A brilliant queer dystopian novel from the author of Yours for the Taking, following a cast of characters on the margins of a strange and exclusive new society.
The year is 2041, and it's a dangerous time to be a woman driving across the United States alone. Deadly storms and uncontrollable wildfires are pummeling the country while political tensions are rising. But Kelly's on the road anyway; she desperately needs to get back to her daughter, who she left seven years ago for a cause that she's no longer sure she believes in.
I never met my great-uncle, a sleeping car porter, around the time of the setting of this book. His wife told me that the work had led to his early death.
I was interested to read this book about the life and work of a sleeping car porter. I was not disappointed. I was drawn to the character of Baxter, a man who dreamed of a life outside of the limitations he was presented with. In that, he had something in common with my great-uncle.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY TOP 20 LITERARY FICTION BOOKS OF 2022
OPRAH DAILY: BOOKS TO READ BY THE FIRE
THE GLOBE 100: THE BEST BOOKS OF 2022
CBC BOOKS: THE BEST CANADIAN FICTION OF 2022
When a mudslide strands a train, Baxter, a queer Black sleeping car porter, must contend with the perils of white passengers, ghosts, and his secret love affair
The Sleeping Car Porter brings to life an important part of Black history in North America, from the perspective of a queer man living in a culture that renders him invisible in two…
This delightful fable about the Golden Age of Broadway unfolds the warm story of Artie, a young rehearsal pianist, Joe, a visionary director, and Carrie, his crackerjack Girl Friday, as they shepherd a production of a musical version of A Midsummer Night's Dream towards opening night.
I have written one complete WW2 saga series, Lily Baker, and am currently writing a second series, The Library Girls. I am addicted to reading about the period and can lose hours and hours doing factual research as well. My mother was a Cockney, and I became immersed in her wartime stories, mostly about the fun she had but also about her many struggles. I love stories about strong women overcoming adversity, and during WW2, many showed the world how capable and resilient they were. I have a Master's Degree in Professional Writing and write occasional magazine articles.
I loved the way when reading this book, I learned a lot about the Blitz and the problems faced by Londoners, their struggles, and their strengths.
The main character, Gertie, is relatable, and I was keen to find out how she overcomes the trials and tribulations she faces. It is a warm and touching story about Gertie’s love of people and books (she has a bookshop). I loved her positive attitude even when her husband died.
I found it one of those books I couldn’t put down but didn’t want it to end.
'A warm and tender tale about the power and healing of friendship and community and the magic of books' - Ruth Hogan
As the bombs began to fall, the book club kept their hopes alive...
The most emotional, uplifting and captivating story of wartime London and the extraordinary power of books to shine a light and draw people together in the darkest of days, inspired by true events.
London, 1938. Bookseller Gertie Bingham is facing difficult times, having just lost her beloved husband, Harry, and with a lingering sadness at never having been able to have a child of her…
I grew up in a religion and family where being gay was most definitely more than frowned upon. Now as a queer author and parent (and former academic who studied queer lit and video games!), I’m thrilled to be bringing a “book baby” into the world during Pride Month that is pure historical romantic fantasy in which two women embrace who they are and one another. When I first started reading queer fiction, much of it was gritty and realistic, sure, but also extremely grim. I think we desperately need a balance of the grim and the gleeful and that is what I hope this little list gives you! Happy endings are possible in fiction and reality. Happy Pride Month, dear readers!
A fantastic, quick-read of a novella featuring a class-difference romance between a lady's maid/thief and a prim and proper lady's companion. When the two women find themselves forced to share a room – and a bed! – things quickly become steamy. But there is more to the story than spice. Revenge upon a villain must be enacted. And of course, Alice and Molly must work to achieve their happy ever after.
I loved my first foray into Cat Sebastian because it is pure historical fantasy, yes, but it's tingly, heart-warming wish-fulfillment of the best kind. We don't need more dead Dumbledores. We need stories that show queer love is possible and can win the day. Amiright?!
Lady’s maid Molly Wilkins is done with thieving—and cheating and stabbing and all the rest of it. She’s determined to keep her hands to herself, so she really shouldn’t be tempted to seduce her employer’s prim and proper companion, Alice. But how can she resist when Alice can’t seem to keep her eyes off Molly?
