Morning book buddies!

About to head out the door for IRL book club to discuss None of This is True (a great audiobook btw), but I wanted to share a quick reading update before I go.

I finally finished The Liars Club and REALLY enjoyed it! Look for that book and a few others in an upcoming post about Books to Read if You Enjoyed The Calamity Club!

I blew through the audio of The Sea Child and definitely see what the hype is about! Look for that book on the Goodreads Choice list for Historical Fiction for sure. It's a fun blend of history and magical realism. I'll be sharing some comps later this week over on IG & TT. 4⭐️s

The Hacienda was super fun, but I was left a little perplexed as to why there needed to be a romance at all. Why does every author try to squeeze in a romance? I just don't get it. The spook and the vibes were there, so why ruin it? 3.5⭐️s

I started Slewfoot on audio earlier this week, and it just wasn't doing it for me. But then I picked up the physical book, and wow! Now I'm reading immersively and blowing through it. It's odd but bingeable.

The Book of Chuck is my current audiobook, and, to be honest, I'm not sure yet. I can't tell if it's the writing style or just that it's not intended to be an audiobook, but either way I'm finding it a bit jarring. BUT I do like the content. Going to stick with it for now but am on the fence.

I read the first chapter of the new BBFL book club book for October, The Next Ship Home, and, man, I can already tell this book is going to destroy me. Come read with us!

ICYMI:

• October Historical Fiction Releases You Don't Want to Miss on Youtube or on Instagram

• Watch Episode 3 of Let's Go to the Library: Books Set in the 1930s

• A fun witchy audiobook for fans of Tudor fiction

• Meet the Deluxe Edition of Outlander

• Come to the Dodgers game with us

• My true thoughts on Mad Mabel

Hear It Here First:

Watch for lots of Fall reading recs over on Youtube this week!

My September reading wrap up is all ready to go on Instagram.

Go enter to win a stack of 5 ARCs on Facebook.

Help choose my November TBR!

Ok friends, gotta run!! Happy Reading!

xoxo

c

The votes are in, and the community has spoken! We'll be reading A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum by Emma Southon for our October group read.

As always, all group read discussions take place in our community Discord. If you're not currently a member, you'll need to upgrade your membership to access the private Discord server.

Become a member here.

A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to The Forum by Emma Southon

In Ancient Rome, the best stories share one ingredient. Murder. Romulus kills Remus to found the city. Senators stab Caesar to save the Republic. Caligula dies in the theater, Claudius dies at dinner, and Galba loses his head in the Forum. In one fifty-year stretch, 26 emperors die at the hands of others.

So what did killing mean in a city where crowds cheered gladiators to their deaths? Emma Southon answers this question through real Roman homicides. She defines murder broadly, with chapters on murder by magic, murder of and by enslaved people, murder in the family, and the murder of emperors. Each chapter then zooms in on individual victims and killers. You see how ordinary Romans judged the killer, the victim, and the act itself, and what those judgments reveal about how Rome understood life, death, and being human.

Get your copy of A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to The Forum here.

Who Is Emma Southon?

Emma Southon is a historian, writer and podcast host. She earned her PhD in ancient history from the University of Birmingham. She has worked as a bookshop manager at Waterstones.

Her first book, Agrippina: Empress, Exile, Hustler, Whore, made the New Statesman's Best Books of the Year list. She also wrote A History of the Roman Empire in 21 Women. Southon's latest release Not Built In A Day: How Slavery Made The Roman Empire has received early praise.

Readers praise Southon's approach for pairing true scholarship with a witty, irreverent voice and sharp comparisons to modern life.

Emma Southon on True Crime In Ancient Times --> Watch Here

October Reading Schedule (Kicks Off October 5th)

Week 1: Chapter 1 & Chapter 2 (through page 70)

Week 2: Chapter 3 & Chapter 4 (through page 134)

Week 3: Chapter 5 & Chapter 6 (through page 210)

Week 4: Chapter 7, Chapter 8 & Chapter 9 (through page 298)

The goal is for us to have a monthly check in call as well as a monthly wrap up call. We will also discuss the book regularly during the month in the group discussion channel on Discord.

