Book picks similar to
Juliana by Vanda


historical-fiction
lgbtq
historical
lgbt

Robbergirl


S.T. Gibson - 2019
    When her men ambush a girl on the road with hair pale as death and a raven perched on her shoulder, Helvig cannot resist bringing home a truly unique prize: a genuine witch. Drawn irresistibly into the other woman’s web, Helvig soon learns of Gerda’s reason for walking the icy border roads alone: to find the Queen who lives at the top of the world and kill her. Anyone else would be smart enough not to believe a children’s story, but Helvig is plagued by enchantments of her own, and she struggles to guard the sins of her past while growing closer to Gerda.As Christmastide gives way to the thin-veiled days when ghosts are at their most vengeful, the two women find themselves on a journey to a final confrontation that will either redeem them or destroy them entirely.It's DEATHLESS meets OF FIRE AND STARS in this coming of age fable.

Pages for You


Sylvia Brownrigg - 2001
    The seventeen-year-old, new to everything around her—college, the East Coast, bodies of literature, and the sexual flurries of student life—is shocked by her desire to follow this wherever it will take her. When Flannery finds herself enrolled in a class with the remote, brilliant older woman, she is intimidated at first, but gradually becomes Anne Arden's student—Baudelaire, lipstick colors, or how to travel with a lover—Flannery proves an eager pupil, until one day learns more about Anne than she ever wanted to know.

All I Want For Christmas


Clare Lydon - 2015
    Her ideal present under the tree would be a shiny new girlfriend, so Tori gives herself one month to find that special lady by December 25th. Christmas spells romance and she’s going to grab some.However, Tori’s dates bring their own complications, and when someone unexpected strolls back into her life, her Christmas girlfriend quest is turned upside down. Will Tori land on her feet and find the woman of her dreams? And if she does, will it be who she expected?From the author of Amazon No.1 best-sellers London Calling, This London Love and The Long Weekend, Clare Lydon has created another page-turner bursting with seasonal attitude and wit. If you’re a fan of Christmas rom-coms, prepare to laugh out loud and be swept off your festive feet!Words: 58,520

Shadow of the Knife


Jane Fletcher - 2008
    The most vicious gang in the Homelands, led by the infamous Butcher, is extending its operations to Roadsend. By her oath as a member of the Militia, Ellen is sworn to uphold the rule of law, no matter what the cost to herself. But as the body count starts to rise, Ellen finds her task made all the harder by a wall of silence from ordinary citizens, a commanding officer with her head in the sand, and the attentions of an attractive young farmer who is probably not who she claims to be.Ellen must work out who to trust, because if she gets it wrong she might easily lose her heart, or her life.

The Breath Between Waves


Charlotte Anne Hamilton - 2021
    Heartbroken, Penelope isn’t looking forward to the weeklong journey. Or that her parents want her to find a husband in America. To make matters worse, she also has to share a cabin with a complete stranger.Ruby Cole, her spunky Irish roommate, is unlike anyone Penelope ever met. They become fast friends as they bond over crushing family expectations and sneaking into lush parties together. That Ruby likes women, too, comes as a surprise to Penelope, but she knows their affair can only be temporary. Because as soon as the Titanic arrives in New York, Penelope will have to marry someone of her father’s choosing.Before long, though, they’ll both have to decide what–and who–is really worth fighting for.

Just One Night


Chelsea M. Cameron - 2021
    Not just any revenge; she’s out to mend her recently shattered heart. Her ex, Wyatt, is going to pay, and the best way to make that happen is to seduce the girl he’s always wanted but has never caught: Esme Bell. To be fair, the dark-haired bartender with the infectious laugh is the girl just about everyone wants, and Wyatt is no exception.Paige’s plan is simple, and it’s going to work. Go out with Esme, take her home, and then rub her victory in Wyatt’s face for the whole town of Castleton, Maine to see. She does reconnaissance at the bar where Esme works, and soon, the game is ON.Is Paige just going to head right for the bedroom? No. She’s more subtle than that. Paige has never really seduced anyone like this, but how hard could it be? She’s not completely devoid of sexy skills.What starts as a plot to get back at her ex turns into something a whole lot more complicated when Paige catches major feelings. Is she ready to give up her mission and put her heart on the line again? Or should she just cut her losses and call the whole thing off?

Thrust


Rachel Spangler - 2021
    At the age of thirteen she made the varsity team, won a state championship, came out, and fell head over heels in love with her team captain, Lauren Standish. After being gently rebuffed by the high school senior, young Jess vowed she would return for her some day when their age difference became irrelevant and her own accomplishments made her not merely an equal, but an Olympian. Eleven years later, Jess makes good on her promise, but when she arrives back in Buffalo a few months before the big games, she’s intrigued to find that the woman she’s always dreamed of could also be exactly the coach she needs to win gold. Lauren, however, isn’t the bubbly team captain she’d been at eighteen. After a stellar collegiate career of her own, circumstances forced her to her dreams on the shelf and return to Buffalo. She’d made peace with a quiet life spent running a rustbelt fencing club and coaching kids when Team USA’s hottest young fencer waltzes back into her life. As much as Lauren finds Jess’s confidence and athleticism alluring, she also sees the hot-headed superstar as a threat to the carefully controlled world rebuilt in the wake of the traumatic loss she is desperate to avoid reliving. Never one to turn her back on a friend in need, Lauren agrees to coach Jess on the condition that they focus only on the swordplay and not the sharp point of attraction threatening to sever the bonds of her professionalism. The two women set to work preparing for the biggest event of their lives, but as tension mounts in the lead-up to the Olympic games, the pressure and the passion building between them also grows, leaving both to wonder if Jess is trying to win the gold, or win the girl.

