Jae's Blog, page 18
December 2, 2021
Character isn’t “Hollywood beautiful” (Sapphic Reading Challenge #47)
This week’s Sapphic Reading Challenge features sapphic books with a main character who isn’t Hollywood beautiful–they don’t fit the beauty standards that Hollywood imposes on women, where only characters who are thin, toned, young, and have perfect hair are portrayed as beautiful.
For this reading list, I’ve picked books with protagonists who don’t fit those standards. They might have love handles, like Denny, the main character in Wrong Number, Right Woman, or consider their nose to big, yet they will always be beautiful in the eyes of their love interest.
Send in your reading lists!
Just a reminder: Once you wrap up your reading for the year and complete your reading lists for the Sapphic Reading Challenge, please send me your list so I can enter you into the drawing for the giveaway on December 31!
15 sapphic books with a main character who isn’t “Hollywood beautiful”
I put together a list of 15 sapphic books featuring main characters who don’t fit Hollywood’s beauty standards.
Wrong Number, Right Woman by Jae
A single text message can change everything!
Flirting has never been Denny’s strong suit, but so what if she’s too shy to ask women out? She’s content with her simple life, working as a cashier and helping her sister raise her niece.
But then she gets a wrong-number text message from a stranger named Eliza, asking her of all people for dating advice!
Eliza is Denny’s total opposite: witty, outgoing—and straight. Despite their differences, the accidental text sparks an unlikely friendship. Soon, Eliza—self-proclaimed queen of disastrous first dates—would rather banter back and forth with Denny than to keep trying her luck at online dating.
When they meet in person, there’s an instant connection. But what Eliza is feeling can’t be attraction, right? It doesn’t mean a thing that she’s starting to wish the guys she dates would be more like Denny. Or does it?
Can the wrong number lead to the right woman after all?
Available at:
Everything Between Us by Harper Bliss
Pink Bean barista Josephine Greenwood is utterly starstruck when she meets her feminist idol, Caitlin James.
When Caitlin starts showing a more than friendly interest in her, Josephine can’t believe Caitlin’s advances are genuine. Her issues with her body and how people see her, threaten to cut off any prospect of romance before it has the chance to blossom.
Will Caitlin be able to break down the walls Josephine has built around herself and open her mind to the possibility of romance?
Available at:
Hooked on You by Jenn Matthews
Anna’s life’s in a bit of a rut. As a teacher with two great kids and a boyfriend, she seems to have it all. Except…she’s bored as hell. Perhaps a new hobby’s in order? Something…crafty? Divorced mother and veteran Ollie has been through the wars, emotionally and physically. To relax, she runs a quirky crochet class in her London craft shop. She can’t help but notice the attractive, feisty new student. A shame Anna’s straight as an arrow.
But somewhere between the chain stitches, doubles and trebles, Ollie and Anna form a powerful connection they never expected.
Available at:
Second in Command by VK Powell
Lieutenant Jazz Perry finds a young girl wandering the downtown streets alone late at night. As the child becomes attached to her, Jazz is reminded of her own experiences in foster care and takes a personal interest even when she knows she should maintain professional distance.
Social worker Emory Blake is good at her job helping children in challenging situations. She believes in the system and knows it works if you let it. When Jazz starts interfering in the case and bypassing the rules, Emory is torn between her responsibilities and an unwelcome attraction she can’t deny.
When on the job responsibilities collide with desires of the heart, becoming personally involved is the only choice.
Available at:
The Shape of You by Georgia Beers
Personal trainer Rebecca McCall is furious when her coworker is sidelined and she’s forced to teach the “Be Your Best Bride” class. As if being a size two for your wedding photos is all exercise is good for. Could the whole thing get more vain and sexist? The class is full of preening, giggling Bridezillas, but one woman stands out. The one who confesses she’s only there because her fiancée signed her up. Who does that to someone they care about? And why can’t Rebecca take her eyes off her?
Spencer Thompson is a second-guesser. After making the worst mistake of her life, she’s happy to abdicate responsibility and let other people make her decisions for her. She’s always felt a little bit too soft, a little bit too curvy in all the wrong places. Her fiancée apparently agrees because she signed Spencer up for a class at the gym. Terrified by the online profile of the instructor, the epitome of Zero Body Fat, Spencer is relieved to find someone new, and realistic looking, leading the class. Except the instructor seems to hate her and Spencer has no idea why.
When a perfectly innocent post workout smoothie leads to an earth shattering kiss, Rebecca wonders if she’s been wrong all along, and Spencer is challenged to make another decision that could change her life forever.
Available at:
Fishwives by Sally Bellerose
Eighty-nine-year-old Regina and ninety-year-old Jackie met in 1955, an era when women were rounded up and jailed simply for dancing together or dressing like a man. On a cold winter day they manage to get themselves out of the house with the help of TJ and Ramon, two young men from their working-class neighborhood in Western Massachusetts. They tie their long-dead Christmas tree to the top of their car and, using a screwdriver in place of a broken gearshift, slowly make the drive to the dump.
This is also the day when everything changes.
During the course of their adventure, memories are triggered. Their history as a passionate and devoted, but troubled couple at the intersection of historic cultural and political change unfolds via scenes from the past—including their first meeting during a police raid on a bar and Regina’s epiphany that she could truly love another woman. In the early years, they often live apart as they flee landlords who discover their secret. As their journey leads them to seek jobs and a sustainable life, they are sometimes separated—but always find their way back to each other.
Available at:
44 Hours by Donna Jay
The universe is definitely trying to punish Jennifer Andrews. Her new colleague, Ellaine Baxter, is not only an annoying, ambitious hard-ass, she’s the woman who broke Jennifer’s best friend’s heart. Now, for added torture, they have to drive to a teambuilding conference together.
On their three-hour journey, things go from tense to catastrophic after an unscheduled stop in New Zealand’s wildly beautiful Kaimanawa Forest. Getting lost is just the start of the nightmare.
For forty-four exhausting hours, the warring pair must find a way to work together. They might even survive…if they don’t kill each other first.
Available at:
Invisible, as Music by Caren J. Werlinger
Henrietta Cochran has spent nearly forty years dealing with the effects of the polio she contracted in 1945. Her braces and crutches restrict her, define her, but they also give her independence. Almost. She hates that she has become increasingly reliant on a series of live-in companions to help her. For some reason, the companions never seem to want to stay very long. So Henrietta retreats further and further into her art, where her physical limitations don’t matter.
Into her life sails Meryn Fleming: out, outspoken, and fiercely political. She’s young, enthusiastically diving into her first job as a history professor at the local college. When she falls, almost literally, into Henrietta’s path, she seems like a godsend.
Little does Henrietta know that this young woman is about to upend her carefully structured existence. Ryn challenges everything, barging right through the walls Henrietta has built to keep others at a distance.
To Ryn, Henrietta is an enigma: prickly and easily insulted at the slightest suggestion that she can’t do things for herself; a brilliant artist capable of producing the most beautiful paintings; and sometimes, when Henrietta doesn’t realize she’s letting her guard down, a tender and sensitive woman.
With Meryn’s youthful optimism pitted against Henrietta’s jaded acceptance of the world as it is, life will never be the same for either of them.
Available at:
Riverfinger Women by Elena Dykewomon
Written when she was just twenty-four years old, Riverfinger Women is Elana Dykewomon’s beloved, intimate coming-of-age novel about Inez and her circle of friends—the Riverfinger women—struggling to find themselves amid the changing social mores of the Civil Rights era. Inez has known she was a lesbian since childhood, and while moving between Highland, her boarding school, and her friends’ Greenwich Village apartment, she experiences longing and disappointment, friendship and romance, and her first real relationship, with schoolmate Abby. Along with their experimental and outgoing friend Peggy, Inez and Abby graduate from Highland and move into adulthood, confronting the prejudices of the larger world as they go.
Told in an engrossing interweaving narrative, Riverfinger Women explores the characters’ brushes with sexual violence, prostitution, drugs, love, and, ultimately, happiness amid the thrills and challenges of lesbian life during the second women’s liberation movement.
Available at:
Lost and Found by Elle Hyden
Two lost souls are on a collision course. One searching for a life partner while the other mourns the loss of hers.
Selina is at a crossroads. No job, no home to call her own, and no partner. She has to turn her life around, but in which direction? Returning to her Native American roots, she seeks mystical aid from the spirit world, to find the life she hungers for.
Rea has been able to find a measure of solace after her wife’s death but longs for the crack in her heart to heal. Sighting a falling star, she sends her wish out into the universe, where it’s heard by the most unlikely allies.
Selina and Rea’s paths crossed many times in the past, but they’d never connected. Now they are being inescapably drawn together by fate, desire, and a touch of the mystical. Will love and trust prevail over loss and fear, so they can have their shot at being found forever?
Available at:
Run in the Blood by A.E. Ross
Raised on the high seas as an avaricious corsair, Aela Crane has turned her back on her roots, but she can’t seem to stem the ancient magic that courses through her. Del is a soft-spoken soldier who seems to know more about Aela’s inherited powers than she does. Brynne’s the crofter’s daughter who’s reluctantly learning to become a princess, if she could just get a certain swashbuckling someone off her mind.
Originally hired on (okay, blackmailed) by the King of the island nation of Thandepar, Aela’s light monster extermination gig takes a fast turn into kidnapping-for-profit. Del tries to ignore family issues by searching for a long lost friend, and ends up getting both for the price of one. Brynne’s prepared to give up her heart for her country until her own personal heartbreaker shows up with the most terrible timing.
As the three of them become more entwined in their own political predicaments, and each other’s lives, they may discover that the legacies their parents have left them aren’t as solid as they seemed. In fact, they may just slip through their fingers, leaving all three fumbling to forge their own future, before the kingdom comes crashing down around them.
Available at:
Love Burns by Adrian J. Smith
Kimberly Thompson—or Kim Burns, her stage name—is a celebrity chef whose career is taking off. As a single mom who has a penchant for being a bit of a bitch, she goes through nannies like the flavor of the month until Becca Kline is sent to her by Kiddie Academy.
Becca—known as ‘the fixer’—is often sent to homes considered to be troublemakers. In charge of caring for four-year-old Michael, she is determined to make this job her last before student teaching in the fall and finishing up her degree, which she has been working on for the better part of a decade.
Neither Kimberly nor Becca are prepared for the changes headed toward them, and they both have to learn the hard way that love doesn’t wait or discriminate.
Available at:
Clio Rising by Paula Martinac
In 1983, Livvie Bliss leaves western North Carolina for New York City, armed with a degree in English and a small cushion of cash from a favorite aunt. Her goal is to launch a career in publishing, but more important, to live openly as a lesbian. A rough start makes Livvie think she should give up and head home, but then a new friend helps her land a job at a literary agency run by the formidable Bea Winston.
Bea hopes Livvie’s Southern charm and “boyish” good looks will help her bond with one of the agency’s most illustrious clients—the cranky Modernist writer Clio Hartt, a closeted octogenarian lesbian of the Paris Lost Generation who has rarely left her Greenwich Village apartment in four decades. When Livvie becomes Clio’s gofer and companion, the plan looks like it’s working: The two connect around their shared Carolina heritage, and their rapport gives Clio support and inspiration to think about publishing again.
But something isn’t quite right with Clio’s writing. And as Livvie learns more about Clio’s relationship with playwright Flora Haynes, uncomfortable parallels emerge between Livvie’s own circle of friends and the drama-filled world of expatriate artists in the 1920s. In Clio’s final days, the writer shares a secret that could upend Livvie’s life—and the literary establishment.
Available at:
Murder and Gold by Ann Aptaker
New York City, 1954.
Two women are found murdered. One is Lorraine Quinn, Cantor Gold’s most recent one-night-stand. The other is political power broker and aspiring New York socialite Eve Garraway, a regular client of Cantor’s stolen art trade.
Police nemesis, Lieutenant Norm Huber, wants to pin the murders on Cantor, send her to prison, and put her in the electric chair. He’ll get evidence on her any way he can. Into this cauldron of danger and death come two other women, each with ties to Cantor’s past. One hates her until passion intervenes; the other harbors darkly hidden feelings.
Set during the earliest stirrings of the Homosexual Rights Movement, Cantor begins to question her own tenuous identity, and the trade-offs she must make to get what she wants.
Cantor Gold, dapper butch art thief and smuggler for whom survival is everything, must now grapple with two fronts: surviving the shifting sands of the criminal underworld, and navigating the changing tides of society.
Available at:
Leave a comment
Leave a comment and let us know which book you’ll be reading for the “character isn’t Hollywood beautiful” category!
The 2022 Reading Challenge: Sapphic Book Bingo
There will be a year-long reading challenge in 2022 too! I’m working on putting together a Sapphic Book Bingo. Make sure you subscribe to my blog to get the Sapphic Book Bingo posts sent to your in-box starting on January 1!
The post Character isn’t “Hollywood beautiful” (Sapphic Reading Challenge #47) appeared first on Jae.
November 26, 2021
Sapphic books set in the 20th century (Sapphic Reading Challenge #46)
This week’s Sapphic Reading Challenge features sapphic books set in the 20th century.
We had an earlier post covering sapphic historical fiction, but this category is more specific: It includes only books that take place between the years 1901-2000.
In my recommended books list below, I picked one or several books set in each decade of the 20th century, starting with the 1900s and wrapping up with the 1990s.
Read up on the rules of the Sapphic Reading Challenge
If you are only discovering the Sapphic Reading Challenge now, the good news is you can still join! It’s a year-long challenge, so it runs until December 31, 2021. Read up on the rules of the Sapphic Reading Challenge and download your PDF so you can keep track of the books you read this year.
15 sapphic books set in the 20th century
I put together a list of 15 sapphic books that are set in the 20th century.