Finds her own heart
For the first time in her life, Alice Stapleton has absolutely nothing to do. The only thing that seems to occupy her thoughts is a lady’s maid with a sharp tongue and a beautiful mouth. Her determination to…
My passion for Chinese history took root when I began reading Jin Yong’s wuxia novels, which are all steeped in Chinese historical background. My fiction writing career began with historical fiction based on Chinese history. Through my earlier research work, I discovered that Chinese historians have always given short shrift to the influence of women on cultural, political, and social developments throughout the ages. That led me to decide to center my writing around inspiring Chinese female historical figures. After publishing The Green Phoenix and Tales of Ming Courtesans, I branched out to write wuxia fantasy novels, but with the same objective of featuring admirable female historical/fictional characters.
I am a great fan of the sensational xianxia drama The Untamed, which is why I love this novel from which the drama is adapted.
One thing that I really like about the novel is the character Wen Qing. My heart is captured by her quiet ways of going about her practice of medicine, her deep but understated affection for her brother Wen Ning, and her unwavering loyalty to her good friend Wei Wuxian after facing adversities together with him. She actually saves him twice, the second time with her own life.
What also strikes me as outstanding is the way the novel constantly asks the thought-provoking questions: what is good and what is evil, and why are unorthodox ways deemed as evil?
Also known as MDZS, the blockbuster danmei/Boys' Love novels from China that inspired comics, animation, and the live-action series The Untamed! This historical fantasy tale of two powerful men who find each other through life and death is now in English, for the very first time!
Wei Wuxian was once one of the most powerful men of his generation, a talented and clever young cultivator who harnessed martial arts and spirituality into powerful abilities. But when the horrors of war led him to seek more power through demonic cultivation, the world's respect for his abilities turned to fear, and his…
I’m a public health professional, author, and reader. During part of my childhood and my subsequent career in international public health, I lived in Côte d’Ivoire and the Central African Republic; I’ve also worked throughout West and Central Africa, primarily in Francophone African countries. My experiences in these parts of the continent have not only influenced my fiction writing, but also what I read. While there are plenty of books by Anglophone African authors, few of their Francophone counterparts see their work translated into English. As a result, stories from French-speaking Africa are underrepresented in the literature available to English-speaking audiences. This list is an attempt to make a dent in this disparity.
Jean is an accomplished student at the University of Douala who sets off with his best friend, Simon, to find Jean’s older brother, who has run away to pursue his dream of becoming a soccer star in Europe. Their trip is paved with danger but Jean is willing to face any perils in order to spend time with Simon, on whom he has a secret, unrequited crush. Despite the novel’s heavy themes of terrorism, child abuse, authoritarianism, homophobia, and the plight of undocumented immigrants, Lobe pulls off an entertaining, rollicking story that provides a wonderful snapshot of his country.
On the trail of Roger, a brother who has gone north in search of football fame in Europe, Choupi, the narrator, takes with him the older Simon, a neighborhood friend. The bus trip north nearly ends in disaster when, at a pit stop, Simon goes wandering in search of grilled caterpillars. At the police station in Yaounde, the local cop tells them that a feckless boza who wants to go to Europe is not worth police effort and their mother should go and pleasure the police chief if she wants help! Through a series of joyful sparky vignettes, Cameroon life…
Lena thinks she knows her future: in her small village, nothing much has changed for two hundred years. Women farm and fish, plant and harvest: a cooperative, productive, peaceful life. Until the day a soldier rides in, to ask the unthinkable of the women: learn to fight. Invasion is imminent,…
This book dazzles on so many levels it’s almost head-spinning.
It’s the almost-real-time tale of a Black transgender woman, Carlotta Mercedes, who comes back to her Brooklyn family and neighborhood after 20 years in prison, to find, Rip Van Winkle-like, that almost everything has changed and that she feels like a ghost walking back into a world she recalls so differently.
Loosely based on Ulysses, it plays out entirely in one July Fourth weekend, with almost no jump cuts. In a feat I don’t think I’ve ever seen a novel pull off, the narration constantly toggles, even in the same sentence, between a close third on Carlotta and her own crazy, funny, and heartbreaking inner voice.
It manages to be an unflinching look at what poverty, racism, and transphobia look like in the life of one person, and yet to call Carlotta a victim, despite her humiliations, would be wrong,…
In this “dangerously hilarious” novel (Los Angeles Times), a trans woman reenters life on the outside after more than twenty years in a men’s prison, over one consequential Fourth of July weekend—from the author of the PEN/Faulkner Award winner Delicious Foods.
