Atramentum


M.J. Duncan - 2016
    Burned out on public accounting after too many sixteen-hour days, the allure of operating a small, independent bookstore is too tempting to resist, and Joss decides to walk away from the career she spent the last decade building to move back to the resort town high in the Rockies. Cupid strikes as she’s moving into her new place outside Sky and, contrary to popular belief, Cupid has four legs and a tail, hits like a linebacker, and answers to the name George. Before Joss can recover from being tackled by the Great Dane, she finds herself face to face with George's mom, Maeve Dylan. Joss is immediately smitten with her beautiful neighbor, but their conversations walk the line between friendliness and flirtation like it’s a tightrope, and Joss is reluctant to do anything that will risk their budding friendship. Thankfully for her, however, George doesn't give up so easily.

The Dreyfus Affair: A Love Story


Peter Lefcourt - 1992
    What this does to their lives, families, team, and the President of the US is hilarious, poignant, brilliant, and dazzling fun.

In at the Deep End


Kate Davies - 2019
    Her roommate has a boyfriend—and their sex noises are audible through the walls, maybe even throughout the neighborhood. Not to mention, she’s treading water in a dead-end job, her know-it-all therapist gives her advice she doesn’t ask for, and the men she is surrounded by are, to be polite, subpar. Enough is enough.So when Julia gets invited to a warehouse party in a part of town where “trendy people who have lots of sex might go on a Friday night”—she readily accepts. Whom she meets there, however, is surprising: a conceptual artist, also a woman.Julia’s sexual awakening begins; her new lesbian life, as she coins it, is exhilarating. She finds her tribe at queer swing dancing classes, and guided by her new lover Sam, she soon discovers London’s gay bars and BDSM clubs, and . . . the complexities of polyamory. Soon it becomes clear that Sam needs to call the shots, and Julia’s newfound liberation comes to bear a suspicious resemblance to entrapment . . . In at the Deep End is an unforgettably frank, funny, and racy odyssey through the pitfalls and seductions we encounter on the treacherous—and more often, absurd—path to love and self.

How Long Has This Been Going On?


Ethan Mordden - 1995
    Beginning in 1949 and moving to the present day, Mordden puts a unique and innovating spin on modern history. An adventurous, adroit, and fascinating novel by one of the finest gay writers of our time.

Jolt


Kris Bryant - 2014
    Of course she was flat on her back and looking up and backward at the gorgeous singer, but that didn’t stop her body and heart from bursting into a kaleidoscope of want, need, and lust. Scared at the intensity of her feelings, Bethany does everything she can to avoid Ali at Camp Jacomo, the camp designed specifically for children of lesbian and gay families where Bethany volunteers every summer. The camp director convinces the hottest singer at the moment, Ali Hart, to spend a week teaching the children music to everybody’s delight except Bethany’s. On her last day at camp, Ali approaches Bethany with an offer of friendship, but they both know it’s the prelude to something bolder. Should Bethany take the risk? Does she really believe she can balance her quiet private life with Ali’s outspoken one?

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.

Wet Nails


Shira Glassman - 2016
    This story explores contrasting versions of bisexuality: Adina's open preference for women vs. the closets and dangers of Rose's era.

Stay and Fight


Madeline Ffitch - 2019
    Too soon, with winter coming, he calls it quits. Helped by Rudy—her government-questioning, wisdom-spouting, seasonal-affective-disordered boss—and a neighbor couple, Helen makes it to spring. Those neighbors, Karen and Lily, are awaiting the arrival of their first child, a boy, which means their time at the Women’s Land Trust must end.So Helen invites the new family to throw in with her—they’ll split the work and the food, build a house, and make a life that sustains them, if barely, for years. Then young Perley decides he wants to go to school. And Rudy sets up a fruit-tree nursery on the pipeline easement edging their land. The outside world is brought clamoring into their makeshift family.Set in a region known for its independent spirit, Stay and Fight shakes up what it means to be a family, to live well, to make peace with nature and make deals with the system. It is a protest novel that challenges our notions of effective action. It is a family novel that refuses to limit the term. And it is a marvel of storytelling that both breaks with tradition and celebrates it. Best of all, it is full of flawed, cantankerous, flesh-and-blood characters who remind us that conflict isn't the end of love, but the real beginning.Absorbingly spun, perfectly voiced, and disruptively political, Madeline ffitch's Stay and Fight forces us to reimagine an Appalachia—and an America—we think we know. And it takes us, laughing and fighting, into a new understanding of what it means to love and to be free.