Shaken to the Core by Jae (1900s)
Kate Winthrop, the only child of a wealthy shipping magnate, has the course of her life charted for her by her parents. She’s expected to marry well and produce a successor to the Winthrop empire. But Kate has a very different path in mind. Her true passion lies with photography—and with women.
Alone in the city after losing her brother, Sicilian immigrant Giuliana Russo starts working for the Winthrops as a maid. Despite their different social status, Kate and Giuliana become friends, much to the dismay of Kate’s parents.
As the connection between the two women grows, a devastating earthquake hits San Francisco and ignites fires that sweep through the city for three days and nights.
Will the disaster shatter their tentative feelings for each other, or will they find the courage to save each other’s lives—and their hearts?
Join Kate and Giuliana on a journey of danger and discovery in the action-packed historical romance Shaken to the Core, set against the backdrop of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
Available at:
While My Heart Beats by Erin McKenzie (1910s)
Johanna Lennox, a working-class Scottish nurse, and Ellie Winthrop, a Voluntary Aid Detachment recruit from a wealthy British family, are thrown together in a general hospital in France during World War I.
When Johanna’s mother dies unexpectedly, Ellie is there to offer the comfort she desperately needs, and their feelings for each other grow into an attraction neither can deny. Johanna is convinced they can’t have a future together and throws herself into her work to escape her pain. She volunteers to serve closer to the front and almost loses her life before being sent home.
When Ellie refuses to give up hope and goes to find her, will Johanna be able to trust that a love born amidst the horrors of the Great War can survive in a post-war world?
Available at:
Masquerade by Anne Shade (1920s)
Harlem, New York, 1925 is a mecca of cultural and creative freedom, where masquerade drag balls are all the rage and the music, dancing, and loose prohibition laws unite people from all walks of life.
Dinah Hampton came to Harlem for better opportunities for her family but ends up working as a nightclub chorus girl to help make ends meet. Among the nightlife and danger, she finds love in the most unexpected way.
When a scandal rocks Celine Montre’s family and sends them fleeing from New Orleans to Harlem, the gorgeous Dinah Hampton helps her to discover that there’s more to life, and love, than she ever thought possible.
When a notorious gangster sets her sights on seducing Celine, Dinah and Celine are forced to risk their hearts, and lives, for love.
Available at:
The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo (1920s)
Jordan Baker grows up in the most rarefied circles of 1920s American society―she has money, education, a killer golf handicap, and invitations to some of the most exclusive parties of the Jazz Age. She’s also queer and Asian, a Vietnamese adoptee treated as an exotic attraction by her peers, while the most important doors remain closed to her.
But the world is full of wonders: infernal pacts and dazzling illusions, lost ghosts and elemental mysteries. In all paper is fire, and Jordan can burn the cut paper heart out of a man. She just has to learn how.
Available at:
All I See Is You by Lily Hammond (1930s)
The heart has its own language.
Summer in January. Birds with unknown songs. People with strange accents.
In 1932, Eliza Sparrow walks straight off the boat from England to New Zealand into a nightmare. Unable to speak or write, and with the death of her mother during the voyage, Eliza is alone, without any means, without any hope. Unless she meets someone willing to help her.
Maxine and Ruth have opened their home to destitute women, sheltering those they can from the worst of the Depression. When they find Eliza, they are determined to aid and protect her.
Never though, did they think they’d have to protect Eliza from their dear friend Clemency. Like them, Clemency loves other women, but unlike the happily ‘married’ Maxine and Ruth, Clemency is lonely, unable to find a lover she really connects with. When she meets Eliza, no one thinks it could be serious and Clemency would simply be taking advantage of the speechless Eliza, her attraction never possibly other than a passing desire.
No one took into account however, that the heart has its own language, and it’s one that Eliza can speak perfectly well.
Available at:
The Seduction of Moxie by Colette Moody (1930s)
When Hollywood-bound actress Violet London meets speakeasy singer Moxie Valette, her trip takes an unexpected turn toward love.
New York City, 1931: When wry Broadway actress Violet London and her hard-drinking cohorts venture into a speakeasy the night before she is to board a train for Hollywood, she is floored by sassy blond singer Moxie Valette. As Violet introduces Moxie to an assortment of bootleg liquor, cross-dressers, and sex shows, she vows to find a way to see her again.
Moxie is fascinated by Violet in a thrilling and unfamiliar way, and the ensuing evening of bon mots, shameless flirtation, and illicit revelry is unlike anything she has ever experienced.
From Manhattan to Los Angeles, both women’s lives are turned upside-down by separation, unscrupulous motion picture studio executives, self-serving agents, eccentric celebrities, and the collection of hedonistic reprobates that are their closest friends.
Available at:
Berlin Hungers by Justine Saracen (1940s)
In the years after World War II, the alliance that saved Europe is breaking down as the Soviet Union and the West compete for control of Germany. When Russia blockades Berlin, everyone, it seems, is hungry: Russian soldiers for German women, the Soviet leaders for territory, the Berliners themselves for food. But the hardest hunger of all is between a Royal Air Force woman and the wife of a Luftwaffe pilot who helped set fire to half of London.
Available at:
Alice & Jean by Lily Hammond (1940s)
Every lover has her story, and every town has its secrets.
It’s 1946 in New Zealand, and Alice Holden has fallen for the woman delivering her milk every morning. Jean has a way about her, a swagger, honey-sweet and low voice, and a wink with an easy smile that lights up Alice’s world, stirring her in ways she’s never known before, and Alice with blinders on, wants to choose this feeling over all else.
Jean has been head over heels in love with the sparky and adorable single mother since the first time she saw her. She’s even drawn to Alice’s two fatherless children, and family life has never looked so good. Jean’s deep desire to have more than a life spent looking in from the outside seems more than she should hope for, and now Alice has her tossing the dice for it against all odds.
But there are two people in town who believe they have the prior claim to Alice, in duty and affection, and they’ll do almost anything to get what they want.
Alice and Jean have discovered that each is what the other has always longed for, each other’s missing link. Now they need to find a way to be together, despite the obstacles.
Available at:
The World Unseen by Shamim Sarif (1950s)
In 1950’s South Africa, a free-spirited café owner falls for a young wife and mother. Their unexpected attraction pushes them to question the cruel rules of a world that divides white from black and women from men, but a world that might just allow an unexpected love to survive.
Available at:
The Ada Decades by Paula Martinac (starts in the 1950s)
Over seven decades, Librarian, Ada Shook, is witness to the racism laced through her Southern city; the paradox of religion as both comfort and torment; and the survival networks created by gay people. Eleven interconnected stories cover the sweep of one woman’s personal history as she reaches her own form of Southern womanhood—compassionate, resilient, principled, lesbian.
Available at:
The Beginning of Everything by Cara Malone (1960s)
A closeted secretary in 1960s Chicago. A fearless activist in San Francisco. A love so powerful it can change the world.
Betty wants what everyone wants – happiness, security, and a quiet, good life. She’s determined to make that happen on her own, despite her mother’s fears that she’ll turn into a spinster if she doesn’t settle down and find a husband soon.
Joan wants an important life – one where she gets to love who she wants to love, do what she enjoys, and will leave the world a better place when she’s gone. But what she is – a lesbian in San Francisco at the beginning of the LGBT+ civil rights movement – is criminal.
When Betty comes to California for vacation, it’s love at first sight across a crowded bar in the Tenderloin district. She’s mesmerized by Joan and drawn to the homophile movement, but does she have the courage to come out for love and join the fight for equality?
Available at:
The Girls Club by Sally Bellerose (1970s)
The Girls Club is the coming-of-age story of a young, white, working-class woman. Set in the 1970s, the story revolves around Cora Rose as she copes with her emerging sexuality, an illness her sisters refer to as “the dreaded bowel disease,” and the conflicts created by the growing disparity between her desires and her Catholic upbringing.
Part one deals with the three sisters’ adolescent relationship to each other and their Catholic working-class world. Cora Rose’s distress at being caught in an embrace with her best friend Stella leads her to sleep with the first boy who shows interest. She is married with a child at age eighteen.
Part two shows how the sisters help and hinder each other in their struggles to take control and responsibility over their lives.
Part three reveals Cora Rose’s physical challenges, including an ostomy, that further complicate her feelings about her sexuality and increase her need for her sisters’ support. She becomes involved with a woman she meets at a bar called The Girls Club. Marie and Renee play out their own struggles as Cora Rose leaves her husband, fights to keep her child, and overcomes religious and social prejudices that threaten her personal integrity.
Available at:
Cast Me Gently by Caren J. Werlinger (1980s)
Teresa Benedetto and Ellie Ryan couldn’t be more different, at least on the surface.
Teresa still lives at home. As much as she loves her boisterous Italian family, she feels trapped by them and their plans for her life. Their love is suffocating her.
Ellie has been on her own for years, working hard to save up enough to live her dream of escaping from Pittsburgh to travel the world. Except leaving isn’t that simple when she knows her brother is out on the streets of the city somewhere, back from Vietnam, but not home.
When Teresa and Ellie meet and fall in love, their worlds clash. Ellie would love to be part of Teresa’s family, but they both know that will never happen. Sooner or later, Teresa will have to choose between the two halves of her heart—Ellie or her family.
Set in 1980, the beginning of the Reagan era and the decline of Pittsburgh’s steel empire, Cast Me Gently is a classic lesbian romance.
Available at:
The Love Factor by Quinn Ivins (1990s)
Molly Cook is almost thirty, with dismal career prospects, and has given up on saving the world. It might be the nineties, and everything’s shoulder pads, Doc Martens, and The X-Files, but people won’t budge on gay rights. Molly decides to give a PhD a whirl but finds herself more interested in campus politics…and her strict and sexy statistics professor.
Professor Carmen Vaughn is stuck in small-town Maryland with smarmy blowhards for colleagues and ungrateful students who can’t handle her high standards. She has no intention of coming out, least of all to Molly, a troublemaking grad student who can’t stop picking fights with the conservative faculty.
But when Molly discovers evidence implicating a homophobic colleague in a scandal, Carmen can’t ignore it—even if the subject hits too close to home. As the two women work together to make their case, they grow closer than Carmen ever imagined. But she absolutely refuses to get involved with a student.
The thing is, as the chemistry builds between them, Molly isn’t sure she wants to be a grad student anymore…if she ever did.
Available at:
Paper is White by Hilary Zaid (1990s)
When oral historian Ellen Margolis and her girlfriend decide to get married, Ellen realizes that she can’t go through with a wedding until she tells her grandmother. There’s only one problem: her grandmother is dead.
As the two young women beat their own early path toward marriage equality, Ellen’s longing to plumb that voluminous silence draws her into a clandestine entanglement with a wily Holocaust survivor—a woman with more to hide than tell—and a secret search for buried history.
If there is to be a wedding Ellen must decide: How much do you need to share to be true to the one you love? Set in ebullient, 1990s Dot-com era San Francisco, Paper is White is a novel about the gravitational pull of the past and the words we must find to make ourselves whole.
Available at:
Leave a comment
Leave a comment and let us know which book you’ll be reading for the “sapphic books set in the 20th century” category!
The 2022 Reading Challenge: Sapphic Book Bingo
There will be a year-long reading challenge in 2022 too! I’m working on putting together a Sapphic Book Bingo. Make sure you subscribe to my blog to get the Sapphic Book Bingo posts sent to your in-box starting on January 1!
The post Sapphic books set in the 20th century (Sapphic Reading Challenge #46) appeared first on Jae.
November 19, 2021
Sapphic books with a trans character (Book Unicorn #11)
For this month’s Book Unicorn category, read a book with a main character who’s a sapphic trans woman.
Generally, the term “trans” (short for “transgender”) can be used in two different ways:
Trans or transgender is an umbrella term that encompasses a variety of gender identities. It includes everyone whose gender identity differs from the sex they were assigned at birth. Many nonbinary people consider themselves trans since they don’t (exclusively) identify as male or female.Trans or transgender can also be used for a more specific identity under that umbrella. Trans women are women who were assigned male at birth. They may or may not have surgery and/or take hormones to bring their bodies into alignment with their gender identity.
Since books about nonbinary characters were already covered in an earlier post, pick a book with a protagonist who fits the latter definition of trans for this category of the Sapphic Reading Challenge: a book featuring a trans woman.
While there are many books with trans supporting characters such as my novel Wrong Number, Right Woman, make sure you choose a book in which the trans character is the main character. Ideally, pick a book written by a trans woman.
What is the Book Unicorn?
A quick reminder: The Book Unicorn is a bonus level that you can pick either by itself or as an additional goal. The goal is to read at least 10 sapphic books from a list of 12 harder-to-find genres and themes, e.g., books about time travel or books about older characters. You can download a PDF with all 12 categories here.
10 sapphic books with a trans protagonist
Here are the 10 books I picked for the “sapphic books with a trans character” category:
Fake It by Lily Seabrooke
To spark interest in Avery’s restaurant, and to revitalize Holly’s image, a fake relationship is the answer to both their problems.
And the start of a pressing new problem: falling in love.
Avery Lindt finally opened her dream restaurant—and there’s no customers. She’s staying optimistic, though: she’s confident she can fake it till she makes it, roll with the punches, and find a way to save her luxury restaurant, Paramour.
But it gets harder when she gets restaurant mogul and star chef Mike Wallace angry, and finds herself on the other end of a campaign to shut down Paramour.
Celebrity chef Holly Mason’s show is in trouble: people are bored with her routine of helping struggling restaurants. Worse, her ex-boyfriend Mike Wallace is making backdoor deals trying to steal the starring role.
Luckily, Holly’s agent Tay has a solution: ditch her show plans for the season, throw their lot in with luxury restaurant Paramour against Mike Wallace’s racketeering operation of a restaurant partnership. The cherry on top? A fake relationship between Holly and Avery to stir up drama.
