100 books like You're Next

Alison Bechdel (best known for Fun Home, a graphic memoir about her bisexual teacher-cum-funeral-parlor-owner father) also wrote this graphic memoir about her actor-writer-teacher mother. It largely takes place in the 1990s, when being boldly “out” was just becoming possible—and Bechdel joyfully and graphically reveals herself as such to her readers. With her mother, however… maybe not so much. When told that Alison is publishing a book of lesbian cartoons, the mother asks: “Isn’t that rather a narrow scope?” before landing the zinger: “You’re not going to use your own name, are you?” Still, the book’s power derives from showing that sexual identity is only a small part of what divides, enrages, and ultimately re-connects this vivid mother-daughter duo. There’s also fierce creative competitiveness. Deeply shared sorrow. And love.           

I’m kicking off with a novel that isn’t a conventional crime story, in that there’s no detective, but there are several heinous crimes, all of which are resolved by the end.

It’s not an exaggeration to say I envy anyone who hasn’t yet read Fingersmith. Unashamedly drawing on the sensation fiction of Wilkie Collins, it has a twist that saw me actually yelping out loud in surprise. But the book is so much more than that.

Starting in London, 1862, we are introduced to Sue Trinder, a young woman entrenched in the criminal underworld. When she agrees to join forces with the sinister Gentleman to hoodwink a young heiress, Sue has no idea exactly what she’s involving herself in.

This book has it all. It’s beautifully written, with phenomenal pace and intrigue, but also with a wonderful love story at its core. If you haven’t read it, what on… show more.

In this slender, fictionalized account of the “hidden in plain sight” romance between sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued reporter Lorena Hickok and larger-than-life First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, we get a gloriously slanted insiders’ view of a pivotal period in American history. This is emphatically a “lesbian love story”—explicit in its depictions of both the pleasures of female sensuality and the tolls of enforced secrecy. It is also—bluntly and forthrightly—a “middle-aged love story,” with all the attendant sea changes, accommodations, and regrets. Most of all, it’s the story of the two wittiest, savviest, best-positioned women anyone could ever encounter. “As Churchill said (to me),” the fictional Lorena begins one of her marvelous anecdotes. And the thing is, he probably did.   

Spears’ compelling tale of Jodie Taylor—a lesbian coming of age in the American South of the 1950s and 1960s—smoothly draws readers into that overall time and place through details of setting (a “Pepto-Bismol pink trailer raised on cinder blocks”), behavior (a girl gleefully pouring salted peanuts into an RC Cola) and history (the Birmingham Church bombing) before plunging us into the far-less-familiar inner world of mid-century Southern lesbians. We gain privileged entrée into wildly rollicking bars and snugly welcoming kitchens; witness acts of treachery and acts of fierce loyalty; come to know women of tough skins and tender hearts. “It takes living queer to understand who we are,” one character confidently asserts. But through this adeptly crafted book, Spears opens up that understanding to us all.    

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.

In contrast to stereotypes about lesbians that framed them as bra-burning, men-hating, hairy-legged feminists, Lauren Gutterman evocatively shows how the emergence of post-World War II lesbian desire took place at the center of American life, in the suburbs, often in marriages to men and heterosexual families with children. Married women rejected divorce or labelling themselves as lesbians even while they had affairs with their female neighbors. Her Neighbor’s Wife offers an extraordinary new interpretation of how post-World War II American marriages could accommodate women’s relationships with other women.

One Last Stop is an example of why I rarely read blurbs, because I’m allergic to spoilers, but it’s impossible to talk about this book without spoiling the premise (which is on the blurb), so here it is: a floundering Southern plus-sized bi white girl meets a Chinese butch on the train in New York, and said butch turns out to be displaced in time from the 1970s.

It’s a new adult sapphic rom-com, with fated love, grumpy x sunshine, and found family tropes, plus the whole “teaching a time traveler about the internet” thing. It was cute and heartfelt, like everything from McQuiston, with a side dose of queer history lessons.

An absolutely exhaustive catalog of queer milestones on television, I’m constantly consulting this amazing book.

There’s no more authoritative examination of the people, shows, and trends that shaped queer representation in broadcast media over the 20th century. Exhaustively researched, it’s not just a must-read – it’s a must-read-multiple-times.

I own two copies, each one jam-packed with bookmarks and notes to myself about the best bits.

This one had me laughing out loud just as much as swooning over the lovely story of Caroline and her transformation once her husband dumps her in the home where ‘difficult’ women are put when they cause too much trouble for those husbands. There are elements of steampunk, social commentary, twisted humor, and a cast of secondary characters that are as varied as they are interesting. The setting, while bleak to begin with, grows on you as you read, and once all the twists and turns finally click into place, it’s a romp of a ride to the end.

Venture capitalist Claire Pressley is done with the New York rat race and moves to small-town Oregon. She buys a rundown homestead with the dream of renovating and turning it into a women-only B&B. But hometown sweetheart, Ruby, has had her eye on the Pruitt homestead for years with the aim of turning it into an animal sanctuary. 

The book is billed as an enemies to lovers romance, and that’s spot on. Claire is icy, Ruby is adorable, but as Claire’s renovation proceeds at a cracking pace, the women talk and find common ground. The slow burn development is beautiful, and the sex scenes, when they occur are cracking hot. Kudos for the inclusion of a safe sex scene. 

Side characters add to the story, particularly Ruby’s grandfather. As if this wasn’t warm and fuzzy enough, the animals will melt your heart and make you smile—shout out to Ninja the… show more.