Group Read Discussion Questions

1. Southon opens by separating homicide from murder. Where do you draw your own line between killing and murder? Did Rome's version shift your thinking?

2. In Roman law, the outcome of a case depended on who died and who held the knife. Which case surprised you most? What does the verdict tell you about whose lives Rome valued?

3. Southon reminds you again and again how biased and incomplete the surviving sources are. How did this shape your trust in the stories she tells? Where do you see the same problem in how we read history or true crime today?

4. Roman fathers held the legal power of life and death over their children. How did the chapters on family and marriage change your picture of the Roman household?

5. Southon writes with humor and modern references, even when describing crucifixion and the arena. Did her voice bring you closer to the Romans or put distance between you and the violence? Point to one moment where the humor worked for you and one where the humor fell flat.

Hello everyone! Happy October from all of us here at Feminist Book Club. It is the season of all things Halloween, Samhain, All Hallow's Eve, and of course, the Season of the Witch, which just so happens to be our theme for the month! Without further ado, the October Book of the Month is...

VenCo by Cherie Dimaline!

Lucky St. James, a Métis millennial living with her cantankerous but loving grandmother Stella, is barely hanging on when she discovers she will be evicted from their tiny Toronto apartment. Then, one night, something strange and irresistible calls out to Lucky. Burrowing through a wall, she finds a silver spoon etched with a crooked-nosed witch and the word SALEM, humming with otherworldly energy.

Hundreds of miles away in Salem, Myrna Good has been looking for Lucky. Myrna works for VenCo, a front company fueled by vast resources of dark money.

Lucky is familiar with the magic of her indigenous ancestors, but she has no idea that the spoon links her to VenCo’s network of witches throughout North America. Generations of witches have been waiting for centuries for the seven spoons to come together, igniting a new era, and restoring women to their rightful power.

But as reckoning approaches, a very powerful adversary is stalking their every move. He’s Jay Christos, a roguish and deadly witch-hunter as old as witchcraft itself.

To find the last spoon, Lucky and Stella embark on a rollicking and dangerous road trip to the darkly magical city of New Orleans, where the final showdown will determine whether VenCo will usher in a new beginning…or remain underground forever.

We highly recommend borrowing a copy of VenCo from your library, but if you would prefer to own a copy, you can buy one here from Bookshop.org or an audiobook copy from Libro.fm, both of which you can set up to support Feminist Book Club! We look forward to reading with you and will announce our discussion times shortly!

October is here, and that means it is (almost) time for the 2026 Ghoulishly Bookish Readathon!

For those of you who are new here, Ghoulishly Bookish is our fall readathon, taking place from October 17th through October 31st! It’s a team-based productivity readathon–instead of trying to read a certain number of books, or books that fit a certain prompt, you hear points (candy) per 100 pages read, and the team that collects the most candy by midnight on Halloween wins! 

The hope of this challenge is that it’ll be fun, community-building, and low-stakes. If you usually can’t participate in readathons because you’re a slower reader who doesn’t finish more than a book or two a month, you only have to read 8 pages per day to earn a candy to help your team. If you’re too much of a mood reader for prompt-based reading challenges, you can read anything you want for this one–including graphic novels or comics.

For my audiobook readers, those will obviously count as well, just convert your listening into pages. If you use Storygraph, it does it automatically (just look at your journal), but you can also engage in some light math–say you read 20% of a 500 page novel… that’s 100 pages! Or you can wait to log your pages until you finish a book (page counts are easily available on Storygraph, Goodreads, or Amazon).

The readathon itself will take place on Discord–you can access our community server by subscribing to any tier and clicking the widget at the bottom of this post (or in your welcome email!) or clicking here.

Choose Your Fighter

The Ghoulishly Bookish Readathon consists of two teams:

Team Vampire

Team Witch

You can head over to #choose-your-team in the Discord server to pick which team you want to be a part of! You can select whichever team you prefer, and I will weight the candy earned to make it fair, but it is easier on me when you keep the teams even–and I think it makes it more fun when it’s closer to a 1-to-1 ratio on each team. 

