Book picks similar to
Solitaire and Brahms by Sarah Dreher
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The Midnight Moon
Gerri Hill - 2014
After exchanging passionate nights and only first names, Peyton Watts and Logan Weaver go back to their lives.For Peyton, it’s a return to her steady, conservative social circle and the not unwelcome overtures from attorney Margot Joseph. Meanwhile, Logan’s free spirit is happy again moving with the college crowd.So when fate throws them once more into each other’s paths, it shouldn’t mean a thing…
Crier's War
Nina Varela - 2019
A love that could birth a revolution.After the War of Kinds ravaged the kingdom of Rabu, the Automae, Designed to be the playthings of royals, took over the estates of their owners and bent the human race to their will.Now, Ayla, a human servant rising the ranks at the House of the Sovereign, dreams of avenging the death of her family… by killing the Sovereign’s daughter, Lady Crier. Crier, who was Made to be beautiful, to be flawless. And to take over the work of her father. Crier had been preparing to do just that—to inherit her father’s rule over the land. But that was before she was betrothed to Scyre Kinok, who seems to have a thousand secrets. That was before she discovered her father isn’t as benevolent as she thought. That was before she met Ayla.Set in a richly-imagined fantasy world, Nina Varela’s debut novel is a sweepingly romantic tale of love, loss and revenge, that challenges what it really means to be human.
The Significant
Kyra Anderson - 2016
A non-citizen fugitive... And a secret love that could kill them both. Kailynn Evada was born on the most powerful planet in the Altereye System, but was raised in the non-citizen district of Trid. She always dreamed of revolution and changing the injustices of the planet Tiao. But when her brother’s plot to destroy the A.I. that runs the planet falls apart, Kailynn finds herself struggling to save his life. Armed with false citizenship and determination to save her brother from execution, Kailynn finds work in the capital city, Anon, as a Significant—a person paid to act as a friend to clients. When a secret request for Significant companionship comes in, the pay drives Kailynn to accept the job. However, she soon discovers that her client is the most powerful person in the planetary system—Elite Isa, leader of the Elite Syndicate of Tiao who is genetically altered for perfection and forbidden from intimate relationships. The undeniable attraction between the two leads to a secret love that could kill them both.
Falling into Her
Erin Zak - 2017
She has friends, money, a job—everything she needs to survive. Except, of course, love, which, after getting her heart broken, she avoids like the plague. Pam Phillips, on the other hand, just buried the love of her life—her husband of twenty-one years. The last thing she wants is a new friend, let alone a new love interest. When the two women meet and swap witty banter, things start to change. Kathryn can feel that familiar tug of desire in her chest as she suggests—in a smooth as silk way—that they meet up again someday. In a moment of pure insanity—or desperation—Pam decides to take a chance. What happens next changes Pam’s life forever.
Fair Play
Tove Jansson - 1989
They have argued, worked, and laughed together for decades. Yet they’ve never really stopped taking each other by surprise. Fair Play shows us Mari and Jona’s intertwined lives as they watch Fassbinder films and Westerns, critique each other’s work, spend time on a solitary island (recognizable to readers of Jansson’s The Summer Book), travel through the American Southwest, and turn life into nothing less than art.
Read Between the Lines
Rachel Lacey - 2021
And ever since she took over her mother’s beloved Manhattan bookstore, they’ve become her home too. The only thing missing is her own real-life romance like the ones she loves to read about, and Rosie has an idea of who she might like to sweep her off her feet. She’s struck up a flirty online friendship with lesbian romance author Brie, and what could be more romantic than falling in love with her favorite author?Jane Breslin works hard to keep her professional and personal lives neatly separated. By day, she works for the family property development business. By night, she puts her steamier side on paper under her pen name: Brie. Jane hasn’t had much luck with her own love life, but her online connection with a loyal reader makes Jane wonder if she could be the one.When Rosie learns that her bookstore’s lease has been terminated by Jane’s family’s business, romance moves to the back burner. Even though they’re at odds, there’s no denying the sparks that fly every time they’re together. When their online identities are revealed, will Jane be able to write her way to a happy ending, or is Rosie’s heart a closed book?
Nightwood
Djuna Barnes - 1936
That time is the period between the two World Wars, and Barnes' novel unfolds in the decadent shadows of Europe's great cities, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna—a world in which the boundaries of class, religion, and sexuality are bold but surprisingly porous. The outsized characters who inhabit this world are some of the most memorable in all of fiction—there is Guido Volkbein, the Wandering Jew and son of a self-proclaimed baron; Robin Vote, the American expatriate who marries him and then engages in a series of affairs, first with Nora Flood and then with Jenny Petherbridge, driving all of her lovers to distraction with her passion for wandering alone in the night; and there is Dr. Matthew-Mighty-Grain-of-Salt-Dante-O'Connor, a transvestite and ostensible gynecologist, whose digressive speeches brim with fury, keen insights, and surprising allusions. Barnes' depiction of these characters and their relationships (Nora says, "A man is another person—a woman is yourself, caught as you turn in panic; on her mouth you kiss your own") has made the novel a landmark of feminist and lesbian literature. Most striking of all is Barnes' unparalleled stylistic innovation, which led T. S. Eliot to proclaim the book "so good a novel that only sensibilities trained on poetry can wholly appreciate it." Now with a new preface by Jeanette Winterson, Nightwood still crackles with the same electric charge it had on its first publication in 1936.
Always Faithful
Isabella - 2010
She is left alone to wonder why she and she alone. Survivor's guilt has nothing on the young Major as she is forced to deal with the scars, both physical and mental, left from her ordeal overseas. Before the accident, she couldn't think of doing anything else in her life. In fact, she even had sacrificed love for service, but now she questions the very ideals she once believed in. Was it worth it? Sent Stateside to recover, she finds herself at the Marine Corps base in California where her new job is to inform families of a loved one's death. One of the "informs" will change her life forever. Claire Monroe is your average military wife, with a loving husband and a little girl. She is used to the time apart from her husband. In fact, it was one of the reasons she married him. Then, one day, her life is turned upside down when she gets a visit from the Marine Corps. She finds herself losing a husband but awakening a long-gone side of herself she never thought she would see again. Is she being disrespectful to the memory of her recently dead husband or is she finally being true to who she really is? Can these two women come to terms with the past and finally find happiness, or will their shared sense of honor keep them apart?
Skye Falling
Mia McKenzie - 2021
Now approaching forty, Skye moves through life entirely--and unrepentantly--on her own terms, living out of a suitcase and avoiding all manner of serious relationships. Her personal life might be a mess, and no one would be surprised if she died alone in a hotel room, but at least she's free to do as she pleases. But then a twelve-year-old girl shows up during one of Skye's brief visits to her hometown of Philadelphia, and tells Skye that she's "her egg." Skye's life is thrown into sharp relief and she decides that it might be time to actually try to have a meaningful relationship with another human being. Spoiler alert: It's not easy.Things gets even more complicated when Skye realizes that the woman she tried and failed to pick up the other day is the girl's aunt and now it's awkward. All the while, her brother is trying to get in touch, her problematic mother is being bewilderingly kind, and the West Philly pool halls and hoagie shops of her youth have been replaced by hipster cafes.Told in a fresh, lively voice, this novel is a relentlessly clever, deeply moving portrait of a woman and the relationships she thought she could live without.