Here are 97 books that The Bi-ble fans have personally recommended if you like
The Bi-ble.
Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.
As an American artist and writer who has lived in European cities for the last decade and a half—first Berlin, now Paris—I often look for echoes of dislocation and longing in the books I read. My first published book explores the lives of people who fled other countries to arrive in a city filled with a complex and dark history.
James Baldwin is one of my favorite authors, and this book is a short, masterful look at the mechanisms behind queer shame. Two lovers, David and Giovanni, hide in a darkened room in self-imposed exile in Paris until the narrator’s sense of shame breaks their love trance.
David, an American who is engaged to a woman, cannot bear to continue his gay affair and so leaves Giovanni, prompting a confrontation with a changed reality and a tragic reckoning with the guillotine.
When David meets the sensual Giovanni in a bohemian bar, he is swept into a passionate love affair. But his girlfriend's return to Paris destroys everything. Unable to admit to the truth, David pretends the liaison never happened - while Giovanni's life descends into tragedy.
United by the theme of love, the writings in the Great Loves series span over two thousand years and vastly different worlds. Readers will be introduced to love's endlessly fascinating possibilities and extremities: romantic love, platonic love, erotic love, gay love, virginal love, adulterous love, parental love, filial love, nostalgic love, unrequited love, illicit love,…
I am a psychological scientist, BBC science communicator, and best-selling author. I am also bisexual. As an academic, my tendency is to immediately look for research and scholarly writing about topics that interest me. But for bisexuality, I found that this was incredibly hard to do. So, I dug into archives and journals, connected with hundreds of bisexuality researchers and activists, and after much searching, I finally found the answers to questions I had had my entire life. I wrote them all down in my new book Bi.
If you’re interested in bisexual activism, and how to mobilise people to fight for Bi+ rights, this book is for you.
It is a dive into bisexual politics written by one of the world’s most prominent bisexual activists. It is also one of the most mentioned books within the bi community, helping a generation of people to feel empowered to deconstruct monosexuality. Inspiring best-selling authors, journalists, and many of the bisexual researchers I have worked with over the years, this book has become an important part of bi culture.
Depicted as duplicitous, traitorous, and promiscuous, bisexuality has long been suspected, marginalized, and rejected by both straight and gay communities alike. Bi takes a long overdue, comprehensive look at bisexual politics- from the issues surrounding biphobia/monosexism, feminism, and transgenderism to the practice of labeling those who identify as bi as either too bisexual" (promiscuous and incapable of fidelity) or not bisexual enough" (not actively engaging romantically or sexually with people of at least two different genders). In this forward-thinking and eye-opening book, feminist bisexual and genderqueer activist Shiri Eisner takes readers on a journey through the many aspects of the…
I am a psychological scientist, BBC science communicator, and best-selling author. I am also bisexual. As an academic, my tendency is to immediately look for research and scholarly writing about topics that interest me. But for bisexuality, I found that this was incredibly hard to do. So, I dug into archives and journals, connected with hundreds of bisexuality researchers and activists, and after much searching, I finally found the answers to questions I had had my entire life. I wrote them all down in my new book Bi.
For academic perspectives on bisexuality, this book is a great resource. Because many books on bisexuality are centred in or around North America this is a welcome addition. It is the first to bring together academic research on bisexual people from around Europe. It also won the Bisexual Book Award for Best Non-Fiction Book of 2020 (if you’re looking for more bi books the annual Bi book awards by the Bi Writers Association is always a good place to search!).
The book includes research from different disciplines, showcasing the many ways that scholars have approached bi+ issues. It provides fascinating insights that are a great stepping stone for venturing deeper into the topic.
Textbooks can be expensive, and many academic articles are locked behind pay-walls, so the authors made sure that there’s an open access version of the textbook (click the direct link below).
Bisexuality in Europe offers an accessible and diverse overview of research on bisexuality and bi+ people in Europe, providing a foundation for theorising and empirical work on plurisexual orientations and identities, and the experiences and realities of people who desire more than one sex or gender
Counteracting the predominance of work on bisexuality based in Ango-American contexts, this collection of fifteen contributions from both early-career and more senior academics reflects the current state of research in Europe on bisexuality and people who desire more than one sex or gender. The book is structured around three interlinked themes that resonate well…
I am a psychological scientist, BBC science communicator, and best-selling author. I am also bisexual. As an academic, my tendency is to immediately look for research and scholarly writing about topics that interest me. But for bisexuality, I found that this was incredibly hard to do. So, I dug into archives and journals, connected with hundreds of bisexuality researchers and activists, and after much searching, I finally found the answers to questions I had had my entire life. I wrote them all down in my new book Bi.
If you’re a bi history nerd like me, you’re going to love this insight into some of the early thoughts on bisexuality by sex researcher Havelock Ellis. Already in the late 1800s, Ellis - who was in an open relationship, and whose wife was bisexual - did research with bisexual people.