Carlotta Mercedes has been misunderstood her entire life. When she was pulled into a robbery gone wrong, she still went by the name she’d grown up with in Fort Greene, Brooklyn—before it gentrified. But not long after her conviction, she took the name Carlotta and began to live as a woman, an embrace of selfhood that prison authorities rejected,…
Who is Vera Kelly isn’t your typical 1960s Cold War spy novel.
Although Vera’s sexuality is unresolved and she’s had a rocky road to adulthood, the CIA recruits her. She goes to work as an undercover agent in Buenos Aires. Her day job is to infiltrate a campus Marxist group with ties to the KGB. At night, she transcribes wiretaps taken from the presidential palace. When her handler goes dark, Vera is caught in the middle of a coup.
Who is Vera Kelly takes us into the mindset of lovely Vera. She’s fresh, funny, quirky, and comes off as a (relatively) regular gal, albeit one who is scrambling to stay alive in South America.
New York City, 1962. Vera Kelly is struggling to make rent and blend into the underground gay scene in Greenwich Village. She's working night shifts at a radio station when her quick wits, sharp tongue, and technical skills get her noticed by a recruiter for the CIA.
Next thing she knows she's in Argentina, tasked with wiretapping a congressman and infiltrating a group of student activists in Buenos Aires. As Vera becomes more and more enmeshed with the young radicals, the fragile local government begins to split at the seams. When a betrayal leaves her stranded in the wake of…
I remember how it was to be an awkward teen, misunderstood, questioning, and having nowhere to turn. I remember living in a violent world where I had to grow up to survive. The world was a scary place for a neurodivergent who lived more in her head than in real life. I want to be able to bring stories to our young people where they might see themselves and not feel so alone because we all are a bit awkward, a bit misunderstood, and filled with stories that deserve to be told.
Louis lives his life always on. He dresses like a rockstar but doesn’t play an instrument. He’s trying to be someone to everyone, and he doesn’t really know who he is until he meets Michael—the new kid.
Louis has a girlfriend, so he’s confused about the feelings he starts to have for Michael. This coming out happens slowly at first, then all at once. Louis is a neurodivergent character, and I really enjoyed his journey of self-discovery.
Louis thought he had it all figured out. He couldn’t have been more wrong.
If you ask Louis, he’s a rock star.
Just the right amount of sarcastic, cute, and only slightly delusional. He attends the best high school — in Paris no less — has the coolest best friend and the fiercest girlfriend, and he’s absolutely, a hundred per cent straight.
So no, Michael, the new British student, with his dark curls and sweet smiles, doesn’t interest him whatsoever. And when a teacher pairs the two to write an essay together and Louis gets all worked up about it,…
I’ve always been curious about people and the way they interact. When I was a small child, all our neighbors had their back doors wide open to catch the summertime breeze; they’d get the sense they were being watched… by my small face pressed against the screen door, listening and learning. My parents would get called..” She’s doing it again.” As an introvert, a performing artist, and a coach, I’ve learned to tune my ears to the messaging beneath the words—the unspoken truth in the interaction. And I truly believe that if we can learn to be more effective and compassionate listeners—our world will change for the better.
One of the most powerful benefits of skilled listening is building trust. Empathy is essential to creating trusting relationships. Jamison is a trained actor, and deep listening and empathy are essential to the craft of acting.
This book spans her experiences, from her work in medical training to her research on incarceration, reality TV, and street violence. I was struck by the heartfulness and clarity in Jamison's writing about what she has witnessed and experienced. She pulls no punches.
The stories in this book provide a clarion call for our species to regain our empathy for each other through skilled and intentional listening to connect, extend understanding, and ensure our survival.
From personal loss to phantom diseases, The Empathy Exams is a bold and brilliant collection, winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize
A Publishers Weekly Top Ten Essay Collection of Spring 2014
Beginning with her experience as a medical actor who was paid to act out symptoms for medical students to diagnose, Leslie Jamison's visceral and revealing essays ask essential questions about our basic understanding of others: How should we care about each other? How can we feel another's pain, especially when pain can be assumed, distorted, or performed? Is empathy a tool by which to test or even grade…
