Books like Exalted — picked by fans

At the beginning of this book, I recognized the ingredients that make up popular erotic novels. The main character, Edie, a Black woman and struggling artist, is beginning a relationship with an older, wealthy, successful white man in an open marriage. There’s a power imbalance. To a certain extent, this excites Edie, and in this way, the book fits neatly into the parameters of the genre.

However, the relationship becomes messy, and Edie’s life, both with and away from Eric, is fraught with bad decisions. Race, wealth, and gender intersect with sex in a complex and uncomfortable milieu. Through all of this, and with the guidance of Eric’s wife, Edie begins to make progressive, less destructive choices, and as she does, her art progresses.

This is a gorgeously written book about two best friends doing nothing in particular. Isa and Gala arrive in New York City intertwined and allied.

They whirl through all the requisite stops of the party girl layabout lifestyle. I was fascinated by the friendship’s closeness; Isa and Gala know each other’s quirks and fears in staggering intimacy. They function as a unit, as a “we.” Isa’s aimlessly wandering through life, but she isn’t in it alone, and that’s comforting to me.

Together, Isa and Gala turn aimlessness into freedom. It’s a detail-packed, slow-burning portrait of how we build identity together, intertwining ourselves and pushing each other forward.

I spent my summers during college doing odd jobs as a temp, but even readers who’ve never known anything but “the steadiness” at work will enjoy this mythical look at the gig economy.

The unnamed narrator, born from a long line of temps, takes pride in her ability to “accurately replace a person,” whether that’s a pirate, an assassin, or even the chairman of the board. This book is for anyone who’s ever wondered what it would take not just to survive their job but to transcend it.

To close off the list, I picked a novel where the main character ends up becoming energized by her work.

At an otherwise soul-sucking job at a PR firm, Ellinor becomes involved with, and motivated by, a political movement about supporting postal workers in Norway.

For a novel that could have been bogged down by the inner workings of the EU and the Norwegian Postal Service, Hjorth’s writing style is crisp and perfect. She could choose any subject matter and it would be interesting. 

I love a first-person narrative that sucks you in, and this compelling coming-of-age story as told by Molly Bolt, is a whopper. Not since the voice of Scout narrating To Kill a Mockingbird has a voice touched generations with its telling of her own story. This was the book that made me want to be a writer. I wanted to be brave like Molly…and brave like Rita Mae.

From childhood to adolescence, and all through college, we follow our hero Molly as she comes into her own about her sexuality with uncompromising strength and flat-out hilarious storytelling. It is remarkable that Rita Mae Brown’s 1973 novel has not yet found its way to the silver screen and it is the single book that made me want to be a writer. It seems that a story with such a strong roadmap, written long before the roads were paved, deserves a film.… show more.

I loved this book because it was the ultimate slow-burn romance coupled with an older woman coming out story, which was truly original at the time. As is almost always the case, the novel is better than the movie, but this one brilliantly made the transition to the film renamed Desert Hearts, which was helped by the amazing chemistry between the actresses and a director that did not shy away from sex scenes which were both graphic, yet beautiful. 

Set back in the 1950s, this sizzling & heartwarming matchup is the trifecta of opposites attract: class, age, and attitude towards coming out, this book was a romance with substance, sprinkled with a bit of comedy, my favorite recipe. 

I started this book for the unlikely main character–Sister Holiday, a chain-smoking, tattooed, queer nun–but it was the mystery that kept me reading. I always love it when a writer can make me feel like I am the one on the line, like I am fighting for my life or to prove my innocence. This book did just that.

I found I was holding myself tightly as Sister Holiday investigated but just kept finding more evidence against herself. The snippets of her past life made me feel for her more and more, taking the character from an unlikely hero to someone I cared deeply about. I can’t wait to get my hands on the second in the series.

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. 

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.

I love this novel because it is beautifully written and dips into darkness without losing the depth of the human spirit.

The story follows Russian lesbians, Gutke and Chava along with the women they love. It is a story of women’s struggle to survive a hard scrabble daily life, a revolution in the pale, and a Russian pogrom before immigrating to New York City. These are intelligent, aware women who dare to defy the norm at their own peril.

They still live in my heart because of their love and kindness, courage, and resilience to embrace hope in the face of hardship and tragedy.