Books like Little Nothing

When I was writing my first mystery series, I knew very little about the history of the lesbian detective novel. Because I wanted to work within the genre’s boundaries, I spent almost as much time researching it as writing. With the 2022 publication of The Lesbian Detective Novel, Megan Casey has made this task way easier for future lesbian mystery authors. She lists over 1,000 titles along with their creators and adds a few pertinent notes about each book or series. When you finish my first four picks and are looking for other lesbian mysteries to enjoy, this is the book to have by your bedside. I certainly have it beside mine.

Like Nikki Baker’s novels, Tell Me What You Like is driven by its narration. Alison Kaine, the protagonist of the novel, works for the Denver Police Department. But unlike most protagonists of lesbian policiers—who tend to be sergeants or detectives—Alison is a lowly officer. Because she is an out lesbian, she is assigned to investigate the murder of a leather dyke outside a lesbian bar, and is slowly drawn into the stories of the bar’s other denizens. And, not quite against her will, she slides into the darker subculture of BDSM, with whips and collars and a dominatrix named Anastasia. 

Unemployed lawyer, Nick, gets offered the chance to make quick bucks in the car repo business. With her repo partner, Frankie, she sets off across North Carolina on a series of zany (and dangerous) jobs to recover the cars. The jobs get more and more bizarre, the characters they meet are loveable and eccentric, and, despite not liking each other much in the beginning, along the way Nick and Frankie fall for each other.

Mixed in with the humour (and there are a lot of zingy one-liners, banter, and snort-coffee moments) are racial and small-town issues that give depth to an otherwise light-hearted story.

If you like novels with big heart, larger-than-life characters (including the cat, Carol Jenkins), an action movie feel at times and a banter-filled developing romance at others, this book will delight you.

Breaking Character is a lesbian celebrity romance, but it’s also so much more than that. The main character, icy British actress Elizabeth, is in the closet for fear of risking her career. When she meets her younger colleague Summer, she starts letting someone close for the first time—and the result is a romance that is sizzling and sweet at the same time. 

If you like age-gap romances with a fake relationship and well-written characters, this is a great introduction to Lee Winter’s books.

This book puts together two very likeable main characters: Emily, an architect with a very rigid outlook on life, and Skye, who’s a freewheeling bike courier. Throw in some great chemistry, an Aussie setting, solid secondary characters, and overlay it all with KJ’s witty banter and amazingly lyrical sentences that seem to come from nowhere but just fit the narrative so perfectly, and you get Change of Plans, a perfect light-hearted romance.

But look a bit deeper and there’s insight into mental health, commentary on social housing, and a background of big megacorps overriding environmental and cultural issues for profit.

I love this book for its humour, magical qualities, deceptively simple language, and the way it weaves together Hindu and Western ideas of transformation.

I have taught it in many different types of classes and my students also loved its unique portrait of the artist as a young Indian woman, a lesbian living in the West. It was a great way to introduce them to India. I am an admirer of Suniti Namjoshi, and this is my favourite among her works.

Forrest’s Kate Delafield, a San Francisco homicide detective, is surely the most famous character in lesbian mystery fiction. She is also the first lesbian police officer. Although most of Forrest’s 10 Delafield novels deserve 5-star ratings, The Beverly Malibu goes far beyond the usual whodunit limits in that it revisits the terrible McCarthy era when minorities—including the LGBTQ community—were kicked down at by the elite. This is also the book where Kate meets her long-time lover Aimee. 

For a more romance-driven option, Safety Protocols for Human Holidays is a sweet winter holiday-themed novella, wherein Raskli, an alien security officer, is asked to check in on human Jen, who is exhibiting odd behavior. Jen is the only human on the ship and is depressed, and it is up to Raskli and the rest of the ragtag crew to sort out how to cheer her up. Perhaps a holiday! But what human holiday to pick? 

This book is straight-up joyful fluff. Yes, it’s in space, and yes, the pairing is sapphic, but it’s also a cute human/alien romance. No stress on this read, and no heavy thinking. Just, well, kissing. And antics. And Christmas.

Finally, a sapphic space book with a humanly complex protagonist. Alana Quick lives in poverty, barely making ends meet as a spaceship mechanic. Her chronic illness takes whatever money she can come by, for her meds. She finally takes life by the wolf-paws (read the book, you’ll get it) and stows away on a ship, determined to find a better life. Of course then chaos ensues, there’s a hot captain to fall in love with (yes, fight authority, Alana. It makes it that much more fun when you two eventually kiss), and Alana must continually navigate her disease, save her sister, and negotiate for a position on the spaceship Tangled Axon.

This book needs to come with a health warning – will make you laugh so hard you’re in danger of pulling a muscle. The humor, usually provided by the two elderly ladies one of the main characters, Jorie, lives with, really is side-splitting. But alongside their hilarity, the romance between Jorie, an out lesbian, and the random woman, Lena, she shares a car ride with when snow cancels their flight is delightful. Mainly because, for once with a ‘late coming out’ story, Lena very quickly accepts her new sexuality, and it’s Jorie who struggles with what it means to be the first woman that Lena’s attracted to.