Book picks similar to
On a Grey Thread by Elsa Gidlow


poetry
queer-history
classics
lesbian-poetry

I Love You, Lola Bloom


Rosy Dee - 2020
    That is, until a chance encounter at a local book club sparks an unexpected connection with the beautiful Ruby Wilson - aka renowned lesfic author, Lola Bloom.Maddison can’t believe her luck when Ruby asks her to design her new book cover, and as they spend more time together, Maddison sees a glimmer of hope for her dispirited love life.However, her hopes are soon dashed, and to top it all off, her past makes an unwelcome reappearance which threatens to make her world come crashing down.Will Maddison get her long-awaited happily ever after? Or will she admit defeat and purchase her one-way ticket to Singledom?Debut author Rosy Dee brings you a slow-burn romantic comedy with all the feels and an extra sprinkling of hearts for good measure.

The Friendly Young Ladies


Mary Renault - 1943
    Sheltered, naïve, and just eighteen, Elsie leaves the stifling environment of her parents’ home in Cornwall to seek out her sister, Leo, who had run away nine years earlier. She finds Leo sharing a houseboat, and a bed, with the beautiful, fair-haired Helen. While Elsie’s arrival seems innocent enough, it is the first of a series of events that will turn Helen and Leo’s contented life inside out. Soon a randy young doctor is chasing after all three women at once, a neighborly friendship begins to show an erotic tinge, and long-quiet ghosts from Leo’s past begin to surface. Before long, no one is sure just who feels what for whom.Mary Renault wrote this delightfully provocative novel in the early 1940s, creating characters that are lighthearted, charming, and free-spirited partly in answer to the despair characteristic of Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness or Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour. The result is a witty and stylish story that offers exceptional insight into the world of upcoming writers and artists of in 1930s London, chronicling their rejection of society’s established sexual mores and their heroic pursuits of art and life.

Funeral Diva


Pamela Sneed - 2020
    . . . Its strength is in its abundance, its desire for language to stir body as well as mind.--Parul Sehgal, The New York Times Book ReviewShe is a writer for the future, in that she defies genre.--Hilton AlsThis notable achievement, traveling from youth to adulthood, is a harrowing account of how Sneed transforms violence and pain into an artist's life.--Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen: An American LyricThere's an eerie sense of timeliness to this book, which features prose and poetry by the writer and teacher Pamela Sneed and is largely -- though not entirely -- about mourning Black gay men killed too soon by a deadly virus.--Tomi Obaro, BuzzfeedOH MY GOODNESS, it was amazing. I was in tears by the end. What starts off as beautiful memoir evolves into incredibly moving poetry, painful and sweet and lovely.--Marie Cloutier, Greenlight Bookstore, Brooklyn, NYBalancing and mixing, with rhyme and reason, love and anger, good and bad, memory and the created present, all to tell the story of a life, a memoir unrestrained, devoid of artificial forms. Honest. Free.--Anjanette Delgado, New York Journal of BooksIn this collection of personal essays and poetry, acclaimed poet and performer Pamela Sneed details her coming of age in New York City during the late 1980s. Funeral Diva captures the impact of AIDS on Black Queer life, and highlights the enduring bonds between the living, the dying, and the dead. Sneed's poems not only converse with lovers past and present, but also with her literary forebears--like James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde--whose aesthetic and thematic investments she renews for a contemporary American landscape.Offering critical focus on matters from police brutality to LGBTQ+ rights, Funeral Diva confronts today's most pressing issues with acerbic wit and audacity. The collection closes with Sneed's reflections on the two pandemics of her time, AIDS and COVID-19, and the disproportionate impact of each on African American communities.Riveting, personal, open-hearted, risky and wise.--Sarah Schulman, author of Conflict Is Not Abuse. . . a tour de force about the collision between a coalescing 1980s 'Black lesbian and gay literary and poetic movement' in New York and the onslaught of AIDS.--Donna Seaman, BooklistPamela Sneed's Funeral Diva is deft, defiant, and devastating.--Tommy Pico, author of FeedFuneral Diva is urgent and necessary reading to live by. This is writing at its finest. Keep this book close to your heart and soul.--Karen Finley, author of Shock TreatmentReminiscent of Audre Lorde's Zami, Pamela Sneed's memoir is, in itself, a healing balm, affirming in its truths and honesty. I cannot remember ever reading a book that illustrates the impact of the AIDS epidemic on our community more poignantly than Funeral Diva.--Nicole Dennis-Benn, author of PatsyPamela Sneed takes enormous risks in this book. She tells the truth with fierce concentration and an abiding sense of purpose."--Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina

