Book picks similar to
Return to Isis by Jean Stewart
lesbian
lgbt
sci-fi
fantasy
Thornfruit
Felicia Davin - 2018
Alizhan can’t see faces, but she can read minds. Her mysterious ability leaves her unable to touch or be touched without excruciating pain. Rescued from abandonment and raised by the wealthy and beautiful Iriyat ha-Varensi, Alizhan has grown up in isolation, using her gift to steal secrets from Iriyat’s rivals, the ruling class of Laalvur. But Iriyat keeps secrets of her own. When Alizhan discovers that she isn’t the only one of her kind, and that a deadly plot threatens everyone like her, there’s only one person she can trust. Ev liked having a secret. None of the other girls in the village had a thief-friend. Evreyet Umarsad—“Ev” to her parents and her one friend—longs to be the kind of hero she reads about in books. But the rest of the world feels impossibly far away from her life on a farm outside Laalvur. Ev will never lay eyes on the underground city of Adappyr, the stars of the Nightward Coast, or the venomous medusas that glow in the dark depths of the sea. At least on her weekly trip to the market, Ev gets to see her thief—the strange young woman who slips by her cart and playfully steals a handful of thornfruit. When the thief needs help, Ev doesn’t hesitate. Together, they uncover a conspiracy that draws them all over Laalvur and beyond. Thornfruit is the first book in The Gardener's Hand trilogy.
The Pyramid Waltz
Barbara Ann Wright - 2012
But when the festival lights go down and the palace slumbers, Katya chases traitors to the crown and protects the kingdom’s greatest secret: the royal Umbriels are part Fiend. When Katya thwarts an attempt to expose the king’s monstrous side, she uncovers a plot to let the Fiends out to play.Starbride has no interest in being a courtier. Ignoring her mother’s order to snare an influential spouse, she comes to court only to study law. But a flirtatious rake of a princess proves hard to resist, and Starbride is pulled into a world of secrets that leaves little room for honesty or love, a world neither woman may survive.
Deal with the Devil
Kit Rocha - 2020
His squad of supersoldiers went AWOL to avoid slaughtering innocents, and now he's fighting to survive.They're on a deadly collision course, and the passion that flares between them only makes it more dangerous. They could burn down the world, destroying each other in the process...Or they could do the impossible: team up.This is the first book in a near-future science fiction series with elements of romance.
The Girl in the Road
Monica Byrne - 2014
She doesn't know how or why, but she must flee India and return to Ethiopia, the place of her birth. Having long heard about The Trail -- an energy-harvesting bridge that spans the Arabian Sea -- she embarks on foot on this forbidden bridge, with its own subculture and rules. What awaits her in Ethiopia is unclear; she's hoping the journey will illuminate it for her.Mariama, a girl from a different time, is on a quest of her own. After witnessing her mother's rape, she joins up with a caravan of strangers heading across Saharan Africa. She meets Yemaya, a beautiful and enigmatic woman who becomes her protector and confidante. Yemaya tells Mariama of Ethiopia, where revolution is brewing and life will be better. Mariama hopes against hope that it offers much more than Yemaya ever promised.As one heads east and the other west, Meena and Mariama's fates will entwine in ways that are profoundly moving and shocking to the core. Vividly imagined and artfully told, written with stunning clarity and deep emotion, The Girl in the Road is a true tour de force.
A Different Light
Elizabeth A. Lynn - 1978
Jimson Alleca can live another 20 years with drugs and a peaceful lifestyle -- if he stays in space-normal. But he's willing to risk it all to make the jump into the Hype, the shimmering "not space" for one year among the stars.
All at Sea
Cheyenne Blue - 2020
Snubbed - yet again - by her unsupportive parents, she runs out on their posh party and takes refuge on a deserted yacht. Waking the next day with the world’s worst hangover, Stevie finds herself far from shore.As if being trapped on the yacht in only her party dress isn’t bad enough, Stevie’s frantic that she’ll miss the first day of her new job as a nurse. She has so much to prove in her career—to herself and her parents.The yacht’s cute but unimpressed captain, Kaz Malone—an eco-warrior who hits the seas with Sinbad the cat—is on a mission: There’s a nuclear-waste-dumping tanker to harass.Kaz is as single-minded as she is stubborn and she’s not about to turn around for some stowaway with a new job. Hell, no. Saving the planet comes first.But perhaps there’s more than one way to a destination? An enthralling, opposites-attract lesbian romance about what lies beneath.Themes: Australia · lesbian eco-warrior · sailing
27 Hours
Tristina Wright - 2017
Jude Welton has two dreams: for humans to stop killing monsters, and for his strange abilities to vanish.But in no reality should a boy raised to love monsters fall for a boy raised to kill them.Nyx Llorca keeps two secrets: the moon speaks to her, and she’s in love with Dahlia, her best friend. Braeden Tennant wants two things: to get out from his mother's shadow, and to unlearn Epsilon's darkest secret.They’ll both have to commit treason to find the truth.During one twenty-seven-hour night, if they can’t stop the war between the colonies and the monsters from becoming a war of extinction, the things they wish for will never come true, and the things they fear will be all that’s left.27 Hours is a sweeping, thrilling story featuring a stellar cast of queer teenagers battling to save their homes and possibly every human on Sahara as the clock ticks down to zero.