Earning + Logging Candy

As I said before, you earn one candy for every 100 pages read! When you’ve read 100 pages (or whenever you’re ready to log your multiple hundreds of pages at once) pop over to #candy-log and comment your team’s candy into the channel equal to the 100s of pages you’ve read since you last logged candy.

Team Vampire’s candy is

Team Witch's candy is

You can log as you go, at the end of each day, not until the very end of the readathon–it’s up to you! I’ll be doing updated throughout the readathon of where the counts are at, but as long as your candy is logged by noon, pacific time on November 1st (though the pages must have been read on Oct 31st or before) it will be counted for the final score! 

I had so much fun with this readathon last year and I’m ecstatic to bring it back! I hope you’ll join us! :)

Hi loves! I’ve got quite the spooky lineup for you this month and I can’t wait to unleash them!

As always, bookworms and weirdos will get the videos ad free and with extended cuts AND 24-48 hours early so if that sounds like something you’d enjoy, now is a great time to upgrade!

Let me know which one tire most excited about in the poll!

Friends! Enemies! Everyone in between!

I hope you're all doing as best as you can be and taking care of yourselves. It's time to vote for the November book club!

Sunny’s Book Club is a monthly book club highlighting both new releases and backlist titles we love. A virtual discussion is hosted over Zoom on the last Sunday of the month.

A new physical book will be shipped to you (or available for in store pickup) the month prior to when this month’s book club will take place. The November pick will ship the last week of October to ensure you have the entire month to read the book.

The link for sign up is not a subscription service, you opt in on a monthly basis dependent on your interest in that months chosen title. We do however have a recurring book club subscription if you are interested here.

You are about to enter a place of strange genius, possible madness, and timeless love . . .

"The Secret History meets The Haunting of Hill House . . . rich, thoughtful, terrifying."--Nicholas Binge, author of Dissolution

An addictive and brilliant puzzle box of a novel following a group of university students who discover an astonishing secret while clearing out a neglected Victorian mansion

For Alex Lane's wealthy university friends, the summer break stretches out before them, full of promise and fabulous plans. But for Alex, broke as usual, going home is not an option. So when the university offers him an unusual summer job clearing out a dilapidated Victorian mansion, Solace House, he jumps at the chance.

Alex joins an unlikely crew of students, from stoner Clive to uptight, short-tempered Helen, and the extremely peculiar Adam. Alex is particularly drawn to mercurial, red-headed Ella, and as the students begin sorting through piles of old newspapers and magazines, dusty antiques, and esoteric junk, Alex and Ella become enthralled by the elaborate and eerie journals of the house's former owner, Edwin Flayne. In these diaries, Flayne details his obsession with his missing mother and his belief in a mysterious realm lying parallel to ours, along with coded instructions on how it might be reached.

As the students gradually uncover the house's secrets, the rift between those who want to delve further and those who believe they've already gone too far grows ever wider.

In this electrifying horror debut that’s equal parts funny and harrowing, a stealth trans woman desperate to maintain her picture-perfect life discovers that she’s seemingly—impossibly—pregnant.

Everything Martha’s wanted, she’s made for herself.

Meet Martha: perfect wife, perfect stepmother, perfect woman. She’s got an adoring husband who wants more kids with her, a loving stepdaughter who looks up to her, and a body to die for. She’s an absolute pro: Salon-quality blowouts at home? Done. Perfectly plated meals on the table every day? Effortless. Meticulously faked miscarriages so her husband won’t suspect the truth? Just hand over the Oscar now.

Martha is trans, so stealth even her family has no idea. She carved the woman she is out of the marble of a boy, and she’ll do whatever it takes to protect what she’s built. When a mysterious chronic illness and its debilitating symptoms threaten to upend her existence, she starts experimental treatments and gives in to her surprising, unsettling cravings. She’s even more shocked to discover that she’s undeniably, impossibly pregnant.

With her body changing rapidly outside of her control and her choices dwindling, Martha struggles to maintain the life she’s fought so hard to live while preparing for the motherhood she never thought she’d have.

