Book picks similar to
The Beginning of Everything by Cara Malone


lesbian
lgbt
historical-fiction
lesbian-romance

Tipping the Velvet


Sarah Waters - 1998
    Through a friend at the box office, Nan manages to visit all her shows and finally meet her heroine. Soon after, she becomes Kitty's dresser and the two head for the bright lights of Leicester Square where they begin a glittering career as music-hall stars in an all-singing and dancing double act. At the same time, behind closed doors, they admit their attraction to each other and their affair begins.

Darkness Falls


K.C. Luck - 2018
    Jackie Scott wields incredible influence as a magazine executive in Seattle. As she plans a smashing party for her fortieth birthday, everything is precisely as she wants it. But when a solar storm lights up the night sky in a dazzling display, it not only ruins the party but destroys power around the planet and Jackie must turn for help from the one woman she has tried so hard not to want … Taylor. Taylor Barnes is an Army veteran new to Seattle and wants nothing more than to find some peace and quiet working as a rent-a-cop in a corporate high-rise. When she is asked to attend the birthday party of the building's powerful and sexy CEO, she can hardly say no. Little did she realize every skill she ever learned would be put to the test to save the woman she can't seem to stop thinking about … Jackie. Anna Patten is a nurse practitioner who has returned one last time to the town she ran away from to pack up the house where she grew up. Trying to avoid any drama, she cannot get away fast enough, or so she tells herself while her heart wonders about her high school crush. When fate lands them together in Seattle at a birthday party, suddenly Anna must lean on the woman she once left behind … Lexi. Lexi Scott has built a simple life of writing novels and remodeling her farmhouse, but when she runs into a long-lost friend, her world is turned upside down. It's not until she attends her sister Jackie's birthday party that she is forced to not only face the apocalypse but now she must decide if she is willing to risk her heart again to save the only woman she ever loved ... Anna. The end of the world is only the beginning.If you like a story with romance and adventure, mixed with conflict and heroism, then you will love KC Luck’s page-turning new book. Explore the world of “Darkness Falls” today!Note: This is a full-length, stand-alone novel with a science fiction/end-of-the-world theme, but is significantly more focused on strong female characters in a loving lesbian relationship.

Juliana


Vanda - 2016
    Alice “Al” Huffman and her childhood friends are fresh off the potato farms of Long Island and bound for Broadway. Al’s plans for stage success are abruptly put on hold when she’s told she has no talent. As she gets a job to pay for acting classes, Al settles into a normal life with her friends and a boyfriend. It all changes when she meets Juliana.A singer on the brink of stardom, Juliana is everything Al isn’t: glamorous, talented, and queer. The farm girl is quickly enthralled, experiencing thoughts and feelings she never realized were possible. Al finds herself slipping between two worlds: the gay underground and the “normal” world of her childhood friends. It’s a balancing act she can handle until the two worlds begin to collideIn a city bursting with change, can Alice find what she was looking for all along?Juliana: Volume 1: 1941-1944 is a captivating work of LGBT historical romance. If you like extensively researched settings, spell-binding storytelling, and characters you can’t help but fall for, then you’ll love the first book in award-winning playwright Vanda’s new Juliana series.Buy Juliana to discover a sexy, funny, and deadly serious world today!

Second Chances


Mia Archer - 2015
    She wants me. If only she didn't care what everyone else thought about our love... Claire and Allison were old friends who hadn't spoken in five years. They drifted apart in high school, and Claire coming out of the closet and scandalizing their small town didn't help.Then the night happened. The two former friends came together at a beach party the summer before shipping off to college for one incredible forbidden encounter. It was a night that fulfilled one of Claire's deepest secret fantasies even as it terrified Allison as she was forced to confront scary questions about her sexuality. Needless to say, the night didn't end well. Fast forward five years. Claire is happy, out, and living it up in the city. Allison is stuck in a passionless relationship with a guy who annoys her more than he excites her. And it's time for their five year reunion. A reunion where they'll see each other for the first time since that fateful night on the beach when everything fell apart. They'll be forced to confront the ghosts of their shared past as Claire comes to terms with her lingering resentment even as Allison tries to answer lingering questions about her sexuality and discover who she truly is. The past and present are on a collision course as two old friends turned one-time lovers come together in a whirlwind weekend to discover whether or not there truly are second chances in life and love!