It would already be a mess if Holly and Avery weren’t already struggling to hold back their attraction for one another. Despite their promise not to date, the lines between acting and reality get awfully blurry sometimes.
Available at:
Knowing Her by Raquel De Leon
Teresa Barrera has finally moved back home after running away when she was fifteen. Things are better for her than they were then. She’s out as a trans lesbian, has a good job, and is in the promising start of a new relationship. To top it all off, she’s back in contact with her sister, who has completely accepted her. She’s not ready to tell the rest of her family, but that’s okay.
Lian Hui, a private investigator who had searched for Teresa for years, is surprised when they become friends. Not much of a people person and prone to bouts of anxiety, she finds herself drawn to Teresa’s kindness and patience. When Teresa’s relationship turns sour, Lian steps up as the friend Teresa needs most.
As Teresa and Lian become closer, they find the line between friendship and romance can be a blurry, confusing thing.
Available at:
Being Emily by Rachel Gold
They say that whoever you are it’s okay, you were born that way. Those words don’t comfort Emily, because she was born Christopher and her insides know that her outsides are all wrong.
They say that it gets better, be who you are and it’ll be fine. For Emily, telling her parents who she really is means a therapist who insists Christopher is normal and Emily is sick. Telling her girlfriend means lectures about how God doesn’t make that kind of mistake.
Emily desperately wants high school in her small Minnesota town to get better. She wants to be the woman she knows is inside, but it’s not until a substitute therapist and a girl named Natalie come into her life that she believes she has a chance of actually Being Emily.
A story for anyone who has ever felt that the inside and outside don’t match and no one else will understand…
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The Seep by Chana Porter
Trina FastHorse Goldberg-Oneka is a fifty-year-old trans woman whose life is irreversibly altered in the wake of a gentle—but nonetheless world-changing—invasion by an alien entity called The Seep. Through The Seep, everything is connected. Capitalism falls, hierarchies and barriers are broken down; if something can be imagined, it is possible.
Trina and her wife, Deeba, live blissfully under The Seep’s utopian influence—until Deeba begins to imagine what it might be like to be reborn as a baby, which will give her the chance at an even better life. Using Seeptech to make this dream a reality, Deeba moves on to a new existence, leaving Trina devastated.
Heartbroken and deep into an alcoholic binge, Trina follows a lost boy she encounters, embarking on an unexpected quest. In her attempt to save him from The Seep, she will confront not only one of its most avid devotees, but the terrifying void that Deeba has left behind. A strange new elegy of love and loss, The Seep explores grief, alienation, and the ache of moving on.
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Tengoku by Rae D. Magdon
Aozora Kaede is on the run. Forced to flee from home after a violent disagreement with her aunt and cousin, she is a wanderer with a spirit wolf as her only companion. Homura Imari lives in the lap of luxury. As the daughter of a daimyo, her duties are clear: stay home and learn how to rule the province she will inherit.
But when fate brings the two of them together, Imari notices Kaede’s connection to the spirits and decides to ask for a favor. She needs someone to guide her to Hongshan, a faraway mountain where a magical blacksmith is rumored to live—a blacksmith who can hopefully replace her missing left hand.
Together, they must travel across the treacherous Jade Sea, protect themselves from Kaede’s vengeful family, and perhaps even save the Empire from destruction.
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Cinder Ella by S.T. Lynn
Ella is transgender. She’s known since she was young; being a woman just fit better. She was happier in skirts than trousers, but that was before her stepmother moved in. Eleanor can’t stand her, and after Ella’s father passes she’s forced to revert to Cole, a lump of a son. She cooks, she cleans, and she tolerates being called the wrong name for the sake of a roof over her head. Where else can she go?
An opportunity to attend the royal ball transforms Ella’s life. For the first time, strangers see a woman when she walks down the stairs. While Princess Lizabetta invited Cole to the ball, she doesn’t blink an eye when Cinderella is the one who shows. The princess is elegant, bold, and everything Ella never knew she wanted. For a moment she glimpses a world that can accept her, and she holds on tight.
She should have known it wouldn’t last. Dumped by her wicked stepmother on the farthest edge of the kingdom, Ella must find a way to let go of the princess and the beautiful life they shared for an hour. She’ll never find her way back. But it’s hard to forget the greatest night of her life when every rose she plants is a reminder.
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Dreadnought by April Daniels
Danny Tozer has a problem: she just inherited the powers of Dreadnought, the world’s greatest superhero. Until Dreadnought fell out of the sky and died right in front of her, Danny was trying to keep people from finding out she’s transgender. But before he expired, Dreadnought passed his mantle to her, and those secondhand superpowers transformed Danny’s body into what she’s always thought it should be. Now there’s no hiding that she’s a girl.
It should be the happiest time of her life, but Danny’s first weeks finally living in a body that fits her are more difficult and complicated than she could have imagined. Between her father’s dangerous obsession with “curing” her girlhood, her best friend suddenly acting like he’s entitled to date her, and her fellow superheroes arguing over her place in their ranks, Danny feels like she’s in over her head.
She doesn’t have time to adjust. Dreadnought’s murderer—a cyborg named Utopia—still haunts the streets of New Port City, threatening destruction. If Danny can’t sort through the confusion of coming out, master her powers, and stop Utopia in time, humanity faces extinction.
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Staying True by Suzie Carr
Free-spirited masseuse Ruby Clark treasures her independence, refusing to allow anyone to encroach on her sense of control. She succeeds at remaining unaffected until she meets Nadia Chase, a self-assured, sexy new client who sets Ruby’s heart in motion.
The two develop a connection that drips with chemistry. As Ruby struggles to maintain her autonomy amidst the fervent attraction, Nadia reveals a secret that threatens to derail both their professional relationship and their blossoming love.
Seeking guidance and support from Shawna, their transgender friend who struggles with her own issues of self-worth, and Ruby’s grampa, a wise storyteller who raised Ruby in the aftermath of a childhood tragedy, the unlikely foursome embarks on a quest to learn the meaning of love, letting go, and staying true.
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The Weight of Living by M.A. Hinkle
When she arrives in Cherrywood Grove for a working vacation, shy photographer Trisha Ivy expects to kick back and relax, enjoying her last summer of freedom before turning into a real adult with a mortgage and a nine-to-five. After all, her real life is back in Chicago with her best friend Bella, not a sleepy small town. But Trisha keeps running into beautiful, confident Gabi Gonzalez, a caterer working all the same weddings…and she’s the daughter of Trisha’s favorite local TV star. Trisha can’t resist getting to know her. After all, she’s only in town for the summer, and Gabi is straight. What harm could it do?
Gabi Gonzalez has spent most of her life trying to escape Cherrywood Grove and find something bigger and better. During an internship in Milwaukee, she thought she’d finally found it. But after her father’s sudden death, she returns home and tries to squeeze back into the same childhood roles: kid sister, cool aunt, tireless worker. She’s just resigned herself to going through the motions when she meets Trisha, someone who finally sees Gabi for her own self instead of putting her in a box. Can Gabi open up to Trisha about what she really wants before Trisha leaves town for good?
Available at:
Stage Dreams by Melanie Gillman
In this rollicking queer western adventure, acclaimed cartoonist Melanie Gillman (Stonewall Award Honor Book As the Crow Flies) puts readers in the saddle alongside Flor and Grace, a Latinx outlaw and a trans runaway, as they team up to thwart a Confederate plot in the New Mexico Territory.
When Flor—also known as the notorious Ghost Hawk—robs the stagecoach that Grace has used to escape her Georgia home, the first thing on her mind is ransom. But when the two get to talking about Flor’s plan to crash a Confederate gala and steal some crucial documents, Grace convinces Flor to let her join the heist.
Available at:
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Leave a comment and let us know which book you’ll be reading for the “sapphic books with a trans character” category?
The 2022 Reading Challenge: Sapphic Book Bingo
There will be a year-long reading challenge in 2022 too! I’m working on putting together a Sapphic Book Bingo with two different bingo cards for you to choose from. Make sure you subscribe to my blog to get the Sapphic Book Bingo posts sent to your in-box starting on January 1!
The post Sapphic books with a trans character (Book Unicorn #11) appeared first on Jae.
November 18, 2021
New-to-you author of WLW & lesbian books (Sapphic Reading Challenge #45)
It’s time for another special category of the Sapphic Reading Challenge. For this one, I’d like you to read a novel by an author of sapphic fiction who’s completely new to you. You might have come across their name several times or seen their books recommended, but it has to be an author from whom you’ve never read anything before.
Here are a few suggestions on where to discover a new author of WLW & lesbian books: If you’d like to give a newer author a chance, take a look at my list of WLW & Lesbian Fiction Newbie Authors to Watch Out for. It includes authors who had published only one or two sapphic books at the time I put together this list, so chances are some of these authors might be new to you.Take a look at the Golden Crown Literary Award finalists in the debut novel category for 2020 and 2021.Check out my Facebook group for readers, where we’ll talk about suggestions for the new-to-you-author category this week.
Leave a comment
Leave a comment and let us know what book you’ll be reading for the “new-to-you author” category!
Subscribe to this blog to get future reading challenge posts
I’m in the process of putting together another big reading challenge for 2022. This one will be a Sapphic Book Bingo. To make sure you don’t miss it, make sure you subscribe to my blog.
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The post New-to-you author of WLW & lesbian books (Sapphic Reading Challenge #45) appeared first on Jae.
November 11, 2021
Character is a business owner (Sapphic Reading Challenge #44)
This week’s Sapphic Reading Challenge features sapphic books in which the main character is a business owner.
The character can be the CEO of a big, successful company, or she can own a small business without any employees.
The business she owns could be a major part of the plot, so we see the character at work a lot, or it can play only a minor role.
Read up on the rules of the Sapphic Reading Challenge
If you are only discovering the Sapphic Reading Challenge now, the good news is you can still join! It’s a year-long challenge, so it runs until December 31, 2021. Read up on the rules of the Sapphic Reading Challenge and download your PDF so you can keep track of the books you read this year.
15 sapphic books with a main character who is a business owner
I put together a list of 15 sapphic books that feature characters who are business owners. I hope you find some new favorites!
Not the Marrying Kind by Jae
Small-town florist Ashley Gaines loves her little flower shop and putting together the perfect bouquets for weddings and other happy occasions. Her own love life, however, is far from blossoming. Ash has decided that staying in the closet is safer than risking her heart again.
Local bakery owner Sasha Peterson hasn’t had much luck mixing it up with romance either. Besides, she’s too busy whipping up delicious treats to have time for a relationship.
But when their town’s first lesbian wedding forces them to work together, Ashley and Sasha discover they have more in common than they imagined.
During food fights, cake tastings, and slow waltzes, they begin to see each other in a new light. Soon Ashley has to admit to herself that Sasha is tempting more than just her sweet tooth.
Available at:
The Last Days of Autumn by Donna K Ford
Autumn Landers, a beautiful, successful business owner, thought she had life figured out until one little word, cancer, changed everything. When Caroline Cross answers Autumn’s ad for a live-in caregiver, Autumn is instantly drawn to her. But Caroline has suffered her own losses and isn’t about to risk her heart. Autumn knows the odds are against her. But for the first time in her life she is going to do things her way. The first thing on her bucket list? Falling in love.
Autumn and Caroline question the fairness of life, the cruelty of loss, and what it means to love as they navigate the complicated minefield of relationships, grief, and life-altering illness.
Available at:
Finding Family by Jamey Moody
Erin Evans is hoping the fourth time’s the charm in her quest to have a baby. At forty-one she’s out of time and doing this on her own. She knows the odds of finding her happily-ever-after are slim, but she wants to be a mother more than anything.
A semi-flirtatious conversation with a tall, fit, dark-haired woman in the waiting room of her fertility clinic gives Erin pause, which she attributes to hormones until she comes out of her procedure to find the alluring Desi Shaw still waiting.
What Desi does next surprises them both…
Available at:
Love’s Divine by Ava Freeman
On a whim, Genesis Malone decides to book a solo trip to the island of Barbados. A sunny beach vacation sounds like the perfect way to renew her spirit after a heartbreaking divorce. The trip takes an unexpected turn when she meets a woman who could be just what she needs to move on. That is if her heart, and the universe, will let her.
Zuri Baker seems to have it all but what she really wants is someone to share her life with. When she meets Genesis, she is intrigued by her quiet nature and longs to get to know her better. Too bad her on-again off-again girlfriend isn’t willing to let her go quite so easily.
When they return to their regular lives and find themselves in the midst of exes, not quite exes, and work drama, will they be able to hold onto what matters most; each other?
Available at:
Rhapsody by KG MacGregor
After eleven years on the anchor desk at TV4, Ashley Giraud is one of the most beloved figures in Tampa Bay. That’s how she likes her love—distant and impersonal. Outwardly sociable with her coworkers and viewers, she can’t wait to get back to her gated home and garden.
When her longtime stylist goes out of business, she follows a colleague’s recommendation to Rhapsody, a small salon that serves as a hub for an eclectic group of lesbian friends. Despite Ashley’s efforts to remain aloof, she soon trades her solitude for roller skates, swing dancing and the emotional ups and downs of new friends.
Never before has she felt so contented in the company of other women. Even so, there’s always the whisper from the past. Would any of them, especially Julia Whitethorn, the charismatic, appealing owner of Rhapsody, care about her if they knew the terrible secret she’s kept for twenty years?
Available at:
Unbridled by D. Jackson Leigh
After a hard-fought battle to take control of her personal and professional life, mystery writer Lauren Everhart’s star is finally rising. She vows never to give up control of anything in her life until she meets her niece’s sexy horseback-riding instructor and signs up for her own private lessons, and more.
Riding top horses on the show jumping circuit and igniting a woman’s desire are simply games of power, and Marsh Langston is a master player. Only this time, the flame she fans with Lauren Everhart burns too hot and so quickly it threatens to sear through Marsh’s impenetrable control.
