The World Unseen


Shamim Sarif - 2001
    When she meets the rebellious Amina who confounds the Indian community by driving a taxi and setting up a cafe with a black man, her world is turned upside down.

The Witch Sea


Sarah Diemer - 2012
    Upon the distant shore prowls an ancient sea god kept captive by a generations-old spell, a spell that Meriel alone must protect.Meriel's life has been lonely and unchanging--until the arrival of Nor. Nor's shape is that of a woman, but her heart belongs to the sea. Even though Nor is also held captive by Meriel's spell, she shows kindness to the isolated witch. Nor sparks a passion within Meriel, defying every law that binds them both.This award-winning short story ("The Witch Sea" won first place in the "Kissed by Venus" Fresh Voices short story competition) is a dark fantasy tale of love, loss and the price of freedom.

Touchdown Hero


Rachel Maldonado - 2016
    She is living out her dream of playing football on an all women's football team while attending a four year college to become a school teacher. With all of her time being split in several directions between schoolwork, practice, homework, and football games, she never thought she would meet a woman where and when she least expected it. Holly Larson was perfect. Sweet, smart, beautiful and at the right time at the right place. She's everything that Charlie could ever want or hope for, but is she too good to be true? If you're a fan of Rachel Maldonado's other books, you'll want to add this one to your collection!

The Gustav Sonata


Rose Tremain - 2016
    An only child, he lives alone with Emilie, the mother he adores but who treats him with bitter severity. He begins an intense friendship with a Jewish boy his age, talented and mercurial Anton Zweibel, a budding concert pianist. Moving backward to the war years and the painful repercussions of an act of conscience, and forward through the lives and careers of two men, The Gustav Sonata explores the passionate love of childhood friendship as it is lost, transformed, and regained over a lifetime. Moving between the 1930s and the 1990s, this fierce and beautifully orchestrated novel explores the vast human issues of racism and tolerance, flight and refuge, cruelty and tenderness. It is a powerful and deeply moving addition to the beloved oeuvre of one of our greatest contemporary novelists.

Prisoner


Megan Derr - 2007
    War has waged between the three nations for longer than anyone can remember, but no one has held the Regenbogen as well as the notorious Wolf of Kria and his fearsome army.A man who fears nothing...Returning home at the end of the year, the Scarlet Army is attacked in the dead of night by a single man who manages to kill hundreds before he is finally captured. A Salharan soldier with no name, no purpose but to kill, he refuses to bend to the Wolf who takes him prisoner and forces upon him a despicable Krian name.A man with nothing to lose...When the rest of his army is slaughtered by Illussor soldiers desperately seeking his prisoner, Dieter determines to hold fast—both for answers and in revenge for the men he lost. But answers and revenge are hard to come by when surrounded by secrets and treachery, and the man least likely to kill him is the prisoner who most wants him dead.

Falling Star


Gill McKnight - 2008
    A movie stunt crew arrives to film a blockbuster in the bay, and Gin Ito heads up the team.

After the Fall


Robin Summers - 2011
    She has three simple rules for life after the plague: Keep moving. Keep to yourself. Don’t get involved. The plague took a particular joy in killing the women of the world, making it that much harder for the few who survived. The only thing that matters since she escaped from a small farm outside of Pittsburgh is the truth waiting at the end of her journey home. The rest of the world, or what’s left of it, can go straight to Hell as far as she’s concerned.When a group of survivors offers her food and shelter, she is more than happy to spend a few days, take what she needs, and get out, like she always does. But in a place called Burninghead Farm, despite all her rules and plans, Taylor finds a group of people who have more to offer than the basics of survival. Most of all, there is Kate, a woman who makes Taylor realize love is still alive and makes her dream of a future she thought was no longer possible. If only Taylor can find the courage to fight for it.It turns out that the end of the world isn’t about the end of the world at all, but about what happens after.

The Emperor's Babe


Bernardine Evaristo - 2001
    Feisty, precocious Zuleika, daughter of Sudanese immigrants-made-good and restless teenage bride of a rich Roman businessman, craves passion and excitement. When she begins an affair with the emperor, Septimius Severus, she knows her life will never be the same. Streetwise, seductive, and lyrical, with a lively, affecting heroine, The Emperor’s Babe is a strikingly imaginative historical novel-in-verse.

