Chamber Music


Doris Grumbach - 1979
    In setting the stage for her extraordinary tale, she recreates the aura of turn-of-the-century Frankfurt, Boston, and Saratoga Springs and of an age when private passions were hidden below the surfaces of private selves. She recalls her marriage as a sheltered young woman to the brilliantly promising Robert Maclaren, his swift rise to international musical fame, the darker story of his angry silences, and eventually, the grim details of his illness and death. In the final phase of her story she tells of the late-blossoming passion she discovers with Anna, the serene nurse who tended Robert in his dying days, and about the artists' colony they found as a tribute to his life and work.

Begging for It


Alex Dimitrov - 2013
    A Bulgarian immigrant, Dimitrov writes as both observer of and fervent participant in this "American Youth," as his speakers navigate both the physical and emotional landscapes of desire, intimacy, and longing--whether for a friend, a lover, or a self, "Saint or stranger, I still recklessly seek you."

Between Us: A Legacy of Lesbian Love Letters


Kay Turner - 1996
    For any lover, letter writing is an act of urgency: for the lesbian lover, it has often been an act of necessity. Collected here for the first time is a sampling of poignantly revealing and often breathlessly passionate love letters between women, written over the past 140 years, including intimate musings by such famous writers as Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, and tatiana de la tierra. Illustrated with more than sixty full-color collages, Between Us is a landmark work, shedding light on lesbian love with candor, humor, and grace.

The Paid Wife


Alexa Woods - 2021
    

Making Waves


Erik Schubach - 2016
     She learned how to be strong again and break the shackles her old life had hobbled her with. While Paya is out making waves in London, Lenore is assigned as the driver for the contractor, McGrath, who is renovating a building for the Flotilla, which will allow people who had fallen upon hard times to have a place to call their own. The problem? Lenore finds McGrath to be the most infuriating, cocky, and egotistical woman on the planet. They mix like oil and water and Lenore wants nothing more than to throw a match on the mixture and be done with the woman. She just can’t figure out what it is that boils her blood around McGrath, though apparently all of her smug and smiling friends have an inkling… The Flotilla series is a spinoff of the bestselling London Harmony series.

The Complete Package


Ann Roberts - 2014
    Her friends despair of cheering her up. Even making her mayor of their idyllic Colorado mountain town doesn’t awaken the joyous, passionate Lenny they once knew.But the arrival of the corporate planners from the Wilderness Campaign brings back some of Lenny’s fire. They already act like they own the place, including the arrogant Sloane McHenry. Pinedale—and her fractured family—does not need a Fortune 500 fix.Sloane is always hunting for the complete package and she’s got it in Pinedale. The mayor is a spineless pushover, the site only holds a dilapidated shop owned by the aforementioned mayor and Sloane has a secret weapon that will prove useful should she meet resistance. This project’s not just about profit, either, for reasons she can’t explain—not even to herself.

Destiny: Valentine's on Emerald Mountain


Cara Malone - 2022
    Single and recently scorned, she’s dreading the next two weeks of couple’s massages, wine tastings and moonlight walks surrounded by people in love. Even the staff are hot and flirty… or maybe that’s just Haley’s heartache talking.But when a white-out catches Haley unprepared and underdressed, romance is the least of her worries.She’s disoriented and shivering when someone reaches through the storm and pulls her into an unoccupied cabin. As the blizzard rages outside, Haley meets her savior—the admirer she’d noticed before, a tall, dark and handsome woman named Destiny. And those sultry looks? Haley wasn’t imagining them.Des builds a fire in the hearth and kindles another in Haley’s core. Snowed in on Valentine’s Day, Haley can’t resist Cupid’s arrow—or Des herself. At least until the storm lets up.

The Other Side of Paradise


Staceyann Chin - 2009
    Staceyann's mother did not want her, and her father was not present. No one, except her grandmother, thought Staceyann would survive.It was her grandmother who nurtured and protected and provided for Staceyann and her older brother in the early years. But when the three were separated, Staceyann was thrust, alone, into an unfamiliar and dysfunctional home in Paradise, Jamaica. There, she faced far greater troubles than absent parents. So, armed with a fierce determination and uncommon intelligence, she discovered a way to break out of this harshly unforgiving world.Staceyann Chin, acclaimed and iconic performance artist, now brings her extraordinary talents to the page in a brave, lyrical, and fiercely candid memoir about growing up in Jamaica. She plumbs tender and unsettling memories as she writes about drifting from one home to the next, coming out as a lesbian, and finding the man she believes to be her father and ultimately her voice. Hers is an unforgettable story told with grace, humor, and courage.

School of the Arts


Mark Doty - 2005
    At once witty and disconsolate -- formally inventive, acutely attentive, insistently alive -- this is a book of fierce vulnerability that explores the ways in which we are educated by the implacable powers of time and desire in a world that constantly renews itself.