Available at:
Sleeping Dogs Lie by E.J. Cochrane
Matilda Smithwick (Maddie to her friends) is the proud owner of Little Guys Pet Care, a small but steadily growing dog walking company on Chicago’s North Side. Maddie loves her job and her life. Sure—she doesn’t have a girlfriend. But her best friend Dottie and her grandmother, Granny Doyle, are far more bothered about her lack of a girlfriend than Maddie is. As long as she has her rescued mutt Bart to keep her company, Maddie is perfectly happy.
That is until she returns from a walk to find one of her clients lying in a pool of his own blood. From there she finds herself thrown into a murder investigation filled with cantankerous purebred dog owners, her client’s bitter ex-wife, harassing phone calls and a police detective with no patience for Matilda’s helpful input. Throw in a lengthy hospital stay for Granny Doyle, a growing attraction for a possible murderer, and a depressed and ill-trained foster dog who refuses to eat, and Maddie’s easy, happy life seems to have fallen completely apart.
Fortunately she has Granny Doyle and Dottie to help her figure out how to save her business and her home…and to help keep her out of jail.
Available at:
Redemption’s Road by CJ Murphy
My name is Rebekka Deklan, and I’m one of the most unconventional pastors you’ll ever meet. I’m covered in tattoos and frequently can be found on a sawhorse at the local brewery with a 1956 Gibson on my knee. Grandpa taught me to play, and I use those gifts to share God’s grace at my non-denominational church, House of the Rising Son.
From the stage of an old opera house in Thomas West Virginia, this retired rock star turned spiritual leader, tries my best to imitate the pastoral style of my former lover, Naomi Layman. Years ago, when we were together, I broke her heart during a night I can’t remember.
Sometimes, it’s hard to teach lessons of grace when I can’t find a way to forgive myself for the biggest mistake of my life. Until then, my life is helping others find their path, while I wage war inside myself to balance the saint within the sinner as I make my way down Redemption’s Road.
Available at:
Following Chance by Baxter Brown
A whirlwind romance…and only the rest of their lives to get over it.
When Kate and Lauren meet in college it’s love at first sight. Unfortunately, the fact that school is almost over is the least of their problems. A roller coaster of emotions and uncertainty causes Kate to leave town, and a heartbroken Lauren, behind.
Fifteen years later, with her ten-year-old daughter in tow, Kate returns to Renfrew hoping to recapture some of the inner peace she found during her college days. She’s stunned when she discovers Lauren has purchased the local coffee shop and has her own ten-year-old surprise.
The two women attempt to avoid one another at all costs. But the incessant pull from the past—and the budding friendship between their daughters—has them on a collision course…to a second chance at love.
Available at:
The House of Agnes by Fiona Zedde
Agnes Noble is private, mysterious, and untouchable. She rules House of Agnes, the most exclusive escort agency on the East Coast, with a diamond fist. Crossing her is a mistake no one makes twice.
Investigative reporter Lola Osbourne is not afraid. She’s gunning for the House and its so-called queen. She’ll make sure no other innocent gets dragged into Agnes’s alluring web, to be used and discarded the way Lola’s sister was.
But her plan to get close to the elusive madam shatters the moment her eyes meet the Queen’s. One look and everything’s different. More complicated. Dangerous.
Now, Lola’s not just fighting to topple a queen from her throne, she’s also scrambling to escape their explosive collision with her suddenly vulnerable heart intact.
Available at:
No Regrets by Joy Argento
Jodi Michaels has life figured out: she owns her business, has a relationship and two great kids. She just hadn’t counted on someone like Beth Bellamy coming along to shake up her world. When Beth makes Jodi wonder if really loving someone and having someone love you in return is what life is all about, her perfect picture begins to crumble.
Beth has never considered herself anything but straight, and all her focus has been on raising her daughter. When she meets Jodi, she can’t deny her attraction. Now all her ideas about what she should do and who she should love are turned inside out.
Jodi and Beth have a love worth fighting for, but when illness threatens Jodi’s life, the battle might be beyond their control. Beth vows to stand by Jodi’s side, but the biggest problem is, Jodi won’t let her.
Available at:
Hopeless Romantic by Georgia Beers
Teddi Baker used to believe in happily ever after. It’s why she became a wedding planner and worked so hard to make her business, Hopeless Romantic, successful. But after the catastrophe of her own marriage, Teddi loses her heart, her hope, and half of her assets. She is officially jaded, but she needs every job she can get to make ends meet. When bride-to-be Kelly Scott walks in, Teddi is ready. Until she comes face-to-face with Kelly’s sister: Leah Scott, her ex-wife’s divorce attorney. The one who helped ruin her life.
Leah Scott wears her heart on her sleeve, an odd characteristic for a divorce attorney. When her father left her stay-at-home mom with barely enough money to survive, she recognized her calling. But Leah still believes in happiness and no one deserves it more than her sister. If only Kelly didn’t insist on using a wedding planner who hates Leah’s guts…despite the unexpected and wholly unwanted chemistry between them.
Available at:
Amy’s Rest by S.R. Silcox
Can renovating a run-down cottage mend a broken heart?
Georgia Ballantyne is anxious to move on after an exhausting two-year-long battle over her former partner’s estate. Once she completes the renovations on the quaint country cottage, she’ll finally be free to find her way forward.
If she could only stop being distracted by her builder, Zoe.
Will what’s supposed to be a simple business transaction lead to an unexpected outcome for the broken-hearted homeowner, the pedantic builder, and the cottage that brought them together?
Available at:
Twice Shy by Aurora Rey
Sometimes, you get a second chance at love. Sometimes, you hook up with your ex and remember why you broke up in the first place.
Amanda Russo knows better than to give her failed marriage another try, but the brief fling reminds her there’s more to life than work and parenting. When the architect she hires to remodel her bakery turns out to be as charming as she is talented, Amanda finds herself ready to take a chance on new love. The only problem? Her ex-wife didn’t get the memo.
For Quinn Sullivan, the sting of divorce is still fresh. Getting set up by pretty much everyone she knows hasn’t inspired her to give love another shot. Meeting Amanda does. Sure, they’re working together, but that’s not a deal breaker. Amanda’s ex might be another story.
Available at:
Entangled by Melissa Brayden
Josephine Wilder’s torrid love affair is with Tangle Valley Vineyard, her family’s legacy. She’s grown up dreaming between the vines. She’s always had secret ideas about how to make the place shine, so when it passes to her, Joey vows to make Tangle Valley everything she knows it can be. Her biggest obstacle? That overly commercial hotel going up, and the uppity manager trying to kill the vineyard’s rustic charm.
Becca Crawford loves to unwind with a good glass of wine. An astute businesswoman who has climbed the hospitality ladder, she’s the perfect person to head up Elite Resorts’ newest property, The Jade Hotel, and give tourists all the luxury they desire. As a bonus, The Jade is not far from the cutest vineyard with the best pinot she’s ever tasted. If only the captivating owner would get on board with her plan and stop badmouthing the hotel to everyone in town.
Is it possible that a nice glass of red could help Becca and Joey see each other in a new and alluring light?
Available at:
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Leave a comment and let us know which book you’ll be reading for the “character is a business owner” category!
The post Character is a business owner (Sapphic Reading Challenge #44) appeared first on Jae.
November 4, 2021
Sapphic book that is part of a series (Sapphic Reading Challenge #43)
For this week’s Sapphic Reading Challenge, pick a sapphic book that is part of a series.
It doesn’t have to be book 1; it can be a book later in the series.
Some series have the same main characters in each book, while others are more loosely connected and feature a different protagonist in every book.
Most series will have the same author, but there are a few series that are a collaboration of different authors, e.g., Ylva Publishing’s Superheroine Collection or The Village Romance Series by T.B. Markinson, Clare Lydon & Harper Bliss.
Some books aren’t even marketed as a series, even though they clearly are, e.g., my novels Just for Show and The Roommate Arrangement. When in doubt, contact the author and ask if the books are considered a series or not.
Read up on the rules of the Sapphic Reading Challenge
If you are only discovering the Sapphic Reading Challenge now, the good news is you can still join! It’s a year-long challenge, so it runs until December 31, 2021. Read up on the rules of the Sapphic Reading Challenge and download your PDF so you can keep track of the books you read this year.
15 sapphic books that are part of a series
I put together a list of 15 sapphic books that are part of a series. I hope you find some new favorites!
Conflict of Interest (Portland Police Bureau series) by Jae
Workaholic Detective Aiden Carlisle isn’t looking for love—and certainly not at the law enforcement seminar she reluctantly agreed to attend. But the first lecturer is not at all what she expected.
Psychologist Dawn Kinsley has just found her place in life. After a failed relationship with a police officer, she has sworn never to get involved with another cop again, but she feels a connection to Aiden from the very first moment.
Can Aiden keep from crossing the line when a brutal crime threatens to keep them apart before they’ve even gotten together?
Available at:
The Devil Inside (Cain Casey series) by Ali Vali
Brains, guts, and ruthless ambition should be enough to come out on top in any fight. Except when the battle is over love, all bets are off. Derby Cain Casey was groomed from birth to take the reins of the Casey family enterprises, which just happens to be one of the major crime organizations in New Orleans. Surviving by never turning away from a fight and knowing how to win at all costs, Cain is as careful with her heart as she is with her business – until she meets Emma Verde. The farm girl from Wisconsin puts a hit out on Cain’s heart and leads her down a dangerous road filled with great joy and devastating sorrow. The Devil Inside is the story of unexpected passion, a shattering betrayal, and the challenge of love put to the test.
Available at:
A Woman Lost (A Woman Lost series) by T.B. Markinson
Elizabeth “Lizzie” Petrie has it all. She’s rich, intelligent, and successful. None of this matters to her mom. Les-Bi-An. That’s all her mom sees.
Even though Lizzie insists her mom’s antagonism doesn’t bother her, Lizzie distances herself from her entire family. When her brother, Peter, calls her out of the blue to announce he’s getting married, Lizzie’s entire life changes drastically. Peter’s fiancée wants to bring the lesbian outcast back into the family. Will this desire cause Lizzie to lose everything dear to her?
Sarah, Lizzie’s girlfriend, is ecstatic about this change in Lizzie’s personal life. Sarah, the hopeless romantic, wants it all, including settling down with the fiercely independent Lizzie.
Can Lizzie be tamed? And can she survive her family and all of their secrets?
Available at:
No Strings Attached (Pink Bean series) by Harper Bliss
Micky Ferro has lived her entire life according to other people’s expectations.
She married a man, had two children, and became a dutiful stay-at-home mom in suburban Sydney. Until she realized that her picture-perfect life wasn’t making her happy.
On the first anniversary of her divorce, Micky decides it’s time for the next step in her journey and gets a job at her neighborhood coffeeshop, The Pink Bean.
Becoming a barista sparks a big change in Micky’s daily routine, but could loud-spoken American customer Robin do the same for her love life?
Available at:
Awakenings (I Found My Heart in San Francisco series) by Susan X. Meagher
Despite the questions of her roommates and the objections of her fiance, Jamie Evans persists in enrolling in a college course that seems an odd choice for a young woman of her background. What no one can know is that the course, The Psychology of the Lesbian Experience, will propel Jamie onto a journey of self-awareness and realization.
For the required fieldwork, Jamie is paired with the darkly beautiful Ryan O’Flaherty – a boldly “out” and sexually adventurous lesbian. This somewhat unlikely pair, slowly, and sometimes painfully, becomes aware that what they feel for each other is more than just friendship. The temptation to live life on her own terms is great, but so are the costs, as Jamie struggles to break out of her establishment-fashioned, pre-ordained mold. If she can summon the courage, however, she might find out that love, and life, have so much more to offer than she ever dreamed.
Available at:
The Caphenon (Chronicles of Alsea series) by Fletcher DeLancey
A split-second decision to save a civilization. Another decision to give it away.
Captain Ekatya Serrado has spent her career fighting the Voloth, who view less advanced civilizations as fuel for their empire. The choice between saving her ship or a world under attack is easy. The choices that come after are harder.
Lancer Andira Tal, the leader of Alsea, believes her people are alone in the universe until a gigantic spaceship crashes near her capital city. Now she is thrust into a struggle between two powerful forces, and her planet is the prize.
With a civilization and the galactic balance of power at risk, friendships and alliances may not hold against betrayal. Honor is easy when the stakes are low.
Available at:
When the Stars Sang (Little Sister Island series) by Caren J. Werlinger
Nearly twenty-five years ago, Kathleen Halloran’s brother drowned during the last summer they ever spent with their grandmother on a remote island off Maine’s coast. Like a siren’s call she can’t resist, Kathleen is pulled back to Little Sister Island. She leaves her job and her girlfriend, packs up her few belongings, and moves into her grandmother’s cottage.
Molly Cooper loves life on Little Sister, where the islanders take care of their own. Kathleen Halloran doesn’t belong here, and her arrival stirs up unwelcome memories for the islanders—including Molly’s brother. Molly is certain Kathleen will pack up at the first big blow. When she doesn’t, Molly begins to see maybe there’s more to Kathleen than she thought.
Sometimes, before you can move forward, you have to look back.
Available at:
A Taste of Sin (How Sweet It Is series) by Fiona Zedde
Desiree Nichols has never been afraid of doing things the hard way. In high school, she was an out lesbian who faced down any bullies who dared challenge her. She jumped in with both feet when she unexpectedly fell for a boy in college. And years later, she didn’t hesitate to race back home to Miami, freshly dumped, to help her family in the wake of her mother’s cancer diagnosis.
While supporting her mother through the cancer crisis, Dez gets a little help of her own from the girls she grew up with—a group of hedonistic honeys whose love for pleasure runs as deeply as hers. With them by her side, she buries her pain in wild Miami parties and even wilder women. The last thing she expects is to fall for her twin brother’s best friend, a woman her brother is already head over heels in love with.
