The poet, Audre Lorde, depicts her life and examines the influence of various women on her development.

Originally published in 1928, Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness is the timeless story of a lesbian couple's struggle to be accepted by "polite" society. Shockingly candid for its time, this novel was the very first to condemn homophobic society for its unfair treatment of gays and lesbians.

"When Ari and Josh meet the first time, the wrong kind of sparks fly. They hate each other. Instantly. A free-spirited, struggling comedian who likes to keep things casual, Ari sublets, takes gigs, and lives by a code that ensures her friends-with-benefits stay firmly in the friendzone. She doesn't believe in morning sex because she never sleeps over. Born-and-bred Manhattanite Josh has ambitious plans: he'll take the culinary world by storm, find...

Lillian Lee doesn't believe in love at first sight. Hate is a different story--and one she is intimately familiar with. Luckily, she hasn't seen her arch-nemesis, Ivy Holden, since graduating from veterinary school five years ago. Since then, while her life isn't going exactly according to plan, she's happy. She has great friends, a job she loves, and the best pets in the world. Most importantly, her life is stable. Sea Cove, Maine, is the last place...

In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado's engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad, and a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming. And it's that struggle that gives the book its original structure:...

"There is a voice of longing inside every woman. We strive so mightily to be good: good mothers, daughters, partners, employees, citizens, and friends. We believe all this striving will make us feel alive. Instead, it leaves us feeling weary, stuck, overwhelmed, and underwhelmed. We look at our lives, relationships, and world, and wonder: Wasn't it all supposed to be more beautiful than this? We quickly silence that question, telling ourselves to...

"Greta Russakoff loves her tight-knit family and tiny Maine hometown, but they can't seem to understand what it's like to be a lesbian living in such a small world. When an act of familial meddling goes way too far, she realizes just how desperately she needs space to figure out who she is. Truman Belvedere's heart is crushed when he learns that his boyfriend has a secret life including a husband and daughter. Reeling, all he wants is a place to lick...

"A reluctant medium is about to discover the ties that bind can unleash a dangerous power . . . . When Jessamyn Teoh starts hearing a voice in her head, she chalks it up to stress. Closeted, broke and jobless, she's moving back to Malaysia with her parents - a country she last saw when she was a toddler. She soon learns the new voice isn't even hers, it's the ghost of her estranged grandmother. In life, Ah Ma was a spirit medium, avatar of a mysterious...

"Spurred on by nineties "family values" campaigns and determined to better herself through education, a teen mom talks her way into college. Disgusted by an overabundance of phallocratic narratives and Freytag's pyramid, she turns to a subcultural canon of resistance and failure. Wryly riffing on feminist literary tropes, it documents the survival of a demonized single mother figuring things out"-- "In this novel, Ariel Gore is a teen mom, aspiring...

"One year ago, recent Portland transplant Ellie Oliver had her dream job in animation and a Christmas Eve meet-cute with a woman at a bookstore that led her to fall in love over the course of a single night. But after a betrayal the next morning and the loss of her job soon after, she finds herself adrift, alone, and desperate for money. Finding work at a local coffee shop, she's just getting through the days-until Andrew, the shop's landlord, proposes...