Stone Butch Blues


Leslie Feinberg - 1993
    Stone Butch Blues traces a propulsive journey, powerfully evoking history and politics while portraying an extraordinary protagonist full of longing, vulnerability, and working-class grit. This once-underground classic takes the reader on a roller-coaster ride of gender transformation and exploration and ultimately speaks to the heart of anyone who has ever suffered or gloried in being different.

Flesh and Blood


Michael Cunningham - 1995
     In 1950, Constantine Stassos, a Greek immigrant laborer, marries Mary Cuccio, an Italian-American girl, and together they produce three children: Susan, an ambitious beauty, Billy, a brilliant homosexual, and Zoe, a wild child. Over the years, a web of tangled longings, love, inadequacies and unfulfilled dreams unfolds as Mary and Constantine's marriage fails and Susan, Billy, and Zoe leave to make families of their own. Zoe raises a child with the help of a transvestite, Billy makes a life with another man, and Susan raises a son conceived in secret, each extending the meaning of family and love. With the power of a Greek tragedy, the story builds to a heartbreaking crescendo, allowing a glimpse into contemporary life which will echo in one's heart for years to come.

The Other Woman


Ann O'Leary - 1999
    Yet, as too many lovers have discovered too late, though Joanna's bedroom door is always open, she keeps her wounded heart under lock and key.Knowing too well Joanna's "love 'em and leave 'em" reputation, beautiful Fiona Maddison is determined to keep their friendship platonic -- unless she can break through Joanna's impenetrable public persona. But as the sexual tension between them starts to smolder, Fiona's resolve starts to melt.Editor: Christine CassidyGenre: Romance

Power Play


Julie Cannon - 2009
    She has never failed to deliver exactly what her boss wanted.But Tate didn’t count on running into Victoria Sosa, an Olympic Gold Medalist with a mind of her own, and a business challenge she must conquer or her career is over. Tate and Victoria face off in the boardroom in the ultimate power play while fighting to take their growing attraction into the bedroom.

Choices


Nancy Toder - 1980
    In this straightforward, sensitive novel, Toder conveys the joys--and fears--of a woman coming to terms with her attraction to other women.

Answered Prayers: The Unfinished Novel


Truman Capote - 1986
    It takes in calculating beauties and sadistic husbands along with such real-life supporting characters as Colette, the Duchess of Windsor, Montgomery Clift, and Tallulah Bankhead. Above all, this malevolently funny book displays Capote at his most relentlessly observant and murderously witty.

For Now, Forever


Trin Denise - 2012
    After a full weekend of celebrating her birthday, she goes to work thinking it will be just another typical workday. That thought comes to a crashing halt when she flips the “Closed” sign to “Open” and finds an elderly mustachioed man standing at the door.Gordon LeVitt, Attorney at Law drops a bombshell that will flip Cassie’s life upside down. The man that she believed to be her father for the last thirty-three years is not really her father, and her recently deceased biological father Collin Masterson has named her as an heir in his Last Will and Testament. The catch: Her presence is required at the reading.Cassie heads to Masterson, West Virginia and has a blow-out that sends her car careening off the side of the road. With her heart racing in her chest, she is relieved when the most gorgeous creature she’s ever seen stops to help and then Cassie does something she has never done in her life—make mad passionate love with a complete stranger named Eelyn M. Carmichael who has agreed to drop Cassie off for her appointment.After Mr. LeVitt’s introductions, Cassie gets an even bigger shock when Eelyn comes strolling into the room and takes a seat next to Lenora, her father’s widow. Feeling sick to her stomach and thinking her world is crashing down, Cassie does the only thing she can—she runs with no intention of looking back. The one thing Cassie forgets is that things are seldom what they seem and Eelyn M. Carmichael has already made up her mind that Cassie Reynolds is not going to be the one who got away because some things that happen in the now, can and do last forever.

Trumpet


Jackie Kay - 1998
    Besieged by the press, his widow Millie flees to a remote Scottish village, where she seeks solace in memories of their marriage. The reminiscences of those who knew Joss Moody render a moving portrait of a shared life founded on an intricate lie, one that preserved a rare, unconditional love.

