Upon the distant shore prowls an ancient sea god kept captive by a generations-old spell, a spell that Meriel alone must protect.Meriel's life has been lonely and unchanging--until the arrival of Nor. Nor's shape is that of a woman, but her heart belongs to the sea. Even though Nor is also held captive by Meriel's spell, she shows kindness to the isolated witch. Nor sparks a passion within Meriel, defying every law that binds them both.This award-winning short story ("The Witch Sea" won first place in the "Kissed by Venus" Fresh Voices short story competition) is a dark fantasy tale of love, loss and the price of freedom.

    ...Literally. Struggling to make ends meet, Sugar has invested everything into Cake Dreams by Sugar with hopes of becoming the most sought-after designer of event desserts in Seattle. Working - and baking - night and day to perfect her business and her chances of winning a large bake-off prize, she's not prepared for disaster. Within a few hours she's got no place to live and no business, not even a bag of flour or a measuring cup. Support arrives in the form of an empathetic Victim's Advocate social worker named Tree, a hunky, charming firefighter named Charlie, and a dynamic, ambitious local TV producer. She's Emily, and the first of the trio to make a serious play for Sugar in the morning, Sugar in the evening, and Sugar in the afternoon. After years as a single lesbian who couldn't get a heartbeat from any woman anywhere, all this attention has Sugar's head spinning. Forced to live with her ailing, homophobic grandmother, she has no idea how she'll get to know any of these new women in her life. They all offer changed circumstances, stability and a hope at forever. But which one will she choose? FINDING MS. RIGHT IS NO PIECE OF CAKE.

    The very last interruption she expects comes in the form of the most beautiful breasts she has ever seen. These belong to an incredibly hot woman, who is standing in front of her, stripping to music.

    What if you don't follow the rules and it radically alters the course of your life?What if you get kicked out of the house and lose all your friends and everyone you love? Will you turn the corner into a world filled with unusual friends and create a new kind of family or self-destruct?BOOKLIST *STARRED* REVIEW

    . .Twenty-three-year-old artist Andrea Morales escaped her Midwestern Catholic childhood—and the closet—to create a home and life for herself within the thriving but insular lesbian underground of Portland, Oregon. But one drunken night, reeling from a bad breakup and a friend’s betrayal, she recklessly crosses enemy lines and hooks up with a man. To her utter shock, Andrea soon discovers she’s pregnant—and despite the concerns of her astonished circle of gay friends, she decides to have the baby.A decade later, when her precocious daughter Lucia starts asking questions about the father she’s never known, Andrea is forced to reconcile the past she hoped to leave behind with the life she’s worked so hard to build.A thoroughly modern and original anti-romantic comedy, Stray City is an unabashedly entertaining literary debut about the families we’re born into and the families we choose, about finding yourself by breaking the rules, and making bad decisions for all the right reasons.

    But when she orders French fries from the flirtatious Hot Dog on a Stick Chick, she gets more than deep-fried potatoes. Abbey tries to ignore the weird, happy feeling in her gut, but that proves to be as impossible as avoiding the very insistent (and—rumor has it—very lesbian) players on Gila High’s girls’ basketball team. They want freakishly long-legged Abbey to try out, and Abbey doesn’t hate the idea. But Kate made Abbey pinky swear to avoid basketball and to keep away from the you-know-who girls on the team.Sometimes promises can’t be kept. And sometimes girls in uniform are impossible to resist.

    In 2010, at seventeen, Lucy Sutcliffe began an online friendship with Kaelyn, a young veterinary student from Michigan. Within months, they began a long distance relationship, finally meeting in the summer of 2011. Lucy's video montage of their first week spent together in Saint Kitts, which she posted to the couple's YouTube channel, was the first in a series of films documenting their long-distance relationship. Funny, tender and candid, the films attracted them a vast online following. Now, for the first time, Lucy's writing about the incredible personal journey she's been on; from never quite wanting the fairy-tale of Prince Charming to realising she was gay at the age of 14, through three years of self-denial to finally coming out to friends and family, to meeting her American girlfriend Kaelyn.

    Along with her brother's wife and children, she finds herself held hostage for ransom aboard the privateer Fleetwind. Sorri Westmere, captain of the Fleetwind, sets out to tame the fiery redhead, but she is soon captivated herself.Striving to teach Rani that being a hostage isn't as bad as it might sound, Sorri learns that perhaps her choice of careers is an impediment to personal happiness.Privateer is a fantasy novel of 140,000 words and is the first in the Five Kingdoms series.