A mysterious realm on the other side of our screens. A dark force that draws victims into its static. The unlikely hero called to save them and herself from this electric hell. Public Access Afterworld is the profound, binge-all-night, headrush of a novel by the celebrated filmmaker of I Saw the TV Glow and Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

Find the receiver. Make it real.

At 5:35 p.m. on September 3, 1988, Dallas weatherman Ray “Can You Say Sunshine” Davino makes passing reference to Public Access Afterworld during a rambling monologue, right before he puts a gun to his head on live television and pulls the trigger.

On June 12, 2009, David Sawyer and Erin Morrison, two lonely, TV-obsessed suburban teens who might be falling in love, gather in Erin's basement to watch TV's analog-to-digital transition. But in the static that follows, Erin witnesses surreal broadcasts from a pirate TV network called Public Access Afterworld, and their lives are changed forever.

Seventeen years later, Bethany Peters toils through the night shift at megacorp GlobalVill’s bleak Austin campus. A trans content moderator, she spends her evenings reviewing an endless stream of horrific videos. But then a young streamer begins to crop up in her feed calling out to Public Access Afterworld.

But what is Public Access Afterworld?

Spanning decades and realities, with an unforgettable ensemble of outcasts and nerds—especially the messy but wholly relatable Bethany, who must overcome paranoia and self-doubt to transform into a hero of our times—Public Access Afterworld will have you reading through the night and rooting for its characters to survive. A mesmerizing mash-up of speculative fiction, horror, and conspiracy, it marks the arrival of a major new force in contemporary fiction by a groundbreaking filmmaker who’s been compared to David Lynch and Paul Thomas Anderson.

From the Booker Prize finalist and author of Sisters: a haunting novel about the complexities of motherhood, nested within three generations of women and children searching for each other to find themselves.

Found alone on a remote island as a toddler, Ori grows up mired in the mystery of what happened to the young mother who left her. When Ori welcomes a child of her own, years later, maternal doubt creeps in. As sleepless nights slacken her grip on reality, she travels back through memory to that stormy island, waiting in the shadow of a beaconless lighthouse, straining hopefully for the sound of her mother's return.

In ways she doesn’t yet understand, Ori’s unraveling binds her to her mother and grandmother, whose lives were also shaped by the brutal intimacies of motherhood. But can exhuming the past alter the future? Is Ori’s fate—and the fate of her child—intractably tethered to the secrets of those who came before her?

Set in the uncanny, coastal England of Daisy Johnson’s imagination, Long Wave immerses the reader in a physical landscape reflective of the novel’s intense, interior drama. With the hypnotic language, ferocious emotion, and inventive imagery she is known for, Johnson offers a masterfully layered and moving story that looks beyond traditional understandings of family to examine the many elemental forces of generation and transplantation that graft us to one another.

Four very compelling choices! Happy voting and remember we are reading Buzzard by Inez Ray in October. Today is the last day to sign up on our website. You never have to buy the book from Sunny's to participate in book club, we just love it when you do.

Love what we do? Become a paid subscriber for less than a cup of coffee a month. Your ongoing support helps us plan ahead, fund causes we care about, and create meaningful programming for our community.

Thank you to everyone who filled out our book club survey for Fishbone Cinderella by Elizabeth Lim!

You can see the results here including the book's strengths and weaknesses, how bingeable it was, stand out characters, and my favorite part, the recommendations list!

I've attached the top 5 recommendations below but we have a list of around 100 other titles that people thought readers who liked Fishbone would enjoy.

The results will be up on the site always so you can come back and visit any time :)

Check it out here:

https://4fb.club/survey/2026-09-book-survey

Friends,

If you missed it, we are reading a story from NWAN Part II Back For Blood, each day this October. Technically this means we are on story 2, but the channels are open for discussion throughout the year...because I'm a frequently late person!

If you want to join in the fun, connect to our community Discord!

If you haven't grabbed a copy yet, be sure to grab using the link below! (I do get a small commission whenever you use my Bindery links!

So excited to finally dive into this one!

