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If you'd like personalized book recommendations, check out our Tailored Titles services for both fiction and nonfiction books. |
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Call Me by Your Name
by André Aciman
The sudden and powerful attraction between a teenage boy and a summer guest at his parents' house on the Italian Riviera has a profound and lasting influence that will mark them both for a lifetime.
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Days Without End
by Sebastian Barry
Entering the U.S. army after fleeing the Great Famine in Ireland, seventeen-year-old Thomas McNulty and his brother-in-arms, John Cole, experience the harrowing realities of the Indian wars and the American Civil War between the Wyoming plains and Tennessee.
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Our Wives Under the Sea
by Julia Armfield
Miri thinks she has got her wife back, when Leah finally returns after a deep sea mission that ended in catastrophe. It soon becomes clear, though, that Leah may have come back wrong. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were stranded on the ocean floor, Leah has carried part of it with her, onto dry land and into their home. To have the woman she loves back should mean a return to normal life, but Miri can feel Leah slipping from her grasp. Memories of what they had before - the jokes they shared, the films they watched, all the small things that made Leah hers - only remind Miri of what she stands to lose. Living in the same space but suddenly separate, Miri comes to realize that the life that they had might be gone.
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Courting Mr. Lincoln
by Louis Bayard
When Mary Todd meets Abraham Lincoln in Springfield in the winter of 1840, he is on no one's short list to be president. Mary, a quick, self-possessed debutante with an interest in debates and elections, at first finds this awkward country lawyer an enigma. I can only hope, she tells his roommate, the handsome, charming Joshua Speed, that his waters being so very still, they also run deep. It's not long, though, before she sees the Lincoln that Speed knows: an amiable, profound man with a gentle wit to match his genius, who respects her keen political mind. But as her relationship with Lincoln deepens, she must confront his inseparable friendship with Speed, who has taught his roommate how to dance, dress, and navigate polite society. Told in the alternating voices of Mary Todd and Joshua Speed, and inspired by historical events, Courting Mr. Lincoln creates a sympathetic and complex portrait of Mary unlike any that has come before; a moving portrayal of the deep and very real connection between the two men; and most of all, an evocation of the unformed man who would grow into one of the nation's most beloved presidents.
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Spent: A Comic Novel
by Alison Bechdel
In Alison Bechdel's ... skewering and gloriously cast ... comic novel confection, a cartoonist named Alison Bechdel, running a pygmy goat sanctuary in Vermont, is existentially irked by a climate-challenged world and a citizenry on the brink of civil war. She wonders: can she pull humanity out of its death spiral by writing a scathingly self-critical memoir about her own greed and privilege? Meanwhile, Alison's first graphic memoir about growing up with her father ... has been adapted into a highly successful TV series. It's a phenomenon that makes Alison ... the envy of her friend group (recognizable as characters, now middle-aged and living communally in Vermont, from Bechdel's beloved comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For). As the TV show ... racks up Emmy after Emmy--and when Alison's Pauline Bunyanesque partner Holly posts an instructional wood-chopping video that goes viral--Alison's own envy spirals. Why couldn't she be the writer for a critically lauded and wildly popular reality TV show--like Queer Eye--showing people how to free themselves from consumer capitalism and live a more ethical life?--
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Written in the Stars
by Alexandria Bellefleur
A lighthearted holiday romance inspired by Pride and Prejudice depicts the experiences of a free-spirited social media astrologer who agrees to a fake relationship with a no-nonsense actuary to appease their respective families.
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Trans-sister Radio
by Christopher A. Bohjalian
With her daughter about to leave for college, fortysomething Alison Banks enrolls in a local college course to take her mind off things and finds herself falling for her instructor, Dana, a man who later confides that he wants to have a sex-change operation.
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Tell the Wolves I'm Home
by Carol Rifka Brunt
Her world upended by the death of a beloved artist uncle who was the only person who understood her, fourteen-year-old June is mailed a teapot by her uncle's grieving friend, with whom June forges a poignant relationship
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The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
by Michael Chabon
In 1939 New York City, Joe Kavalier, a refugee from Hitler's Prague, joins forces with his Brooklyn-born cousin, Sammy Clay, to create comic-book superheroes inspired by their own fantasies, fears, and dreams.
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In at the Deep End
by Kate Davies
Enduring a dead-end job and three-year romantic dry spell, Julia accepts an invitation to a trendy warehouse party and rediscovers her sexuality as a lesbian before her new lover reveals a darker nature
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The Danish Girl
by David Ebershoff
A novel set in Copenhagen, Paris and Dresden in the 1920s introduces a man who discovers he is a woman, and the woman who will do anything for him, in a tale of love and marriage in the midst of fundamental crisis. Soon to be a major motion picture starring Academy Award-winner Eddie Redmayne. Reissue. Movie tie-in.
