Here are 100 books that You're Next fans have personally recommended if you like You're Next. Book DNA is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama

Sivan Piatigorsky-Roth Author Of Diana: My Graphic Obsession

From my list on graphic nonfiction that focuses on women.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been passionate about making, reading, and studying comics for my whole life. When I first encountered autobiographical comics, they were all by women who I looked up to for their ability to tackle their lives with both words and images. This is a small list and biased towards the cartoonists I first encountered in the world of female autobiographical comics. There is so much more out there. I love how the flexibility and history of the comic form have allowed for so much blending of genres and styles. 

Sivan's book list on graphic nonfiction that focuses on women

Sivan Piatigorsky-Roth Why Sivan loves this book

Fun Home is Alison Bechdel’s most famous work (and it is phenomenal), but this one captured my heart. While the former focuses on her father, here Bechdel turns her focus on her relationship with her mother, weaving in a lot of psychoanalysis and modernist literature.

Bechdel’s characteristic intricacy and attention to detail are on full display, and the frequent inclusion of dreams and their interpretation (a particular interest of mine) make the whole book feel almost surreal yet completely grounded.

By Alison Bechdel ,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An expansive, moving and captivating graphic memoir from the author of Fun Home.

Alison Bechdel's Fun Home was a literary phenomenon. While Fun Home explored Bechdel's relationship with her father, a closeted homosexual, this memoir is about her mother - a voracious reader, a music lover, a passionate amateur actor. Also a woman, unhappily married to a gay man, whose artistic aspirations simmered under the surface of Bechdel's childhood... and who stopped touching or kissing her daughter goodnight, for ever, when she was seven.

Poignantly, hilariously, Bechdel embarks on a quest for answers concerning the mother-daughter gulf.

'As absorbing as…


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Book cover of These Blue Mountains

These Blue Mountains by Sarah Loudin Thomas,

A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.

German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…

Book cover of Fingersmith

Livi Michael Author Of Elizabeth and Ruth

From my list on Victorian writers and the Victorian underworld.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been fascinated by historical fiction since childhood, when I used to read historical stories for children by such writers as Rosemary Sutcliffe and Henry Treece, moving on to Dickens and Austen in my early teens. Many of the great books about girls growing up were written in the Victorian and Edwardian periods by e.g. Louisa M Alcott, L M Montgomery, and Laura Ingalls Wilder. I devoured all these since they seemed to take me into a different world. I am a fiction writer rather than a historian since it is the great stories offered by history that spark my passion!

Livi's book list on Victorian writers and the Victorian underworld

Livi Michael Why Livi loves this book

This is one novel that I can truly say kept me up all night until I’d finished all 548 pages, despite a headache and sore eyes!

A thrilling tale of deception, betrayal, and ingenuity by one of my all-time favourite writers, Fingersmith tells the story of two women from very different social classes. One is a young thief, the other from an aristocratic family, a secretary to her corrupt uncle.

In the course of the novel, their intertwined history is exposed, along with the conspiracy to steal Maud’s fortune. There are vivid, Dickensian scenes of Victorian London and Gothic elements to the romance, but I especially admire the multiple, breathtaking plot twists. I wish I’d written it!

By Sarah Waters ,

Why should I read it?

14 authors picked Fingersmith as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

“Oliver Twist with a twist…Waters spins an absorbing tale that withholds as much as it discloses. A pulsating story.”—The New York Times Book Review

Sue Trinder is an orphan, left as an infant in the care of Mrs. Sucksby, a "baby farmer," who raised her with unusual tenderness, as if Sue were her own. Mrs. Sucksby’s household, with its fussy babies calmed with doses of gin, also hosts a transient family of petty thieves—fingersmiths—for whom this house in the heart of a mean London slum is home.

One day, the most beloved thief of all arrives—Gentleman, an elegant con man,…


Book cover of White Houses

S.W. Leicher Author Of Acts of Assumption

From my list on shattering the image of the word lesbian.

Why am I passionate about this?

