Walk Like a Man
by Laurinda Brown
from Q-Boro Books
"The first time I lied naked with a woman I was nervous but anxious to get it on. I had no idea what we were supposed to do. As I sat there waiting for her to make her move, she was lying there waiting for me to make mine. So I kissed her.
...I will say that our lovemaking was one of the most intense events of my life. That whole night I felt this power…this aura about myself that I'd never felt before. And then it hit me. I had spent the entire night with a woman consumed with the idea of me being a man. On the outside I walked on the tips of my toes-dainty and self-assured-bouncing my long, thick hair from side to side, I looked every bit of a lady to the world. But on the inside, though, down beneath the smooth skin and soft fragrance, I walked like a man."
Strap on your attitude and dive into 10 different pulsating stories from women who love the way you love, living life on the edge, exploring sexuality uninhibited. Walk Like A Man….Don't read it alone. It's so hot with passion you'll need somebody to cool you off!
Walk Like A Man is an underground release from Laurinda D. Brown and her first venture into lesbian erotica.
Trash
by Dorothy Allison
from Plume
Trash, Allison's landmark collection, laid the groundwork for her critically acclaimed Bastard Out of Carolina, the National Book Award finalist that was hailed by The New York Times Book Review as "simply stunning...a wonderful work of fiction by a major talent." In addition to Allison's classic stories, this new edition of Trash features "Stubborn Girls and Mean Stories," an introduction in which Allison discusses the writing of Trash and "Compassion," a never-before-published short story.
First published in 1988, the award-winning Trash showcases Allison at her most fearlessly honest and startlingly vivid. The limitless scope of human emotion and experience are depicted in stories that give aching and eloquent voice to the terrible wounds we inflict on those closest to us. These are tales of loss and redemption; of shame and forgiveness; of love and abuse and the healing power of storytelling.
A book that resonates with uncompromising candor and incandescence, Trash is sure to captivate Allison's legion of readers and win her a devoted new following.
Best Lesbian Love Stories 2005 (Best Lesbian Love Stories) (Best Lesbian Love Stories)
from Alyson Books
New original romantic fiction by Katherine V. Forrest (Curious Wine), Karin Kallmaker (One Degree of Separation), Claire McNab (The Wombat Strategy), Jane Summer (The Silk Road), Carol Guess (Gaslight), Ann Wadsworth (Light, Coming Back), Lesla Newman (She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not), and Diana Cage (Box Lunch).
Angela Brown is the editor of Best Lesbian Love Stories 2003 and Mentsh: Queer Jews Speak Out. She lives West Hollywood, Calif.
The Vintage Book of International Lesbian Fiction
by Naomi Holoch
from Vintage
There are those among us--you know who you are--who tend to avoid lesbian fiction because the genre isn't known for literary excellence. The occasional lesbian mystery or vampire story may slip through as vacation reading, but for something serious you turn to the poets (Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Jewelle Gomez), or to straight women novelists, or to writers such as Dorothy Allison, whose work transcends the boundaries of lesbian fiction. This anthology is for readers like you. The consistently fine quality of the stories is matched by their unusual ingenuity and playfulness with language (the specter of James Joyce hovers over many stories, and not only those by Irish writers). In fact, American writers--who might be thought to have pioneered the genre--may seem sluggish and puritan by comparison. As the editors point out, "the word lesbian is not global in its use and significance," and while most of the authors included would define themselves as lesbian, for others the term is almost without meaning. Selections by Marguerite Yourcenar, Anchee Min (from Red Azalea), and the Egyptian writer Alifa Rifaat are among the most striking. --Regina Marler
A groundbreaking volume from Lamda Award-winning editors Naomi Holoch and Joan Nestle, The Vintage Book of International  Lesbian Fiction presents a range of literary voices--from twenty-seven countries spanning six continents--and offers glimpses of lesbian life in unfamilar, often exotic climes.
We follow an Irish woman as she travels through time in search of a wronged maiden, and anticipate the harrowing fate of a married Indian woman who pursues pleasure with her female lover under the shadow of her husbands suspicious rage.  We meet a teacher in Barcelona who locks herself up in her grandmother's house with her young Columbian student, and witness a Slovenian woman's rendezvous with her long dead lover.
This collection includes the work of familiar writers, as well as a number never before published in English.  From the West Indies to Eastern Europe, the Middle East to Southeast Asia, Latin America to South Africa, the distinctive stories found in these pages evoke the diverse political, cultural, emotional, and sexual landscapes of each writer's life.  A groundbreaking volume from the Lamda Award-winning editors Naomi Holoch and Joan Nestle, who also wrote the introduction, this collections evokes the universal urgency of persistent desire.