The Other Woman


Hildred Billings - 2021
     The most captivating woman in the city has walked into my office. Hair as red as carnal passion and a body I can’t stop fantasizing about. She doesn’t know it yet, but I’m about to ask her out. And she will say yes, because she won’t have a reason to say no. When my conquest is complete, I intend to forget all about her. She is, after all, the reason for my pain. She is the source of my breakup and the woman my good-for-nothing ex seduced. I will consume the woman who wrecked my relationship. I will not fall for her, no matter how tempting she is. It’s not becoming to be The Other Woman, after all. Good girls shouldn’t cross me.But Keira isn’t a good girl, is she? I’m no saint myself. In the end, we’ll probably go down together. It’ll be what we both deserve. THE OTHER WOMAN is a heated tale of revenge and scarred hearts. It has a HEA – but how Evelyn and Keira get there? You’ll have to find out for yourself.

Shame Is an Ocean I Swim Across


Mary Lambert - 2018
    In verse that deals with sexual assault, mental illness, and body acceptance, Ms. Lambert's Shame Is an Ocean I Swim Across emerges as an important new voice in poetry, providing strength and resilience even in the darkest of times.

Beyond the Pale


Elana Dykewomon - 1997
    The richly textured novel details Gutke Gurvich’s odyssey from her apprenticeship as a midwife in a Russian shtetl to her work in the suffrage movement in New York. Interwoven with her tale is that Chava Meyer, who was attended by Gurvich at her birth and grew up to survive the pogrom that took the lives of her parents. Throughout the book, historical background plays a large part: Jewish faith and traditions, the practice of midwifery, the horrific conditions in prerevolutionary Russia and New York sweatshops, and the determined work of labor unionists and suffragists.

Aquamarine


Carol Anshaw - 1992
    From there, Anshaw intricately traces three possible paths for Jesse, spinning exhilarating variations on the themes of lost love and parallel lives unlived. Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina, writes, "I found myself wishing I could buy a dozen copies and start a discussion group, just so I'd be able to debate all the questions this astonishing novel provokes." A Reader's Guide is available.

Delayed Rays of a Star


Amanda Lee Koe - 2019
    From Weimar Berlin to LA's Chinatown, from a seaside resort in East Germany to a luxury apartment on the Champs-Élysées, the different settings they inhabit are as richly textured as the roles they play: siren, muse, predator, or lover, each one a carefully calibrated performance. And in the orbit of each star live secondary players--a Chinese immigrant housemaid, a German soldier on leave from North Africa, a pompous Hollywood director--whose voices and viewpoints reveal the legacy each woman left in her own time, as well as in ours. Amanda Lee Koe's playful, wry prose guides the reader dexterously around murky questions of ego, persona, complicity, desire, and difference. Intimate and raw, Delayed Rays of a Star is a visceral depiction of womanhood--its particular hungers, its calculations, and its eventual betrayals--and announces a bold new literary voice.

A Pirate's Heart


Catherine Friend - 2008
    She’s aided in her search by investigator Randi Marx, who proves to be as frustrating as she is beautiful. The treasure map Emma and Randi seek belonged to Thomasina Farris, a pirate who disappeared from the Caribbean in 1715. Did Captain Tommy steal an entire treasure from a Spanish galleon and escape? Was she convicted of piracy and hanged by her neck? Did she die of a broken heart when she lost the woman she loved?In her race to find the map, Emma learns that pirates not only steal treasure, but they also steal hearts. When Emma discovers Captain Tommy’s fate, she must decide her own as well, choosing between romance...or revenge.