Freshman Year


Annameekee Hesik - 2010
    But when she orders French fries from the flirtatious Hot Dog on a Stick Chick, she gets more than deep-fried potatoes. Abbey tries to ignore the weird, happy feeling in her gut, but that proves to be as impossible as avoiding the very insistent (and—rumor has it—very lesbian) players on Gila High’s girls’ basketball team. They want freakishly long-legged Abbey to try out, and Abbey doesn’t hate the idea. But Kate made Abbey pinky swear to avoid basketball and to keep away from the you-know-who girls on the team.Sometimes promises can’t be kept. And sometimes girls in uniform are impossible to resist.

The Covert Captain: Or, A Marriage of Equals


Jeannelle M. Ferreira - 2018
    But Nathaniel is not what he seems, and before the wedding, the truth will out... Eleanor Charlotte Fleming, forgotten daughter of a minor baronet, stakes her life on a deception and makes her name—if not her fortune—on the battlefield. Her war at an end, she returns to England as Captain Nathaniel Fleming and wants nothing more than peace, quiet, and the company of horses. Instead, Captain Fleming meets Harriet. Harriet has averted the calamity of matrimony for a decade, cares little for the cut of her gowns, and is really rather clever. Falling in love is not a turn of the cards either of them expected. Harriet accepts Captain Fleming, but will she accept Eleanor? Along the way, there are ballrooms, stillrooms, mollyhouses, society intrigue, and sundering circumstance.

The Queen of Ieflaria


Effie Calvin - 2018
    At age seventeen, Esofi's journey to Ieflaria is not for the wedding she always expected but instead to offer condolences on the death of her would-be husband.But Ieflaria is desperately in need of help from Rhodia for their dragon problem, so Esofi is offered a new betrothal to Prince Albion's younger sister, the new Crown Princess Adale. But Adale has no plans of taking the throne, leaving Esofi with more to battle than fire-breathing beasts.

Making a Tinderbox


Emma Sterner-Radley - 2017
    However societal rules regarding gender, race, and sexuality are very different. These differences shape the lives of our protagonists, the would-be-princess Lady Elisandrine 'Elise' Falk and Nessa Clay, a farmer's daughter who’s chasing her dreams. Having to leave their old lives behind, they decide to travel together. They find things that make them different and should keep them apart. They also find themselves magnetically drawn to each other, no matter how hard they resist their increasing longing for each other. In the modern and dangerous city of Nightport, brimming with exciting innovations in clockwork and steam power, strange events start to surround them. Unknown men ask questions regarding their whereabouts and small packages wrapped neatly in midnight blue paper with white ribbon start to arrive. With the help of some new friends they meet along the way, Elise and Nessa start to unravel the mysteries — and their feelings for one another.

The Mercies


Kiran Millwood Hargrave - 2020
    Twenty-year-old Maren Bergensdatter stands on the craggy coast, watching the sea break into a sudden and reckless storm. Forty fishermen, including her brother and father, are drowned and left broken on the rocks below. With the menfolk wiped out, the women of the tiny Northern town of Vardø must fend for themselves. Three years later, a sinister figure arrives. Absalom Cornet comes from Scotland, where he burned witches in the northern isles. He brings with him his young Norwegian wife, Ursa, who is both heady with her husband's authority and terrified by it. In Vardø, and in Maren, Ursa sees something she has never seen before: independent women. But Absalom sees only a place untouched by God and flooded with a mighty evil. As Maren and Ursa are pushed together and are drawn to one another in ways that surprise them both, the island begins to close in on them with Absalom's iron rule threatening Vardø's very existence. Inspired by the real events of the Vardø storm and the 1620 witch trials, The Mercies is a feminist story of love, evil, and obsession, set at the edge of civilization.

Olivia


Dorothy Strachey - 1949
    Dorothy Strachey’s classic Olivia captures the awakening passions of an English adolescent sent away for a year to a small finishing school outside Paris. The innocent but watchful Olivia develops an infatuation for her headmistress, Mlle. Julie, and through this screen of love observes the tense romance between Mlle. Julie and the other head of the school, Mlle. Cara, in its final months. “Although not strictly autobiographical, Olivia draws on the author’s experiences at finishing schools run by the charismatic Mlle. Marie Souvestre, whose influence lived on through former students like Natalie Barney and Eleanor Roosevelt. Olivia was dedicated to the memory of Strachey’s friend Virginia Woolf and published to acclaim in 1949. Colette wrote the screenplay for the 1951 film adaptation of the novel. In 1999, Olivia was included on the Publishing Triangle’s widely publicized list of the 100 Best Gay and Lesbian Novels of the 20th Century. “Dorothy Strachey (1865-1960) was the sister of the novelist Lytton Strachey and a prominent member of the Bloomsbury Group…….Olivia, originally published under a pseudonym, is her only novel.” -- Amazon.com

Outrun the Wind


Elizabeth Tammi - 2018
    After being rescued from a harrowing life as an Oracle of Delphi, Kahina is glad to be a part of the Hunt; living among a group of female warriors gives her a chance to reclaim her strength, even while her prophetic powers linger. But when a routine mission goes awry, Kahina breaks the first rule in order to save the legendary huntress Atalanta. To earn back Artemis’s favor, Kahina must complete a dangerous task in the kingdom of Arkadia— where the king’s daughter is revealed to be none other than Atalanta. Still reeling from her disastrous quest and her father’s insistence on marriage, Atalanta isn’t sure what to make of Kahina. As her connection to Atalanta deepens, Kahina finds herself in danger of breaking Artemis’ second rule.She helps Atalanta devise a dangerous game to avoid marriage, and word spreads throughout Greece, attracting suitors willing to tempt fate to go up against Atalanta in a race for her hand. But when the men responsible for both the girls’ dark pasts arrive, the game turns deadly.

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.