Sometimes I want a queer story about coming out. I want stories about fear, first recognition, complicated families, and fighting for the right to live openly. Those stories matter because many of us have lived them.

But I don’t want coming out to be the price of admission every time I open a sapphic book.

Sometimes I want to meet a woman who already knows she loves women. I want her greatest problem to involve a dragon, a murder, a haunted spaceship, a failing coffee shop, or a deeply inconvenient crush (yes I have book recs for all of the above). I want queer characters with exes, bad habits, established communities, and opinions about everything. I want queerness to shape their lives without becoming their only story.

There is a specific kind of relief in entering a world where nobody pauses to explain why two women are attracted to each other. No one demands a declaration. No one treats a kiss like a political lesson for a straight audience. The characters still struggle, but their suffering doesn’t automatically begin with who they love.

Queer normative fiction goes further than simple inclusion. In a fully queer normative world, homophobia and transphobia do not structure society. Queer relationships, genders, families, and ways of living belong to the social fabric. Authors get to ask different questions because they’re no longer required to recreate every oppression from our world.

How does inheritance work when heterosexual marriage is not the assumed foundation of family? What forms of kinship become ordinary? What language develops around gender when a binary system never holds social authority? What conflicts emerge when queerness is no longer treated as the conflict?

Not every book on this list creates a fully queer normative society. Some take place in worlds where other oppressive systems still operate, but sapphic identity is treated as an ordinary part of the characters’ lives. I separated those books because “no coming-out plot” and “no homophobia exists in the world” are related ideas, but they’re not interchangeable.

Both kinds of stories give sapphic characters room to want more than survival. They get to pursue power, make terrible choices, solve mysteries, fall in love, fail at communication, save kingdoms, and build lives. Queerness belongs to them without consuming every narrative possibility.

I want more books where sapphic characters already know who they are. I want stories where queer community exists before the first chapter. I want desire without apology and identity without an assigned lesson.

How does your reading experience change when queerness is treated as ordinary? Which book made you feel like you had entered a fully realized queer world?

Books Recommendations

The Deep by Rivers Solomon with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, and Jonathan Snipes
The wajinru are water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African women thrown overboard during the transatlantic slave trade. Their society does not rely on cisheteronormative or monogamous structures. Gender remains fluid, relationships take different forms, and communal care shapes the culture. Yetu’s connection with Oori adds a sapphic relationship to a story about memory, trauma, and collective survival.

The Kingdom of Immortal Lovers series by Ruby Roe
Ruby Roe writes sapphic romantasy worlds where women loving women needs no defense or explanation. The Kingdom of Immortal Lovers trilogy begins with House of Crimson Hearts and continues with House of Crimson Kisses and House of Crimson Curses. Vampire Octavia and hunter Red enter a deadly competition for control of Sangui City, forcing two enemies with a forgotten history to work together. Queerness is ordinary, while blood, betrayal, ambition, desire, and supernatural politics drive the conflict. Readers who enjoy this trilogy will find the same queer normativity across Roe's other sapphic fantasy series.

The Dark Gods series by Tara Sim (sapphic relationship within the larger cast)
Beginning with The City of Dusk, this epic fantasy follows four heirs linked to the gods of life, death, light, and darkness as they fight to save their dying city. The ensemble includes characters with varied sexualities, and queerness exists without prejudice or explanation. The series is not centered on a single sapphic romance, but it belongs here because queer people occupy every level of its story, including positions of power, faith, danger, and moral complexity.

The Tea Dragon Society by K. O’Neill
This graphic novel builds a soft fantasy world where queer identities, same-gender relationships, disability, and chosen family belong without explanation. The story centers care, tradition, memory, and intergenerational community. The full Tea Dragon series offers a strong starting place for readers seeking warmth.

The This Poison Heart duology by Kalynn Bayron (my favorite YA duology)
Briseis possesses a gift for growing plants with a single touch. After inheriting an old estate filled with poisonous botanicals and family secrets, she uncovers a connection to Greek mythology and deadly magic. Briseis has two mothers, develops a sapphic romance with the mysterious Marie, and lives in a story free from homophobia. The duology centers Black girlhood, queer family, grief, generational history, and love while allowing queerness to exist without conflict or explanation.