My family is a marvelously mixed bunch: lesbian, gay, and straight relatives; Jewish and Latin relatives; relatives along a spectrum of economic situations, abilities, and political views.  The policy work that I do connects me with social justice advocates from across NYC’s multiple ethnic, racial, religious, and LGBTQ communities. The wildly disparate voices that surround me illuminate both the power of communal ties and the dangers of narrow identity labeling.  A central quest behind my work, my reading, and my writing has thus always been to balance and respect everything at once: the cultural structures that sustain us; the individual quirks that challenge and complicate those structures; and the universalities that cross all cultural borders.

S.W.'s book list on shattering the image of the word lesbian

S.W. Leicher Why S.W. loves this book

In this slender, fictionalized account of the “hidden in plain sight” romance between sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued reporter Lorena Hickok and larger-than-life First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, we get a gloriously slanted insiders’ view of a pivotal period in American history. This is emphatically a “lesbian love story”—explicit in its depictions of both the pleasures of female sensuality and the tolls of enforced secrecy. It is also—bluntly and forthrightly—a “middle-aged love story,” with all the attendant sea changes, accommodations, and regrets. Most of all, it’s the story of the two wittiest, savviest, best-positioned women anyone could ever encounter. “As Churchill said (to me),” the fictional Lorena begins one of her marvelous anecdotes. And the thing is, he probably did.   

By Amy Bloom ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked White Houses as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

For readers of The Paris Wife and The Swans of Fifth Avenue comes a “sensuous, captivating account of a forbidden affair between two women” (People)—Eleanor Roosevelt and “first friend” Lorena Hickok.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Financial Times • San Francisco Chronicle • New York Public Library • Refinery29 • Real Simple

Lorena Hickok meets Eleanor Roosevelt in 1932 while reporting on Franklin Roosevelt’s first presidential campaign. Having grown up worse than poor in South Dakota and reinvented herself as the most prominent woman reporter in America, “Hick,” as she’s known to her friends and…


If you love Kylie Schachte...

Book cover of The Last Whaler

The Last Whaler by Cynthia Reeves,

This book is an elegiac meditation on the will to survive. Tor, a beluga whaler, and his wife, Astrid, a botanist specializing in Arctic flora, are stranded during the dark season of 1937-38 at his remote whaling station in the Svalbard archipelago when they misjudge ice conditions and fail to…

Book cover of It's Not Like I Knew Her

S.W. Leicher Author Of Acts of Assumption

From my list on shattering the image of the word lesbian.

Why am I passionate about this?

My family is a marvelously mixed bunch: lesbian, gay, and straight relatives; Jewish and Latin relatives; relatives along a spectrum of economic situations, abilities, and political views.  The policy work that I do connects me with social justice advocates from across NYC’s multiple ethnic, racial, religious, and LGBTQ communities. The wildly disparate voices that surround me illuminate both the power of communal ties and the dangers of narrow identity labeling.  A central quest behind my work, my reading, and my writing has thus always been to balance and respect everything at once: the cultural structures that sustain us; the individual quirks that challenge and complicate those structures; and the universalities that cross all cultural borders.

S.W.'s book list on shattering the image of the word lesbian

S.W. Leicher Why S.W. loves this book

Spears’ compelling tale of Jodie Taylor—a lesbian coming of age in the American South of the 1950s and 1960s—smoothly draws readers into that overall time and place through details of setting (a “Pepto-Bismol pink trailer raised on cinder blocks”), behavior (a girl gleefully pouring salted peanuts into an RC Cola) and history (the Birmingham Church bombing) before plunging us into the far-less-familiar inner world of mid-century Southern lesbians. We gain privileged entrée into wildly rollicking bars and snugly welcoming kitchens; witness acts of treachery and acts of fierce loyalty; come to know women of tough skins and tender hearts. “It takes living queer to understand who we are,” one character confidently asserts. But through this adeptly crafted book, Spears opens up that understanding to us all.    

