Here are 100 books that Acts of Service fans have personally recommended if you like
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I came out as bisexual way back in 1991, and experienced a lot of discrimination, hostility, and ridicule from both the gay and straight communities. Finding stories about me and my own experience has always been vital, to help me explore and understand more about myself and how I “fit in” in a world that seems to be so locked into an either/or framework. True, I have witnessed a number of positive changes for bi+ folks in the decades since I came out, but there's still a long way to go in terms of visibility, acceptance, and understanding.
As a writer, each time I read anything by James Baldwin, it´s like I´m getting a master class in how to capture a feeling and translate that into an articulate thought. When a friend told me to read this book over 30 years ago, shortly after I came out, they said this was “the best, and perhaps the most tragic novel about bisexuality ever written.”
Years later, it still kicks me in the gut each time I read it. Baldwin´s detailed examination of David´s desire for Giovanni while simultaneously being engaged to his fiancé, Hella, remains achingly beautiful.
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,…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I came out as bisexual way back in 1991, and experienced a lot of discrimination, hostility, and ridicule from both the gay and straight communities. Finding stories about me and my own experience has always been vital, to help me explore and understand more about myself and how I “fit in” in a world that seems to be so locked into an either/or framework. True, I have witnessed a number of positive changes for bi+ folks in the decades since I came out, but there's still a long way to go in terms of visibility, acceptance, and understanding.
Guy New York has had a huge influence on my own creative writing, and this book of his is definitely my favorite. A sprawling story set in New York City's East Village of the recent past, this erotic story is raw and raunchy and populated with characters that are absolutely flawed yet totally identifiable.
There are all kinds of sex and intimacy depicted here, but I appreciate how he keeps the focus on the experience of eroticism between all of these characters and genders, no matter how messy or contradictory, as that feels truer to life. Also, for me, it contains some of the most authentic portrayals of male bisexuality I have found in contemporary fiction. Definitely recommend!
"A peek into the inner worlds of those of us who live on the edge. Disgusting, Beautiful, Immoral lets you into the minds of wild and wanton sexual adventurers. Well written, compelling, and flat out sexy." - Stoya
Disgusting Beautiful Immoral is no doubt, the dirtiest book in the world. It also happens to be smart, funny, sweet, and kinky as hell. From ageplay to spanking and threesomes to moresomes, the story speeds through New York City on a filthy bender of love, desire, and twisted passion.
I came out as bisexual way back in 1991, and experienced a lot of discrimination, hostility, and ridicule from both the gay and straight communities. Finding stories about me and my own experience has always been vital, to help me explore and understand more about myself and how I “fit in” in a world that seems to be so locked into an either/or framework. True, I have witnessed a number of positive changes for bi+ folks in the decades since I came out, but there's still a long way to go in terms of visibility, acceptance, and understanding.
This collection of essays about bisexuality came out earlier this year, and I already feel like I need to read it again. The book encompasses both ends of a philosophical spectrum, from recognizable authors who go deep into subjects I thought I was already familiar with to newer voices who open up my mind with their engaging questions surrounding bisexuality, gender-fluidity, polyamory, and more.
Some of these writers challenged my thinking, which I found rare and rewarding in a lot of contemporary writing on bisexual identity and experience. I want to re-read this book so I can process the ideas and questions Vaneet Mehta and Lois Shearing have assembled here and see how I can pour some of this into my life and fiction.
The bisexual experience is, by necessity, incredibly diverse - we are likely to be attracted to different genders, form part of multiple marginalised groups, and be perceived (depending on the gender of our partner) in wildly different ways... This anthology is a radical and ambitious attempt to capture the incredible multiplicity of bisexual identities. With essays that unpack the intersectionality and conflict of bisexuality with history, language, sexual violence, class identity, religion, polyamory, gender critical ideology, fatness, trans activism, the asylum system, literature and anarchy - this collection of bi voices demands to be heard.
The Year Mrs. Cooper Got Out More
by
Meredith Marple,
The coastal tourist town of Great Wharf, Maine, boasts a crime rate so low you might suspect someone’s lying.
Nevertheless, jobless empty nester Mallory Cooper has become increasingly reclusive and fearful. Careful to keep the red wine handy and loath to leave the house, Mallory misses her happier self—and so…
I came out as bisexual way back in 1991, and experienced a lot of discrimination, hostility, and ridicule from both the gay and straight communities. Finding stories about me and my own experience has always been vital, to help me explore and understand more about myself and how I “fit in” in a world that seems to be so locked into an either/or framework. True, I have witnessed a number of positive changes for bi+ folks in the decades since I came out, but there's still a long way to go in terms of visibility, acceptance, and understanding.
