We Were Witches


Ariel Gore - 2017
    Disgusted by an overabundance of phallocratic narratives and Freytag’s pyramid, she turns to a subcultural canon of resistance and failure. Wryly riffing on feminist literary tropes, it documents the survival of a demonized single mother figuring things out.

Without You


Anthony Rapp - 2006
     Anthony had a special feeling about Jonathan Larson's rock musical from his first audition, so he was thrilled when he landed a starring role as the filmmaker Mark Cohen. With his mom's cancer in remission and a reason to quit his newly acquired job at Starbucks, his life was looking up. When Rent opened to thunderous acclaim off Broadway, Rapp and his fellow cast members knew that something truly extraordinary had taken shape. But even as friends and family were celebrating the show's success, they were also mourning Jonathan Larson's sudden death from an aortic aneurysm. By the time Rent made its triumphant jump to Broadway, Larson had posthumously won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize. When Anthony's mom began to lose her battle with cancer, he struggled to balance the demands of life in the theatre with his responsibility to his family. Here, Anthony recounts the show's magnificent success and his overwhelming loss. He also shares his first experiences discovering his sexuality, the tension it created with his mother, and his struggle into adulthood to gain her acceptance. Variously marked by fledgling love and devastating loss, piercing frustration and powerful enlightenment, Without You charts the course of Rapp's exhilarating journey with the cast and crew of Rent as well as the intimacies of his personal life behind the curtain.

Driven


Suzanne Falter - 2019
    should be in the library of ever LGBTQ person ..." -- US Review of Books Who says you can’t find the love of your life while you’re getting your tire fixed? Even IF your boss is actively trying to close her garage? Driven is the oldest woman-owned garage in Oakland – and the pride of the lesbian community. At least, it is until the uber-competitive former race car driver Mindy Rose shows up and opens her own garage, complete with chair massages and a sushi bar. Mindy’s out to destroy Driven, a fact that galls her good-hearted, and very ethical Irish assistant Kate. This is just reinforced when Kate has an emergency blow out, and is forced to go into Driven for a repair. Instantly, she finds herself drawn to the tall, tantalizing co-owner Lizzy. That’s when things get … well … complicated. Especially because Kate is an undocumented worker who seriously needs her job. Soon Kate finds herself hatching a secret scheme to save Driven, while falling hard for Lizzy. Yet, Lizzy has no idea she’s part of Mindy’s nasty operation. Or even that Mindy is out to get her. Can sweet Kate and passionate Lizzy finally find the love they’ve been looking for forever? Or will Mindy find out and bring them and Driven down – and get Kate deported in the process? And when is Kate going to tell Lizzy who she actually is? It’s just the beginning of the wild ride that is the Oaktown Girls series.

Love and Money


Dennis Kelly - 2007
    A series of scenes that gradually tell the story of how the financial collapse affects a British couple and how fiscal worry, stress, and fear can strain mankind's greatest emotion.

Space Cruiser Musashi


Dean Chalmers - 2016
    a horde of armored transhuman warriors... The RCS Musashi is an antique ship—a last-chance posting for the unmotivated and undisciplined in the Fleet. But their captain, aging war hero Harrison Kane, believes that his crew of misfits can summon their talents to become the very best. A disgraced XO… an insubordinate bad-girl helmsman… an arrogant and possibly psychotic telepath… an engineer who relates emotionally only to machines… a genetically engineered Marine Sergeant who strives to become a samurai warrior… They will have to band together to stop the Valorian threat… And stand together even when their own government stoops to betray them to appease the enemy.

Queens of Geek


Jen Wilde - 2017
    She’s a vlogger and actress promoting her first movie at SupaCon, and this is her chance to show fans she’s over her public breakup with co-star Reese Ryan. When internet-famous cool-girl actress Alyssa Huntington arrives as a surprise guest, it seems Charlie’s long-time crush on her isn’t as one-sided as she thought.Taylor likes to blend in. Her brain is wired differently, making her fear change. And there’s one thing in her life she knows will never change: her friendship with her best guy friend Jamie—no matter how much she may secretly want it to. But when she hears about a fan contest for her favorite fandom, she starts to rethink her rules on playing it safe.Queens of Geek by Jen Wilde, chosen by readers like you for Macmillan's young adult imprint Swoon Reads, is an empowering novel for anyone who has ever felt that fandom is family.

Now a Major Motion Picture


Cory McCarthy - 2018
    E. Thorne. So it's just a little annoying that M. E. Thorne is her grandmother—and that Iris has to deal with the trilogy's crazy fans.When Iris gets dropped in Ireland for the movie adaptation, she sees her opportunity: if she can shut down production, the Elementia craze won't grow any bigger, and she can finally have a normal life. Not even the rascally-cute actor Eamon O'Brien can get in her way.But the crew's passion is contagious, and as Iris begins to find herself in the very world she has avoided her whole life, she realizes that this movie might just be amazing…

Something for the Weekend: Life in the Chemsex Underworld


James Wharton - 2018
    In his search for new friends and potential lovers, he becomes sucked into London’s gay drug culture, soon becoming addicted to partying and the phenomenon that is ‘chemsex’. Exploring his own journey through this dark but popular world, James looks at the motivating factors that led him to the culture, as well as examining the paths taken by others. He reveals the real goings-on at the weekends for thousands of people after most have gone to bed, and how modern technology allows them to arrange, congregate, furnish themselves with drugs and spend hours, often days, behind closed curtains, with strangers and in states of heightened sexual desire.Something for the Weekend looks compassionately at a growing culture that’s now moved beyond London and established itself as more than a short-term craze.