Who says going back home has to be boring?
Available at:
Against Doctor’s Orders (Rivers Community series) by Radclyffe
There’d been a Rivers at the helm of Argyle Community Hospital for six generations, and Harper Rivers was set to take her father’s place whenever he decided to hang up his shingle. Unfortunately, the board of directors had other ideas—they accepted a buyout offer from a health care conglomerate with plans to close the hospital’s doors to the community that depended on it. And Presley Worth, a high-powered corporate financier, came to town to oversee the closure. Funny thing was, no one asked Harper, and she had no intentions of following anyone’s orders but her own—no matter how beautiful, smart, or commanding the new boss might be.
Available at:
Daughter of Mystery (Alpennia series) by Heather Rose Jones
Margerit Sovitre did not expect to inherit Baron Saveze’s fortunes—even less his bodyguard, a ruthlessly efficient swordswoman known only as Barbara. Wealth suddenly makes Margerit a highly eligible heiress and buys her the enmity of the new Baron. He had expected to inherit all, and now eyes her fortune with open envy.
Barbara proudly served as the old Baron’s duelist but she had expected his death to make her a free woman. Bitterness turns to determination when she finds herself the only force that stands between Margerit and the new Baron’s greed.
At first Margerit protests the need for Barbara’s services, but soon she cannot imagine sending Barbara away. And Barbara’s duty has become something far more hazardous to her heart than the point of a sword. But greater dangers loom than one man’s hatred—the Prince of Alpennia is ill. Deadly intrigue surrounds the succession and the rituals of divine power known as The Mysteries of the Saints.
Available at:
Northern Lights (The Compass series) by Lise Gold
Hannah Hudson decides to take a break from her busy restaurant and her life in London after her girlfriend, who she thought she’d spend her life with, suddenly walks out on her. She travels to a small boutique hotel in Kirkenes, Norway, hoping to spend a peaceful and relaxing Christmas by herself.
Kristine Miller loves adventure. A bank manager living in a small town in Louisiana, she’ll take every opportunity she can get to explore the world. Kristine travels to Norway hoping to see the famous northern lights but when she meets Hannah, a fellow guest at her hotel, she realizes soon enough that the northern lights might not be the most fascinating thing there.
Both women expected Christmas in Norway to be special but neither of them expected it to bring magic into their lives…
Available at:
Dear Taylor (Letters to War series) by Eija Jimenez
Taylor Phillips was working as a barista in NYC the day the twin towers came crashing down. Seeing her city in shambles, coated in ash, and American lives lost, she enlisted to fight the War on Terror.
Daniella Melo, a Rhode Island American History teacher, challenges her class to write letters to soldiers fighting overseas. With one name left and a student short, Daniella takes it upon herself to write letters to Private Taylor Phillips stationed in Afghanistan.
Over the next two years, the women exchange letters, sharing stories of their daily lives: Daniella trailing after her rambunctious daughter, Jackie, and dealing with overeager seniors planning prom while Taylor trudges through sand and dirt, driving her humvee in cold deserts. Their friendship continues to grow until it becomes something so much more than either woman expect.
Available at:
The Origins of Heartbreak (Lakeside Hospital series) by Cara Malone
Alex McHenry’s world stood still the day her father passed.
She was 19, studying to be an art teacher, and living happily like any other college student. Then abruptly, her life was reduced to funeral arrangements, depression, therapy, and the responsibility of caring for her mother, who retreated to the couch to take solace in the artificially cheerful hosts on the Home Shopping Network.
After more than a year of living frozen in the moment of her father’s death, Alex decides to take the first steps out of her grief. She enrolls in a paramedic program and during one of her first classes, she meets Megan Callahan, a pretty but aloof medical student who comes crashing into her life at the most unexpected moment.
It’s not long before Alex discovers that Megan has her own skeletons in the proverbial closet, and when a bacterial outbreak forces them together, they must both decide whether to confront their demons together, or continue to live in limbo.
Can Alex and Megan work together to mend their broken hearts? Or will they turn away in fear?
Available at:
Bury Me When I’m Dead (Charlie Mack Motown Mystery series) by Cheryl A. Head
Charlene “Charlie” Mack is a PI in Detroit. Born and raised in the city that America forgot, Charlie has built a highly respected private investigations firm through hard work, smart choices, and relentless ambition. Her team of investigators are highly skilled and trustworthy, but she secretly struggles with her sexual orientation and a mother with early-onset Alzheimer’s.
When Charlie and her crack team head to Birmingham, Alabama following the trail of a missing person, what should be a routine case turns into a complex chase for answers. Shady locals and a southern patriarch with dark secrets dating back forty years obscure their path. It seems like everyone has something to hide, including Charlie. When the case turns deadly with a double murder, and Charlie is attacked on a quiet neighborhood street, everything suddenly becomes personal. Who can Charlie trust, and will she ever solve the riddles of the Magic City?
Available at:
The Queen of Ieflaria (Tales of Inthya series) by Effie Calvin
Princess Esofi of Rhodia and Crown Prince Albion of Ieflaria have been betrothed since they were children but have never met. At age seventeen, Esofi’s journey to Ieflaria is not for the wedding she always expected but instead to offer condolences on the death of her would-be husband.
But Ieflaria is desperately in need of help from Rhodia for their dragon problem, so Esofi is offered a new betrothal to Prince Albion’s younger sister, the new Crown Princess Adale. But Adale has no plans of taking the throne, leaving Esofi with more to battle than fire-breathing beasts.
Available at:
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Leave a comment and let us know which book you’ll be reading for the “sapphic book that is part of a series” category!
The post Sapphic book that is part of a series (Sapphic Reading Challenge #43) appeared first on Jae.
November 3, 2021
Sapphic historical romance “A Place to Call Home” – Reading Companion
Starting today, my brand-new short story “A Place to Call Home” is available everywhere, including Amazon worldwide and Ylva!
It’s part of the Oregon series and picks up right after the end of my sapphic historical romance Backwards to Oregon, which is my most popular novel. Luke and Nora have survived the dangers along the Oregon Trail, but now they have to find a new home and grow as a couple.
At 13,000 words, it’s considered a novelette (longer than a short story, but shorter than a novella).
Since the reading companion for my novel Chemistry Lessons was so popular with readers, I put together one for “A Place to Call Home” too. I hope you enjoy looking at some pictures and videos while you read so you can imagine the setting and what Luke and Nora are doing as they build their home.
I sorted the pictures and descriptions below in the order in which they occur in the story.
Oregon City, Oregon – October 14, 1851
The story opens in Oregon City, which was the capital of the Oregon Territory in 1851 and its biggest city, with a population of 900.
Here’s a painting of Oregon City painted by John Mix Stanley in 1852. If you look closely, you can make out covered wagons on main street.
Here’s a link to another drawing of Oregon City from the 1850s. In both drawings, you can clearly see the bluff east of town, later named Singer Hill Bluff.
Luke and Nora had traveled from Missouri to Oregon in a covered wagon.
As you might remember from Backwards to Oregon, their wagon was drawn by several yokes of oxen. While Hollywood makes us think it was mostly horses pulling the wagons, pioneers usually preferred oxen to horses or mules because they were sturdier and more reliable.
The ox team wasn’t steered from on top of the wagon seat but by walking next to the wagon. Here’s a photograph that gives you a good idea.
Three-year-old Amy named the Hamiltons’ oxen after princesses from fairy tales.
Amy also named Measles, Luke’s Appaloosa mare. Measles might have looked a little like this:
Near Willow Island, Oregon – October 14, 1851
Once Luke and Nora leave Oregon City and travel along the Willamette River, they encounter a steamboat. All the early steamboats on the Willamette were sidewheelers like the Wallamet, painted in 1852. The first steamboat in Oregon was built the year before Luke and Nora arrived, and they quickly became the most important means of transportation in the Willamette Valley until about the 1900s.
The landscape looked very different in the 1850s from today, so I can’t share a photo to give you an idea of the scenery. The Willamette Valley was covered by a lush oak savanna–open grassland with clusters of mostly oaks.
There are efforts to restore and save the remains of oak savanna in the West and Midwest. Here’s a documentary about it.
Below is a photo of oak savanna in California. The grassland in Oregon in October would be greener, of course.
A flock of Canada geese points Luke and Nora in the right direction. You have probably seen them fly in a V-formation. They fly like that to take advantage of the updraft created by the wing tips of the bird in front of them, conserving energy.
Luke and Nora also hear an Osprey. If you wonder what they sound like, here’s a short video.
Hamilton Horse Ranch, Baker Prairie, Oregon – October 16, 1851
Once pioneers arrived in Oregon and picked a piece of land, the first thing they did was to build a log cabin. It was usually a crude structure that was only meant to last them for a year or two, until they could build a bigger, better home.
The pioneers removed the bark from the logs to avoid their home being infested by insects. The tool they used to debark trees is called a drawknife. This is what it looks like:
Here’s a video that shows you how a drawknife is used to peel the logs.
Hamilton Horse Ranch, Baker Prairie, Oregon – October 18, 1851
Once the logs are debarked and a foundation laid, Luke and Nora start to raise the walls of their cabin.
Here’s a video that shows you how pioneers built their log cabins. Instead of using nails, which were too expensive, they interlocked the ends of the logs with notches, which gives the cabin that characteristic look with extended log ends.
The notches they use in the video are V-notches, while Luke and Nora chose to use saddle notches–a round notch that fits exactly onto the log below like this:
In this video, you will see how the saddle notches are done.
The higher-up logs were moved into position with the help of ropes and forked sticks like in this video. The video also shows you how the gable ends and the rafters were built.
Hamilton Horse Ranch, Baker Prairie, Oregon – October 25, 1851
Once the walls and the roof were up, pioneers had to fill the spaces between the logs to keep the wind, rain, and cold out. First, the gaps were filled with rocks, pieces of wood, moss, and horsehair. This process was called chinking. Then it was daubed with a mixture of clay, mud, and some fibrous material such as straw…or cow or horse manure!
This video shows you the chinking and daubing process.
Hamilton Horse Ranch, Baker Prairie, Oregon – October 30, 1851
Once they were done, their log cabin might have looked like this (except Luke and Nora didn’t have the time to hew the logs to create flat surfaces; instead, they used round logs):
As you can see, most log cabins had the chimney on the outside to reduce the chance of the cabin catching fire.
The cabin door was kept secured by a latch and could be unlatched with a string that was threaded through a hole in the door. This blog explains how it’s done.
In the last scene, Luke makes a pair of stirrups for Amy. Apparently, stirrups for children really exist. Here’s what they look like today.
I hope you enjoyed “A Place to Call Home” and this reading companion! If you did, would you mind writing a short review and posting it where you bought the book? It doesn’t have to be long. A sentence or two would be great!
Thank you and happy reading!
Jae
The post Sapphic historical romance “A Place to Call Home” – Reading Companion appeared first on Jae.
October 28, 2021
Books set in a country you don’t live in (Sapphic Reading Challenge #42)
This week’s Sapphic Reading Challenge features sapphic books set in a country you don’t live in.
One of the great things about books is that they allow you to “visit” new places, even during a time when you might not be able to travel. For this category, choose a sapphic book that takes place in a country that you don’t currently live in. Depending on where you live, that could mean a book set in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, etc. Maybe pick a book set in a place that you’d like to visit or one that takes place in a country you don’t know much about.
If you can, choose a book that is written by a native of the country in which it’s set or at least someone who has spent considerable time there so you know it’s written in an authentic way.
Read up on the rules of the Sapphic Reading Challenge
If you are only discovering the Sapphic Reading Challenge now, the good news is you can still join! It’s a year-long challenge, so it runs until December 31, 2021. Read up on the rules of the Sapphic Reading Challenge and download your PDF so you can keep track of the books you read this year.
30 sapphic books set in a country you don’t live in
I put together a list of 30 sapphic books that are set in countries all over the world. The list is in alphabetical order, starting with Antarctica, Australia & Bangladesh and ending with Syria, Taiwan & Wales. I hope you find some new favorites!
The Vintage Book of International Lesbian Fiction by Naomi Holoch and Joan Nestle (Stories from 27 different countries)
We follow an Irish woman as she travels through time in search of a wronged maiden, and anticipate the harrowing fate of a married Indian woman who pursues pleasure with her female lover under the shadow of her husbands suspicious rage. We meet a teacher in Barcelona who locks herself up in her grandmother’s house with her young Columbian student, and witness a Slovenian woman’s rendezvous with her long dead lover.
This collection includes the work of familiar writers, as well as a number never before published in English. From the West Indies to Eastern Europe, the Middle East to Southeast Asia, Latin America to South Africa, the distinctive stories found in these pages evoke the diverse political, cultural, emotional, and sexual landscapes of each writer’s life. A groundbreaking volume from the Lamda Award-winning editors Naomi Holoch and Joan Nestle, who also wrote the introduction, this collections evokes the universal urgency of persistent desire.
Available at:
Rising from Ash by Jax Meyer (Antarctica)
Phoenix Murray has had enough. Enough of her incompetent boss. Enough of her addict father always asking for money. Enough of the struggle to survive. So when her aunt offers her a job as a cook at the South Pole, she jumps at it. Even when she’s asked to avoid casual sex to keep the peace in the tiny community.
Astrophysicist Ashley Bennett can’t wait for her year at the South Pole. Not only will it allow her to focus on her PhD research, it’s a key step in her plan to become a Mars colonist. Avoiding the complications of dating in a society that doesn’t understand asexuality is a bonus.
When Phoenix and Ash meet, they can’t help but push each other’s buttons. Phoenix doesn’t understand that her confident sexuality puts Ash on edge while Ash’s curt formality triggers Phoenix’s insecurities about her upbringing. But living at the bottom of the world means there’s nowhere to run, and as they find common ground, their differences aren’t nearly the hindrance they thought.
