Amelia Westlake


Erin Gough - 2018
    So when she risks it all by creating a hoax to expose the school's many problems – with help from notorious bad-girl Will Everheart, no less – Harriet tells herself it's because she's seeking justice. And definitely not because she finds Will oddly fascinating. But as Will and Harriet's campaign heats up, it gets harder for them to remain sworn enemies – and to avoid being caught. As tensions burn throughout the school, how far will they go to keep their mission – and their feelings for each other – a secret?

What Night Brings


Carla Trujillo - 2003
    What Night Brings is the unforgettable story of Marci's struggle to find and maintain her identity against all odds - a perilous home life, an incomprehensible Church, and a largely indifferent world. Winner of the Miguel Marmol prize focusing on human rights, the Paterson Fiction Prize, the Latino Literary Foundation Latino Book Award, the Bronze Medal from Foreword Magazine, and Honorable Mention for the Gustavus Meyers Books Award. Also shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award.

Dear John, I Love Jane: Women Write About Leaving Men for Women


Candace Walsh - 2009
    Examples abound in popular culture, from actress Cynthia Nixon, who left her male partner of 15 years to be with a woman, to writer and comedienne Carol Leifer, who divorced her husband for the same reason.In a culture increasingly open to accepting this fluidity, Dear John, I Love Jane is a timely, fiercely candid exploration of female sexuality and personal choice. The book is comprised of essays written by a broad spectrum of women, including a number of well-known writers and personalities. Their stories are sometimes funny, sometimes painful—but always achingly honest—accounts of leaving a man for a woman, and the consequences of making such a choice.Arousing, inspiring, bawdy, bold, and heartfelt, Dear John, I Love Jane is an engrossing reflection of a new era of female sexuality.

Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club


Benjamin Alire Sáenz - 2012
    Take, for instance, the Kentucky Club on Avenida Juárez two blocks south of the Rio Grande. It's a touchstone for each of Sáenz's stories. His characters walk by, they might go in for a drink or to score, or they might just stay there for a while and let their story be told. Sáenz knows that the Kentucky Club, like special watering holes in all cities, is the contrary to borders. It welcomes Spanish and English, Mexicans and gringos, poor and rich, gay and straight, drug addicts and drunks, laughter and sadness, and even despair. It's a place of rich history and good drinks and cold beer and a long polished mahogany bar. Some days it smells like piss. "I'm going home to the other side." That's a strange statement, but you hear it all the time at the Kentucky Club.Benjamin Alire Sáenz is a highly regarded writer of fiction, poetry, and children's literature. Like these stories, his writing crosses borders and lands in our collective psyche. Poets & Writers Magazine named him one of the fifty most inspiring writers in the world. He's been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and PEN Center's prestigious award for young adult fiction. Sáenz is the chair of the creative writing department of University of Texas at El Paso.Awards:PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionLambda Literary AwardSouthwest Book Award

Leash


Jane DeLynn - 2002
    While her current spends the summer researching public housing in Stockholm, a moderately wealthy, object-oppressed, and terminally hip New York female of a certain age seeks adventure in the sedate dyke bars of lower Manhattan. Finding none, she answers a personal ad. She is ordered to put on a blindfold before the first meeting with the woman she knows only as Sir. Not knowing what someone looks like turns out to be freeing, as do the escalating constraints that alienate her not just from her former life, but from her very conception of who she is. Part Georges Bataille, part Fran Leibowitz, this is the Story of O told with a self-referentially perverse sense of humor. Leash extends the logic of S&M to its inexorable and startling conclusion, darkly and hilariously revealing the masochistic impulse as the urge to disappear from the chores, obligations, and emotional vacuity of daily life. First published in 2002.

Who Is Vera Kelly?


Rosalie Knecht - 2018
    Vera Kelly is struggling to make rent and blend into the underground gay scene in Greenwich Village. She's working night shifts at a radio station when her quick wits, sharp tongue, and technical skills get her noticed by a recruiter for the CIA. Next thing she knows she's in Argentina, tasked with wiretapping a congressman and infiltrating a group of student activists in Buenos Aires. As Vera becomes more and more enmeshed with the young radicals, the fragile local government begins to split at the seams. When a betrayal leaves her stranded in the wake of a coup, Vera learns war makes for strange and unexpected bedfellows, and she's forced to take extreme measures to save herself.An exhilarating page turner and perceptive coming-of-age story, WHO IS VERA KELLY? introduces an original, wry and whip-smart female spy for the twenty-first century.

Name Me Nobody


Lois-Ann Yamanaka - 1999
    Yamanaka pens powerful novel of friendship, family, sexuality, and identity in which 13-year-old Emi-Lou struggles with coming of age and middle school in Hawaii.