Dierdre Winter is one of my favorite independent writers of bisexual erotic literature. Like all of her novellas and short stories, this book takes its time introducing its characters, allowing the reader to get inside their heads.
For all of its highly charged erotic scenes, the book is about communication within a marriage, being honest with your partner about what you desire, and also about trust. Instead of just delivering some quick “word porn,” Winter takes her time to engage all of my senses, particularly my brain.
"He looked at me like I was the greatest thing to ever happen to him, like I was a genie he’d finally unleashed from its lamp after years of struggle and hope, like I was a goddess descended from on high, and he couldn’t believe I’d lowered myself to such an extent that I deigned to walk among the mortals. I felt power, an almost uncomfortable level of power, like I could have asked him for anything in the world, at that moment, and he would have jumped up to make it happen. But that’s not what I wanted, not…
I have a close girlfriend who was once involved with a man she wanted to marry. The trouble was, the guy was always hanging out with this other woman who he’d known since childhood. Just friends, he said. Nothing going on. Ha! The shenanigans they got up to were unbelievable, and extremely upsetting to my girlfriend, who eventually broke up with the cad. Her unlucky experience got me interested in the psychology of the love triangle, and why some people remain mired in these dead-end relationships. My reading jam is anything twisty and suspenseful, and what’s more fraught than a three-way competition for someone’s affections.
This one had my head spinning right round, baby! Happy marriage, babies, a nice home—what more could a young wife ask for?
How about someone she can trust, for starters, and how ’bout her husband’s ex-lover quits coming around all the time, tattling tales of his murky past? It reminded me of an old friend of mine who fell in love with a guy she’d met through an online dating site. He claimed he was long divorced, but—whoops—was actually still married, and living with his estranged wife in separate parts of their house.
You can probably guess how that ended, but not this book. With every wild plot turn, I was grabbing for the Oh sh*t handle and gasping for breath.
'Shari Lapena is one of the best thriller writers in the business' Steve Cavanagh
'I tore through it. It kept me on my toes throughout and the ending was just fantastic. Really tense!' Harriet Tyce, author of Blood Orange
___
It starts with a shocking accusation . . .
Stephanie and Patrick are recently married, with new-born twins. While Stephanie struggles with the disorienting effects of sleep deprivation, there's one thing she knows for certain - she has everything she ever wanted.
I have always been fascinated with morally grey or complex characters. For me, the sign of a great novel is one where you find yourself talking about the characters as if they were real people you know. I want to experience something when I read, and characters that are flawed, imperfect, or morally grey have always intrigued me because they can take me to places I haven’t (or wouldn’t!) go myself. And, of course, they provide ample grounds for fun discussions with my friends! Sci-fi apocalyptic fiction is fertile ground for such characters, so I’ve tried to pick books you may not have heard of. I hope you like them!
This was a book club choice, and as soon as I finished it, I bought the other two books in the trilogy. I literally couldn’t put them down! Another post-apocalypse for this list, this time, the story is told through the memories of Jimmy/Snowman. But make no mistake, the novel is about Crake, a brilliant, lonely, and terrifying young man.
As Jimmy tries to recover his past, shadowed by the gentle, green-skinned ‘children of Crake,’ he recalls the events leading up to the end of humanity. This is very much a mystery, so I must be careful what I reveal, but if you are all about misguided genius and hubris, you will adore this novel. Needless to say, with an author like Atwood, the writing is superb.
By the author of THE HANDMAID'S TALE and ALIAS GRACE
*
Pigs might not fly but they are strangely altered. So, for that matter, are wolves and racoons. A man, once named Jimmy, lives in a tree, wrapped in old bedsheets, now calls himself Snowman. The voice of Oryx, the woman he loved, teasingly haunts him. And the green-eyed Children of Crake are, for some reason, his responsibility.
*
Praise for Oryx and Crake:
'In Jimmy, Atwood has created a great character: a tragic-comic artist of the future, part buffoon, part Orpheus. An adman who's a sad man; a jealous…
Don’t mess with the hothead—or he might just mess with you. Slater Ibáñez is only interested in two kinds of guys: the ones he wants to punch, and the ones he sleeps with. Things get interesting when they start to overlap. A freelance investigator, Slater trolls the dark side of…
I love studying the ins/outs of humanity and our interactions, but especially, EI (emotional intelligence). A lot of emphasis is put on being “smart” and analytical (think IQ), but EI is largely ignored.
Relationships thrive (and die) on EI! In the novels I write, I explore the emotional side of relationships and how, if we pay attention to this other side of intelligence, beautiful interactions happen.
Typically, I don’t find riveting EI in books—and so when I do, I gobble the book up once, then twice, and possibly a third time, then tell everyone I know to GO READ THAT BOOK!
