Here are 100 books that Exalted fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’m the descendant of three generations of visual artists, a gene I thought had skipped me. However, art popped up in many of my stories when I started writing fiction. In 2012, I published The Life Story of a Chilean Sea Blob, and to promote it, I launched a street art campaign that included putting plaster blobs on the streets of Washington, D.C. This blossomed into several other street art projects and earned attention from The Washington Postand several D.C. TV news stations. My next two books centered around Frida Kahlo and Edvard Munch.
At the beginning of this book, I recognized the ingredients that make up popular erotic novels. The main character, Edie, a Black woman and struggling artist, is beginning a relationship with an older, wealthy, successful white man in an open marriage. There’s a power imbalance. To a certain extent, this excites Edie, and in this way, the book fits neatly into the parameters of the genre.
However, the relationship becomes messy, and Edie’s life, both with and away from Eric, is fraught with bad decisions. Race, wealth, and gender intersect with sex in a complex and uncomfortable milieu. Through all of this, and with the guidance of Eric’s wife, Edie begins to make progressive, less destructive choices, and as she does, her art progresses.
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
WINNER of the NBCC John Leonard Prize, the Kirkus Prize, the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize, and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award
One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2020 A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, The New York Times Book Review, O Magazine, Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Times, Glamour, Shondaland, Boston Globe, and many more!
"So delicious that it feels illicit . . . Raven Leilani’s first novel reads like summer: sentences like ice that crackle or…
I'm fascinated by stories about complicated friendships because they speak to our eternal need to be part of something. Everyone wants to have friends, especially when we’re young, but what if those friendships aren’t good for us? What happens when self-interest motivates our social choices? It seems there’s often a fragile boundary between love and hate. This volatile intensity becomes addictive. I'm a Canadian writer with a BA in English from the University of Ottawa. When writing fiction, I love exploring the toxic threads of jealousy, ambition, and obsession that both bind us together and tear us apart.
This is a gorgeously written book about two best friends doing nothing in particular. Isa and Gala arrive in New York City intertwined and allied.
They whirl through all the requisite stops of the party girl layabout lifestyle. I was fascinated by the friendship’s closeness; Isa and Gala know each other’s quirks and fears in staggering intimacy. They function as a unit, as a “we.” Isa’s aimlessly wandering through life, but she isn’t in it alone, and that’s comforting to me.
Together, Isa and Gala turn aimlessness into freedom. It’s a detail-packed, slow-burning portrait of how we build identity together, intertwining ourselves and pushing each other forward.
With the verve and bite of Ottessa Moshfegh and the barbed charm of Nancy Mitford, Marlowe Granados's stunning debut brilliantly captures a summer of striving in New York City
Refreshing and wry in equal measure, Happy Hour is an intoxicating novel of youth well spent. Isa Epley is all of twenty-one years old, and already wise enough to understand that the purpose of life is the pursuit of pleasure. She arrives in New York City for a summer of adventure with her best friend, one newly blond Gala Novak. They have little money, but that's hardly going to stop them…
I’ll tell you a secret. I’m obsessed with money—not fast cars, designer labels, and McMansions, but the accumulation of capital: who has it, how they got it, and what lengths they’re willing to go to to keep it. So I’ve always loved novels about work. They cut right to the heart of a character’s true motivations, revealing what they’ll fight for and who they’ll love. Don’t show me what a person looks like, show me how they earn (or don’t earn) their living, and I’ll remember them forever.
I spent my summers during college doing odd jobs as a temp, but even readers who’ve never known anything but “the steadiness” at work will enjoy this mythical look at the gig economy.
The unnamed narrator, born from a long line of temps, takes pride in her ability to “accurately replace a person,” whether that’s a pirate, an assassin, or even the chairman of the board. This book is for anyone who’s ever wondered what it would take not just to survive their job but to transcend it.
In Temporary, a young woman’s workplace is the size of the world. She fills increasingly bizarre placements in search of steadiness, connection, and something, at last, to call her own. Whether it’s shining an endless closet of shoes, swabbing the deck of a pirate ship, assisting an assassin, or filling in for the Chairman of the Board, for the mythical Temporary, “there is nothing more personal than doing your job.”
This riveting quest, at once hilarious and profound, will resonate with anyone who has ever done their best at work, even when the work is only temporary.
I am a novelist with my debut, The One, out in April 2023. I’m interested in stories about the role of gender, technology, and privacy in our contemporary culture.We spend so many hours at work, yet often the literature we read spends so little time discussing what that experience is actually like. As I wrote my own novel with a narrator flailing so aimlessly through her early post-grad years that she ends up on a reality dating show, I craved other books that tackled what it was like to have to earn a living at the forefront of the text, rather than a nebulous character detail in the background.
To close off the list, I picked a novel where the main character ends up becoming energized by her work.