Mostly Dead Things


Kristen Arnett - 2019
    Shocked and grieving, Jessa steps up to manage the failing business, while the rest of the Morton family crumbles. Her mother starts sneaking into the shop to make aggressively lewd art with the taxidermied animals. Her brother Milo withdraws, struggling to function. And Brynn, Milo’s wife—and the only person Jessa’s ever been in love with—walks out without a word. As Jessa seeks out less-than-legal ways of generating income, her mother’s art escalates—picture a figure of her dead husband and a stuffed buffalo in an uncomfortably sexual pose—and the Mortons reach a tipping point. For the first time, Jessa has no choice but to learn who these people truly are, and ultimately how she fits alongside them.

Gravity


Leanne Lieberman - 2008
    Ellie has no doubts about her strict religious upbringing until she falls in love with another girl at her grandmother's cottage. Aware that homosexuality clashes with Jewish observance, Ellie feels forced to either alter her sexuality or leave her community. Meanwhile, Ellie's mother, Chana, becomes convinced she has a messianic role to play, and her sister, Neshama, chafes against the restrictions of her faith. Ellie is afraid there is no way to be both gay and Jewish, but her mother and sister offer alternative concepts of God that help Ellie find a place for herself as a queer Jew.

Curious Wine


Katherine V. Forrest - 1983
    The intimacy of a cabin at Lake Tahoe provides the combustible setting that brings Diana Holland and Lane Christianson together in this passionate novel of first discovery.

The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister


Anne Lister - 1992
    She kept extensive diaries of her life and loves, written partly in code. Made up of Greek letters mingled with other symbols of her own devising, Anne referred to the code as her "crypthand," and the use of it allowed her the freedom to describe her intimate life in great detail. Her diaries have been edited by Helena Whitbread, who spent years decoding and transcribing them.

Marriage of a Thousand Lies


S.J. Sindu - 2017
    They present an illusion of marital bliss to their conservative Sri Lankan–American families, while each dates on the side. It’s not ideal, but for Lucky, it seems to be working. She goes out dancing, shedrinks a bit, she makes ends meet by doing digital art on commission. But when Lucky’s grandmother has a nasty fall, Lucky returns to her childhood home and unexpectedly reconnects with her former best friend and first lover, Nisha, who is preparing for her own arranged wedding with a man she’s never met.As the connection between the two women is rekindled, Lucky tries to save Nisha from entering a marriage based on a lie. But does Nisha really want to be saved? And after a decade’s worth of lying, can Lucky break free of her own circumstances and build a new life? Is she willing to walk away from all that she values about her parents and community to live in a new truth? As Lucky—an outsider no matter what choices she makes—is pushed to the breaking point, Marriage of a Thousand Lies offers a vivid exploration of a life lived at a complex intersection of race, sexuality, and nationality. The result is a profoundly American debut novel shot through with humor and loss, a story of love, family, and the truths that define us all.

Taking Flight


Siera Maley - 2015
    Being born and raised in Los Angeles, California by her movie star mom and ex-child-star father sounds like an ideal childhood, but with a mother who’s always busy and a father who suffers from alcoholism, Lauren’s already parentless childhood and her resulting rebellious streak are made worse when her mother passes away and she’s left alone with her father, who doesn’t care how little school she attends, how much alcohol she drinks, or how many girls she sleeps with.When she puts too many toes out of line and a judge deems her father unfit to be her guardian, she’s shipped across the country to the rural mountains of northern Georgia, where a personal friend of the judge lives with his wife and two kids on a farm. David Marshall is a professional counselor known for “reforming unruly youth”, and as part of David’s program, Lauren will be required to work with farm animals, go to church once a week, attend counseling sessions with David, and go to a new school, all for seven months until her graduation. So naturally, her plan is simple: to have her best friend come pick her up two months early on the day she turns eighteen, and to be as difficult as possible in the meantime.Her plan doesn’t account for David Marshall’s daughter.

Tell the Wolves I'm Home


Carol Rifka Brunt - 2012
    1987. There's only one person who has ever truly understood fourteen-year-old June Elbus, and that's her uncle, the renowned painter Finn Weiss. Shy at school and distant from her older sister, June can only be herself in Finn's company; he is her godfather, confidant, and best friend. So when he dies, far too young, of a mysterious illness her mother can barely speak about, June's world is turned upside down. But Finn's death brings a surprise acquaintance into June's life—someone who will help her to heal, and to question what she thinks she knows about Finn, her family, and even her own heart. At Finn's funeral, June notices a strange man lingering just beyond the crowd. A few days later, she receives a package in the mail. Inside is a beautiful teapot she recognizes from Finn's apartment, and a note from Toby, the stranger, asking for an opportunity to meet. As the two begin to spend time together, June realizes she's not the only one who misses Finn, and if she can bring herself to trust this unexpected friend, he just might be the one she needs the most. An emotionally charged coming-of-age novel, Tell the Wolves I'm Home is a tender story of love lost and found, an unforgettable portrait of the way compassion can make us whole again.

Zami: A New Spelling of My Name


Audre Lorde - 1982
    From the author's vivid childhood memories in Harlem to her coming of age in the late 1950s, the nature of Audre Lorde's work is cyclical. It especially relates the linkage of women who have shaped her . . . Lorde brings into play her craft of lush description and characterization. It keeps unfolding page after page.--Off Our Backs