The Renunciations: Poems


Donika Kelly - 2021
    Moving between a childhood marked by love and abuse and the breaking marriage of that adult child, Donika Kelly charts memory and the body as landscapes to be traversed and tended. These poems construct life rafts and sanctuaries even in their most devastating confrontations with what a person can bear, with how families harm themselves. With the companionship of “the oracle”—an observer of memory who knows how each close call with oblivion ends—the act of remembrance becomes curative, and personal mythologies give way to a future defined less by wounds than by possibility.In this gorgeous and heartrending second collection, we find the home one builds inside oneself after reckoning with a legacy of trauma—a home whose construction starts “with a razing.”

Little Gold


Allie Rogers - 2017
    Little Gold, a boyish girl on the brink of adolescence, is struggling with the reality of her broken family and a home descending into chaos. Her only refuge is the tree at the end of her garden.Into her fractured life steps elderly neighbour, Peggy Baxter. The connection between the two is instant, but just when it seems that Little Gold has found solace, outsiders appear who seek to take advantage of her frail family in the worst way possible. In an era when so much is hard to speak aloud, can Little Gold share enough of her life to avert disaster? And can Peggy Baxter, a woman running out of time and with her own secrets to bear, recognise the danger before it’s too late?

Less Happier Lands


Annette De Burgh - 2013
    A war of words soon spirals into a forbidden and passionate love that covers many years.But as the years move on, troubled waters lie ahead.

Dancing with Demons: The Authorized Biography of Dusty Springfield


Penny Valentine - 2000
    Her signature voice made songs such as, "I Only Want to Be With You," "Son of A Preacher Man," and "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me," international hits. In Dancing With Demons, two of her closest friends, Valentine and Wickham, capture, with vivid memories and personal anecdotes, a Dusty most people never glimpsed in this no-holds-barred yet touching portrait of one of the world's true grand dames of popular music.

Some Go Hungry


J. Patrick Redmond - 2016
    While visiting, Grey must confront a painful past riddled in homophobia, secrets, religious hypocrisy and fear."-- Queerty "Anyone who has come out in small-town America will understand how difficult it is to be who you are when the majority of customers at your family restaurant are the same ones you just saw in church....Some Go Hungry is at its best when confronting religious prejudice, and is even pulse-quickening when the narrator sits through one of his friend's sermons aimed directly at him....Only someone who has grown up in rural America could write so convincingly of the pressures there. It's also refreshing to find a book that relates the experience of being gay somewhere other than in a large city."-- Gay & Lesbian Review "A gay murder mystery that takes readers from Miami Beach, Florida to Fort Sackville, Indiana, as Grey Daniels 'struggles to live his authentic, openly gay life' amidst the fundamentalist Christians in his hometown."-- Bay Area Reporter "Captivating debut...[Protagonist] Grey's tale is a lesson for us all that only when we consider our own feelings first will we find happiness--and acceptance."--Edge Media Network"Redmond's fiction isn’t an attempt to recap historical events. The fictional news reports of character Robbie Palmer's alleged murder interspersed between chapters, and the 'homophobia' that engulfs the fictional town of Fort Sackville, is a platform from which the author can express his sincere concern regarding real-life situations that occur in our modern world."-- Boomer Magazine "I was totally engrossed in what I read...An important tale that in some ways is timeless...We read of bigotry, religion, murder, and personal redemption in small-town America as told by a new writer who is a master storyteller and whom I expect to be hearing about in the near future."--Reviews by Amos Lassen"Patrick Redmond has filled his first novel with passion--the passion to tell a story that resonates far beyond the confines of the small Indiana town where it is set. Some Go Hungry tells an important tale that in some ways is timeless, and in other ways could have been ripped from today's headlines."--Mark Childress, author of Crazy in AlabamaPart of Akashic's Kaylie Jones Books imprint.Some Go Hungry is a fictional account drawn from the author's own experiences working in his family's provincial Indiana restaurant--and wrestling with his sexual orientation--in a town that was rocked by the scandalous murder of his gay high school classmate in the 1980s.Now a young man who has embraced his sexuality, Grey Daniels returns from Miami Beach, Florida, to Fort Sackville, Indiana, to run Daniels' Family Buffet for his ailing father. Understanding that knowledge of his sexuality may reap disastrous results on his family's half-century-old restaurant legacy--a popular Sunday dinner spot for the after-church crowd--Grey struggles to live his authentic, openly gay life. He is put to the test when his former high school lover--and fellow classmate of the murdered student--returns to town as the youth pastor and choir director of the local fundamentalist Christian church.Some Go Hungry is the story of a man forced to choose between the happiness of others and his own joy, all the while realizing that compromising oneself--sacrificing your soul for the sake of others--is not living, but death.

Neon Fever Dream


Eliot Peper - 2016
    Do yourself a favor and check out Neon Fever Dream." -Popular Science A dark secret hides in the swirling dust and exultant revelry of Burning Man.Asha Amarasuriya is bored and struggling to get by as a martial arts instructor in Oakland. When an enigmatic seductress offers her a golden ticket, Asha decides to take a leap of faith and head to Burning Man. But there is more than meets the eye at the infamous desert pilgrimage and Asha gets sucked into a quest to unravel a sinister mystery at the heart of Black Rock City.Will Asha and her friends survive to expose the shadowy conspiracy? By the time the Man burns, their lives will have changed forever.