Here are 100 books that Eating Fire fans have personally recommended if you like
Eating Fire.
Book DNA is a community of 13,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
Allan D. Hunter came out as genderqueer in 1980, more than 20 years before “genderqueer” was trending. He decided that women's studies in academia was the proper place to discuss these ideas about gender, so he headed to New York to major in women's studies as one of the first male students to do so.
This book is a typical first-person account of a student in a program (medical, in this case) who encounters some discrepancies between the idealistically-drawn portrait of how a medical school is supposed to operate and the actual realities in which jealousies, territoriality, and the ongoing scramble to acquire and defend power within the institution play a major role. The main character is naïve to such considerations until they are made apparent to him.
This is a novel about doctors: what they do to each other and to their patients. And what their patients do to them. The heroes are young doctors, fresh out of medical school and taking the blame for disease and random disaster.
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
Allan D. Hunter came out as genderqueer in 1980, more than 20 years before “genderqueer” was trending. He decided that women's studies in academia was the proper place to discuss these ideas about gender, so he headed to New York to major in women's studies as one of the first male students to do so.
This book is a feminist memoir that focuses on the passionate experience of being politically connected with others, and juxtaposes that with the divisiveness and the unfortunate polarization of identity politics.
She also makes a strong case for a nuanced reading of political situations, showing how simplistic knee-jerk litmus testing becomes toxic within any movement, no matter how righteous the cause.
When Lise Weil came out in 1976, she came out into a land that was all on fire. Lesbian desire was the pulsing center of an entire way of life, a culture, a movement. The air throbbed with possibility. At the center of In Search of Pure Lust is Weil’s immersion in this culture, this movement: the grand experiment of lesbian feminism of the ’70s and ’80s. She and the women around her lived in a state of heightened erotic intensity that was, she believed, the source of their most vital knowledge. Desire was their guiding light. But after fifteen…
Allan D. Hunter came out as genderqueer in 1980, more than 20 years before “genderqueer” was trending. He decided that women's studies in academia was the proper place to discuss these ideas about gender, so he headed to New York to major in women's studies as one of the first male students to do so.
This story is the memoir of a very butch lesbian, which is an identity that juxtaposes very oddly and awkwardly against how our culture thinks of motherhood and pregnancy.
This tongue-in-cheek depiction makes for a clever skewering of the tension between one's internal identity and the perceptions of others, and the complexities of stepping outside the identity role that one has chosen to occupy.
First pregnancy can be a fraught, uncomfortable experience for any woman, but for resolutely butch lesbian Teek Thomasson, it is exceptionally challenging.
Teek identifies as a masculine woman in a world bent on associating pregnancy with a cult of uber-femininity. Teek wonders, “Can butches even get pregnant?”
Of course, as she and her pragmatic femme girlfriend Vee discover, they can. But what happens when they do? Written and illustrated by A.K. Summers, and based on her own pregnancy, Pregnant Butch strives to depict this increasingly common, but still underrepresented experience of queer pregnancy with humor and complexity—from the question of…
A poisonous maiden, a Daoist sex cult, and a violent insurgency.
The polyandrous Yan family in China's rural Shaanxi Province takes in two carpenter brothers. When one brother is convicted of murder after killing their neighbor in a dispute, a constable threatens to expose the family's rumored polyandry and extorts…
Allan D. Hunter came out as genderqueer in 1980, more than 20 years before “genderqueer” was trending. He decided that women's studies in academia was the proper place to discuss these ideas about gender, so he headed to New York to major in women's studies as one of the first male students to do so.
This tale is the autobiographical account of a married man who, when his wife gets an especially nice promotion opportunity, agrees with her that it makes more sense for him to stay at home with their young girl child.
He takes his role and its responsibilities seriously. His story is mostly the story of what is involved being the domestic partner on a day-to-day basis, but braided into that is the specifically gendered experience of doing all that as a male person in this society.
Lincoln Menner is finding out just how hard it is to be a woman. When his wife Jo was offered her dream job, Linc supported her wholeheartedly, leaving his thriving landscape business in Los Angeles and moving to Rochester, New York. This was a chance to escape the cloying needs and atrocious tastes of his celebrity clientele, start over in fresh surroundings, and spend a little quality time with their three-year-old daughter, Violet.
But Linc had no idea what it really meant to be a househusband: To stay home every day, folding laundry, cleaning soap scum, and teaching his little…
I think all romance writers have their favourite trope, and second chances has the strongest hold on me. I’m a person who makes mistakes, so I love to see equally fallible humans getting their second chance at a happy ever after too. People with a history always lend depth to a story too. At any point, you can pluck a moment from their past to show an element of their relationship. And angst. I love a good dose of angst. With second chances, it's likely been a rocky road. Then the clincher for me, that sense of fate and destiny of people who’ve gone separate ways but find themselves drawn back together.
