Here are 100 books that The Famous Lady Lovers fans have personally recommended if you like
The Famous Lady Lovers.
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If society considered your desires illegal, would you save records of it? As a historian of sexuality in the US and as a queer person, I’m drawn to stories about convention-defying love. We know much more about straight people’s passions because these were the socially approved ones. Learning about queer people’s desires is more challenging—and the result feels even more precious.
I love this book because it is both totally surprising and, at the same time, familiar. Sylvia and Charity lived together for more than 40 years in the early 1800s in New England, and their neighbors acknowledged their status as devoted partners.
Cleves is a masterful storyteller. Reading the book, I was captivated by these two remarkable women. When I finished the book, I realized I had a completely different understanding of queer relationships in early America.
Charity and Sylvia is the intimate history of two ordinary women who lived in an extraordinary same-sex marriage during the early nineteenth century. Based on diaries, letters, and poetry, among other original documents, the research traces the women's lives in sharp detail. Charity Bryant was born in 1777 to a consumptive mother who died a month later. Raised in Massachusetts, Charity developed into a brilliant and strong-willed woman with a passion for her own sex. After being banished from her family home by her father at age twenty, she traveled throughout Massachusetts, working as a teacher, making intimate female friends,…
The dragons of Yuro have been hunted to extinction.
On a small, isolated island, in a reclusive forest, lives bandit leader Marani and her brother Jacks. With their outlaw band they rob from the rich to feed themselves, raiding carriages and dodging the occasional vindictive…
If society considered your desires illegal, would you save records of it? As a historian of sexuality in the US and as a queer person, I’m drawn to stories about convention-defying love. We know much more about straight people’s passions because these were the socially approved ones. Learning about queer people’s desires is more challenging—and the result feels even more precious.
I can’t take my eyes off this collection of gorgeous historical photographs of affectionate queer couples from 1850 to 1950. Nini and Treadwell scoured libraries and personal collections to create this visual testament to gay love. Their painstaking digitization of often fragile originals created a unique archive, one that we can all share on our coffee tables.
I loved the book so much that I obtained permission from Nini and Treadwell to reprint one of their images as the frontispiece of Fierce Desires! We, too, rarely get to see these snapshots of queer affection, but they are beautiful to behold.
Loving: A Photographic History of Men in Love, 1850-1950 portrays the history of romantic love between men in hundreds of moving and tender vernacular photographs taken between the years 1850 and 1950. This visual narrative of astonishing sensitivity brings to light an until-now-unpublished collection of hundreds of snapshots, portraits, and group photos taken in the most varied of contexts, both private and public.
Taken when male partnerships were often illegal, the photos here were found at flea markets, in shoe boxes, family archives, old suitcases, and later online and at auctions. The collection now includes photos from all over the…
If society considered your desires illegal, would you save records of it? As a historian of sexuality in the US and as a queer person, I’m drawn to stories about convention-defying love. We know much more about straight people’s passions because these were the socially approved ones. Learning about queer people’s desires is more challenging—and the result feels even more precious.
This extraordinary book reprints passionate letters exchanged by two Black women in the mid-19th century—the only such letters ever discovered in the US. I loved reading Addie Brown’s letters to Rebecca Primus, which reveal the depth of their commitment to each other.
Griffin’s commentary perfectly balances the transcribed letters. She taught me that Rebecca, who was from an educated family, was a trailblazing educator for formerly enslaved people in Maryland, has a school named after her, and left her papers (including Addie’s letters!) for posterity. I felt like I knew and cared about Addie and Rebecca by the book’s end.
A riveting collection of letters written at the time of the Civil War that chronicle the lives of two African American women from New England: one who went to the South to found a school, the other a domestic servant who stayed in the North, in New York and New England.
Rebecca Primus, the daughter of a prominent black Hartford family, was one of the many women who traveled south after the Civil War to teach the newly freed men and women. She was sent by the Hartford Freedmen's Aid Society to Royal Oak, Maryland, where she helped to found…
Jake Sledge, a rugged ex-cop turned private eye, teams up with his colossal partner Bobo to navigate the gritty streets of River City.
A murdered lawyer drags them into a web of political intrigue, neo-Nazi thugs, and bloody showdowns. With sharp wit and hard-hitting action, Jake tackles scumbags the only…
If society considered your desires illegal, would you save records of it? As a historian of sexuality in the US and as a queer person, I’m drawn to stories about convention-defying love. We know much more about straight people’s passions because these were the socially approved ones. Learning about queer people’s desires is more challenging—and the result feels even more precious.
Katz’s book highlights the queer relationships enjoyed by some of the most famous men of the nineteenth-century United States, from Abraham Lincoln to Walt Whitman, as well as many lesser-known figures.
The book changed the way I thought about men’s friendships as part of their private lives. Katz wants to show that these relationships forged a new understanding of gay men’s sexuality as more than physical. The result is a loving portrait of men’s affections and passions.