By Pat Spears ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked It's Not Like I Knew Her as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Jodie Taylor's childhood is filled with loss, abuse, chronic disappointment, and an instinctive awareness that her desire for women will forever make her an outcast. At 18, she flees her home town in rural north Florida and arrives in racially charged Selma, Alabama in 1956 as a penniless fugitive.She finds work in a cafÃ?© that is frequented by racist nightriders and, with an eye on the door, she hunkers down behind a wall of lies and half-truths. Her self-imposed silence with the family she left behind is broken when a crisis sets Jodie on a backward journey. As she struggles…


Book cover of Shatter the Sky

Leanne M. Pankuch Author Of Dragon's Truth

From my list on girls and dragons, or girl dragons.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up reading and re-reading Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. But it always bothered me that there weren’t many girls or women in those books—and most of those that did appear were pretty, perfect, and—well—kind of boring. In college, I studied literature, myths, and fairytales and found that most of the female characters in those stories didn’t reflect women I wanted to be or know, either. So, I wrote my own high fantasy novel and continue to seek out great fantasy, sci-fi, and fairytale-inspired literature featuring strong female characters that are dragons on the inside—and sometimes on the outside, too. 

Leanne's book list on girls and dragons, or girl dragons

Leanne M. Pankuch Why Leanne loves this book

Shatter the Sky is a quick-read YA high fantasy. It’s the story of Maren, who wants to live an ordinary life with her girlfriend, Kaia. When Kaia is kidnapped, Maren decides to apprentice herself to the Aromatory—the emperor’s mysterious dragon tamer—as a first step in her rescue plan. 

Shatter the Sky features a number of diverse characters and a sapphic romance and has been highly praised for breaking ground in the YA fantasy realm. I particularly enjoyed the Aromatory, the new take on dragons, and a main character who begins by viewing herself as unimportant but progresses to accepting her power and recognizing her value. Maren’s story continues—with ramped-up stakes, more dragons, and a complicated political plot in the meatier second book in this duology—Storm the Earth.

By Rebecca Kim Wells ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Shatter the Sky as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 14, 15, 16, and 17.

What is this book about?

New England Book Award Finalist

“A top-notch dragon story…Both nuanced and real.” —Shelf Awareness (starred review)
“I absolutely devoured it.” —Mackenzi Lee, bestselling author of The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue
“Perfect for fans of Tamora Pierce, Renée Ahdieh, and Cindy Pon.” —Saundra Mitchell, author of All the Things We Do in the Dark and editor of YA anthology All Out

A determined young woman sets out to rescue her kidnapped girlfriend by stealing a dragon from the corrupt emperor in this stunning fantasy debut that’s perfect for fans of Margaret Rogerson, Rae Carson, and Rachel Hartman.


Book cover of Her Neighbor's Wife: A History of Lesbian Desire Within Marriage

Julie Hardwick Author Of Sex in an Old Regime City: Young Workers and Intimacy in France, 1660-1789

From my list on the history of sex.

Why am I passionate about this?

Like most people, I find the history of sex and everything associated with it fascinating! It’s often been difficult to document and interpret the complexities about heterosexuality, gender identity, and same-sex desire as well as women’s reproductive health which is intimately (although not exclusively of course) linked to sex. We are in a golden age of fantastic work on so many aspects of the history of sex. Apart from the intrinsic interest of these books, I think they provide such an important context for our very lively and often very intense contemporary legal, political, and cultural debates over sex in all its forms.

Julie's book list on the history of sex

Julie Hardwick Why Julie loves this book

In contrast to stereotypes about lesbians that framed them as bra-burning, men-hating, hairy-legged feminists, Lauren Gutterman evocatively shows how the emergence of post-World War II lesbian desire took place at the center of American life, in the suburbs, often in marriages to men and heterosexual families with children. Married women rejected divorce or labelling themselves as lesbians even while they had affairs with their female neighbors. Her Neighbor’s Wife offers an extraordinary new interpretation of how post-World War II American marriages could accommodate women’s relationships with other women.

By Lauren Jae Gutterman ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Her Neighbor's Wife as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

At first glance, Barbara Kalish fit the stereotype of a 1950s wife and mother. Married at eighteen, Barbara lived with her husband and two daughters in a California suburb, where she was president of the Parent-Teacher Association. At a PTA training conference in San Francisco, Barbara met Pearl, another PTA president who also had two children and happened to live only a few blocks away from her. To Barbara, Pearl was "the most gorgeous woman in the world," and the two began an affair that lasted over a decade.
Through interviews, diaries, memoirs, and letters, Her Neighbor's Wife traces the…


If you love You're Next...