Breakfast with Scot


Michael Downing - 1999
    But when eleven-year-old Scot's mother suddenly dies, the couple is determined to make good on a wine-soaked promise made years before. They hang a tire swing in the back yard and call the neighborhood school to arrange enrollment. Scot arrives just in time to start fifth grade—with a pair of lacy white socks in his duffel bag. With wry dialogue, frothy characters, and an offbeat plot, Michael Downing's mastery reaches new heights of brilliance in Breakfast with Scot.About the Author:Michael Downing is the author of the novels Perfect Agreement, Mother of God, and A Narrow Time. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Dancer from the Dance


Andrew Holleran - 1978
    It depicts the adventures of Malone, a beautiful young man searching for love amid New York's emerging gay scene. From Manhattan's Everard Baths and after-hours discos to Fire Island's deserted parks and lavish orgies, Malone looks high and low for meaningful companionship. The person he finds is Sutherland, a campy quintessential queen -- and one of the most memorable literary creations of contemporary fiction. Hilarious, witty, and ultimately heartbreaking, Dancer from the Dance is truthful, provocative, outrageous fiction told in a voice as close to laughter as to tears.

The Warrior's Path


Catherine M. Wilson - 2008
    Since she never did find the story she was looking for all those years ago, she decided to write it.In Book I of the trilogy, Tamras arrives in Merin's house to begin her apprenticeship as a warrior, but her small stature causes many, including Tamras herself, to doubt that she will ever become a competent swordswoman. To make matters worse, the Lady Merin assigns her the position of companion, little more than a personal servant, to a woman who came to Merin's house, seemingly out of nowhere, the previous winter, and this stranger wants nothing to do with Tamras.

A World Between


Emily Hashimoto - 2020
    Both girls are on the brink of adulthood, each full of possibility and big ideas, and they fall into a whirlwind romance. Years later, Eleanor and Leena collide on the streets of San Francisco. Although grown and changed and each separately partnered, the two find themselves, once again, irresistibly pulled back together. Emily Hashimoto’s debut novel perfectly captures the wonder and confusion of growing up and growing closer. Narrated in sparkling prose, A World Between follows two strikingly different but interconnected women as they navigate family, female friendship, and their own fraught history.

You Exist Too Much


Zaina Arafat - 2020
    She has exposed her legs in a biblical city, an act they deem forbidden, and their judgement will echo on through her adolescence. When our narrator finally admits to her mother that she is queer, her mother's response only intensifies a sense of shame: "You exist too much," she tells her daughter.Told in vignettes that flash between the U.S. and the Middle East--from New York to Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine--Zaina Arafat's debut novel traces her protagonist's progress from blushing teen to sought-after DJ and aspiring writer. In Brooklyn, she moves into an apartment with her first serious girlfriend and tries to content herself with their comfortable relationship. But soon her longings, so closely hidden during her teenage years, explode out into reckless romantic encounters and obsessions with other people. Her desire to thwart her own destructive impulses will eventually lead her to The Ledge, an unconventional treatment center that identifies her affliction as "love addiction." In this strange, enclosed society she will start to consider the unnerving similarities between her own internal traumas and divisions and those of the places that have formed her.Opening up the fantasies and desires of one young woman caught between cultural, religious, and sexual identities, You Exist Too Much is a captivating story charting two of our most intense longings--for love, and a place to call home.

Face the Music


Ali Vali - 2020
    When the biggest record label in Nashville hands her a new client, country music royalty, Sophie Roddy, Mason’s reluctant to take on a problem diva whose excessive lifestyle almost ruined her career, but can't turn down the challenge. Victoria Roddy has lived in Sophie Roddy’s shadow for as long as she can remember. Being her mother's assistant is more than a job description...it’s her life. Now arrogant and aggravating Mason thinks she can turn Sophie’s career around, but Victoria doesn’t believe Mason’s ridiculous demands and exhaustive schedule are what her mother needs right now.Mason and Victoria have to work together, so it’s really too bad they can’t stand each other, and even worse that they can’t seem to deny their attraction.Cover Artist: Tammy SeidickGenres: Contemporary / RomanceTags: Enemies to Lovers Romance, Music, Actors/Artists, Celebrity, Close Quarters Words: 92,500

Summer Fun


Jeanne Thornton - 2021
    She is obsessed with the Get Happies, the quintessential 1960s Californian band, helmed by its resident genius, B—-. Why did the band stop making music? Why did they never release their rumored album, Summer Fun?Gala writes letters to B—- that shed light not only on the Get Happies, but paint an extraordinary portrait of Gala. The parallel narratives of B—- and Gala form a dialogue about creation–of music, identity, self, culture, and counterculture.Summer Fun is an epic and magical work of trans literature that marks Thornton as one of our most exciting and original novelists.