Desperate Times


Hildred Billings - 2018
    When the two tough butches meet at a small town bar, they think they're getting the femmes of their dreams. So begins the awkward - yet sordid - acquaintance of the only two lesbians in town. Local rancher Tess doesn't have time for women who aren't her type, and new-girl-in-town Sidney isn't interested in someone who only sees her as a piece of fresh meat. Yet they keep bumping into each other... is it fate, or just small town karma? A bad date turns into a one-night stand. A one-night stand turns into a casual relationship. A casual relationship becomes Sidney's greatest amusement, and Tess's biggest nightmare as she's slowly forced out of the closet in conservative River Rock. Desperate times are afoot in the sleepy, gossipy hamlet of rural America. It's going to take more than nerves of steel to survive the isolationism and people with nothing better to do than ruin their neighbors' lives. It's going to take a whole lotta introspection - and love. (And no-holds-barred carnality. Let's be real.)

Always Alex


Robin Alexander - 2014
    At eighteen, she left her hometown of Barbier Point, Louisiana, longing to be free of her father’s chokehold on her life and with a heart full of dreams she hoped would come true. Years later, she is forced to return home with at least one granted wish—her daughter, Sydney. Alex Soileau stood at Dana’s side for years tossing her coins into the well, making the same wish each time, a secret plea that she refused to reveal even to her best friend. Time and maturity insisted that she give up on her one fervent desire, but her heart never would. Reunited as adults, both women realize that maybe there was magic in the well after all.

It Takes Two


Harper Bliss - 2015
    Will Ella be able to overcome her fear of tying the knot and give Kay what she wants more than anything? Find out in this sequel to Amazon No.1 best-seller At the Water's Edge.It Takes Two is a 15.000 words lesbian romance novelette and the sequel to At the Water's Edge

Sidebar


Carsen Taite - 2017
    She’s determined not to let any mistakes, past or future, get in her way, but a complex murder case and undeniable attraction to her rebellious law clerk threaten Camille’s carefully planned future at every turn.Attorney West Fallon is a social justice crusader, reluctant to put her career plans on hold to clerk for a federal judge, even if the judge is the man who saved her life. When he’s suddenly forced to retire, West is stuck clerking for Judge Camille Avery, an infuriatingly stubborn—okay, brilliant, intense, and sexy—law-and-order jurist who seems just as unhappy to be saddled with her.As Camille and West explore their growing desire and challenge the boundaries of their work and personal relationships, a big case threatens to destroy both their careers. Can their love survive?

Lost for Words


Andrea Bramhall - 2018
    Fulfilling career, loving family, great friends, and… Who’s she kidding? She lives at home with her aging mother, Fleur. She works as a massage therapist, and spends all her time with her best friend, Bobbi. But damn it, she’s happy. Well, okay, maybe not happy, but she’s content. It’s enough. Until the well-meaning but meddlesome women in her life, Fleur and Bobbi, team up and enter Sasha into a writing competition with the potential to change her life.Film producer and director Jac Kensington has the career she’s spent thirty years honing to perfection, with little thought to her personal life. She helps run an annual scriptwriting competition in search of new talent and projects for her company to produce.Meddling might have brought Jac and Sasha together, but fate has plans of its own. Sasha’s life is on the brink of changing beyond all recognition in this bittersweet lesbian romantic comedy.Themes: British lesbian romcom · Lesbian Film producer · Manchester · scriptwriting competition104,000 words