So, let’s go angsty first with a Melissa Brayden, an author who lures you in with light-hearted banter, beautiful characters and settings, then knocks you out with a punch of angst.
Small-town romance, Strawberry Summer, tracks two very different characters over several years and several chances and it’s almost painful how much you want things to work out for these two. Readers who like shouting at books for the couple to get it together, this is a good one for you.
One of the things I love most about Melissa’s books, is the reveal that opens your eyes to another level in the story. You’ll be happily reading the romance, swept along, thinking you know where it’s all going and why, then she’ll pull back a layer and plunge you into an understanding of a character that makes sense down to your bones, and you can never think of that…
Just because you’re through with your past, doesn’t mean it’s through with you.
Margaret Beringer didn’t have an easy adolescence. She hated her name, was less than popular in school, and was always cast aside as a farm kid.” However, with the arrival of Courtney Carrington, Margaret’s youth sparked into color. Courtney was smart, beautiful, and put togethereverything Margaret wasn’t. Who would have imagined that they’d fit together so perfectly?
But first loves can scar.
Margaret hasn’t seen Courtney in years and that’s for the best. But when Courtney loses her father and returns to Tanner Peak…
I started in publishing at the Advocate magazine, twenty years ago in its heyday, then moved to Alyson Books, who first published Emma Donoghue among many others, offering a place for queer writers showcasing queer stories to find their audience. Afterwards, I became involved with Gertrude literary journal, a beloved, 25-year-old non-profit, LGBTQA journal that has now evolved to The Gertrude Conference. All the while, I read, wrote, and supported queer stories, like these gems!
This one was made into a long-short documentary (38 minutes) called Jeanne Cordova: Butches, Lies & Feminism that won the Grand Jury Prize at Outfest 2017 for Best Documentary Short, now I’d love to see this as a biopic feature!
Let’s watch Jeanne Cordova come to life—her old school get-er-done butch energy out there in the 1970s fighting for lesbian rights, starting the West Coast Lesbian Conference in 1971 and the first National Lesbian Conference in 1973. Imagine the drama bringing people together and setting the platform for lesbian rights when many were fired if outed.
Maybe Fortune Feimster could play a role!? Oh yes, yes she could.
A sweeping memoir, a raw and intimate chronicle of a young activist torn between conflicting personal longings and political goals. When We Were Outlaws offers a rare view of the life of a radical lesbian during the early cultural struggle for gay rights, Women’s Liberation, and the New Left of the 1970s.
Brash and ambitious, activist Jeanne Córdova is living with one woman and falling in love with another, but her passionate beliefs tell her that her first duty is to the revolution” to change the world and end discrimination against gays and lesbians. Trying to compartmentalize her sexual life,…
Big Ideas... For Small Businesses
by
John Lamerton,
Big Ideas… for Small Businesses is a straight-talking, no-nonsense guide to growing a small business without sacrificing your lifestyle. Written by a former civil servant turned entrepreneur, the book challenges hustle culture and instead champions the idea of an "ambitious lifestyle business" - one that provides freedom and financial stability,…
I’ve always loved reading but really fell in love with fantasy in my mid teens when I discovered the Lord of the Rings and Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone’s Fighting Fantasy gamebook series. I haven’t looked back since. My love of fantasy literature and games led me into a degree in English Lit and writing. My first novel, Demonheart, dark fantasy, was published in 2017. As a fantasy writer, I have to fuel up on a steady diet of fantasy novels and I hope you enjoy my recommended list!
I loved a number of things about Pennyblade. For starters, the main character’s (Kyra’s) race, the Commrach, who are like elves, are ruthless libertines and hedonists.
The Pennyblade world is a fascinating and grim place where same sex relationships are punishable by death and the action, which is visceral and very explicit, just keeps coming.
I really liked that this is a novel about prejudices, it appealed to me as someone from an ethnic minority group who grew up in London in the late 1970s / early 80s and experienced racism.
Fortunately, Pennyblade has plenty of humour which makes the grimdark nature of the book more palatable.
A sharp-tongued disgraced-noble-turned-mercenary has to stop the world collapsing into chaos in this gripping, savagely funny epic fantasy packed with unforgettable characters, for fans of Joe Abercrombie.
Exile. Mercenary. Lover. Monster. Pennyblade.