His writing shows us that bisexuality isn’t trendy or new, that the stereotypes we battle today were already being criticised over a century ago, and that some people had positive ideas about bisexuality. For example, Ellis attributed the success of great leaders and artists to their bisexuality. He credits this to the “innately democratic attitude” of bisexual people to see beyond social class. Ellis a key figure in bi history who often gets missed, but his work can give a real sense of connectedness with our past.
His books can be hard to find in print, but Project Gutenberg…
As a queer, nonbinary author and lover of historical fiction, I’ve spent countless hours thinking about how to tell stories I care about in a genre that has traditionally excluded people like me. We all know that life was hard for LGBTQ+ folks growing up in, well, basically any time in recent history. There’s a time and place for realistic depictions of those hardships, but we also need space to imagine ourselves in more joyful, fantastical depictions of the past. After all, if straight people can enjoy Jane Austen without thinking too hard about the legal rights of women during that era, why can’t queer people do the same?
I desperately want to be best friends with Henry (Monty) Montague, the delightful, ridiculous, irrepressibly queer gentleman of this book.
The story follows Monty on a joyous and, at times, harrowing romp through 18th-century Europe, accompanied by his prickly but secretly brilliant sister and his quiet, kind-hearted best friend (who he’s totally in love with but far too clueless to do anything about.)
What I love the most about this story is the way it depicts queerness in a way that feels true to its historical setting. Monty interrogates his identity with the flawed language and beliefs he inherited from the world around him, which I suspect anyone who didn’t grow up with access to an open and loving queer community, i.e., most of us, can relate to.
A Kirkus Prize nominee and Stonewall Honor winner with 5 starred reviews! A New York Times bestseller!
Named one of the best books of 2017 by NPR and the New York Public Library!
"The queer teen historical you didn't know was missing from your life."-Teen Vogue
"A stunning powerhouse of a story."-School Library Journal
"A gleeful romp through history."-ALA Booklist
A young bisexual British lord embarks on an unforgettable Grand Tour of Europe with his best friend/secret crush. An 18th-century romantic adventure for the modern age written by This Monstrous Thing author Mackenzi Lee-Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda meets…
I was thrown into the deep end to learn about autism when our first son was diagnosed as autistic. As first-time parents, how were we to know that the struggles we faced went beyond the norm? We also have twins, one of whom is ADHD and the other dyslexic. Thus, not only have I spent a lot of time learning about autism, but I also enjoy turning to fiction to learn how others both struggle and find solutions. I started writing because the bedtime routine with my kiddos was very difficult. Nearly twelve years later, I am still using my writing to overcome the obstacles in my life.
One of the things I love most about this book is how much Georgia learns about herself by raising an autistic daughter.
I have found the same to be true as my wife and I are raising an autistic son. The more I learn about him, the more I learn about myself. It is a wonderful experience to see myself mirrored in a character. Though Georgia and Lauren face many obstacles, Georgia’s daughter, Hannah, keeps pulling them back together.
I am a sucker for a cute kid who knows more about what the grownups in their lives need than they do.
Lauren Ashburn left a promising job to help her family in Vermont take care of her dying father. Now that he’s gone, Lauren has every intention of returning to her old life―the vibrant, successful one her father had always expected her to have. But Lauren discovers that she feels adrift without his strict guidance.
Georgia Solomon designs homes for others. But as a bisexual autistic woman, she rarely feels at home herself. When her best friend dies suddenly, leaving her alone with their young daughter, her little slice of happiness vanishes. Now Georgia finds herself struggling to navigate a world…
On a trip to Morocco, immersed in new sounds, smells, sights, and tastes, I was hit with the idea for a novel about a woman in the 11th century, a time when a Berber ruler took over the whole of North Africa and Spain. It led to many years of research and correspondence with historians, and became not one novel, but four, telling the story of four women’s lives that interweave as a newborn empire rises. The books I have listed here were some of the ones that brought the place, the culture, and the era alive for me. I hope they can do the same for you!
A deeply visual book, full of intricate details of craftwork and intimate moments of daily life, this is described as an ‘ideal photo album’ of Morocco, and it’s a very enjoyable and beautiful book to explore if you are planning to go to Morocco or longing to return after a trip there. A really lovely way to immerse yourself in Moroccan culture for a little while.
"Morocco: A Sense of Place" is one of two titles in a new series of travel books designed to be an innovative mix between travelogue and armchair travel. Aimed at a young or young-at-heart audience, they are presented as ideal photo albums of your last favourite trip the one you wish you'd taken the time to put together, without the hassle of sifting through all your crumpled ticket stubs and badly centred photos of monuments hidden behind the heads of strangers. These highly visual and evocative volumes will be seized on by anyone with a love of travel and photography.
