The Price of Salt


Patricia Highsmith - 1952
    They fall in love and set out across the United States, pursued by a private investigator who eventually blackmails Carol into a choice between her daughter and her lover. With this reissue, The Price of Salt may finally be recognized as a major twentieth-century American novel.

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

A Plain Brown Rapper


Rita Mae Brown - 1976
    --Hanoi to Hoboken: a round trip ticket --Living with other women --Take a lesbian to lunch --The last straw --The shape of things to come --Roxanne Dunbar --Gossip --Leadership vs. stardom --The last picture show --A manifesto for the feminist artist --Love song for feminists from Flamingo Park --I am a woman --The good fairy --It's all Dixie cups to me --The lady's not for burning.

Hotel Liaison


J. Lee Meyer - 2008
    Laurel Hoffman, an associate professor of women's studies in Berkeley, struggles to stay on track for tenure while caught up in the last throes of a crumbling relationship with a senior colleague. When she hears of a hotel being renovated and a secret room full of papers about women who once stayed there, she knows she has a potential career-saving article. Stefanie Beresford, the hotel owner, is not exactly receptive when Laurel approaches her about researching the hotel’s history, but that doesn't stop her from flirting with the alluring academic. She doesn't need the distraction, but for the first time in her life she wants to take a chance on more than a fleeting encounter. While Laurel can't deny her powerful feelings for Stefanie, she fears she's risking her heart as well as her future if she acts on her desires. But can a simple encounter between two rational adults really be all that dangerous?

The Best Short Stories of All Time - Volume 1


Jack LondonEdgar Allan Poe - 2011
    Ranging from the 19th to the 20th centuries, writers include James Augustine Aloysius Joyce, Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, Richard Edward Connell, Henri Nathaniel Hawthorne, Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, Jack London, Henri Ringgold Wilmer Lardner, Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant and Edgar Allan Poe.

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit


Jeanette Winterson - 1985
    Zealous and passionate, she seems destined for life as a missionary, but then she falls for one of her converts.At sixteen, Jeanette decides to leave the church, her home and her family, for the young woman she loves. Innovative, punchy and tender,Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a few days ride into the bizarre outposts of religious excess and human obsession.

Shaken


K.G. MacGregor - 2004
    Joining forces, they struggle to escape the ruins, only to lose touch after their dramatic rescue. In a chance meeting several months later, Anna Kaklis reconnects with her partner in survival, Lilian Stewart. Now on a journey of discovery, they forge a friendship that grows into the strongest bond either has ever known. Armed with the lessons of their underground ordeal, Anna and Lily unearth what is really important in their lives. Ultimately, Shaken is a story of challenge and courage, loss and triumph, love and family.

Under the Southern Cross


Claire McNab - 1992
    the grandeur of Ayers Rock... legendary Alice Springs... the Great Barrier Reef... the primal beauty of Cape Tribulation…Two women, from different continents, with different values, collide with spectacular results... UNDER THE SOUTHERN CROSS.American Lee Paynter has built her Small travel agency into an international tour company. Brash, confident, openly lesbian, her great love is her business. Women? They're to enjoy and let go.Alexandra Findlay is pursuing a career in Australian tourism with quiet focus and determination, convinced that her career is the best she can hope for in her arid, closeted emotional existence.Now Alex has been assigned to accompany Lee on the American woman's visit Down Under, to win Lee's company over to Australian tourism. Suddenly Alex's quiet life explodes... And Lee is challenged by a woman unlike any she has ever known.

The Well of Loneliness


Radclyffe Hall - 1928
    Stephen grows to be a war hero, a bestselling writer and a loyal, protective lover. But Stephen is a woman, and her lovers are women. As her ambitions drive her, and society confines her, Stephen is forced into desperate actions.The Well of Loneliness was banned for obscenity when published in 1928. It became an international bestseller, and for decades was the single most famous lesbian novel. It has influenced how love between women is understood, for the twentieth century and beyond.

Aimée & Jaguar: A Love Story, Berlin 1943


Erica Fischer - 1994
    When Lilly "Aimee" Wust, a gentile mother of four and wife of a Nazi officer, met Felice "Jaguar" Schragenheim, a Jew living underground in Berlin, neither could have guessed that their brief initial encounter would develop into a blazing, devoted love. As the Nazi stranglehold closed in on them, Lilly and Felice found themselves fighting insurmountable odds to stay together. Extraordinarily passionate and heartrending, this is a rare and personal look at the love and strength of two women whose commitment to each other defied the brutality of their time.

The Maid of Buttermere


Melvyn Bragg - 1987
    The story of an imposter and bigamist, who travels to the North where he marries the maid of Buttermere, a young woman whose natural beauty inspired the dreams and confirmed the theories of a=early 19th century writers.

Desert of the Heart


Jane Rule - 1964
    This classic of lesbian eroticism is Jane Rule's first novel.Set in the late 1950s, this is the story of Evelyn Hall, an English professor, who goes to Reno to obtain a divorce and put an end to her disastrous 16-year marriage. While staying at a boarding house to establish her six-week residency requirement she meets Ann Childs, a casino worker and fifteen years her junior. Physically, they are remarkably alike and eventually have an affair and begin the struggle to figure out just how a relationship between two women can last. Desert of the Heart examines the conflict between convention and freedom and the ways in which the characters try to resolve the conflict.

Trash: Stories


Dorothy Allison - 1988
    The limitless scope of human emotion and experience are depicted in stories that give aching and eloquent voice to the terrible wounds we inflict on those closest to us. These are tales of loss and redemption; of shame and forgiveness; of love and abuse and the healing power of storytelling. A book that resonates with uncompromising candor and incandescence, Trash is sure to captivate Allison's legion of readers and win her a devoted new following.

I Await the Devil's Coming


Mary MacLane - 1902
    Written in potent, raw prose that propelled the author to celebrity upon publication, the book has become almost completely forgotten.In the early 20th century, MacLane's name was synonymous with sexuality; she is widely hailed as being one of the earliest American feminist authors, and critics at the time praised her work for its daringly open and confessional style. In its first month of publication, the book sold 100,000 copies—a remarkable number for a debut author, and one that illustrates MacLane's broad appeal.Now, with a new foreword written by critic Jessa Crispin, I Await The Devil's Coming stands poised to renew its reputation as one of America's earliest and most powerful accounts of feminist thought and creativity.

To Protect and Serve


V.K. Powell - 2008
    Assigned to the Vice/Narcotics Division, Alex is given the dangerous but career-building mission of catching the city's most notorious and elusive drug lord, Sonny Davis.