Rising From Ash is the first book in the Forged by Fire series, a slow burn contemporary lesbian romance that shows the power of intimacy to form a new life.
Available at:
A Heart This Big by Cheyenne Blue (Australia)
Australian country girl Nina Pellegrini runs a program for city kids to experience a taste of rural life at Banksia Farm. But when a child is hurt and a lawsuit threatens, Nina is determined to find the best legal assistance to help her save the farm.
Enter high-flying lawyer Leigh Willoughby, whose city world is far from the farm’s chaotic mix of kids and animals. She certainly doesn’t have time for small cases that don’t pay or farm visits that wreck her cool—and her clothes.
Still, the warm-hearted Nina and her challenging, twelve-year-old daughter, Phoebe, are awfully hard to say no to. What on earth has she gotten herself into?
Available at:
Bright Lines by Tanwi Nandini Islam (Bangladesh)
For as long as she can remember, Ella has longed to feel at home. Orphaned as a child after her parents’ murder, and afflicted with hallucinations at dusk, she’s always felt more at ease in nature than with people. She traveled from Bangladesh to Brooklyn to live with the Saleems: her uncle Anwar, aunt Hashi, and their beautiful daughter, Charu, her complete opposite. One summer, when Ella returns home from college, she discovers Charu’s friend Maya—an Islamic cleric’s runaway daughter—asleep in her bedroom.
As the girls have a summer of clandestine adventure and sexual awakenings, Anwar—owner of a popular botanical apothecary—has his own secrets, threatening his thirty-year marriage. But when tragedy strikes, the Saleems find themselves blamed. To keep his family from unraveling, Anwar takes them on a fated trip to Bangladesh, to reckon with the past, their extended family, and each other.
Available at:
Broken Faith by Lois Cloarec Hart (Canada)
Emotional wounds aren’t always apparent, and those that haunt Marika and Rhiannon are deep and lasting.
On the surface, Marika appears to be a wealthy, successful lawyer, while Rhiannon is a reclusive, maladjusted loner. But Marika, in her own way, is as damaged as the younger Rhiannon. When circumstances throw them together one summer, they begin to reach out, each finding unexpected strengths in the other.
However, even as inner demons are gradually vanquished and old hurts begin to heal, evil in human form reappears. The cruelly enigmatic Cass has used and controlled Marika in the past, and she aims to do so again.
Can Marika find it within herself to break free? Can she save her young friend from Cass’ malevolent web? With the support of remarkable friends, the pair fights to break free—of their crippling pasts and the woman who will own them, or kill them.
Available at:
A Map of Home by Randa Jarrar (Egypt & Kuwait)
Born in 1970s Boston to an Egyptian-Greek mother and a Palestinian father, the rebellious Nidali—whose name is a feminization of the word “struggle”—soon moves to a very different life in Kuwait. There the family leads a mildly eccentric middle-class existence until the Iraqi invasion drives them first to Egypt and then to Texas.
Available at:
London Calling by Clare Lydon (England)
Jess Sharp’s life hasn’t exactly gone according to plan. She’s 32, unemployed, and single after a devastating breakup. She’s also left Australia for London to live in her parents’ spare room. Her chaotic life seems to be spiraling until she meets someone who could be a game-changer.
She’s optimistic after a wildly successful first date, but far too much tequila and the ghosts of girlfriends past may drag her far below her lowest point. Can she win the race for romance without tripping?
Available at:
Fair Play by Tove Jansson (Finland)
Mari is a writer and Jonna is an artist, and they live at opposite ends of a big apartment building, their studios connected by a long attic passageway. They have argued, worked, and laughed together for decades. Yet they’ve never really stopped taking each other by surprise. Fair Play shows us Mari and Jona’s intertwined lives as they watch Fassbinder films and Westerns, critique each other’s work, spend time on a solitary island (recognizable to readers of Jansson’s The Summer Book), travel through the American Southwest, and turn life into nothing less than art.
Available at:
French Kissing (Season One) by Harper Bliss (France)
Long-time partners Nadia & Juliette are estranged.
Claire hasn’t had a serious girlfriend in years.
And Steph has the hots for a new, but very forbidden high-profile client.
Can four women navigate love and friendship in their beautiful city of Paris?
Available at:
Paper Love by Jae (Germany)
Susanne Wolff isn’t thrilled when her mother sends her all the way across the country to Freiburg to save her uncle’s stationery store from bankruptcy. Freiburg is too provincial for her taste, and besides, pen and paper are outdated anyway.
Anja Lamm, Paper Love’s only full-time employee, takes an instant dislike to the arrogant, digital-loving snob who’s supposed to be her temporary boss.
But thanks to a meddling cat, a business trip to a stationery fair, and an armada of origami boats, Anja soon starts to see beneath Susanne’s aloof exterior, and Susanne discovers how sexy pens and notebooks can be—at least when Anja handles them.
As the end of Susanne’s three-month stay approaches, will she stick to her plan to leave, or will she open her heart to more than just paper love?
Available at:
Falling into Place by Sheryn Munir (India)
Romance is not for Tara. Embittered after a college fling, she vows to never fall in love again–especially since she believes there’s no future for same-sex love in her home in urban India. Then, one rain-drenched evening, an insane decision brings the bubbly Sameen into her life and everything changes. Sameen is beautiful, a breath of fresh air…and almost certainly straight. All Tara’s carefully built-up defences start to crumble, one after the other. But is this relationship doomed before it can even start?
Available at:
If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan (Iran)
Seventeen-year-old Sahar has been in love with her best friend, Nasrin, since they were six. They’ve shared stolen kisses and romantic promises. But Iran is a dangerous place for two girls in love–Sahar and Nasrin could be beaten, imprisoned, even executed. So they carry on in secret until Nasrin’s parents suddenly announce that they’ve arranged for her marriage.
Then Sahar discovers what seems like the perfect solution: homosexuality may be a crime, but to be a man trapped in a woman’s body is seen as nature’s mistake, and sex reassignment is legal and accessible. Sahar will never be able to love Nasrin in the body she wants to be loved in without risking their lives, but is saving their love worth sacrificing her true self?
Available at:
Landing by Emma Donoghue (Ireland & Canada)
Síle is a stylish citizen of the new Dublin, a veteran flight attendant who’s traveled the world. Jude is a twenty-five-year-old archivist, stubbornly attached to Ireland, Ontario, the tiny town in which she was born and raised. When Jude meets Síle on her first transatlantic plane trip, the spark between them is instant.
After a coffee shared at Heathrow Airport, both women return to their lives—but neither can forget their encounter. Over the next year, Jude and Síle connect through emails, phone calls, letters, and the occasional visit. But no matter how passionate, every long-distance relationship comes to a crossroads, because you can’t have a happily ever after when the one you love is a world apart . . .
Available at:
A Small Country About to Vanish by Victoria Avilan (Israel)
This sweeping novel follows childhood sweethearts Rona and Shelli as they come of age and face impossible choices. Passion and heartbreak come alive in this lyrical exploration of love, friendship, and family in Israel.
A Small Country about to Vanish is Rona and Shelli’s love-hate relationship with an ancient piano, each other and their difficult homeland – a country physically too small and politically too volatile to maintain its own existence.
Wise and compassionate Rona believes in fairness and equality and shows a rare ability to feel empathy for her supposed enemies, while her friends and family want security first. Shelli, an avid reader of Holocaust literature, raises old but relevant questions. Must history repeat itself? How do we know when the political pot of hatred has boiled beneath us, making it necessary to leave our belongings behind and relocate, to save ourselves and our family?
Available at:
Bliss by Fiona Zedde (Jamaica)
Bliss Sinclair’s life of dull routine and unhappiness makes her imagination the only place she can find fulfillment. Until she meets Regina, a provocative writer who pulls her out of her head and into a sensuously real world alive with flavors and sensations beyond any she’d ever imagined. This real world is exciting and rich with irresistible pleasures, but Sinclair quickly learns these pleasures are not what they seem.
She discovers that lust can simply be another illusion, and passion without love can poison just as easily as it redeems. To cleanse herself of Regina’s poison, she escapes to Jamaica, the place where she was born, in hopes that the sun and ocean breezes will heal both old and new wounds. But among the brilliant flowers and crystal waters of the island, Sinclair finds ghosts from her past as well as strangers who challenge her very understanding of life and love.
From hidden grottos bubbling with desire to dangerous streets where violence is just a breath away, Sinclair must fight for the love she deserves, fight for herself, and for the life of satisfaction that was meant to be hers all along.
Available at:
My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness by Nagata Kabi (Japan)
The candid tell-all of a young woman’s struggles with depression and sexuality that has taken the internet by storm!
Available at:
I Can’t Think Straight by Shamim Sarif (Jordan)
Tala, a London-based Palestinian, is preparing for her elaborate Middle Eastern wedding when she meets Leyla, a young British Indian woman who is dating her best friend. Spirited Christian Tala and shy Muslim Leyla could not be more different from each other, but the attraction is immediate and goes deeper than friendship.
But Tala is not ready to accept the implications of the choice her heart has made for her and escapes back to Jordan, while Leyla tries to move on with her new-found life, to the shock of her tradition-loving parents. As Tala’s wedding day approaches, simmering tensions come to boiling point and the pressure mounts for Tala to be true to herself.
Available at:
Not Yet Uhuru by Dolar Vasani (Kenya)
A collection of contemporary illustrated lesbian love stories. Unique, empathic, playful and with lots of humour. All stories paint an evocative picture of the search for sexual expression and freedom, highlighting the lived realities of women who love women, crossing the cultural, age and societal boundaries.
There’s something in this book for all women, gay or straight, young or old, from all backgrounds – the characters are honest and relatable.
Available at:
Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta (Nigeria)
One day in 1968, at the height of the Biafran civil war, Ijeoma’s father is killed and her world is transformed forever. Separated from her grief-stricken mother, she meets another young lost girl, Amina, and the two become inseparable. Theirs is a relationship that will shake the foundations of Ijeoma’s faith, test her resolve and flood her heart.
In this masterful novel of faith, love and redemption, Okparanta takes us from Ijeoma’s childhood in war torn Biafra, through the perils and pleasures of her blossoming sexuality, her wrong turns, and into the everyday sorrows and joys of marriage and motherhood. As we journey with Ijeoma we are drawn to the question: what is the value of love and what is the cost?
A triumphant love story written with beauty and delicacy, Under the Udala Tree is a hymn to those who’ve lost and a prayer for a more compassionate world. It is a work of extraordinary beauty that will enrich your heart.
Available at:
Bunny Finds a Friend by Hazel Yeats (Netherlands)
It’s close to Christmas in Amsterdam, and Cara Jong isn’t having the best of days. Her girlfriend has left her, and her new job isn’t nearly as glamorous as she hoped it would be. A run-in with Jude Donovan, who’s playing Santa Claus in a department store, does little to lift her spirits, even though there’s clearly an appealing woman hidden beneath Santa’s beard.
When Cara finds out that Jude is actually a well-known author of children’s books, she’s intrigued and decides to attend Jude’s reading. A bizarre misunderstanding breaks the ice between them, and they share a heated kiss that same night.
As the weeks go by, they begin to fall in love and hope to leave past experiences behind. But Cara doesn’t trust her luck in love and soon breaks things off, leaving Jude baffled and broken-hearted.
Can Cara’s meddling sisters and a hilarious road trip convince Cara to go after her happily-ever-after with the writer?
Available at:
Changing the Script by Lee Winter (New Zealand)
LA-based English indie filmmaker Alex Levitin reluctantly takes a job in New Zealand to save the “worst movie ever”, Shezan: Mistress of the Forest. Things might go easier for her if she didn’t almost run over the standoffish, beautiful local cop on her first day in town. And it’d really help if her film set wasn’t being mysteriously sabotaged.
When Ika Whenu’s Senior Constable Sam Keegan isn’t trying to stamp out a motorcycle gang drug problem afflicting her town, she’s publicly slamming everything about the exploitative film, Shezan, and the Hollywood blow-ins making it. That includes its nerdy, cute director, Alex, who has woeful driving skills to go with her smart mouth.
Against the stunning scenery and chaotic film-set backdrop, attraction flares between the two warring women as they’re forced to work together to find the set saboteur.
Available at:
Blind Goddess (Hanne Wilhelmsen #1) by Anne Holt (Norway)
A drug dealer is battered to death in the outskirts of Oslo. A young Dutch student, covered in blood, walks aimlessly through the streets of central Oslo. He is taken into custody, but refuses to speak.
Five days later a shady criminal lawyer called Hans Olsen is murdered. The two deaths don’t seem related, but Detective Inspector Hanne Wilhelmsen is unconvinced. Soon, she uncovers a link between the bodies: Olsen defended the drug dealer.
But there are powerful forces working against Hanne; a conspiracy that reaches far beyond a crooked lawyer and a small-time dealer. The investigation will take her into the offices of the most powerful men in Norway – and even put her own life at risk…
Available at:
Don’t Tell My Mother by Brigitte Bautista (Philippines)
With an overly zealous mother as her guide, 19-year-old Sam has never had problems navigating through Christian suburbia before. But, all that changes when she befriends and becomes intrigued with Clara, her widowed neighbor and the village’s social outcast. When their friendship grows into the “unnatural”, Sam is forced to examine her upbringing and come to terms with who she really is.
Available at:
The Others by Seba al-Herz (Saudi Arabia)
A best-selling book when it appeared in Arabic, The Others is a literary tour de force, offering a window into one of the most repressive societies in the world. Seba al-Herz tells the story of a nameless teenager at a girls’ school in the heavily Shi’ite Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. Like her classmates, she has no contact with men outside her family.