In "Love Stories" Jonathan Ned Katz presents stories of men's intimacies with men during the 19th century - including those of Abraham Lincoln - drawing flesh-and-blood portraits of intimate friendships and the ways in which men struggled to name, define and defend their sexual feelings for one another. In a world before "gay" and "straight" referred to sexuality, men like Walt Whitman and John Addlington Symonds created new ways to name and conceive of their erotic relationships with other men. Katz, diving into history through diaries, letters, newspapers and poems, offers us a clearer picture than ever before of how…
I am a writer and performer born and raised in New York City. In my previous life, I was an Emmy-nominated journalist and digital media producer, covering sexual and reproductive health. In addition to writing, I love musical improv, opera, Olympic weightlifting, and spending time with my wife and dog.
Many books have kissing inthe forest, but how many are about kissing the forest itself?
Fenton has watched countless hunters enter his forest to claim a wish by killing the white-tailed stag. Each hunter has taken: a sip from the stream, a flower from the vine, wood to light a fire. Each hunter has subsequently died.
Prior is different; he takes nothing, instead asking for a god’s assistance in waking his sister from her sleeping sickness. Fenton—who is the forest and the white-tailed stag and a son of Old Nan and also, definitely, a god—decides to pack up the forest and help Prior out.
Where I come from, that sort of thing will get you a little kiss or two at the very least.
Season after season, hunters have attempted to capture the white-tailed stag. Local legend holds that its capture promises prosperity, and in a land that is dying—to hunger, to war; to a magical curse, some say—even a whisper of hope is a powerful lure. Yet every hunter who tries fails, never to leave the forest. Fenton, god of the forest, yet imprisoned within its borders, watches from his place in the trees as the hunters first despoil and then fall to his land, dispassionate as his deadwood heart.
Prior doesn't hope to capture the stag or secure prosperity. He has a…
I’m a reader and an author who loves stories that are so beautifully written they wrap you up tight in comfort, ensuring no matter what hurt the characters go through, you know it will all be okay in the end. And in stressful times—even in times that aren’t so stressful!—I think we all need that little bit of fictional certainty, that knowing that everything is going to be okay in the end. I started writing to give queer characters suffering from problems like loneliness, anxiety, and homelessness, as many happy endings as I could.Because no matter the difficulties you may be going through, everyone deserves a happy ending.😊
A beautifully written coming-of-age tale. And another book I have read many times. The descriptions are so sensuous and evocative of a hot summer in the French countryside that it’s easy to lose yourself in them. This story isn’t a straightforward romance and reading about deeply flawed but very human characters are ultimately what gives me comfort with this one.
Now also available as an audio-book, read by the author. Adam is a delightful 16-year-old who does well in school and spends his spare time practising the cello. Or that’s what his parents think. But there is another side to him, as farmer’s son Sylvain discovers when he meets Adam alone in the middle of a wood… The results of this chance encounter are explosive in this classic, passionate story of illicit romance and teenage sex during one long, hot summer in the French countryside…
Reviews:
A fine and elegantly written work deserving of a wide readership irrespective of sexual…
Caroline Herschel has always lived in the shadows. Beholden to her wildly popular older brother, William, who rescued her from servitude, she's worked hard to build a life for herself – one where she can go unnoticed and repay the debt she believes she owes him. But when her brother…
As someone who struggles with the relentless “Family is everything!” of the holidays—a reality I share in common with a lot of queer people—I’ve been a lover of queer holiday stories that work to counterbalance and center the chosen families so many of us queer people create. As a queer reader, I’m always looking for more immersive stories about people like me, and during the holidays, I’m all the more ready for happy stories of queer holiday joy. I also own a rescued husky, and queer holiday audiobooks help get me through those frosty Canadian winter walks.
I love queer romance when it shows slices of queer life that we don’t see anywhere near as often as we do when we’re glimpsed in the mainstream, and that includes stocky, cuddly bear-type dudes like Will, who have such heart and is so genuinely well-written as a big gentle, shy dude I just melted for him at step one.
The snow, the holiday, the crush, and the passing of secret notes to his singer/songwriter crush are icing on the already wonderful gingerbread cookie that is this story, and it’s one of the first I revisit every year to get myself in the mood for the holidays. Also, the singer crush is written swoon-worthy, so you’re crushing out on him right there with Will.
A rising star struggling to write a Christmas song.
Song lyrics written in secret.
Will Johnson is shocked to discover his hotel room window overlooks the courtyard patio of one of his favorite gay singers, Rex Garland. Even more amazing, Rex seems interested in Will too.
When Will overhears Rex struggling to write an original Christmas song, he is struck by a flash of inspiration and drafts an anonymous note with song lyrics. Will is sure nothing will come of it, but the Christmas magic swirling amidst all the snow in upstate New…
I’m a horror writer to the core, always have been, so few things get me as interested as a great collection of short stories. I can remember a few corkers that really put the wind up me as a kid, and it seems I’ve been chasing that feeling ever since! Australia is my home, and it has a broad and diverse genre scene that deserves a lot more attention – I’ve befriended a great many authors of horror, fantasy, SF, and all points in between, and to a person they are lovely, generous, and talented. I’m doing my part to draw attention to the proliferation of vital voices down here.