    Jorie Andolini is one of those people and has spent a lot of time envisioning that moment. She bumps into a woman at a grocery store, the woman drops a can of peas, Jorie picks it up, their eyes meet, and two souls connect. But it’s actually a wasted trip to New York, a snowstorm, and a canceled flight home that puts her in the path of Lena Vaughn.Lena has found fault in every man she’s ever dated. Her dream of finding a husband is dwindling with every year that passes. Despite what her friends say, Lena doesn’t believe she has a fear of commitment, she simply hasn’t found a man she wanted to commit to. It comes as a surprise that in fact it is a woman who stirs those desires. For Lena, it’s not really a matter of sexuality, it’s just Jorie.Travel the road to happiness with Jorie and Lena. Two crazy old women, meddling friends, and cattitude are just some sights you’ll see along the way.

    At fifteen, Jamie Maxwell’s main goals in life are to make the United States youth national soccer pool, move past the Incident-That-Shall-Not-Be- Named, and maybe—someday—kiss a girl. When she meets Emma Blakeley at a tournament in Southern California, something about the older girl draws her in. And it isn’t that she expects to ever get the chance to kiss Emma. Really. When Jamie invites her to sneak out on the last night of Surf Cup, Emma doesn’t go because she likes Jamie’s smile. She goes because, as the daughter of a surgeon and a nurse, she has a genetic predisposition to try to heal people. And Jamie, she can tell, is wounded.Neither girl suspects that this first last night together will form the basis of a bond that will last across years and miles, from SoCal soccer fields and New York hotels to Portuguese beaches and the streets of Vancouver. But that’s how most friendships begin, isn’t it? With a smile and a nod and the courage to ask, “Do you maybe, possibly, want to come with me?”

    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.

    This time...it's worse.Ice begins when a boy is kidnapped from a London park and Detective Inspectors Alex Blake and Maggie Campbell are brought together to work on the case. While their goal is the same, their work ethics are not. Intelligent, perceptive and at times disobedient, Alex Blake does what she believes it takes to do her job. Maggie Campbell has a slightly different approach. She believes that rule books were written for a reason. Unexpectedly, their dynamics mesh, but when her feelings for Alex become stronger than she wants to admit, Maggie provokes the worst in Alex to ensure that they will never be partners again. Three years later, fate brings them together again. Their assignment is simple, but a plane crash gets in their way. Now, in the middle of a blizzard, they have to try to survive...and fight the feelings that refuse to die.

    She accepted that she would spend her life alone when she chose to live her life disguised as a man. After working in a brothel for three years, Nora Macauley has lost all illusions about love. She no longer hopes for a man who will sweep her off her feet and take her away to begin a new, respectable life. But now they find themselves married and on the way to Oregon in a covered wagon, with two thousand miles ahead of them.

    Poppy Jenkins makes everyone smile. She’s the heart of Wells, a beautiful village in mid-Wales, leaving light and laughter in her wake. She has a doting family, an errant dog and a little sister with a nose for mischief. But she’s the only gay in the village and it’s a long time since she kissed a girl: the chance of romance in sleepy Wells is rarer than a barking sheep. If she doesn’t think too hard, life is cosy, until a smart sports car barrels into town with the last woman Poppy wants to see behind the wheel. Beautiful Rosalyn Thorn was once Poppy’s high school BFF even though she was trouble. Then one day she abandoned Wells and Poppy without explanation. Now the highflier is back and bound to cause fresh havoc in the village and with Poppy’s heart; folk are not happy. Wells needs to wake up to the 21st century and Rosalyn can help, but old prejudices die hard. If they can be friends it could be the chance to make everyone’s happy ever after. Couldn’t it?

     Coming out is hard. The struggle is ongoing, a daily part of life whether to a new friend, a co-worker, or most importantly yourself. Pray the Gay Away chronicles Michael and Zach as they face awkward sexual encounters, drug-fueled escapades, coming out to each other, and their biggest foe - Mom, a woman who not only gave birth to what she calls one regret - but two. The memoir hilariously and poignantly explores what it’s like growing up as gay, Iraqi twins in modern America. Pray the Gay Away was inspired the night Mom snuck into their bedroom and force fed them “holy grapes,” determined to “de-gay” them. The Zakar Twins are new voices speaking out against generations, particularly within the Iraqi culture, who look down on being gay. This book is not only for the LBGTQ community, but for young adults, looking to achieve normalcy.