I’ve been writing stories and poems with erotic themes since I first entered the spoken word scene in 1980s San Francisco. As a young queer boy, raised in the highly eroticized Catholic Church, I was actually comfortable talking about and writing about sex and eros as I’d been stigmatized by it, and it got me fascinated with what the big deal was and why writers were afraid to approach it or why they did so in a corny/predictable/idealized and/or often dishonest and clumsy way. Soon I was teaching erotic writing and have been integrating it into my writing in honest, fresh, and enlivening ways—and helping others do so—ever since.
This book is probably the single most praised underground gay novel of my generation, and deservedly so. It’s so many things—beautiful writing, an old west setting in all its ugliness and adventure and hope, and a highly original narrative voice in the bisexual native orphan, Shed, who is being raised in a bordello. All the characters are well-drawn and as odd as the narrator, and the erotic journey, if I can call it that, is one of the most original, thought-provoking, and beautiful expressions of the possibilities of queer I’ve ever encountered. Spanbauer has helped me to write more skillfully about class and race and sexuality and how they are everywhere and how they can warp—and sometimes, oftentimes—set people free.
The cult gay classic of the early 1990s, reissued to mark the year of the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots
Between nights, earning his keep at Excellent, Idaho's outrageously pink whorehouse, Shed or, Duivichi-un-Dua - lives a life of drinking, talking and smoking opium stardust with his eccentric family. But soon, he will leave this tiny turn-of-the-century town in search of the true meaning of his Shoshone name - and in search of himself.
Along the way Shed will fall in love with the philosophical, green-eyed, half-crazy cowboy Dellwood Barker, a man who talks to the moon, on a…
I grew up reading and re-reading Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Ringstrilogy. But it always bothered me that there weren’t many girls or women in those books—and most of those that did appear were pretty, perfect, and—well—kind of boring. In college, I studied literature, myths, and fairytales and found that most of the female characters in those stories didn’t reflect women I wanted to be or know, either. So, I wrote my own high fantasy novel and continue to seek out great fantasy, sci-fi, and fairytale-inspired literature featuring strong female characters that are dragons on the inside—and sometimes on the outside, too.
Shatter the Sky is a quick-read YA high fantasy. It’s the story of Maren, who wants to live an ordinary life with her girlfriend, Kaia. When Kaia is kidnapped, Maren decides to apprentice herself to the Aromatory—the emperor’s mysterious dragon tamer—as a first step in her rescue plan.
Shatter the Sky features a number of diverse characters and a sapphic romance and has been highly praised for breaking ground in the YA fantasy realm. I particularly enjoyed the Aromatory, the new take on dragons, and a main character who begins by viewing herself as unimportant but progresses to accepting her power and recognizing her value. Maren’s story continues—with ramped-up stakes, more dragons, and a complicated political plot in the meatier second book in this duology—Storm the Earth.
“A top-notch dragon story…Both nuanced and real.” —Shelf Awareness (starred review) “I absolutely devoured it.” —Mackenzi Lee, bestselling author of The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue “Perfect for fans of Tamora Pierce, Renée Ahdieh, and Cindy Pon.” —Saundra Mitchell, author of All the Things We Do in the Dark and editor of YA anthology All Out
A determined young woman sets out to rescue her kidnapped girlfriend by stealing a dragon from the corrupt emperor in this stunning fantasy debut that’s perfect for fans of Margaret Rogerson, Rae Carson, and Rachel Hartman.
My name is Sara Jo Easton, and I’m the bisexual author of the Zarder novels, a fantasy series where a race of dragon-like creatures called Onizards learns to get past their prejudices. When I was at a book signing for my third book, The Blood of Senbralni, a strange man loudly declared I was part of an agenda to turn people to homosexuality and Satan with my evil dragons. To be clear, I am not and will never be affiliated with Satan. I made a vow that every book I wrote from that point forward would have at least one LGBTQ+ romance with a happy ending to annoy people like that man.
You might believe that I chose this book solely based on the title.
I can’t deny finding the idea of having the cover out and actively reading it in front of the kind of people wanting to ban LGBTQ+ books is a tantalizing one. That said, the real reason I chose this book is it is a helpful guide to the LGBTQ+ community that uses inclusive language and describes the different ways people identify with copious amounts of humor and quotes from members of the community.
It has important information about a wide variety of topics that I wish were around in an easy-to-read format when I was younger. There are frank sex education discussions in this book, which is vital information to fill in the gaps in sex education in most schools. I have this one saved for when the younger members of my family are ready to start…
The bestselling young adult non-fiction book on sexuality and gender! Lesbian. Gay. Bisexual. Transgender. Queer. Intersex. Straight. Curious. This book is for everyone, regardless of gender or sexual preference. This book is for anyone who's ever dared to wonder. This book is for YOU. This candid, funny, and uncensored exploration of sexuality and what it's like to grow up LGBTQ also includes real stories from people across the gender and sexual spectrums, not to mention hilarious illustrations. Inside this revised and updated edition, you'll find the answers to all the questions you ever wanted to ask, with topics like:Stereotypes-the facts…