Much extreme horror presents us with cardboard characters who are ripped and torn with no real consequence – but Aaron gives us deeply felt people who pulse on the page, which means it really hurts me as a reader when he subjects them to brutal and unforgiving fates.
His fiction aches like unacknowledged truth, displaying an empathy that doesn’t gloss over the horrors of this world and the next, and feels intimately personal whether he's delving into family dramas, failed relationships, queer themes, or sophisticated splatter.
While his work mostly details the horrors we inflict upon each other, even with the best of intentions, it’s too broad to be kept in one box – and if it was, it would surely cut its way out and come for your heart next.
An agency that sends social workers into the homes of grieving families to impersonate dead loved ones... The kind old woman who saved a teenager's life but now finds herself haunted by the weight of a cheated suicide... And the daughter of a candlestick maker as she tries to survive a painful existence after her father's execution for making human chandeliers of drunken cowboys... These stories and more-ranging from supernatural to the frighteningly domestic, Splatterpunk to the weird and cosmic-stain the pages of Cut to Care: A Collection of Little Hurts by Aaron Dries. They serve as a timely reminder…
I’m a reader and an author who loves stories that are so beautifully written they wrap you up tight in comfort, ensuring no matter what hurt the characters go through, you know it will all be okay in the end. And in stressful times—even in times that aren’t so stressful!—I think we all need that little bit of fictional certainty, that knowing that everything is going to be okay in the end. I started writing to give queer characters suffering from problems like loneliness, anxiety, and homelessness, as many happy endings as I could.Because no matter the difficulties you may be going through, everyone deserves a happy ending.😊
This is the story of two young men, one rich, one homeless but it’s not a simple rescue me type story. Laurie and Sasha reach out desperately to one another from their different worlds, and against all odds begin an affair, hidden in the attics of Laurie’s sumptuous home and on the bleak moorland of a Romani encampment. For Laurie, it’s a delicious sexual awakening, and Sasha returns his affections, opening up to him a whole new world of freedom. But Sasha has secrets, and a murky, violent past.
I’ve reread this book countless times. Harper Fox’s writing is breathtaking and it’s so comforting to read characters you can’t help but adore falling in love and finding their way through conflict to a safe and happy ending.
Laurence Fitzroy is trapped in a golden cage. The only son of a wealthy London baronet, he’s struggling to escape his father’s suffocating world. But Laurie is losing his fight. At nineteen years of age, bright and imaginative, he’s no match for the brutal Sir William. Laurie wants to be an actor – bad enough as far as Sir William is concerned, but, worse than that, he’s gay.
One bitter winter night, he meets a young homeless man huddled in blankets outside the opera house. The two form a bond straight away, and Laurie takes him home, wanting only to…
Rodney Bradford comes into Lindsay's restaurant, offers to buy her small house for double its value, eats her brownies, and drops dead on the sidewalk in front. Next, her almost-ex-husband offers to sign the divorce papers, but only if she'll give him her small,…
As someone who struggles with the relentless “Family is everything!” of the holidays—a reality I share in common with a lot of queer people—I’ve been a lover of queer holiday stories that work to counterbalance and center the chosen families so many of us queer people create. As a queer reader, I’m always looking for more immersive stories about people like me, and during the holidays, I’m all the more ready for happy stories of queer holiday joy. I also own a rescued husky, and queer holiday audiobooks help get me through those frosty Canadian winter walks.
I re-listen to this one on audiobook every year while I bake my Christmas cookies and walk the dog, and every year, it helps conjure joy via the two men realizing they’re right for each other despite some missteps. Thanks to some dire events, the main character, Toby, learns how to both stand up for himself and finally declare what it is he wants out of life—which happens to be Mr. Miggles, the town librarian (and also his boss).
Tristan Wright takes an already wonderful story and makes it entirely engrossing via his performance, and I have multiple “Yes!” fist-pumping moments throughout (which, if I’m walking the dog, makes people stare at me on the street). Also, Toby and his love interest, Mr. Miggles, are librarians, and this story has so much library love in it I felt like I was getting a warm hug.
Toby Kincaid loves being the junior librarian in his hometown of Sandy Lake, Ohio. He spends his days surrounded by books and chatting with the library patrons. He especially adores the head librarian, Mr. Miggles, who is kind, witty, knowledgeable about everything, and hopelessly addicted to Christmas. Sean Miggles is also pretty cute—especially for an older guy who wears ties and suit pants every day. But Sean keeps himself at a distance, and there’s a sadness about him that Toby can’t figure out. When Sean is accused of a crime he didn’t commit, he gives up without a fight. Toby…
