Fans pick 100 books like Tipping the Velvet

This book wrecked me; it’s such a deep dive into the lives of the woman brutally murdered by Jack the Ripper. Rubenhold reconstructs their lives with great empathy, bringing them to the forefront of the story. The five were real women who felt love, pain, and hope—not faceless victims of sensationalized murder.

These women are often portrayed as “five prostitutes” in pop culture, but Rubenhold shows that there is no evidence of sex work for most of the women. This book pulls back the curtain on the tension, violence, poverty, and heartbreak in Victorian London. This book brought me to absolute tears. 

This is another two-for-one book! It is a historical fiction about the life of Alexander the Great, told by his male lover, Bagoas. But it was written in 1972, only five years after the decriminalization of homosexuality in the UK. Bagoas is a nuanced character; he is frank about the nature of his love for Alexander the Great, and there are even a few sex scenes! As I read it, I couldn’t help reflecting on how groundbreaking this must have seemed in the context of the 1970s. 

Mary Renault is a very interesting figure in her own right. She was undoubtedly queer and lived with her partner for over 50 years. There are relatively few women in her novels, and many of them are unflatteringly depicted. Renault eschewed the label of ‘lesbian,’ was uncomfortable with the early gay pride movement, and is said to have told people that she wished… show more.

I love this because, in many ways, it is a kind of modern take on Sargasso Sea, with a liberal dash of Catcher in the Rye thrown into the soup: an exploration of what happens when you apply the same kinds of patriarchal oppression and expectations Antoinette suffered in the 19th century to a young 20th-century woman living in what is supposedly a more “progressive” and “modern” era.

Esther Greenwood’s unraveling is both brutally relatable and unexpectedly humorous at points, and there are images from it that are so starkly drawn that they stay embedded in your mind like glass shards after an explosion. It’s a modern classic for a reason. 

I first read Rediker’s work as a graduate student, and from the first pages, I was “hooked.”

Want to understand what made pirates tick? In this book, pirates are recast not as violent, unthinking brutes but as ordinary, sea-going laboring men driven to lawlessness by the brutal demands of expanding Atlantic trade.

I especially appreciated Rediker’s situating pirate behavior and customs within the broader world of maritime life. He argues that these outlawed men created a floating society that was then the most egalitarian and democratic in the Western world.

The story of two mystical creatures stuck in 1899 New York who have to make their own way in the world.  Despite their different natures, they become unlikely friends and have to work together to survive. 

While I enjoyed the perspective of both supernatural beings in this book, I found the golem especially engaging. Through her eyes, the reader gets an amazingly detailed view of turn-of-the-century New York as well as the intricacies of human behavior. 

The jinni faces different challenges—he’s lost a chunk of his memory—but he also has to adapt to life among people. Wrapped in a rich tapestry of historical details, the story walks us through their processes of acclimating to human society and facing the dangers of their pasts.

This is a coming-of-age novel set in 1950s San Francisco. As teenagers my best friend and I shared a mutual hyperfixation with the Cold War. It beautifully explores that era, from the Space Race to the McCarthyism that targeted both queer Americans and Chinese Americans. My best friend now lives in San Francisco, and when I last went to visit her I treated myself to going on a little walking tour of some of the places mentioned in the novel, all around Chinatown and Russian Hill.

The desire Lily feels towards her butch friend is beautiful and stirring, and the excitement she feels at exploring the underground gay scene is absolutely infectious. 

Jordy Rosenberg does something clever and innovative with the historical fiction genre and reimagines the historical figure of Jack Sheppard as a transgender man. This is a bit of a two-for-one as there’s also the metatextual story, told through footnotes, of a contemporary trans academic who comes across the ‘confessions’ of Jack. It’s playful, knowing, and slippery. It made me think a lot about the nature of history and what we project onto the people of the past. It pairs beautifully with the Bad Gays podcast. 

I’ve never been to the marsh and fenlands of East England, but the descriptions of them in this book have made me really want to visit them!

This book will make you question everything you’ve ever thought about your sanity.

The incredible true story of Susannah Cahalan took the world by storm when it topped the charts to #1 New York Times Bestseller and was made into a film. Cahalan’s intense journey from New York Post investigative reporter to psychiatric lockdown patient spans only one month, a month that nearly ended her life.

A reader once described my books as ‘unputdownable,’ and I’m happy to share that label with Brain on Fire. Riveting, frightening, and incredibly moving, I couldn’t read quickly enough as Susannah fought to reclaim her sanity and her life.

Based on her article “The Month of Madness,” this book is one of the best about a young woman’s struggle to find and reclaim herself.

This book, set during the Elizabethan period, tells the intrigue-filled story of Christopher (or Kit) Marlowe as he agrees to be a spy for the Queen of England in order to make the money he needs to become a playwright. I know what you’re thinking. This does involve a monarch, but it’s very much about what happens when a desperate man makes a deal with powerful people to achieve his dreams, and ends up in trouble. If you know what happened to the famous playwright who was Shakespeare’s peer before his death (or what likely happened to him), you know what I mean. This book is a thriller, but is at its heart a love story about a man in love with his art and his best friend, and his struggle to choose between them. 

This is a quirky, hilarious, autobiographical coming-of-age story about a lesbian who grows up in a repressive English Pentecostal community.

Winterson’s creation of the mother is the most unique mother I’ve ever encountered—damaged, oppressive, deeply misunderstanding of her genius daughter. I found lots of commonalities between the conflicts Jeanette had with her difficult mother and my own experience, even though we live countries apart.

Winterson’s gusto and humor are inspiring.