Table of Contents:
Mary Dorcey, Ireland from A Noise from the WoodshedMakeda Sivera, JamaicaCaribbean ChameleonMireille Best, FranceStéphanie's BookChristina Peri Rossi, UruguayFinal Judgement and Singing in the DesertShani Mootoo, India-Trinidad-CanadaLemon ScentMarguerite Yourcenar, BelgiumSappho or SuicideEmma Donoghue, IrelandLooking for PetronillaSylvia Molloy, Argentinafrom Certificate of AbsenceDale Gunthorp, South AfricaGypsophilaKaren Williams, South AfricaThe Came at DawnCynthia Price, South AfricaLesbian BedroomsAlifa Rifaat, EgyptMy World of the UnknownYasmin V. Tambiah, Sri LankaThe Civil War, Sandalwood, Transl(iter)ation I, and Transl(iter)ation II (for Aruna and Giti)Dionne Brand, TrinidadMadame Alaird's BreastsViolette Leduc, Francefrom L'AphyxieAnchee Min, ChinafromRed AzaleaGerd Brantenberg, Norwayfrom Four WindsEsther Tusquets, Spainfrom The Same Sea as Every SummerKaren-Susan Fessel, GermanyLost FacesMar$#237;a Eugenia AlegrÃa Nuñez, CubaThe Girl Typist Who Worked for a Provincial Ministry of CultureNgahuia Te Awekatuku, Aotearoa/New ZealandParetipua, Old Man Tuna, andWatching the Big GirlsDacia Maraini, ItalyfromLetters to MarinaRosamarÃa Roffiel, MexicoForever Lasts Only a Full MoonAnna Blaman, Hollandfrom Lonely AdventureChrista Winsloe, Germanyfrom The Child ManuelaAchy Obejas, CubaWatersNicole Brossard, CanadafromMauve DesertGila Svirsky, IsraelMeeting NataliaMaureen Duffy, EnglandfromThe MicrocosmJeanne D'Arc Jutras, Canadafrom GeorgieSuzana Tratnik, SloveniaUnder the Ironwood TreesElena Georgiou, CyprusAphrodite's VisionEtel Adnan, Lebanonfrom In the Heart of the Heart of Another CountryGina Schein, AustraliaMinnie Gets Married
The Mammoth Book of Lesbian Short Stories
from Carroll & Graf Publishers
It's no secret that commercial markets for short stories have been drying up for the past 30 years. This is considered a reflection of the diminishing readership for short fiction, and, as a result--with the occasional startling exception--book advances are small, reviews scarce, and promotion negligible. The prophets of literary doom have more or less ignored gay and lesbian fiction, however, where the short story flourishes among a feisty and increasingly discerning readership. "At the end of the 1990s," notes Emma Donoghue, "the only difficulty in compiling a collection of three decades of superb lesbian stories is that there are so many to choose from." Perhaps the best and widest-ranging of recent anthologies, the Mammoth Book includes the work of established writers (Jane Rule, Sara Maitland, Dorothy Allison) alongside that of novices, and corrects the usual overemphasis on American fiction. Like the editors of The Vintage Book of International Lesbian Fiction, Donoghue has chosen a thematic rather than biographical approach, including women writers "of all persuasions." But don't try to choose between this excellent book and the Vintage anthology, which has a different emphasis. Buy them both and become an expert in the lesbian short story. --Regina Marler
Building on the success of The Mammoth Book of Gay Short Stories, The Mammoth Book of Lesbian Short Stories collects an international array of the best-known lesbian authors and new talents. Few of the stories have been anthologized before, and some have been specially commissioned for this work. With its focus on new writing, editor and author Emma Donoghue has gathered stories from such writers as Dorothy Allison, Patricia Dunker, Tanith Lee, Jennifer Levin, Anna Livia, Ingrid Macdonald, Sara Maitland, Shani Mootoo, Elizabeth Taylor, Shay Youngblood, and many others.
The Drag Queen of Elfland: Short Stories
by Lawrence Schimel
from Circlet Press
Many gay writers have had an affinity for the supernatural and fanciful--think of James M. Barrie's Peter Pan or Oscar Wilde's fairy tales--and why not? In societies that persecute homosexuals, what could be more comforting than alternative worlds that transcend the harshness of reality? In its 17 stories The Drag Queen of Elfland creates not so much other independent worlds, but shows us the hidden reality beneath our all too expected material lives. In "Take Back the Night," a lesbian bookstore owner meets one of the women who runs with the (were) wolves, and in "Hemo Homo," a gay vampire discovers the drawbacks of going to the gym (too many mirrors, is the least of it). Lawrence Schimel is always funny, politically on-target, and unafraid to push his subject to new, and often startling, places.
A Letter to Harvey Milk: Short Stories (Library of American Fiction)
by Leslea Newman
from University of Wisconsin Press
This poignant and humorous collection of stories offers a fresh perspective on current issues such as homosexuality and anti-Semitism and lends a unique voice to those experiencing growing pains and self-discovery. Newman’s readers accompany her quirky Jewish characters through all types of experiences from an initial lesbian sexual encounter to being sequestered in a college apartment after paranoid Holocaust flashbacks. In these stories characters anxiously discover their lesbian identities while beginning to understand, and finally to embrace, their Jewish heritage. The title story, "A Letter to Harvey Milk," was the second place finalist in the Raymond Carver Short Story Competition.
Touchy Subjects
by Emma Donoghue
from Harvest Books
Many of these stories involve animals and what they mean to us, or babies and whether to have them; some reimagine biblical plots in modern contexts. With characters old, young, straight, gay, and simply confused, Donoghue dazzles with her range and her ability to touch lightly but penetrate deeply into the human condition.
The Big Book Of Lesbian Horse Stories
by Alisa Surkis
from Kensington
Best Lesbian Love Stories 2004 (Best Lesbian Love Stories)
from Alyson Books
In this moving new collection, today's finest writers celebrate lesbian love, desire and heartbreak. Contributors include: Katherine V. Forrest (Curious Wine), Carol Guess (Switch), Lesla Newman (She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not), Claire McNab (Out of Sight), Ann Wadsworth (Light, Coming Back), Ruthann Robson (A/K/A), Jane Summer (The Silk Road), and many others.
Angela Brown edited Set in Stone and Best Lesbian Love Stories 2003. She lives in West Hollywood, Calif.
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