The Child


Sarah Schulman - 2007
    Structured like a classic novel of legal suspense, The Child explores what happens when Stew, a lonely fifteen-year-old boy, looks for and finds an adult boyfriend online. In short order his lover is arrested in an Internet pedophilia sting and Stew's world is turned upside down. He's exposed to his family and community, leaving the outcast to fend for himself against forces intent on his destruction. Desperate and enraged, the confused Stew murders his nephew in a panic. Schulman's novel considers the impact of these events on all those involved — from the parents of the murdered child, to Stew's staunchly Catholic parents, and the attorneys working on his case. Carefully untangling the actions of an isolated teenager denied a natural outlet for his feelings during a critical time in his life, The Child is a haunting meditation on isolation and the prejudices of culture and family.

To Be Unbroken


Stein Willard - 2015
    But wealth and esteem came second only to the passionate, albeit illicit, love she felt for Princess Anima. Their secret liaison came to an abrupt end when Anima’s duty to her father and the Kingdom tore them apart; triggering an ancient curse. Heartbroken and cast in stone, Maxima was left yearning for her paramour. Finding Anima’s soul was the only way to break the curse and reclaim her lover. Rich and beautiful, Sara Laramie grew up as one of the most sought after socialites in Boston’s elite circles. A failed relationship caused her to retreat from the social scene and instead focus all her attention on starting a private gallery. Finally, with a purpose in life, she thought she had enough to keep her busy. That was until she received an unexpected request to showcase the statue of a formidable ancient Greek female warrior in her gallery. The arrival of the statue coincided with the appearance of a gorgeous flint-eye stranger who with a single kiss spun Sara’s life out of control.

Finding Faith


Kim Pritekel - 2020
    Considering he was the only parent she had left after her mother's suicide when Faith was just a child, she thought that's what it would take. She was wrong. What she dreamed would be glamorous and satisfying turned out to be grueling and thankless. Since she wasn't willing to play the game between the sheets, she was forced to stay in the cubicle jungle doing all the heavy lifting while the men got the credit and the rewards. Deciding she is done, Faith packs up and, with the flip of the bird to the rearview mirror, leaves New York and heads home to Colorado. She has nothing there: no job, nowhere to live, no relationship with her father. Truth is, she barely has a relationship with herself. On the drive home, she finds herself in Wynter, a tiny mountain town at the foot of the Rockies. Looking more like it belongs in a made-for-TV Christmas movie than on the map, Faith is utterly enchanted. When she tries her luck and buys a raffle ticket at Pop’s, Wynter’s charming café, her prize is far more than meets the eye—or the heart. Enter Wyatt, a feisty, sexy southerner and waitress at Pop's, who just happens to be married to a local sheriff's deputy. All is not as it appears with the All-American boy and his Georgia peach.A colorful cast of unforgettable and charming characters will teach the jaded attorney that sometimes to find yourself all you have to do is go back to the basics…and have a little Faith.

The No-Nonsense Guide to Sexual Diversity


Vanessa Baird - 2001
    In some countries, equal rights have been achieved and progress is being made against discrimination; in others, being gay still incurs the death penalty.This guide examines all the colors of the sexual rainbow, unearths hidden histories, and looks at contributions from medicine and science. It also includes a unique global survey of laws that affect sexual minorities.Vanessa Baird has been co-editor at New Internationalist magazine since 1986. Her previous books include, as compiler and editor, Eye to Eye Women.

It's Not Really About the Hair: The Honest Truth About Life, Love, and the Business of Beauty


Tabatha Coffey - 2011
    Tabatha Coffey, star of the hit Bravo reality show Tabatha’s Salon Takeover, shares her compelling life story with fans, revealing not only the events that have made her so outspoken, but the personal tenets that have contributed to her success and kept her centered and thriving with each new challenge and opportunity.

Strange Bedfellows


Q. Kelly - 2011
    A call girl with a secret of her own. Can they learn to trust each other enough to find the love they seek in each other's arms? Frances is grappling with something else, too. Her daughter, Marissa, has been gone 11 years. She was kidnapped by her father on her third birthday. Frances hopes her coming out will also ease the way for Marissa's return. This book is 75,000 words.

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.

The Light in You


Lisa Elliot - 2020
    Passionate and principled, she believes in yoga and wants to make a difference. Unfortunately, her studio is hanging by a thread after a slow start. She doesn’t have time for love, and isn’t attachment the root of all suffering anyway?Life isn’t going the way Emily Mackenzie had planned. She’s lost her high-powered corporate job and isn’t coping well. She’s spent her twenties sacrificing her personal life for her career and now she has nothing to show for it. Stressed and struggling, she might just be at her rock bottom. When Emily joins Heart Yoga she finds a lot more than just a good stretch.An unexpected kiss forces Angela to question everything she holds dear, and as Emily gets back on her feet is it wise for her to risk getting involved with someone who’s not looking for love?

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.

All of the Above


James Dawson - 2015
    Things start looking up when Toria meets the funny and foul-mouthed Polly, who's the coolest girl that Toria has ever seen. Polly and the rest of the 'alternative' kids take Toria under their wing. And that's when she meets the irresistible Nico Mancini, lead singer of a local band - and it's instalove at first sight! Toria likes Nico, Nico likes Toria, but then there's Polly ... love and friendship have a funny way of going round in circles.

The Unspoken Name


A.K. Larkwood - 2020
    She will climb the mountain, enter the Shrine of the Unspoken, and gain the most honored title: sacrifice. On the day of her foretold death, however, a powerful mage offers her a new fate.Csorwe leaves her home, her destiny, and her god to become the wizard's loyal sword-hand -- stealing, spying, and killing to help him reclaim his seat of power in the homeland from which he was exiled.But Csorwe and the wizard will soon learn – gods remember, and if you live long enough, all debts come due.

Rapture


Carol Ann Duffy - 2005
    Carol Ann Duffy's 'Rapture' is about the loss and rediscovery of love in all its aspects - erotic, intellectual, emotional.

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.

Pride: The Unlikely Story of the True Heroes of the Miner's Strike


Tim Tate - 2017
    They did so in the midst of the 1984 miners’ strike—the most bitter and divisive dispute for more than half a century. In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher’s social and fiscal policies devastated Britain’s traditional industries, as AIDS began to claim lives across the nation. As the government and police battled "the enemy within" in communities across the land and newspapers whipped up fear of the gay "perverts" who were supposedly responsible for inflicting this disease, miners and homosexuals unexpectedly made a stand together and forged a lasting friendship. It was an alliance which helped keep an entire valley clothed and fed during the darkest months of the strike. And it led directly to unions and the Labour Party accepting gay equality as a cause to be championed. Pride tells the inspiring true story of how two very different communities—each struggling to overcome its own bitter internal arguments, as well as facing the power of a hostile government and press—found common cause against overwhelming odds. And how this one simple but unlikely act of friendship would, in time, help change life in Britain—forever. This is the true story that inspired the Golden Globe Award-nominated, GLAAD-nominated, BAFTA-winning film Pride.

Shame Is an Ocean I Swim Across


Mary Lambert - 2018
    In verse that deals with sexual assault, mental illness, and body acceptance, Ms. Lambert's Shame Is an Ocean I Swim Across emerges as an important new voice in poetry, providing strength and resilience even in the darkest of times.