At an otherwise soul-sucking job at a PR firm, Ellinor becomes involved with, and motivated by, a political movement about supporting postal workers in Norway.
For a novel that could have been bogged down by the inner workings of the EU and the Norwegian Postal Service, Hjorth’s writing style is crisp and perfect. She could choose any subject matter and it would be interesting.
Ellinor, a 35-year-old media consultant, has not been feeling herself; she's not been feeling much at all lately. Far beyond jaded, she picks through an old diary and fails to recognise the woman in its pages, seemingly as far away from the world around her as she's ever been. But when her coworker vanishes overnight, an unusual new task is dropped on her desk. Off she goes to meet the Norwegian Postal Workers Union, setting the ball rolling on a strange and transformative six months.
This is an existential scream of a novel about loneliness (and the postal service!), written…
I am a contemporary romance writer, mom, queer, dog-lover, and coffee enthusiast. I have a deep love of the genre, particularly sparkly and swoony, sapphic romcoms, with a borderline obsession with happily-ever-afters. Knowing I will always have a happy ending while smiling through pages gives me the comforting hug I sometimes need. My goal is to spread queer joy in my writing and provide a safe, celebratory, and affirming space for my readers to escape reality.
This book was like drinking a hot chocolate with marshmallows on a cold winter day.
I swoon over sweet stories and second-chance romances. And, any time you take an original story (especially a Christmas-ish story) and add in a drag queen instead of an angel, it becomes magic, right?
I’m also a huge sucker for dogs being in a book. The writing was cute and snappy, the feel-good story I was craving, and I left this book with a spring in my step.
Perfect for fans of Alison Cochrun and Ashley Herring Blake, this sapphic retelling of It’s a Wonderful Life will make the yuletide gay.
After years of putting aside her dreams of travel and adventure, Bailey George is ready to leave Lanford Falls and her responsibilities behind on a long-awaited vacation to New York City. But when the volunteer who took over her leadership position for the town's Winter Wonderfest has a medical emergency, Bailey finds herself stuck in Lanford Falls. She gets roped into reassuming her old role, not wanting to let the town or her friends and family down.…
I am the author of the Sherlockiana duology My Dear Watson and Mrs. Watson: Untold Stories. I chose these books because they all have British women at the helm, involve detectives and/or investigative processes, and contain close-to-home scandals and intrigue. In that sense, these are “domestic” mysteries—books that contain puzzles related to everyday household drama. Miss Marple, Harriet Vane, and the women of Baker Street solve literal detective cases. The secret writings of Anne Lister and Constance Wilde show how they decoded the homosexual element in their lives, and used their writing to maintain a sense of self in oppressive societies. Each of them are women after my own heart.
A real-life figure played in the Gentleman Jack TV series by Suranne Jones, this biography investigates Anne Lister’s personal diaries to reveal a portrait of someone remarkable: a businesswoman landowner in the early 1800s, a world traveler, and a lover of women long before the word “lesbian” would have accurately described her.
Lister’s boldness seems ahead of her time, but perhaps only because women were so rarely free to express themselves. Lister’s numerous liaisons with women, her plans to make and grow her fortune, plus her documentation of her digestive health, all make her relatable over 200 years later.
This is an important piece of LGBT and gender studies history, a bright chronicle in the archives of feminist study, and an interesting read about an extraordinary person.
The extraordinary life of history's first modern lesbian who inspired the popular television series Gentleman Jack.
Anne Lister's journals were so shocking that the first person to crack their secret code hid them behind a fake panel in his ancestral home. Anne Lister was a Regency landowner, an intrepid world traveller ... and an unabashed lover of other women.
In this bold new biography, prizewinning author Angela Steidele uses the diaries to create a portrait of Anne Lister as we've never seen her before: a woman in some ways very much of her time…
I love reading about queer history: It’s the story of a diverse, courageous, and creative community, and it’s filled with inspiring actions and fascinating people. It’s also a history I had to seek out for myself because it was never taught at school—and although there has been progress since I came out as queer three decades ago, this is still true for most teens today. Over the last few years, I have written LGBTQIA+ books for all ages, and spoken to thousands of students. The books on this list explore queer history in ways that I think many teens will find highly enjoyable as well as informative.
This historical novel also explores the lives of lesbians in the 1950s, but in a very different way: it is told in dual narratives, from the point of view of two teen girls growing up and coming out six decades apart. In 1955, eighteen-year-old Janet finds a series of books about women who love other women: lesbian pulp novels. Sixty-two years later, Abby is studying classic 1950s lesbian pulp fiction. It’s a cleverly constructed story and I love how the two stories are woven together.
From a queer history perspective, the book is well-researched and illuminates the danger and fear faced by so many queer people during the Lavender Scare, and the important role played by lesbian pulp novels in a time when young queer girls rarely saw others like themselves.