When the glamorous Dai tries to seduce her, her feelings of guilt are overcome by an overwhelming desire for sexual and emotional intimacy. Dai introduces her to a secret world of lesbian parties, online flirtations, and hotel liaisons—a world in which the thrill of infatuation and the shame of obsession are deeply intertwined. Al-Herz’s erotic, dreamlike story of looming personal crisis is a remarkable portrait of hidden lives.
Available at:
Defensive Mindset by Wendy Temple (Scotland)
Star footballer and successful businesswoman Jessie Grainger has her life set, and doesn’t need anything getting in the way. That includes rebellious rival player Fran Docherty, a burnt-out barmaid with a past as messed up as her attitude. So when the clashing pair find themselves on the same Edinburgh women’s football team, how will they survive each other, let alone play to win?
Available at:
The World Unseen by Shamim Sarif (South Africa)
In 1950’s South Africa, a free-spirited café owner falls for a young wife and mother. Their unexpected attraction pushes them to question the cruel rules of a world that divides white from black and women from men, but a world that might just allow an unexpected love to survive.
Available at:
Once in Sweden by Emma Sterner-Radley (Sweden)
American Aubrey DeValle is currently working as a nurse in London. Once a vibrant and confident world traveller, she is now lonely and both physically and mentally in recovery. Her whole life has been turned upside down and she’s not sure if the controversial decisions she made were the right ones.
Swedish Elina Lindvall is brooding in her small town and about to be whisked away by her best friends to a summer cabin in the south of Sweden, where she knows they will pump her for information about her breakup and why she refuses to talk about what happened.
When we go back in time and find out what paths led each woman to their present, will we find solutions to their problems or merely more issues to overcome? Moreover, does the past hold the key to how they can both dare to love again? And if so, can love beat the greatest obstacle of all?
Available at:
Cinnamon by Samar Yazbek (Syria)
In the dark of night, Hanan al-Hashimi awakens from a nightmare, confused and shaken. Roaming the house in search of some reassurance, she is drawn towards the streak of light under her husband’s bedroom door. Little does she know that the beckoning glow will turn her life on its head…
Available at:
Last Words from Montmartre by Qiu Miaojin (Taiwan)
When the pioneering Taiwanese novelist Qiu Miaojin committed suicide in 1995 at age twenty-six, she left behind her unpublished masterpiece, Last Words from Montmartre. Unfolding through a series of letters written by an unnamed narrator, Last Words tells the story of a passionate relationship between two young women—their sexual awakening, their gradual breakup, and the devastating aftermath of their broken love. In a style that veers between extremes, from self-deprecation to pathos, compulsive repetition to rhapsodic musings, reticence to vulnerability, Qiu’s genre-bending novel is at once a psychological thriller, a sublime romance, and the author’s own suicide note.
The letters (which, Qiu tells us, can be read in any order) leap between Paris, Taipei, and Tokyo. They display wrenching insights into what it means to live between cultures, languages, and genders—until the genderless character Zoë appears, and the narrator’s spiritual and physical identity is transformed. As powerfully raw and transcendent as Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask, Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, and Theresa Cha’s Dictée, to name but a few, Last Words from Montmartre proves Qiu Miaojin to be one of the finest experimentalists and modernist Chinese-language writers of our generation.
Available at:
Poppy Jenkins by Clare Ashton (Wales)
Two old friends, one hot summer, a whole load of confusion.
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?
Available at:
Leave a comment
Leave a comment and let us know which book you’ll be reading for the “book set in a country you don’t live in” category!
The post Books set in a country you don’t live in (Sapphic Reading Challenge #42) appeared first on Jae.
October 21, 2021
Mistaken identity in a sapphic book (Sapphic Reading Challenge #41)
This week’s Sapphic Reading Challenge features sapphic books with a mistaken identity theme.
A character is mistaken for someone else for at least a part of the book. Usually, it’s misunderstanding (or at least it starts out that way), rather than one character intentionally lying or disguising herself. The misunderstanding can be cleared up quickly or the other character can play along and start pretending to be someone she isn’t, but the situation didn’t start out as an intentional disguise.
Read up on the rules of the Sapphic Reading Challenge
If you are only discovering the Sapphic Reading Challenge now, the good news is you can still join! It’s a year-long challenge, so it runs until December 31, 2021. Read up on the rules of the Sapphic Reading Challenge and download your PDF so you can keep track of the books you read this year.
15 sapphic books with a mistaken identity theme
I put together a list of 15 sapphic books with a mistaken identity theme. I hope you find at least one you’ll enjoy.
Wrong Number, Right Woman by Jae
A single text message can change everything!
Flirting has never been Denny’s strong suit, but so what if she’s too shy to ask women out? She’s content with her simple life, working as a cashier and helping her sister raise her niece.
But then she gets a wrong-number text message from a stranger named Eliza, asking her of all people for dating advice!
Eliza is Denny’s total opposite: witty, outgoing—and straight. Despite their differences, the accidental text sparks an unlikely friendship. Soon, Eliza—self-proclaimed queen of disastrous first dates—would rather banter back and forth with Denny than to keep trying her luck at online dating.
When they meet in person, there’s an instant connection. But what Eliza is feeling can’t be attraction, right? It doesn’t mean a thing that she’s starting to wish the guys she dates would be more like Denny. Or does it?
Can the wrong number lead to the right woman after all?
Available at:
Mistaken Identity by Donna Jay
On a scale of awkward to totally catastrophic, Kelly Bennett has managed to hit every level of “Oh. My. God.” in just one night.
Kelly decides her older, uptight girlfriend Paula needs a bit of loosening up during her birthday party. When she finds her curled up in bed, Kelly leaps her bones, adds a few restraints and kinky sex, and one satisfied lover later, sneaks out… only to run into her girlfriend, Paula, in the hallway.
After the shock wears off, leaving a puddle of guilt, recriminations, and a now ex-girlfriend, Kelly’s left with one burning question: who was that woman in the bedroom? Was it Paula’s best friend? Her deplorable assistant? One of her flatmates?
And why did she go along with it?
There’s nothing left for it: Kelly’s on a mission to find out and apologise.
Available at:
Alias by Cari Hunter
A car lies crashed below a Welsh mountain road. One of the young women inside it is dead, the other badly injured, with no memory of who she is or what just happened. All she has is a bus pass showing her photograph and a name she doesn’t recognise.
As she struggles to recover from her injuries, a startling revelation shatters everything she thought she knew, forcing her into an uneasy alliance with Detective Bronwen Pryce. With danger closing in from all sides, the two women must work together to uncover the truth—even if it kills them.
Available at:
Telling Lies Online by Miranda MacLeod
Jamie Richards is a scientist who embraces reason– except when it comes to romance. Tired of her impulsive streak leaving her heartbroken, she’s determined to do everything right the next time she’s in love. But her resolve crumbles when a technical glitch matches her with perfection in Claire, a woman who lives on the opposite side of the country. Who is straight. And under the impression that Jamie’s a guy. But Jamie can’t help being smitten. Would one tiny lie be so terrible if it gets her closer to the woman of her dreams?
Claire Flores is a dreamer and a believer in signs, but she has a secret that keeps her cautious about love. All she wants is a picture-perfect family of her own, but she’s never met a man who attracts her. Until now. Throwing caution to the wind, she goes from Portland to Boston to meet Jay, her online love. Instead she meets Jamie, his work colleague, who befriends her in Jay’s unexpected absence. Claire’s heart is aflutter. Jamie stirs up feelings Claire never knew possible, but how close can she get without having to admit that she’s been lying to herself about her dreams all along?
What starts as a simple fib soon snowballs as Jamie fabricates increasingly ridiculous tales to keep her identity as Jay under wraps, until a comedy of errors threatens to topple the whole charade to the ground. Can true love prevail when it’s founded on a lie?
Available at:
The Wrong Date by Sienna Waters
Annie Harland is rich, successful, and very single. So when an invitation to her tenth high school reunion drops on her mat, she’s determined to skip it. Until a drunk evening with her best friend results in an appointment with an escort named Robin.
Robin is supposed to be bookish, well-muscled, and the owner of a golden retriever. Robin is actually tall, curvaceous, and very, very female.
Things should have ended at their very first meeting. But for some strange reason, Annie can’t stop seeing Ms. Wrong. And Robin is Ms. Wrong, if only because she’s a Ms. and not a Mr.
What should have been a story of high school revenge has turned into a romance, and Annie’s life is about to be turned upside down. But love knows no labels, or does it?
Available at:
Mrs. Mix Up by Candace Harper
A secret crush. A mix-up in paperwork. And suddenly, a fake marriage that lands two women in one hotel room–and face to face with their denial.
After six months of simmering attraction, librarians Sofiya Anderson and Molly Andersen are ready to burst. There’s a magnetism between them that threatens their commitment to professionalism, and not even a librarian’s stern shushing can quiet it down. But they’ve managed to hold themselves in check…for now.
Until a mistake at a regional conference, a tiny oversight in spelling, makes the coordinators believe they’re a married couple.
Two women. One bed. And a Mrs. Mix-Up that doesn’t quite go by the books. Can they make it through four days of professional development with both their hearts and their jobs intact?
Available at:
Scent by Kris Bryant
Nico Marshall’s living her best life. Her packaging company’s turning a profit and she’s just been labeled Chicago’s most promising up-and-coming artist. The only thing missing is love. When she meets a beautiful woman on the train with an indescribable sweet and sugary scent, Nico’s ready to make her move.
Sophia Sweet doesn’t have time for distractions. Never mind how fit and tan Nico is, or how she has the most beautiful eyes ever. Sophia only has one goal: keep the family business alive. Her third-generation chocolatier shop, Sweet Stuff, is tanking. In a last-ditch effort, Sophia creates an upscale version of their product and needs the perfect package to ensure success.
When Sophia recognizes Nico from the train but mistakes her for the packaging company’s warehouse employee, Nico doesn’t bother to correct her. She’s been burned by women in the past wanting her for her money. This time, she’s determined to win Sophia over with her charm.
Available at:
The Lily and the Crown by Roslyn Sinclair
Ariana “Ari” Geiker lives an isolated life on an imperial space station commanded by her father. The skilled, young botanist rarely leaves her living quarters, where she maintains an elaborate garden.
When an imperious older woman is captured from a pirate ship and given to her as a slave, Ariana’s perfectly ordered life is thrown into chaos. Her nameless slave is watchful, intelligent, dangerous, and sexy, and seems to know an awful lot about tactics, star charts, and the dread, marauding pirate queen, Mir. What happens when the slave also reveals an expertise in seduction to her innocent mistress?
Available at:
Requiem for Immortals by Lee Winter
What would make the most dangerous ice queen of them all, ruthless underworld assassin Requiem, hesitate?
Professional cellist Natalya Tsvetnenko moves seamlessly among the elite where she fills the souls of symphony patrons with beauty even as she takes the lives of the corrupt of Australia’s ruthless underworld. The cold, exacting assassin is hired to kill a woman who seems so innocent that Natalya can’t understand why anyone would want her dead.
As she gets to know her target, she can’t work out why she even cares.
Available at:
Anyone But You by KG MacGregor
An underground pipeline has ruptured, spilling oily sludge into Minnesota’s pristine Lake Bunyan. Taking the media’s heat for Nations Oil is Corporate Communications Director Cathryn Mack, an old pro when it comes to spinning the facts in her company’s favor.
Stuck in Duluth to handle the press during eight weeks of cleanup, she finds a silver lining when Stacie Pilardi pops up on SappHere, a mobile app that seeks out nearby lesbians. Stacie is smart, funny, sexy as hell, and wants a longterm relationship as much as Cathryn—which is to say, not at all.
A perfect arrangement, until they realize they’re rivals—Stacie is head of the Clean Energy Action Network, in town to protest the greed and recklessness of oil companies and the havoc they wreak on the environment.
It’s best for everyone involved if they end this, and that’s exactly what they intend to do. Eventually…
Available at:
Lucifer’s Emblem by Sarah Biglow
Zuri knows she’s next in line to rule Hell, until the theft of a priceless family relic throws her future into chaos. Now, to reclaim what’s hers, she must infiltrate the prestigious Celestial Academy. Even if it means lying her way in.
Miryam’s famous Archangel father treats her like she doesn’t exist, fueling her insecurity and self-doubt. She pretends she’s got it all together until confident, badass Zuri ends up as her roommate.
The longer they spend together, the harder it is to keep up the façade. When they uncover plans to unleash Armageddon, they have no choice but to come clean. With Zuri’s life on the line, her only hope of survival is to trust Miryam. But is their growing bond strong enough to overcome eons of bad blood between Fallen and Archangels?
Available at:
Love’s Autograph by Michele Reynolds
What do you do when you show up at an apartment to pick up your blind date and she mistakes you for her kid’s sitter?
Lesbian rock star EJ Way decides to be the sitter for the night. Fascinated by both Ria and her eleven-year-old daughter, she finds herself sitting night after night, without revealing who she really is. Getting a glimpse into their family life seems like a nice change of pace from her world of music and fame. She doesn’t count on falling in love—or on having to watch Ria go on date after date.
Available at:
Green-Eyed Monster by Gill McKnight
There is a lot more to kidnapping than financial analyst Mickey Rapowski ever imagined. Mickey has a chip on her shoulder—she’s been cheated out of a small fortune by corporate giant Victoria Gresham. In an irrational attempt at revenge, Mickey kidnaps Gresham’s girlfriend, Ginette Felstrom. A straightforward and effective plan—except Ginette is the worst captive ever and no one wants to pay her ransom. Out of her depth as every one of her well-laid plans spins totally out of control, Mickey becomes the victim of reverse Stockholm Syndrome and falls head over heels for her captive. How could something so simple go so wrong? Or is that…right?