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You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty
by Akwaeke Emezi
Learning how to feel joy while healing from loss, Feyi Adekola starts dating the perfect guy, but discovers she has feelings for someone else who is off limits and must decide just how far she is willing to go for a second chance at love.
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Girl, Woman, Other
by Bernardine Evaristo
From one of Britain's most celebrated writers of color comes a magnificent portrayal of the intersections of identity and a moving and hopeful story of an interconnected group of Black British women.Girl, Woman, Other paints a vivid portrait of the state of post-Brexit Britain, as well as looking back to the legacy of Britain's colonial history in Africa and the Caribbean.The twelve central characters of this multivoiced novel lead vastly different lives: Amma is a newly acclaimed playwright whose work often explores her Black lesbian identity; her old friend Shirley is a teacher, jaded after decades of work in London's funding-deprived schools; Carole, one of Shirley's former students, is a successful investment banker; Carole's mother Bummi works as a cleaner and worries about her daughter's lack of rootedness despite her obvious achievements. From a nonbinary social media influencer to a ninety-three-year-old woman living on a farm in Northern England, these unforgettable characters also intersect in shared aspects of their identities, from age to race to sexuality to class.Sparklingly witty and filled with emotion, centering voices we often see othered, and written in an innovative fast-moving form that borrows technique from poetry, Girl, Woman, Other is a polyphonic and richly textured social novel that shows a side of Britain we rarely see, one that reminds us of all that connects us to our neighbors, even in times when we are encouraged to be split apart.
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Fried Green Tomatoes at the
Whistle Stop Cafe
by Fannie Flagg
Mrs. Threadgoode's tale of two high-spirited women of the 1930s, Idgie and Ruth, helps Evelyn, a 1980s woman in a sad slump of middle age, to begin to rejuvenate her own life.
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This is How it Always Is
by Laurie Frankel
A family reshapes their ideas about family, love, and loyalty when youngest son Claude reveals increasingly determined preferences for girls' clothing and accessories and refuses to stay silent.
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Three Junes
by Julia Glass
The interconnected lives, loves, and relationships of different generations of the McLeod family are revealed over the course of three crucial summers, in a debut novel about love, death, and birth in a Scottish family.
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Less
by Andrew Sean Greer
You are a failed novelist about to turn fifty. A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: your boyfriend of the past nine years is engaged to someone else. You can't say yes--it would be too awkward--and you can't say no--it would look like defeat. On your desk are a series of invitations to half-baked literary events around the world. Question: How do you arrange to skip town? Answer: You accept them all. What would possibly go wrong?--Amazon.com.
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Carol
by Patricia Highsmith
Trapped in a dead-end day job in a department store, stage designer Therese Belivet finds her life forever changed when she encounters--and falls in love with--Carol Aird, a suburban housewife in the midst of a divorce.
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The Prospects
by Kt Hoffman
Gene Ionescu, a gay trans man in his third year in the minors with the Beaverton Beavers, is a solid shortstop, but he's no one's idea of a major league prospect. He's just happy to be here, though, getting underpaid six months of the year to play the sport he's loved since childhood. ... But his plans go awry when Luis Estrada--Gene's rival since their college days--gets traded to his team--and promptly takes Gene's position. After Gene's coach forces him over to second base, he and Luis can't manage a civil conversation off the field or a competent play on it--a major issue for the team since their two positions make up the critical keystone combination on the infield. But when Gene finds Luis having a panic attack in their shared hotel room, he offers to start extra practices together--
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Stray City
by Chelsey Johnson
Building a home for herself in the thriving but insular lesbian underground of Portland away from her Midwestern Catholic childhood, a young artist becomes unexpectedly pregnant after a reckless night and is forced to come to terms with her past a decade later when her precocious daughter asks about her father.
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Under the Whispering Door
by TJ Klune
After he dies, a curious and powerful being gives Wallace one week to cross over to the land of the dead, and Wallace, who finally starts to learn about all the things he missed in life, sets about living a lifetime in seven days.
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These Things Happen
by Richard Kramer
Wesley, a 10th grader, tries to navigate through life, despite having divorced parents, a father who has come out as gay and a popular friend who also comes out as gay, right after winning a school election.