Joyride Vol. 1
Jackson Lanzing - 2016
Uma Akkolyte is a girl who shoots first, leaps before she looks, and is desperate for any means to leave her planet behind. And so she does. When Uma jacks an alien spaceship and punches through the stratosphere she sets forth on an adventure with an unlikely crew who are totally not ready for all the good, bad, and weird the universe will throw at them.From writers Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly (Batman and Robin Eternal, Grayson) and artist Marcus To (Nightwing, New Avengers), Joyride is a rebellious love letter to the sci-fi genre, exploring what happens when nothing stands between a group of teens and their freedom amongst the stars.Collecting: Joyride 1-4
Battle of the Linguist Mages
Scotto Moore - 2022
Her prowess in the game makes her an ideal candidate to learn the secrets of "power morphemes"—unnaturally dense units of meaning that warp perception when skilfully pronounced.But Isobel’s reputation makes her the target of a strange resistance movement led by spellcasting anarchists, who may be the only thing stopping the cabal from toppling California over the edge of a terrible transformation, with forty million lives at stake.Time is short for Isobel to level up and choose a side—because the cabal has attracted much bigger and weirder enemies than the anarchist resistance, emerging from dark and vicious dimensions of reality and heading straight for planet Earth!
Amberlough
Lara Elena Donnelly - 2017
The radical One State Party—nicknamed the Ospies—is gaining popular support to unite Gedda's four municipal governments under an ironclad, socially conservative vision.Not everyone agrees with the Ospies' philosophy, including master spy Cyril DePaul and his lover Aristide Makricosta, smuggler and emcee at the popular Bumble Bee Cabaret. When Cyril's cover is blown on a mission, however, he must become a turncoat in exchange for his life. Returning to Amberlough under the Ospies' watchful eye, Cyril enters a complex game of deception. One of his concerns is safeguarding Aristide, who refuses to let anyone—the crooked city police or the homophobic Ospies—dictate his life.Enter streetwise Cordelia Lehane, top dancer at the Bee and Aristide’s runner, who could be the key to Cyril’s plans—if she can be trusted. As the twinkling lights of nightclub marquees yield to the rising flames of a fascist revolution, these three will struggle to survive using whatever means—and people—necessary. Including each other.
The Gumshoe, the Witch, and the Virtual Corpse
Keith Hartman - 1999
During your stay, depending on your tastes, you can cruise gay midtown (I hear that the Inquisition Health Club has introduced manacles and chains to the aerobics class) or check out the Reverend-Senator Stonewall's headquarters at Freedom Plaza (watch out for the Christian Militia guarding it, though) or attend a sky-clad Wiccan sabbat (by invitation only). Avoid the courthouse, where the Cherokee have turned out in full war-paint to renegotiate a nineteenth-century land deal. Also stay away from all cemeteries, at least until the police find out why someone is disinterring and crucifying corpses. As you can tell, this is a lively novel, full of intricate plotting and engaging off-beat characters. Among the latter are a gay detective, a Wiccan family, an ambitious televangelist with an eye on the White House, an artist whose medium is flesh and blood, a Cherokee drag queen--and then there's poor Benji, who would just like to make it to his fifteenth birthday, assuming the MIBS don't get him first or his Baptist parents don't ground him for life because his new girlfriend is a witch.
A Matter of Oaths
Helen S. Wright - 1988
For no crime on his record, the young officer had been identity wiped, and his innumerable, now-forgotten enemies were still tracking him across the galaxy.
Dread Nation
Justina Ireland - 2018
In this new nation, safety for all depends on the work of a few, and laws like the Native and Negro Reeducation Act require certain children attend combat schools to learn to put down the dead. But there are also opportunities—and Jane is studying to become an Attendant, trained in both weaponry and etiquette to protect the well-to-do. It’s a chance for a better life for Negro girls like Jane. After all, not even being the daughter of a wealthy white Southern woman could save her from society’s expectations.But that’s not a life Jane wants. Almost finished with her education at Miss Preston’s School of Combat in Baltimore, Jane is set on returning to her Kentucky home and doesn’t pay much mind to the politics of the eastern cities, with their talk of returning America to the glory of its days before the dead rose. But when families around Baltimore County begin to go missing, Jane is caught in the middle of a conspiracy, one that finds her in a desperate fight for her life against some powerful enemies. And the restless dead, it would seem, are the least of her problems.
Rabbit & Robot
Andrew Smith - 2018
Meanwhile, Earth, in the midst of thirty simultaneous wars, burns to ash beneath them. And as the robots on board become increasingly insane and cannibalistic, and the Earth becomes a toxic wasteland, the boys have to wonder if they’ll be stranded alone in space forever.
Star Pirate
Mia Archer - 2018
Meet new and interesting aliens. Seduce them, then rob them blind. Not bad work for an earth girl abducted from a sci-fi con and thrown into a life of piracy in the civilized galaxies! Flynn had it all. A modified freighter to travel the galaxies. A loyal crew who’d die for her, and a plan to rob the most powerful royal family those galaxies have ever known! The one thing she wasn’t counting on? Falling head over heels for the princess she’s trying to rob! Seleya had it all. She was the princess heiress. First in line for the Selevas throne. And she hated living life in a gilded cage where she was forever a slave to her mother’s whims. A one night dalliance with a strange noble from an outlying galaxy seemed like just the thing to infuriate the queen. What she wasn’t counting on was that noble being one of the most notorious pirates in the civilized galaxies on a mission to seduce and steal! The stuck up princess and the smart-mouthed pirate are about to lead each other on a chase across the stars in the biggest heist the civilized galaxies have ever seen. The only question is whether they’ll kill each other or kiss each other when the dust settles! Star Pirate is an 85,000 word lesbian science fiction romance that’s a little Han Solo, a little Spaceballs, and a guaranteed geeky good time!