The Complete E. M. Forster Collection : 11 Complete Works


E.M. Forster - 2011
    M. Forster.1) Where Angels Fear to Tread2) The Longest Journey3) A Room with a View4) Howards End5) The Machine Stops6) The Story of a Panic 7) The Other Side of the Hedge 8) The Celestial Omnibus 9) Other Kingdom 10) The Curate's Friend 11) The Road from Colonus

Shared Winds


Kenna White - 2004
    Lyn's hopes and dreams are perilously close to dissolving unless she can find a contractor to rebuild her business before a season without revenue forces her to close her doors forever. But with such widespread damage throughout the area, Lan's frustration mounts as the lack of available contractors becomes apparent. Then Emma Bishop, daughter of the most renowned contractor in the county, steps in to offer her services. The offer seems like an answer to Lan's prayers until she learns of Emma's inexperience and ulterior motives... As the two woman work closely together to rebuild the marina, each is caught unaware as something else begins to threaten their contractor-client relationship. Despite their best efforts, a smoldering caldron of emotion and desire begins to bubble up through the icy Okalahoma winter...

Summer Will Show


Sylvia Townsend Warner - 1936
    He can have his tawdry mistress. She intends to devote herself to the serious business of raising her two children in proper Tory fashion. Then tragedy strikes: the children die, and Sophia, in despair, finds her way to Paris, arriving just in time for the revolution of 1848. Before long she has formed the unlikeliest of close relations with Minna, her husband’s sometime mistress, whose dramatic recitations, based on her hair-raising childhood in czarist Russia, electrify audiences in drawing rooms and on the street alike. Minna, “magnanimous and unscrupulous, fickle, ardent, and interfering,” leads Sophia on a wild adventure through bohemian and revolutionary Paris, in a story that reaches an unforgettable conclusion amidst the bullets, bloodshed, and hope of the barricades.Sylvia Townsend Warner was one of the most original and inventive of twentieth-century English novelists. At once an adventure story, a love story, and a novel of ideas, Summer Will Show is a brilliant reimagining of the possibilities of historical fiction.

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.

The Whale: A Love Story


Mark Beauregard - 2016
    In despair, Melville takes his family for a vacation to his cousin’s farm in the Berkshires, where he meets Nathaniel Hawthorne at a picnic—and his life turns upside down.  The Whale chronicles the fervent love affair that grows out of that serendipitous afternoon. Already in debt, Melville recklessly borrows money to purchase a local farm in order to remain near Hawthorne, his newfound muse. The two develop a deep connection marked by tensions and estrangements, and feelings both shared and suppressed.   Melville dedicated Moby-Dick to Hawthorne, and Mark Beauregard’s novel fills in the story behind that dedication with historical accuracy and exquisite emotional precision, reflecting his nuanced reading of the real letters and journals of Melville, Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and others. An exuberant tale of longing and passion, The Whale captures not only a transformative relationship—long the subject of speculation—between two of our most enduring authors, but also their exhilarating moment in history, when a community of high-spirited and ambitious writers was creating truly American literature for the first time.

Initiation by Desire


M.J. Williamz - 2012
    Tully Stephens wants only to survive her sophomore year. They soon realize how desperately they want each other, but that’s easier said than done.Tulley is a nineteen-year-old new initiate in the Gamma Alpha Epsilon sorority who has never loved a woman. Sue is the twenty-six-year-old resident adviser who jumps from bed to bed. Tulley is discovering her true self while Sue wants to discover more about the sexy young butch who’s invading her fantasies.A sorority house is never the ideal location for keeping a secret, especially when the secret is a blossoming affair. Can their love withstand the strain of the concealment? Will their time together always consist of stolen moments? Or will they complete their Initiation of Desire?

World on Fire


Geonn Cannon - 2009
    After a particularly bad fire leaves Alex and another member of her team in the hospital, she finds herself entranced by Dr. Rachel Tom. She doesn’t plan to fall in love and doesn’t need the hassles of a new relationship, but Rachel felt the pull as well. And she’s not the kind to let something so good slip through her fingers.Both women quickly succumb to their desires, but the relationship may be over before it begins. Alex soon realizes that the horrible blazes they’ve been fighting recently are too uniform to be anything but arson. And if she’s right, someone is setting them for the express purpose of killing firefighters.