Kyra Cal'Adra has spent the last four years on the Main, living in exile from her home, her people, her lover and her past. A highblood commrach - the ancient race of the Isle, dedicated to tradition and the perfection of the blood - she's welcome among the humans of the Main only for the skill of her rapier, her preternatural bladework. They don't care which of the…
I am a Cambodian American/Asian American writer who is always concerned/interested/curious by the landscape of our diasporic stories. There is incredible diversity here… in the ways Asian Americanness can look, sound, and feel like a myriad of things. These books aren’t instructed or tethered by gaze but rather born and smartly crafted by unique souls that run deep. These authors and their stories are my heroes. I hope you enjoy these picks as much as I do!
This book sits at the center of my heart. It is personal, vulnerable, and incredibly moving.
It follows Pustata’s relationship with her mother who struggles to acknowledge her daughter’s queer identity. As children of survivors, it’s about the boundaries we must articulate to survive ourselves and the hope we must keep in the secret parts to leave space for transformation.
Her sensitivity and strength are always in conversation with each other and always equally felt.
When Putsata Reang was eleven months old, her family fled war-torn Cambodia, spending twenty-three days on an overcrowded navy vessel before finding sanctuary at an American naval base in the Philippines. Holding what appeared to be a lifeless baby in her arms, Ma resisted the captain's orders to throw her bundle overboard. Instead, on landing, Ma rushed her baby into the arms of American military nurses and doctors, who saved the child's life. "I had hope, just a little, you were still alive," Ma would tell Put in an oft-repeated story that became family legend.
I am the author of the Sherlockiana duology My Dear Watson and Mrs. Watson: Untold Stories. I chose these books because they all have British women at the helm, involve detectives and/or investigative processes, and contain close-to-home scandals and intrigue. In that sense, these are “domestic” mysteries—books that contain puzzles related to everyday household drama. Miss Marple, Harriet Vane, and the women of Baker Street solve literal detective cases. The secret writings of Anne Lister and Constance Wilde show how they decoded the homosexual element in their lives, and used their writing to maintain a sense of self in oppressive societies. Each of them are women after my own heart.
A real-life figure played in the Gentleman Jack TV series by Suranne Jones, this biography investigates Anne Lister’s personal diaries to reveal a portrait of someone remarkable: a businesswoman landowner in the early 1800s, a world traveler, and a lover of women long before the word “lesbian” would have accurately described her.
Lister’s boldness seems ahead of her time, but perhaps only because women were so rarely free to express themselves. Lister’s numerous liaisons with women, her plans to make and grow her fortune, plus her documentation of her digestive health, all make her relatable over 200 years later.
This is an important piece of LGBT and gender studies history, a bright chronicle in the archives of feminist study, and an interesting read about an extraordinary person.
The extraordinary life of history's first modern lesbian who inspired the popular television series Gentleman Jack.
Anne Lister's journals were so shocking that the first person to crack their secret code hid them behind a fake panel in his ancestral home. Anne Lister was a Regency landowner, an intrepid world traveller ... and an unabashed lover of other women.
In this bold new biography, prizewinning author Angela Steidele uses the diaries to create a portrait of Anne Lister as we've never seen her before: a woman in some ways very much of her time…
The problem is not with the actions young women take but with the toxic, sexist conditions they are responding to.
Tanenbaum found, based on six years of interviews with young people ages 14-30, that young women are navigating a culture littered with gendered dress codes, revenge porn, and sexually explicit…
I’m an OB/GYN, passionate about adventuring beyond what’s expected. This has led me to pivot multiple times in my career, now focusing on writing. I’ve written a play, The Post-Roe Monologues, to elevate women’s stories. I cherish the curiosity that drives outer and inner exploration, and I love memoirs that skillfully weave the two. The books on this list feature extraordinary women who took risks, left comfort and safety, and battled vulnerability to step into the unknown. These authors moved beyond the stories they’d believed about themselves–or that others told about them. They invite you to think about living fuller and bigger lives.
I read this book in a day. The writing sparkles with intimacy, vulnerability, and humor. Levy, a journalist accustomed to traveling the world, finds herself lost while on assignment in Mongolia. There, she experiences a miscarriage within the context of a crumbling relationship.
She writes, “The future I thought I was meticulously crafting for years had disappeared, and with it have gone my ideas about the kind of life I’d imagined I was due.”
An Amazon.com Book of 2017 and an NPR Great Read of 2017
'Every deep feeling a human is capable of will be shaken loose by this short, but profound book' David Sedaris
'I wanted what we all want: everything. We want a mate who feels like family and a lover who is exotic, surprising. We want to be youthful adventurers and middle-aged mothers. We want intimacy and autonomy, safety and stimulation, reassurance and novelty, coziness and thrills. But we can't have it all.'