Mrs. Everything


Jennifer Weiner - 2019
    Jo is the tomboy, the bookish rebel with a passion to make the world more fair; Bethie is the pretty, feminine good girl, a would-be star who enjoys the power her beauty confers and dreams of a traditional life.But the truth ends up looking different from what the girls imagined. Jo and Bethie survive traumas and tragedies. As their lives unfold against the background of free love and Vietnam, Woodstock and women’s lib, Bethie becomes an adventure-loving wild child who dives headlong into the counterculture and is up for anything (except settling down). Meanwhile, Jo becomes a proper young mother in Connecticut, a witness to the changing world instead of a participant. Neither woman inhabits the world she dreams of, nor has a life that feels authentic or brings her joy. Is it too late for the women to finally stake a claim on happily ever after?

Don't Let Go


Cynthia Dane - 2019
    Yet there is one resident in her high-rise luxury building who makes coming to work worth it. Cindy Ling, the enigmatic businesswoman who always has a lady on her arm, also has a wink to spare the mild-mannered clerk looking her way. When chance brings Rose up to Cindy’s penthouse suite, her life isn’t simply changed forever. It’s transformed. A Reckoning From the moment she first sees her, Cindy knows that Rose is a font of endless potential. For a woman who has spent her whole life running away from a core part of her identity, taking Rose as a lover is not only the greatest escape, but Cindy’s best chance at reformatting her image as Taiwan’s foremost playgirl. Except whenever Cindy makes such drastic changes to her life, she discovers that the old ghosts she attempts to lock away come hurtling back. Falling in love with Rose is a blessing and a curse from the very deity Cindy has held a grudge against since the tragic death of her father. But Cindy knows they’re a match made in the stars. This time, she’ll overcome her inner demons. A Bargaining Yet when Cindy is inevitably consumed, Rose persists. She’ll overcome her traditional family, her sheltered upbringing, and her insecurities if it means not only bringing Cindy out of the darkness, but reclaiming the world Rose knows they deserve to inhabit. No matter how hard Cindy pushes her away, their carnal connection and fairy-tale romance are too pure to spoil. Rose has nothing to fear. She won’t let go. DON’T LET GO contains no-holds-barred references to mental illness and features non-Western beliefs and settings. It introduces brand-new characters and clubs to the Dane-Billings universe of billionaire girlfriends and the women who are transformed by loving them.

Forbidden


Emma Nichols - 2018
     But what of the local chef, Iman? As she awakens to her sexuality, in a country where such love is forbidden, will her heart’s yearning be satisfied or forever denied? Dive into 'Forbidden', the latest lesbian romance, set in exotic pre-war Syria, from Emma Nichols, author of the bestselling The Vincenti Series: Finding You, Remember Us and The Hangover.

We Were Witches


Ariel Gore - 2017
    Disgusted by an overabundance of phallocratic narratives and Freytag’s pyramid, she turns to a subcultural canon of resistance and failure. Wryly riffing on feminist literary tropes, it documents the survival of a demonized single mother figuring things out.

Bittersweet


Nevada Barr - 1984
    A heart-wrenching, yet tender tale of two women whose boundless devotion to each other is continually challenged in nineteenth century America.

Under the Udala Trees


Chinelo Okparanta - 2015
    Sent away to safety, she meets another displaced child and they, star-crossed, fall in love. They are from different ethnic communities. They are also both girls. When their love is discovered, Ijeoma learns that she will have to hide this part of herself. But there is a cost to living inside a lie. As Edwidge Danticat has made personal the legacy of Haiti's political coming of age, Okparanta's Under the Udala Trees uses one woman's lifetime to examine the ways in which Nigerians continue to struggle toward selfhood. Even as their nation contends with and recovers from the effects of war and division, Nigerian lives are also wrecked and lost from taboo and prejudice. This story offers a glimmer of hope — a future where a woman might just be able to shape her life around truth and love.

The Friendly Young Ladies


Mary Renault - 1943
    Sheltered, naïve, and just eighteen, Elsie leaves the stifling environment of her parents’ home in Cornwall to seek out her sister, Leo, who had run away nine years earlier. She finds Leo sharing a houseboat, and a bed, with the beautiful, fair-haired Helen. While Elsie’s arrival seems innocent enough, it is the first of a series of events that will turn Helen and Leo’s contented life inside out. Soon a randy young doctor is chasing after all three women at once, a neighborly friendship begins to show an erotic tinge, and long-quiet ghosts from Leo’s past begin to surface. Before long, no one is sure just who feels what for whom.Mary Renault wrote this delightfully provocative novel in the early 1940s, creating characters that are lighthearted, charming, and free-spirited partly in answer to the despair characteristic of Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness or Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour. The result is a witty and stylish story that offers exceptional insight into the world of upcoming writers and artists of in 1930s London, chronicling their rejection of society’s established sexual mores and their heroic pursuits of art and life.