The Last Nude


Ellis Avery - 2012
    In the heady years before the crash, financiers drape their mistresses in Chanel, while expatriates flock to the avant-garde bookshop Shakespeare and Company. One day in July, a young American named Rafaela Fano gets into the car of a coolly dazzling stranger, the Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka.Struggling to halt a downward slide toward prostitution, Rafaela agrees to model for the artist, a dispossessed Saint Petersburg aristocrat with a murky past. The two become lovers, and Rafaela inspires Tamara's most iconic Jazz Age images, among them her most accomplished—and coveted—works of art. A season as the painter's muse teaches Rafaela some hard lessons: Tamara is a cocktail of raw hunger and glittering artifice. And all the while, their romantic idyll is threatened by history's darkening tide.Inspired by real events in de Lempicka's history, The Last Nude is a tour de force of historical imagination. Avery gives the reader a tantalizing window into a lost Paris, an age already vanishing as the inexorable forces of history close in on two tangled lives. Spellbinding and provocative, The Last Nude is a novel about genius and craft, love and desire, regret, and, most of all, hope that can transcend time and circumstance.

Broken Wings


L.-J. Baker - 2006
    But Rye is a poor builder's labourer with a teenage sister to raise, while Flora is a wealthy artist-celebrity with a tree-top condominium and a sporty, late-model flying carpet. If those aren’t obstacles enough to the scorching attraction that rapidly develops, Rye lives under the pall of a dark secret that has made her a fugitive in the very land where she sought freedom. The more Rye reveals to Flora, the more vulnerable she is to her past catching up with her. Can she and Flora find their way to loving one another in the face of their social and cultural differences while struggling with the dark forces that threaten Rye? Broken Wings is a soaring celebration of the power of love, family, and justice to triumph over intolerance, homophobia, and slavery.

Shadows of Aggar


Chris Anne Wolfe - 1991
    Her mission: Rescue a downed pilot and spy from Aggar's badlands. But Aggar is not part of the Terran empire and before Aggar's Council will allow the journey, Diana must be bonded to a Shadowmate. That's when things get interesting. Shadows are exceptional guides, field companions and fighters. However, Elana is also something more -- she's gifted with the magic of the Blue Sight, a sixth sense that allows her to read and manipulate intentions through the shifting colors of an individual's amarin. She's also been gifted with dreams. Dreams of a certain Amazon. Aided by friends and flying eitteh, haunted by Changelings, madmen and laser guns, Diana and Elana cross the vast and varied lands that are Aggar. In their race against time to prevent an all-out intergalactic war, the two women become erotically entangled. But all too soon they discover that when the stakes are this high, nothing is ever easy and choices are never simple.

Chosen


Brey Willows - 2018
    When a military convoy arrives to pick up Devin Rossi and Karissa Decker, along with dozens of other bewildered people, the two have no idea they are part of a group selected by the government to be transported to a space station preparing for the colonization of another planet. They are members of the Chosen. On their way to the military base, their convoy is attacked and Devin and Karissa learn the real reason behind their selection. Their attraction grows as they struggle to survive and wrestle with the decision to continue on to the base as part of the Chosen, which means leaving millions of others behind to die. Will they face an uncertain future together, or will the cost be too high?Cover Artist: Tammy SedickGenres: Romance / Speculative Fiction

Mask of the Highwaywoman


Niamh Murphy - 2012
    In spite of Evelyn’s terror, she is intrigued by the leader of the gang, a beautiful Highwaywoman called Bess. Increasingly entranced by Bess and the prospect of adventure, Evelyn puts up little resistance when she is kidnapped. However, she begins to suspect there is a lot more to her captor than she initially thought and what started as a light-hearted escapade rapidly turns into a desperate escape and a frantic struggle for survival.Niamh Murphy’s debut novel is not just a swashbuckling lesbian romance, but also a gripping tale of love and betrayal.

Moontangled


Stephanie Burgis - 2020
    If Juliana needs to use magic to get her stubborn fiancée to pay her attention...well, then, as the top student in her class, she is more than ready to take on that challenge!Unbeknownst to Juliana, though, Caroline plans to nobly sacrifice their betrothal for Juliana's own sake - and no one has ever accused iron-willed Caroline Fennell of being easy to deter from any goal.Their path to mutual happiness may seem tangled beyond repair...but when they enter the fey-ruled woods that border Thornfell College, these two determined women will find all of their plans upended in a night of unexpected and magical possibilities.Moontangled will be published in ebook and paperback on February 3, 2019.