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A Shore Thing
by Joanna Lowell
Former painter and unreformed rake Kit Griffith is forging a new life in Cornwall, choosing freedom over an identity that didn't fit. He knew that leaving his Sisterhood of women artists might mean forfeiting artistic community forever. He didn't realize he would lose his ability to paint altogether. Luckily, he has other talents. Why not devote himself to selling bicycles and trysting with the holidaymakers? Enter Muriel Pendrake, the feisty New-York-bound botanist who has come to St. Ives to commission Kit for illustrations of British seaweeds. Kit shouldn't accept Muriel's offer, but he must enlist her help to prove to an all-male cycling club that women can ride as well as men. And she won't agree unless he gives her what she wants. Maybe that's exactly the challenge he needs. As Kit and Muriel spend their days cycling together, their desire begins to burn with the heat of the summer sun. But are they pedaling toward something impossible? The past is bound to catch up to them, and at the season's end, their paths will diverge. With only their hearts as guides, Kit and Muriel must decide if they're willing to race into the unknown for the adventure of a lifetime--
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Her Body and Other Parties
by Carmen Maria Machado
Contains short stories about the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.
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The Great Believers
by Rebecca Makkai
A dazzling new novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris, by the acclaimed and award-winning author Rebecca Makkai. In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico's funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico's little sister. Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago crisis, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways AIDS affected her life and her relationship with her daughter. The two intertwining stories take us through the heartbreak of the eighties and the chaos of the modern world, as both Yale and Fiona struggle to find goodness in the midst of disaster.
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One Last Stop
by Casey McQuiston
Cynical August starts to believe in the impossible when meets Jane on the subway, a mysterious punk rocker she forms a crush on, who is literally displaced in time from the 1970s and is trying to find her way back.
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Outlawed
by Anna North
The day of her wedding, 17 year old Ada's life looks good; she loves her husband, and she loves working as an apprentice to her mother, a respected midwife. But after a year of marriage and no pregnancy, in a town where barren women are routinely hanged as witches, her survival depends on leaving behind everything she knows. She joins up with the notorious Hole in the Wall Gang, a band of outlaws led by a preacher-turned-robber known to all as the Kid. Charismatic, grandiose, and mercurial, the Kid is determined to create a safe haven for outcast women. But to make this dream a reality, the Gang hatches a treacherous plan that may get them all killed. And Ada must decide whether she's willing to risk her life for the possibility of a new kind of future for them all.
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The Guncle
by Steven Rowley
When Patrick, or Gay Uncle Patrick (GUP) for short, takes on the role of primary guardian for his young niece and nephew, he sets "Guncle Rules," but soon learns that parenting is not solved with treats or jokes as his eyes are opened to a new sense of responsibility.
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When Katie Met Cassidy
by Camille Perri
Katie Daniels is a perfection-seeking 28-year-old lawyer living the New York dream. She's engaged to charming art curator Paul Michael, has successfully made her way up the ladder at a multinational law firm, and has a hold on apartments in Soho and the West Village. Suffice it to say, she has come a long way from her Kentucky upbringing. But the rug is swept from under Katie when she is suddenly dumped by her fiance, Paul Michael, leaving her devastated and completely lost. On a whim, she agrees to have a drink with Cassidy Price-a self-assured, sexually promiscuous woman she meets at work. The two form a newfound friendship, which soon brings into question everything Katie thought she knew about sex--and love.
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The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
by Victoria Schwab
This stunning new collector's edition chronicles the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, who, in a moment of desperation, makes a Faustian bargain to live forever, and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets, until 300 years pass, and a young man remembers her name.
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Home After Dark
by David Small
A long-awaited graphic novel by the Caldecott Medal-winning creator of Stitches uses evocative, spliced imagery to convey the story of an abandoned youth struggling to survive in a dilapidated, racially torn and chronically violent 1950s California community.
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Fortune Favors the Dead
by Stephen Spotswood
A detective novel set in 1945, about two female private investigators trying to solve the locked-room murder of a society widow.
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On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
by Ocean Vuong
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born--a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam--and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity.
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Lot: Stories
by Bryan Washington
Coming of age in his family's Houston restaurant, a mixed-heritage teen navigates bullying, his newly discovered sexual orientation, and the ripple effects of a disadvantaged community.
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The Paying Guests
by Sarah Waters
Forced to take in lodgers in economically challenged 1922 South London, widow Mrs. Wray and her spinster daughter find their lives profoundly and disturbingly changed by the arrival of a modern young couple.
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Mrs. Dalloway
by Virginia Woolf
Mrs Dalloway (1925) is a novel by Virginia Woolf that details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a fictional high-society woman in post-First World War England. It describes Clarissa's preparations for a party she will host in the evening, and the ensuing party. With an interior perspective, the story travels forward and back in time and in and out of the characters' minds to construct an image of Clarissa's life and of the inter-war social structure.The post-war effects is represented through its character Septimus Warren Smith, a First World War veteran suffering from deferred traumatic stress, spends his day in the park with his Italian-born wife Lucrezia, where Peter Walsh observes them. Septimus is visited by frequent and indecipherable hallucinations, mostly concerning his dear friend Evans who died in the war.
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Avon Lake Public Library
32649 Electric Blvd.
Avon Lake, Ohio 44012
440-933-8128alpl.org |
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