The Complete Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist


Diane DiMassa - 1999
    Hothead Paisan, the over-caffeinated, media-crazed psychotic lesbian "with scary hair and a fetish for guns, grenades, mallets, and sharp objects, " returns for more search-and-destroy missions and preventative homicides A cult favorite, The Complete Collection combines Hothead Paisan and Revenge of Hothead Paisan with new strips in a single volume for the first time.

Foul Is Fair


Hannah Capin - 2020
    Untouchable, they have the kind of power other girls only dream of. Every party is theirs and the world is at their feet. Until the night of Elle’s sweet sixteen, when they crash a St. Andrew’s Prep party. The night the golden boys choose Elle as their next target. They picked the wrong girl. Sworn to vengeance, Elle transfers to St. Andrew’s. She plots to destroy each boy, one by one. She’ll take their power, their lives, and their control of the prep school’s hierarchy. And she and her coven have the perfect way in: a boy named Mack, whose ambition could turn deadly. Foul is Fair is a bloody, thrilling revenge fantasy for the girls who have had enough. Golden boys beware: something wicked this way comes.

The World and Other Places: Stories


Jeanette Winterson - 1998
    There are the surprising, fresh little phrases minted expressly to convey the delicate realities of the made-up world. There's the humor, fierce and sly but always kind. There's the imagination that changes gender and historical epoch at whim, and does so convincingly; and the characters themselves, a sundry bunch of men and women not necessarily successful or commendable but always, somehow, likable. Best of all, by their very diversity, these stories reveal glimpses of the smart and enigmatic woman behind the work. In "Atlantic Crossing," Winterson becomes a middle-aged businessman of the mid-20th century, accidentally assigned to share his second-class cabin with a young black woman on a transatlantic crossing. In the realm of event, little happens, but in its depth of perception and what it tells of the nuances of regret, the story is as rich as a novel in another writer's hands. A few scant pages later, Winterson becomes a kind of lost female Homer, telling Orion's story from Artemis's point of view: "When she returned she saw this huge rag of a man eating her goat, raw.... His reputation hung about him like bad breath." In "The Poetics of Sex," she creates a lesbian love story that evokes her characters' personalities as explicitly as their erotic pleasures. "The 24-Hour Dog," the story of a woman writer returning a puppy she had thought to adopt, is remorseless as a psychological thriller in the squirmy depths it plumbs: "I had made every preparation, every calculation, except for those two essentials that could not be calculated: his heart and mine." Read The World and Other Places twice, once for instruction, once for joy. --Joyce Thompson

Sheltered by Love


M.E. Tudor - 2020
    The result being two hundred hours of community service at the local Humane Society Shelter. The shelter is run by Lillie Stein, who moved back to her hometown with her daughter, Chrissy, leaving behind the chaotic and uptight life that entailed being part of a United States’ senator’s family.Chrissy Stein spent most of her life being bullied because of her family. She blossomed when her mother moved her away from Washington D.C. and homeschooled her. Now, a vet tech at the shelter, Chrissy loves her life helping animals.Jericho, as Suzanne prefers to be called, finds working at the shelter is not as easy as she thought it would be, but quickly realizes cleaning the kennels and grounds is just one of many things that make life better for the animals at the shelter.Chrissy is devoted to helping animals and is not excited about having to babysit Jericho. But, as the two young women work together, they find that they have a lot in common, despite their very different backgrounds, including their love of animals.Tornadoes, hurricanes, and animal rescues bring Chrissy and Jericho closer together as their relationship builds slowly from friendship to something more. But, will Jericho’s ex ruin everything for these two young women in her effort to hurt everyone she feels has let her down?

Tender Delirium


Tania De Rozario - 2013
    It brings together (but is not limited to) estranged lovers, despairing mothers and the avenging spirits of murdered women, in an assortment of words that celebrate queer desire, obsessive longing and a general disregard for "proper" subject matter. Comprising selected work written over the course of a decade, the largely confessional collection has been described as dark and hysterical ... but in a good way.

The Warrior's Path


Catherine M. Wilson - 2008
    Since she never did find the story she was looking for all those years ago, she decided to write it.In Book I of the trilogy, Tamras arrives in Merin's house to begin her apprenticeship as a warrior, but her small stature causes many, including Tamras herself, to doubt that she will ever become a competent swordswoman. To make matters worse, the Lady Merin assigns her the position of companion, little more than a personal servant, to a woman who came to Merin's house, seemingly out of nowhere, the previous winter, and this stranger wants nothing to do with Tamras.

Give Me a God I Can Relate to


Blythe Baird - 2015
    In 2014, she represented Chicago as the youngest competitor at the National Poetry Slam. Her work has been published or featured by The Huffington Post, Write Bloody, EverydayFeminism, Button Poetry, Chicago Literati, Banango Street, and Wicked Banshee, among others.