Available at:
Under a Falling Star by Jae
Falling stars are supposed to be a lucky sign, but not for Austen. Her new job as a secretary in an international games company isn’t off to a good start. Her first assignment—decorating the Christmas tree in the lobby—results in a trip to the ER after Dee, the company’s second-in-command, gets hit by the star-shaped tree topper.
Dee blames her instant attraction to Austen on her head wound, not the magic of the falling star. She’s determined not to act on it, especially since Austen has no idea that Dee is practically her boss.
Available at:
The Real Story by Sienna Waters
Elle Baker is one step away from being fired from the journalism job she’s wanted since forever. She needs a story, and she needs one badly.
Alya Goldstein is known for not only being super-successful, but also for being incredibly private. An interview that’s impossible to get.
Until a misunderstanding leads to Elle being hired as Alya’s new assistant. It’s the perfect way to get the story. Or it should be. But as Alya starts to finally open up, Elle finds that she’s getting far more involved in this story than she really should be.
As the lies spiral out of control, Elle’s forced to face her past. Sometimes it’s the lies you tell yourself that are the most damaging. Someone has to make Alya believe in happy endings, but is Elle in too deep to live happily ever after?
Available at:
Leave a comment
Leave a comment and let us know which book you’ll be reading for the “mistaken identity” category!
The post Mistaken identity in a sapphic book (Sapphic Reading Challenge #41) appeared first on Jae.
October 15, 2021
Sapphic horror novel (Book Unicorn #10)
It’s time for another Book Unicorn category: sapphic horror novels!
Horror novels generally aim to invoke feelings of dread, fear, and anxiety in readers. In short: These books are meant to be scary!
There’s some overlap with other genres such as psychological thrillers and paranormal and other speculative fiction since the scary element is often a supernatural entity such as demons, zombies, ghosts, etc.
Free paranormal romance (October 13-17)
Speaking of paranormal… Before I share the book list for the sapphic horror category, I would like to share a free book with you. If you don’t already have my paranormal romance Second Nature, you can download it for free on Amazon worldwide this week. It’s book 1 of my Shape-Shifter Romance series.
What is the Book Unicorn?
A quick reminder: The Book Unicorn is a bonus level that you can pick either by itself or as an additional goal. The goal is to read at least 10 sapphic books from a list of 12 harder-to-find genres and themes. You can download a PDF with all 12 categories here.
15 sapphic horror novels
Here are the 15 books I picked for the “sapphic horror novels” category:
Cold as Hell by Neen Cohen
The town of OpenFields is cold as hell…
Magic exists in OpenFields, and everyone but Adie plays their part. So what happens when murder and strangers visit the secret town?
Adie’s normal isn’t “normal.” Cameras watch her sleep, the eyes of the townsfolk narrow at her sight, and when she discovers her bosses’ office in disarray, and a stranger who makes her heart thunder, her world changes forever.
Available at:
Wilder Girls by Rory Power
Everyone loses something to the Tox; Hetty lost her eye, Reese’s hand has changed, and Byatt just disappeared completely.
It’s been 18 months since the Raxter School for Girls was put in quarantine. The Tox turned the students strange and savage, the teachers died off one by one. Cut off from the mainland, the girls don’t dare wander past the school’s fence where the Tox has made the woods wild and dangerous. They wait for the cure as the Tox takes, their bodies becoming sick and foreign, things bursting out of them, bits missing.
But when Byatt goes missing, Hetty will do anything to find her best friend, even if it means breaking quarantine and braving the horrors that lie in the wilderness past the fence. As she digs deeper, she learns disturbing truths about her school and what else is living on Raxter Island.
Available at:
Outsider by W. Freedreamer Tinkanesh
Sid is a medicated musician who has lost her rhythm, but strangely is finding her voice as a writer. Her involvement in this story starts when she attends one of Second Look’s gigs for the first time. The rock band inspires her to write short stories sprinkled with monsters.
For Joy, the bored blood-drinker, it might have started when a powerful vampire turned her into a creature of the night at the dawn of the 20th century. Death would probably claim that it started at Sid’s birth, when she thought this soul would make a perfect travelling companion.
For Toni and Dee-Dee, it was the night the mighty predator made the unwilling musician into an extremely angry fledgling. The entity known as Life, meddling with mortals’ private lives and nights, clinched her own private deal.
The curious Sid wonders and inquires about vampires. The cynical Joy rediscovers the art of feeling and finds herself willing to protect her mortal lover, even against an over-righteous vampire.
Available at:
Dead Lez Walking by G Benson
One hospital. One zombie virus. One desperate group. One way out.
A new virus has appeared, and all Taren can do is groan. Being a nurse in Accident and Emergency has its downsides, and dealing with the flood of people freaking out over symptoms they don’t really have is definitely one of them.
Joy, an exhausted surgeon, is just trying to find somewhere to relax after a horrendous night on call—and somewhere she can avoid Taren, since Joy blew her off after an incredible date weeks ago. When she wakes up after an accidental nap, her pager has gone dead, and the doors outside are barricaded. This can’t be about the virus, can it?
Yes, it can. The dead are rising, and they are hungry. Joy and Taren are trapped with a group of others as they try to fight for their lives and get out. The rest of the group think it would be great if Joy and Taren would stop making moon eyes at each other when they are oh, you know, just trying to survive the zombie apocalypse.
Available at:
The Curse of Doll Island by Ocean
In 1732 a Shaman performed ‘The Curse of the Damned’ on two women, trapped their tormented souls in wax dolls, and banished them to a tiny island.
Fast forward 287 years. Rosie Moorea is a simple girl who lives an unassuming life. Her friends convince her that she needs to give herself a fun adventure. Overcoming long standing anxieties, she books a solo vacation. All is uneventful until she meets the charismatic, professional skateboarding movie star, Devin Fitzroy, who convinces her to go on a picnic. With a setting sun and an approaching storm, they end up on an island rumored to be haunted by cursed dolls.
Rosie and Devin don’t believe the superstitions that the dolls come alive when the sun goes down. However, they’re about to discover there’s more to worry about than bugs and snakes when they find themselves stranded on an island that holds many secrets, most of them evil.
Forced to confront their own fears and insecurities, the women are thrown into situations that require quick wit and bravery to survive. Will they make it through the night to see the sun rise or will something more evil than they could ever have imagined get to them first?
Available at:
Paradigm by Yvonne Heidt
Work can be hell. Especially when you’re working nights in the most haunted sanitarium in the USA. Jazz Miller is in charge of special effects. Her job is to orchestrate the creepiest and most terrifying experiences for thrill-seeking tourists. But not all of the disturbing occurrences that take place on these tours are part of the show. There is something more sinister at work.
Missing her ride one night, Jazz is inadvertently locked in the chilling building…alone. The experience is terrifying, and she barely survives the shock. But the horror doesn’t stop at one night. Something had found her that night and it won’t let her go. Thirteen years later and at her wits end, she tries to escape its malignant clutches one last time. California seems the perfect destination, it’s sunny, warm and home of her best friend Billy. But the ominous entity can’t be shaken so easily.
Gypsy Tanner is the host of the popular television show Paradigm, an investigative series that not only takes a deep look into paranormal occurrences but also enlists experts in the field to try and help the victims. Her last investigation was a particularly difficult and ominous one. When disturbing things begin to happen afterwards, she is convinced that something may have stayed with her.
When Jazz and Gypsy meet, the attraction between them is electric. It’s hard to ignore the pull they feel toward each other but how can either focus on a new relationship under these circumstances? If bad things happen in the dark, can their love be the light that frees them from the malevolent shadows?
Bad things happen in the dark.
Leave the lights on.
Available at:
The House by Eden Darry
Sadie, Fin, and their two children were a perfectly ordinary family. Even if Fin felt taken for granted sometimes. Even if their introverted son, Liam, had terrible nightmares and knew things he shouldn’t.
But everything changes the night Sadie is viciously assaulted by former client Lance Sherry. Sherry knows where they live, and when the police fail to catch him, Sadie and Fin are forced to run. They think they’ve found the perfect place to start over. The house is everything Fin dreamed of, but as they settle in, Sadie discovers their home may not be what it seems, and daughter Lucy’s imaginary friend might not be imaginary at all. Or even a friend. With Lance Sherry hunting them, the house could be the least of their problems. He’s coming to finish what he started. And he won’t stop until he finds Sadie.
Available at:
Castle Wrath by Karin Kallmaker
A bubbly ingenue falls heir to a remote, storm-drenched castle in a foreign land. All hers – if she can outlast the dangerous and too delicious competing claimant.
Strange happenings, a curious (and disconcertingly attractive) caretaker, plus sensuous nightmares may be far more than California girl Brittany Brannigan can handle.
Available at:
Beyond and Begone by Lois Cloarec Hart
Erin has retreated from the world after the loss of her wife, Gwen, in a hit-and-run accident. Her best friend, Mariel, who is also her late wife’s sister, is the only person she’s interacted with for years.
Finally, Erin dips her toes back into the dating pool, only to find that very odd things begin to happen. Mariel’s medium, Zahra, insists that Gwen is trying to reach her with a warning. Erin has no use for psychics, but as the incidents mount, she reluctantly turns to Zahra for help and finds herself swept into a maelstrom of danger and intrigue.
Can the love of her life save her? Or will she join Gwen, beyond and begone?
Available at:
The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling
When Gyre Price lied her way into this expedition, she thought she’d be mapping mineral deposits, and that her biggest problems would be cave collapses and gear malfunctions. She also thought that the fat paycheck—enough to get her off-planet and on the trail of her mother—meant she’d get a skilled surface team, monitoring her suit and environment, keeping her safe. Keeping her sane.
Instead, she got Em.
Em sees nothing wrong with controlling Gyre’s body with drugs or withholding critical information to “ensure the smooth operation” of her expedition. Em knows all about Gyre’s falsified credentials, and has no qualms using them as a leash—and a lash. And Em has secrets, too . . .
As Gyre descends, little inconsistencies—missing supplies, unexpected changes in the route, and, worst of all, shifts in Em’s motivations—drive her out of her depths. Lost and disoriented, Gyre finds her sense of control giving way to paranoia and anger. On her own in this mysterious, deadly place, surrounded by darkness and the unknown, Gyre must overcome more than just the dangerous terrain and the Tunneler which calls underground its home if she wants to make it out alive—she must confront the ghosts in her own head.
But how come she can’t shake the feeling she’s being followed?
Available at:
The Dark Beneath the Ice by Amelinda Bérubé
Something is wrong with Marianne.
It’s not just that her parents have finally split up. Or that life hasn’t been the same since she quit dancing. Or even that her mother has checked herself into the hospital.
She’s losing time. Doing things she would never do. And objects around her seem to break whenever she comes close. Something is after her. And the only one who seems to believe her is the daughter of a local psychic.
But their first attempt at an exorcism calls down the full force of the thing’s rage. It demands Marianne give back what she stole. Whatever is haunting her, it wants everything she has—everything it’s convinced she stole. Marianne must uncover the truth that lies beneath it all before the nightmare can take what it thinks it’s owed, leaving Marianne trapped in the darkness of the other side.
Available at:
Dark Dreamer by Jennifer Fulton
Best selling horror author Rowe Devlin has had two flops in a row and keeps falling in love with straight women. Seeking inspiration and a fresh start, she abandons life in Manhattan for an old Victorian house in Maine.
But Dark Harbor Cottage is a far cry from the tranquil writing environment she envisioned. For a start, the place is haunted, and the ghost is none too friendly. To make life even more difficult, her neighbors are a huge distraction. The Temple twins, Phoebe and Cara, are identical and profoundly alluring, and Rowe is soon under their spell, unable to decide which of the two she is more in love with.
Just when it seems things can’t get any worse, she finds herself embroiled in a mystery more bizarre and frightening than anything she’s ever written.
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Valley of the Dead by Crystal M. Romero
Gay Pride weekend this year was bound to go down in history because of the nation’s advances in equality. Across California’s Silicon Valley, couples gathered for numerous weddings, and people showed their pride at a downtown park. Even the usual religious protesters failed to ruin the celebration. Unfortunately, history would not remember this as the day of celebrating equality but as the day the zombies overran the world. Revelry quickly turned to chaos as the crowds fought for their lives.
Yvonne Martin just wanted to relax at home this year, but a frantic call from her best friend set her on a terrifying mission to save him. Along the way, they are thrown together with Captain Jacqueline Rhodes and her partner, the last surviving officers of the police force. Together with some of their neighbors, they must make their escape from this Valley of the Dead.
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Keepers of the Cave by Gerri Hill
While the investigations go on in Dallas and Baton Rouge after the disappearance of a senator’s daughter, FBI agents CJ Johnston and Paige Riley are assigned to the sleepy backwoods of East Texas for a dead-end assignment to infiltrate an all-girls school.
Random disappearances dating back fifty years and more raise red flags that point to the tiny, isolated community of Hoganville. But CJ and Paige fear there will be little distraction from the memories of the one-night stand they shared six months ago.
Nevertheless, they integrate themselves into the lives of the teachers and staff, but soon the odd behavior of the townspeople has them convinced something sinister lurks there. Something, perhaps, that even the residents of Hoganville don’t know about.
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The Low, Low Woods by Carmen Maria Machado
Shudder-To-Think, Pennsylvania, has been on fire for years. The coal mines beneath it are long since abandoned. The woods are full of rabbits with human eyes, a deer woman who stalks hungry girls, and swaths of skinless men. And the people in Shudder-to-Think? Well, they’re not doing so well either.
When El and Octavia wake up in a movie theater with no memory of the last few hours of their lives, the two teenage dirtbags begin a surreal and terrifying journey to discover the truth about the strange town that they call home. Like so many women in Shudder-to-Think before them, all they have is a void where the truth once was. But as time passes, El finds herself needing to know more about what has happened, while Octavia wants nothing more than to forget the forgetting. Can these two teens reconcile their differences before the horrible things lurking beneath their town emerge and swallow them whole?
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