I’ve always been deeply fascinated with any amnesia-related plot. A teenager who survives a near-death experience and cannot remember the last several years of her life? And, despite this being YA novel, as an older reader, I could not put this book down. It kept me guessing, constantly deducing as everything unfolded, and though the main characters are young, their emotional processes are so raw and beautiful. I’ve reread this one many a time. For any Nancy Drew gamers out there, The Secret History of Us is like a ND game/Nicholas Sparks’ novel hybrid.
"Jessi Kirby's books just keep getting better and better, and The Secret History of Us is her best yet. It beautifully touches on all the most important things in life-love, family, friendship, memory, and bacon. I loved it."-Morgan Matson, New York Times bestselling author of The Unexpected Everything In this gorgeously written, emotional novel that fans of Sarah Dessen will enjoy, a teenage girl must piece together the parts of her life she doesn't remember after a severe collision leaves her with no memory of the past four years. When Olivia awakes in a hospital bed following a near-fatal car…
A lover of fiction since my teens, I only really took an interest in history in my 20s. I’m fascinated with WWII and the 1950s due to family histories and having visited key sites, like Bletchley Park and the Command Bunker in Uxbridge, near where I grew up. I’m not especially patriotic, but I am proud of what Britain had to do in 1940, as well as the toll the war took and the years of recovery. But it’s also the time, albeit decreasingly so, when people still alive today can look back at their youth, and we can all have a nostalgia for that time in our lives.
It is a beautifully atmospheric, Blitz-era novel about passions and complex relationships in the noir blackout and who can be trusted in such times.
Published just after the war, it captures the period in a way that those born decades later can only dream of doing. My mum was an un-evacuated child in London during the Blitz, and her school was bombed to the ground by the Luftwaffe—but luckily, on a Saturday.
England is flawed as a nation, then and now, but it’s important to remember the unique evil of the Nazis. Most individuals are flawed in much more minor ways. The novels I have chosen all contain imperfect people making mistakes. To me, that’s true life. It’s what I relate to.
It is wartime London, and the carelessness of people with no future flows through the evening air. Stella discovers that her lover Robert is suspected of selling information to the enemy. Harrison, the British intelligence agent on his trail, wants to bargain, the price for his silence being Stella herself. Caught between two men and unsure who she can trust, the flimsy structures of Stella's life begin to crumble.
I first became interested in the subject of my novel after reading about the prosecution and sentencing of Andrea Yates, the mother who drowned her five children in a bathtub. My curiosity led me to Dr. Spinelli’s book, and the studies and scientific information told me there was a book there. Having lived on the St. Clair River, I knew it had to be part of the story. As a retired lawyer, I had plenty of knowledge of the court system, so I decided to write the novel from the lawyer’s point of view and include her personal growth as she connects to her client in unorthodox ways.
Although considered a classic, I only read this book while working on my novel, and it has haunted me ever since. The injustice of the girl’s treatment versus that of the father (who is never publicly identified in the story) left a serious impression and kept me at my writing desk.
Although English law has recognized the emotional changes a woman experiences during and after birth, the U.S. has never done so.
'Our deeds carry their terrible consequences...consequences that are hardly ever confined to ourselves.'
Pretty Hetty Sorrel is loved by the village carpenter Adam Bede, but her head is turned by the attentions of the fickle young squire, Arthur Donnithorne. His dalliance with the dairymaid has unforeseen consequences that affect the lives of many in their small rural community. First published in 1859, Adam Bede carried its readers back sixty years to the lush countryside of Eliot's native Warwickshire, and a time of impending change for England and the wider world. Eliot's powerful portrayal of the interaction of ordinary people brought…
"My friends are my estate." This quote from Emily Dickinson (which I like so much, I’ve put in my novel!) gives a proper dignity to the concept of friendship. Friends can be overlooked in fiction, often just there to show that the main character isn’t a complete loner. Friendships are portrayed as less interesting and important than romances. Yet in real life, romantic relationships come and go, whilst friends are there for you, no matter what. Or at least, the best ones are. I’m a passionate believer in stories which reflect the importance, and complexity, of what, for many of us, are our longest-lasting relationships.
This funny, lively story tells first one friend’s version of events, then the other’s; the reader has to decide where they think the truth and lies are.
It was one of the books that inspired me to write, and it may not be a coincidence that my first novel also tells a story from two different accounts…!
Here, friends Gemma and Lily hope to never see each other again after a huge falling out over a man, but the more we find out, the more we aren’t sure whose side we should be on. What a rare talent Marian Keyes has for seeing the humanity, and the humour, in everyone.