Homeward for a Spell by Jamie Pacton and Rebecca Podos
Ranger Sage finally gets the chance to lead an adventuring party, only to find herself crossing a hostile winter landscape with monsters, magical danger, and Araphi, an aristocratic bard on the run. Their attraction develops inside a cozy quest full of music, flirting, and found family. Queer romance belongs naturally beside the adventure.

Her Pretty Knight by Mariah Rae Birch
This steamy fairy-tale romantasy pairs Della, a death witch posing as a princess, with Sir Galeon, the scarred knight assigned to protect her. A jealous prince, palace danger, and bodies in the library complicate their forbidden romance. The story lets two women occupy the roles of princess, witch, and shining knight without turning their queerness into the obstacle.

An Unlikely Coven by AM Kvita
Joan Greenwood returns to New York and discovers a spell has transformed an ordinary human into a powerful witch. A rescue mission, family secrets, supernatural politics, and a slow-burning sapphic connection pull her into magical chaos. Queer and BIPOC characters stand at the center of this urban fantasy about chosen family and belonging.

Field Guide for the Formerly Villainous by Autumn K. England
After escaping the mind control of an evil cult, nonbinary magic user Oaklin Nettlewood retreats to a farm to heal. Friendship, a grumpy horse, a good dog, and a gentle romance with a paladin-librarian help them return to the world. The cozy fantasy treats Oaklin's gender and queerness as ordinary while giving trauma, recovery, and community the emotional focus.

The Between Earth and Sky trilogy by Rebecca Roanhorse (sapphic relationship within the larger cast)
Beginning with Black Sun, this Indigenous-inspired epic fantasy follows people caught in prophecy, political upheaval, religious conflict, and war. Bisexual women, nonbinary people, varied pronouns, and queer relationships exist throughout Meridian without needing to justify their presence. The trilogy gives queer characters power, desire, ambition, and moral complexity on an epic scale.

For the Love of the Quest by Alexandra Ammon Parthun
Lady Edith Darling runs away to fulfill her grandmother's last wish and find Excalibur. She hires Thomasin Shaw, the feared leader of a London gang, who initially sees the wealthy lady as a possible ransom. Traps, Arthurian puzzles, criminal schemes, and attraction turn their journey into a sapphic historical romance about two women chasing treasure and choosing each other.

Moss'd in Space by Rebecca Thorne
Torian buys an abandoned alien starship and discovers its moss is a sentient organic computer with a sharp tongue and abandonment issues. Her ex-captain Amelia, an angry immortal alien, and a growing found family join the trouble. This cozy science-fiction romance places queer relationships inside a funny space adventure about freedom, connection, and finding home.

When I Was Death by Alexis Henderson
Alexis Henderson's work belongs on any reading list for queer horror with richly drawn Black girls and women. Her 2026 YA novel When I Was Death follows Roslyn after her sister's disappearance, when a group of strange girls arrives in town and reveals a bargain with Death. Grief, girlhood, love, and mortality drive the story, making this a strong choice for readers who want a darker book this year.

Mine, Yours & Ours by Karmen Lee
This dark sapphic mafia romance sits within Lee's Pretty When Vicious world of ruthless widows, criminal dynasties, dangerous rivals, and women who refuse to surrender power. Melissa believes her husband's death has finally freed her, until his twin appears and pulls her back into the Kincaid family's orbit. The result is an enemies-to-lovers story where Black sapphic desire takes center stage in a genre often dominated by heterosexual couples.

I Accidentally Locked Down a Witch by Jessica Cage
Fitness entrepreneur Shontae Carter meets Likosa, a witch from another realm who plans to use the mysterious power in Shontae's aura to open a portal home. Their attraction disrupts the scheme and turns the fourth Accidents Happen book into a spicy sapphic paranormal rom-com. It also centers a plus-size Black woman whose strength, work, friendships, and desirability all matter.