Book cover of White Picket Fences

White Picket Fences by Kyle Ann Robertson,

Tina Edwards loved her childhood and creating fairy houses, a passion shared with her father, a world-renowned architect. But at nine years old, she found him dead at his desk and is haunted by this memory. Tina's mother abruptly moved away, leaving Tina with feelings of abandonment and suspicion.

Raised…

Book cover of Alternate Channels: The Uncensored Story of Gay and Lesbian Images on Radio and Television: 1930s to the Present

Matt Baume Author Of Hi Honey, I'm Homo!: Sitcoms, Specials, and the Queering of American Culture

From my list on queer characters on television.

Why am I passionate about this?

The short version: I just really love television! The slightly longer version is that, in my career, I’ve had a very unusual perspective on both entertainment and activism. My first jobs out of college were at companies like Lucasfilm and The Jim Henson company, where I saw first-hand just how important pop culture and fandom can be for audiences. And I also worked extensively on queer causes, eventually making activism my full-time job when I joined the team that brought marriage equality to the US Supreme Court. Through that work, I became more and more interested in the ways that pop culture – particularly television – has been a tool for advancing civil rights. 

Matt's book list on queer characters on television

Matt Baume Why Matt loves this book

An absolutely exhaustive catalog of queer milestones on television, I’m constantly consulting this amazing book.

There’s no more authoritative examination of the people, shows, and trends that shaped queer representation in broadcast media over the 20th century. Exhaustively researched, it’s not just a must-read – it’s a must-read-multiple-times.

I own two copies, each one jam-packed with bookmarks and notes to myself about the best bits.

By Steven Capsuto ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Alternate Channels as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Definitive, vibrant, and utterly fascinating, Alternate Channels traces the monumental growth of gay, lesbian, and bisexual images on radio and television from the 1930s to the present. Splashed against the tumultuous backdrop of the McCarthy witch hunts, Stonewall and the gay liberation movement, the birth of the 700 Club and the religious right, the outbreak of AIDS and the arrival of in-your-face queer activism, this chatty, authoritative broadcast history tells the stories of such notorious and noteworthy moments as

- 1947: Radio gays--A bitchy fashion photographer throws fits at the drop of a designer hat on the adaptation of Moss…


Book cover of Dr. Todson's Home for Incorrigible Women

A. L. Brooks Author Of Dare to Love

From my list on coming out later in life.

Why am I passionate about this?

I knew in my early teens that I wasn’t straight, but back then, the thought of coming out was too scary. I waited until I was twenty-three to do so, and it was still scary even being ten years older! So I can relate to stories of women of all ages discovering their less-than-straight sexuality. It’s rarely easy, no matter how many years you’ve lived already. It still requires good support from the people who love you, and one thing in common in all of the books I’ve recommended is that family, or often found family, plays a crucial role in the newly-out woman feeling comfortable being themselves.

A. L.'s book list on coming out later in life

A. L. Brooks Why A. L. loves this book

This one had me laughing out loud just as much as swooning over the lovely story of Caroline and her transformation once her husband dumps her in the home where ‘difficult’ women are put when they cause too much trouble for those husbands. There are elements of steampunk, social commentary, twisted humor, and a cast of secondary characters that are as varied as they are interesting. The setting, while bleak to begin with, grows on you as you read, and once all the twists and turns finally click into place, it’s a romp of a ride to the end.

By Riley LaShea ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Dr. Todson's Home for Incorrigible Women as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A gentle Victorian tale of women’s passions and power, with a sprinkle of romance, a trifle of steampunk, and heaps and heaps of quiet revolution.

