Ella Lyons - 2015
    She’s captain of the Number Ninjas, her schedule is perfect, and her best friend Jacqueline Flores is going to be right by her side for all of it. But on the first day back at Dearington, Jac throws a wrench in Anabelle’s tidy plans. Not only has she rearranged her classes and dropped Number Ninjas, she’s joined the Girls who Like Girls Program, leaving Anabelle’s entire schedule in upheaval. Jac is never around anymore, and when she is, she’s got new friends (who Anabelle hates) or she’s running off to a lecture on alternative footwear. Anabelle is left to deal with the changes on her own, and suddenly, Jac’s inability to keep their dorm room tidy is the very least of Anabelle’s problems.

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.

Jellicle Girl


Stevie Mikayne - 2012
    Jackie—wilful, cheeky and confident, made Beth see things in herself that she'd never imagined, and do things she never thought she would. As memories of Beth's last night with Jackie grow more like waking nightmares, Beth does everything she can to forget the girl who was so much more than a friend. Beth has a self-destructive ritual she swears she'll keep secret, even from the psychologist trying to help her. But Dr. Nancy Sullivan doesn't have time for secrets. In fact, she doesn't have much time at all. She's been charged with helping Beth break through the barriers of her past, knowing very well that her own demons might end her career before she can get through to the stubborn young woman. Meanwhile, a young foster child with a wicked sense of humour, and a devastating past, reminds Beth that secrets seem powerful, but can destroy the person who holds them too close. A haunting and evocative story about redemption, identity, and learning to let go of secrets that scar.

A Call Away


K.C. Richardson - 2018
    She has questions about her grandparents that she hopes to find the answers to while preparing the farm to sell. Abigail Price, a neighbor of Syd’s grandmother, has lived on her grandmother’s farm in Iowa for most of her life, leaving only to promote her latest novel. In helping Syd find the answers she’s looking for, they develop a mutual attraction and deeper feelings for each other.Syd has to return to her life in Chicago, but will Abby stay in Iowa, or will she give the big city, and love, a chance?Cover Artist: Sheri HalalGenres: Contemporary / Romance

Life Before Man


Margaret Atwood - 1979
    Imprisoned by walls of their own construction, here are three people, each in midlife, in midcrisis, forced to make choices--after the rules have changed. Elizabeth, with her controlled sensuality, her suppressed rage, is married to the wrong man. She has just lost her latest lover to suicide. Nate, her gentle, indecisive husband, is planning to leave her for Lesje, a perennial innocent who prefers dinosaurs to men. Hanging over them all is the ghost of Elizabeth's dead lover...and the dizzying threat of three lives careening inevitably toward the same climax.