The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling
Gyre enters a dangerous cave system with only Em, her remote handler, controlling her suit and feeding her information. The tense relationship between the two women drives this claustrophobic science-fiction horror. Their queerness requires no explanation, though manipulation, isolation, and survival provide more than enough conflict.

Spear by Nicola Griffith
This queer Arthurian retelling follows a young woman who leaves an isolated childhood to seek a place at King Artos’s court. The court opens into a larger queer world, and the sapphic relationship grows inside a story about destiny, identity, magic, and belonging.

A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark
Agent Fatma investigates a supernatural murder in an alternate 1912 Cairo filled with djinn, magic, airships, and political unrest. Fatma already has history with Siti when the novel begins. Their relationship belongs naturally beside the mystery rather than becoming a problem requiring explanation.

A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
The first Wayfarers novel follows a mixed-species spaceship crew whose relationships challenge human assumptions about gender, sexuality, family, and intimacy. The book includes a sapphic relationship while treating queerness as part of a larger, culturally varied future.

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
The Locked Tomb series fills a necromantic space empire with lesbians, complicated women, devotion, rivalry, grief, and terrible decisions. Queerness needs no explanation. Readers receive murder mystery, body horror, theology, and bone magic instead of a coming-out narrative.

The Unbroken by C. L. Clark
Touraine and Luca occupy opposite sides of a colonial conflict, and their attraction becomes tangled with power, betrayal, and political violence. The fantasy world normalizes queerness, but the novel remains deeply concerned with empire, race, class, and cultural belonging.

The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri
An imprisoned princess and a maidservant hiding forbidden power become drawn to each other while navigating empire, religious violence, revolution, and ambition. Their attraction belongs to the story without requiring a coming-out arc. The Burning Kingdoms trilogy gives sapphic women room to be strategic, furious, loving, and morally complicated.

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon
This epic fantasy includes a central sapphic relationship amid dragons, court politics, religion, and a threat to the world. Duty and secrecy complicate the romance, but queerness itself does not serve as the primary conflict.

Questions for the community

Which book gave you the strongest sense of living inside a queer normative world?

Do you prefer stories with no homophobia at all, or stories where homophobia exists but never controls the main character’s arc?

Which genre needs more sapphic characters whose queerness is already established?

Five books to begin with

• For cozy fantasy: Field Guide for the Formerly Villainous

• For epic fantasy: The Between Earth and Sky Trilogy (not exclusively sapphic)

• For science-fiction mystery: The Space Between Worlds

• For horror: The Luminous Dead

• For a fully queer normative fantasy world: This Poison Heart

Bindery Babes!! How is it already October? Only 3 months left in the year and we've already read so many incredible books together. I cannot wait to figure out what's next, so I'm sharing my longlist for both November and December below.

I think for November, we either want to go cozy fantasy or horror. For December, we have historically closed the year with a holiday romance, but I've thrown in a few wild cards as well.

What do you think? Drop any suggestions and additional titles you want to vote on in the comments! I clearly have more thoughts on November so please help for December especially! xx Nina

NOVEMBER

1. My Faire Lady by Haley J. Munroe 

2. Homeward For a Spell by Rebecca Podos & Jamie Pacton 

3. Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell

4. She’s a Doll by Barbara Truelove

5. Devil of the Deep by Falencia Jean-Francois

6. The Lamb by Lucy Rose

7. On Sundays She Picked Flowers by Yah Yah Scholfield

8. Rottenheart by Kat Dunn

9. Meet Me in the Garden by Nina Lacour

10. The Keeper of Magical Things by Julie Leong 

11. Your Beloved Remains by Quinn Connor

12. Heap Earth Upon It by Chloe Michelle Howarth

13. Whidbey by T Kira Madden

14. We Call Them Witches by India-Rose Bower

15. Jawbone by Mónica Ojeda

DECEMBER

1. Most Wonderful by Georgia Clark

2. I'll Get Back To You Becca Grischow 

3. I’ll Be Gone for Christmas by Georgia Boone 

4. Yours For the Season by Kate Cochrane 

5. Set the Record Straight by Hannah Bonam-Young

6. Mortal Follies by Alexis Hall