The Emperor's Babe


Bernardine Evaristo - 2001
    Feisty, precocious Zuleika, daughter of Sudanese immigrants-made-good and restless teenage bride of a rich Roman businessman, craves passion and excitement. When she begins an affair with the emperor, Septimius Severus, she knows her life will never be the same. Streetwise, seductive, and lyrical, with a lively, affecting heroine, The Emperor’s Babe is a strikingly imaginative historical novel-in-verse.

Pink Bean Series #1-3


Harper Bliss - 2018
    Beneath the Surface will take you back in time to follow their journey and discover the origin story of Sydney's pinkest coffee shop.Finally, get to know Josephine, long-time barista at the Pink Bean, as she attempts to get over her insecurities and opens herself up to love in Everything Between Us.Grab an espresso (or a flat white) and settle down for nearly 700 pages of heartwarming, dramatic and steamy lesbian romance, like only best-selling author Harper Bliss can craft.Sydney is full of coffeeshops, but none as exciting, and full of drama, as the Pink Bean..

Remember Me, Synthetica


K. Aten - 2020
    Alexandra Turing is a roboticist whose intellect is unrivaled in the field of artificial intelligence. While science has always come easy, Alexandra struggles to understand emotional cues and responses. Driven by the legacy of her late great-uncle, she dedicates her life to the Synthetica project at her father's company, Organic Advancement Solutions (OAS).​Her life is rebooted when she wakes from a coma, six months after being struck by a car. Traumatic brain injury altered Alex's senses, her memory, and her personality. Despite the changes, she feels reborn as she navigates her way back into her old life. Part of her new journey includes dating the alluring Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, Emily St. John.Emily is enamored with the hyper-intelligent scientist, but there are things about Alex and OAS that don't add up. With Emily's prompting, Alex undergoes testing that leaves her with more questions than answers. What she discovers changes more than her life, it will change the world around her.

Gay Pride and Prejudice


Kate Christie - 2012
    Netherfield Hall has just been let to a single man of large fortune. But while it is true that such a man is generally considered to be in want of a wife, it is equally true that not all men desire female companionship, just as not every woman dreams of being married.Like other variations on Jane Austen's classic romance novel, Gay Pride & Prejudice poses a question: What if some among Austen's characters preferred the company of their own sex? In this queer revision of the classic original, Kate Christie offers an alternate version of love, friendship, and marriage for Elizabeth Bennet, Mr. Darcy, and others among their circle of friends. But even as the path to love veers from the straight and narrow, the destination remains much the same.If you have an open mind, dear reader, you may discover the book Jane Austen would likely never have approved, but which, nonetheless, affords a window onto gay and lesbian life in early nineteenth century England.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post


Emily M. Danforth - 2012
    Relief they'll never know that, hours earlier, she had been kissing a girl.But that relief doesn't last, and Cam is soon forced to move in with her conservative aunt Ruth and her well-intentioned but hopelessly old-fashioned grandmother. She knows that from this point on, her life will forever be different. Survival in Miles City, Montana, means blending in and leaving well enough alone (as her grandmother might say), and Cam becomes an expert at both.Then Coley Taylor moves to town. Beautiful, pickup-driving Coley is a perfect cowgirl with the perfect boyfriend to match. She and Cam forge an unexpected and intense friendship--one that seems to leave room for something more to emerge. But just as that starts to seem like a real possibility, ultrareligious Aunt Ruth takes drastic action to "fix" her niece, bringing Cam face-to-face with the cost of denying her true self--even if she's not exactly sure who that is.The Miseducation of Cameron Post is a stunning and unforgettable literary debut about discovering who you are and finding the courage to live life according to your own rules.

Rat Bohemia


Sarah Schulman - 1995
    Navigating the currents of the city are three friends: Rita Mae, a rat exterminator; Killer, a career plant-waterer; and David, an HIV-positive writer. Together, they seek new ways to be truthful and honest about their lives as others around them avert their glances. Alternately elegiac, defiant, and funny, Rat Bohemia is an expansive novel about how one can cope with loss and heal the wounds of the past by reinventing oneself in the city.Rat Bohemia won the Ferro-Grumley Award for Lesbian Fiction and was named one of the “100 Best Gay and Lesbian Novels of All Time” by the Publishing Triangle.