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What is this book about?
From the award-winning author Robin Talley comes an inspiring new novel about the power of love to fight prejudice and hate.
Two women connected across generations through the power of words.
In 1955 eighteen-year-old Janet Jones must keep the love she shares with her best friend a secret. As in the age of McCarthyism to be gay is to sin. But when Janet discovers a series of books about women falling in love with other women, it awakens something in her. As she juggles a romance she must keep hidden and a new-found ambition to write and publish her own…
When I was young and just figuring out the whole gay thing, I had to cross state lines to see the one gay movie and smuggle out the one library book I was too afraid to check out. In the 1970s and 80s I grew up knowing I was part of a group that was rarely talked about, aside from jokes. I've enjoyed so many stories that didn't represent me. If the struggle is real, I want to see, hear, and feel the whole messy bunch of it. I like the uncomfortable process of writing, and make promises that I later break: I can always tone this part down later…and then I never do.
I love a first-person narrative that sucks you in, and this compelling coming-of-age story as told by Molly Bolt, is a whopper. Not since the voice of Scout narrating To Kill a Mockingbird has a voice touched generations with its telling of her own story. This was the book that made me want to be a writer. I wanted to be brave like Molly…and brave like Rita Mae.
From childhood to adolescence, and all through college, we follow our hero Molly as she comes into her own about her sexuality with uncompromising strength and flat-out hilarious storytelling. It is remarkable that Rita Mae Brown’s 1973 novel has not yet found its way to the silver screen and it is the single book that made me want to be a writer. It seems that a story with such a strong roadmap, written long before the roads were paved, deserves a film.…
Discover the classic coming of age novel that confronts prejudice and injustice with power and humanity.
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY RITA MAE BROWN
Molly Bolt is a young lady with a big character. Beautiful, funny and bright, Molly figures out at a young age that she will have to be tough to stay true to herself in 1950s America. In her dealings with boyfriends and girlfriends, in the rocky relationship with her mother and in her determination to pursue her career, she will fight for her right to happiness. Charming, proud and inspiring, Molly is the girl who refuses to…
As a contemporary fiction author, I dig down into and expose the dirty underbelly of my characters’ lives and experiences. As a reader and television viewer, I am drawn to stories that do the same. My fascination with reading and writing gritty stories about queer characters figuring their lives out stems from my own confused upbringing. I have written four full-length contemporary fiction novels that all put the main character’s experiences and choices under a microscope. Additionally, while I didn’t set out to try to destigmatize therapy and friends talking openly about their struggles, reviewers have pointed out that those are themes in my books.
Michelle writes in an authentic voice that draws the reader into her tumultuous, down and dirty story. I love Valencia because as I read the book, it feels like she is sitting next to me on a dirty curb, late at night, regaling me with stories about her youthful adventures (and misadventures) in San Francisco. Valenciawas a touchstone for me as a young author; it taught me that it’s okay to write about gritty, real-life things because, surprise, they are relatable. Valencia also helped me overcome my self-doubt about writing and getting my own unique voice out into the world.
Valencia is the fast-paced account of one girl's search for love and high times in the drama-filled dyke world of San Francisco's Mission District. Michelle Tea records a year lived in a world of girls: there's knife-wielding Marta, who introduces Michelle to a new world of radical sex Willa, Michelle's tormented poet-girlfriend Iris, the beautiful boy-dyke who ran away from the South in a dust cloud of drama and Iris's ex, Magdalena Squalor, to whom Michelle turns when Iris breaks her heart.
Fashion has been the love of my life since I was a little kid pouring over magazines and watching shows on fashion TV in the middle of the night. But I’ve always known fashion is not about clothing, its about feeling and it’s about people. That’s why I love to read the stories about people who work in fashion, who have been impacted by fashion and those who love it just as much as I do.
Everybody (Else) Is Perfect is a memoir about the author, but it speaks to the ways fashion and beauty have created impossible standards for us all to live by.
Korn was the editor-in-chief of NYLON, which from the outside seems like one of the most glamorous jobs in the world. But, as she details, things are not always as they seems. While brands and magazines promote body positivity and feminism on the inside they’re doing anything but.
From the former editor-in-chief of Nylon comes a provocative and intimate collection of personal and cultural essays featuring eye-opening explorations of hot button topics for modern women, including internet feminism, impossible beauty standards in social media, shifting ideals about sexuality, and much more.
Gabrielle Korn starts her professional life with all the right credentials. Prestigious college degree? Check. A loving, accepting family? Check. Instagram-worthy offices and a tight-knit group of friends? Check, check. Gabrielle’s life seems to reach the crescendo of perfect when she gets named the youngest editor-in-chief in the history of one of fashion’s most influential publication. Suddenly…