Caroline Ajax is an inconvenient woman. Unwell. Hot-tempered. Harboring a tragic secret she can’t share with another living soul. Dropped at an institution in the Surrey Hills by her husband, Thomas, her only objective is to survive, to endure, to make it back to what little there is of her life as soon as she possibly can. But it doesn’t take her long to discover there is something unusual about this house and its eclectic…


Book cover of Murder at the Nightwood Bar

Aya Walksfar Author Of Run or Die

From my list on prove what love can do.

Why am I passionate about this?

My illiterate grandparents taught me to love learning. A librarian who shared books and food with a ragged, hungry kid cemented my love of books. My fifth-grade teacher in a ghetto school took unpaid time to encourage my writing. My mother taught me to never give up my dreams. Dogs taught me the meaning of unconditional affection and loyalty. And nowadays, when I lose faith in myself, it is my wife’s love and belief in me that keeps me going. Love, in its many forms, has shaped my life. 

Aya's book list on prove what love can do

Aya Walksfar Why Aya loves this book

I liked the protagonist, Kate Delafield, immediately for her straightforward manner. Within very few pages, Katherine painted a picture of the neighborhood and the bar where a murder occurred in its back parking lot, yet she never caused the story to drag. Katherine pulled me in with her succinct description of the murder scene. It was as if I stood beside Kate Delafield.

As the detectives entered the bar, I felt lesbian history reverberating down through the years. As a lesbian, I identified with Kate Delafield and with the milieu within which she had to live and do her job as a police detective. I also understood the hostility of the bar patrons—all lesbians—toward the police. Without preaching, Katherine described the larger conflict inherent in the situation.

This book was so well-written that I “felt” the emotions of the characters; the sadness that a young life had been destroyed way…

By Katherine V. Forrest ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Murder at the Nightwood Bar as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Dory Quillin, nineteen-years old, her white-blonde hair ruffled by the gentle breezes of a June evening, lies dead in the parking lot of a lesbian bar. Her bewildered silver-blue eyes stare beseechingly into the mind and soul of the woman who kneels beside her: LAPD homicide detective Kate Delafield.

The investigation is far from a simple matter. Kate uncovers shocking facts about the brief life of the murdered young lesbian. She finds her road to the killer obstructed by Dory’s uncooperative, judgmental parents, the waning interest of her own partner, and most frustrating of all, the open hostility of women…


If you love Kylie Schachte...

Book cover of The Duke's Christmas Redemption

The Duke's Christmas Redemption by Arietta Richmond,

A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.

Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…

Book cover of In The Game

Iza Moreau Author Of The News in Small Towns

From my list on mysteries featuring lesbian detectives.

Why am I passionate about this?

Halfway through my first novel, I realized that I was writing in a genre that had received little critical study and had almost no visibility. To find my way around the genre—and my place within it—I began reading heavily and before I knew it, I had read well over 200 lesbian mystery novels and devoured almost every serious review and critical study The dozen books I have written over the last decade reflect this study. In them, I hope I have succeeded in expanding the genre in some small way and adding to the menu of a hungry and discerning LGBTQ audience. 

Iza's book list on mysteries featuring lesbian detectives

Iza Moreau Why Iza loves this book

Nikki Baker is the first African-American writer of lesbian mysteries and her character Virginia Kelly—who works as a financial analyst in Chicago—is the first African-American lesbian sleuth. This makes it important, but what makes the book outstanding is the writing, especially the voice of the protagonist. The plots are slick and entertaining, but it is Virginia’s internal musings and interpersonal relationships that make this—and the other 3 books in the series—a clear 5-star winner. 

By Nikki Baker ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked In The Game as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

When businesswoman Virginia Kelly meets her old college chum Bev Johnson for drinks late one night, Bev confides that her lover, Kelsey, is seeing another woman. Ginny had picked up that gossip months ago, but she is shocked when the next morning's papers report that Kelsey was found murdered behind the very bar where Ginny and Bev had met. Worried that her friend could be implicated, Ginny decides to track down Kelsey's killer and contacts a lawyer, Susan Coogan. Susan takes an immediate, intense liking to Ginny, complicating Ginny's relationship with her live-in lover. Meanwhile Ginny's inquiries heat up when…


Book cover of Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama
Book cover of Fingersmith
Book cover of White Houses

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