No Modernism Without Lesbians

A Sunday Times Book of the Year Winner of the Polari Prize 'A book about love, identity, acceptance and the freedom to write, paint, compose and wear corduroy breeches with gaiters. To swear, kiss, publish and be damned. It is vastly entertaining and often moving... There isn't a page without an entertaining vignette' The Times. The extraordinary story of how a singular group of women in a pivotal time and place – Paris, Between the Wars – fostered the birth of the Modernist movement. Sylvia Beach, Bryher, Natalie Barney, and Gertrude Stein. A trailblazing publisher; a patron of artists; a society hostess; a groundbreaking writer. They were all women who loved women. They rejected the patriarchy and made lives of their own – forming a community around them in Paris. Each of these four central women interacted with a myriad of others, some of the most influential, most entertaining, most shocking and most brilliant figures of the age. Diana Souhami weaves their stories into those of the four central women to create a vivid moving tapestry of life among the Modernists in pre-War Paris. 'One of the best books I've read this year.' James Bridle

Wild Girls is the critically acclaimed true story of two wealthy American heiresses---one an artist, the other a writer---whose stormy, passionate love affair captivated Paris’s salon set between the wars. Natalie Barney and Romaine Brooks were rich, American, eccentric, and grandly lesbian. They met in Paris in 1915, and their relationship lasted more than fifty years, despite infidelity, separation, and temperamental differences. Romaine Brooks, a painter, was the product of an unhappy childhood and trusted no one but Natalie. Natalie Barney was passionate about life, sex, and love. Her Friday afternoon salons, attended by Gertrude Stein, and Colette and Edith Sitwell, were a magnet for social introductions and cultural innovations. Drawing from letters, papers, and paintings, Diana Souhami, the award-winning author of Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter, re-creates the lives and loves of this pair of dazzling and wild women. “Epic romance . . . smartly sex-positive and so good-naturedly shocking.” ---The New York Times Book Review “Real tenderness and pathos . . . not only entertaining but affecting reading.” ---The Washington Post “Their friends were the most bohemian, their parties the most risqué, their tortured love affair the most notorious in Europe. Diana Souhami tells a remarkable tale.” ---The Sunday Telegraph (UK)

Diana Souhami’s Lambda Award–winning biography is a fascinating look at one of the twentieth century’s most intriguing lesbian literary figures. Born in 1880, Marguerite Radclyffe-Hall was a young unwanted child when her parents put an end to their tempestuous marriage by filing for divorce. She had already made tentative forays into lesbian love when her father died, leaving her an heiress at eighteen. Her income assured, Hall moved out of her mother’s house, renamed herself John in honor of her great-great-grandfather, and divided her time among hunting, traveling, and pursuing women. She began to write—songs, poetry, prose, and short stories—and achieved success as a novelist, but it was with the publication of The Well of Loneliness in 1928 that Radclyffe Hall became an internationally known figure. Dubbed the “bible of lesbianism,” the book caused a scandal on both sides of the Atlantic. Though moralistic in tone, because of its subject matter it was tried as obscene in America and in the United Kingdom, where it was censored under the Obscene Publications Act. The Trials of Radclyffe Hall is a fascinating, no-holds-barred account of the life of this controversial woman, including her torrid relationship with the married artist Una Troubridge, who was Hall’s devoted partner for twenty-eight years.

A Literary Hub Best Book of Year • A Crime Reads Best Debut of the Year • A Newsweek 25 Best Fall Books • A Philadelphia Inquirer 10 Big Books for the Fall • An O Magazine.com LGBTQ Books That Are Changing the Literary Landscape in 2020 Selection • An Electric Lit Most Anticipated Debut of the Second Half of 2020 • A Paperback Paris Best New LGBTQ+ Books To Read This Year Selection • A Passport Best Book of the Month The Secret History meets Lie with Me in Micah Nemerever's compulsively readable debut novel—a feverishly taut Hitchcockian story about two college students, each with his own troubled past, whose escalating obsession with one another leads to an act of unspeakable violence. When Paul enters university in early 1970s Pittsburgh, it’s with the hope of moving past the recent death of his father. Sensitive, insecure, and incomprehensible to his grieving family, Paul feels isolated and alone. When he meets the worldly Julian in his freshman ethics class, Paul is immediately drawn to his classmate’s effortless charm. Paul sees Julian as his sole intellectual equal—an ally against the conventional world he finds so suffocating. Paul will stop at nothing to prove himself worthy of their friendship, because with Julian life is more invigorating than Paul could ever have imagined. But as charismatic as he can choose to be, Julian is also volatile and capriciously cruel, and Paul becomes increasingly afraid that he can never live up to what Julian expects of him. As their friendship spirals into all-consuming intimacy, they each learn the lengths to which the other will go in order to stay together, their obsession ultimately hurtling them toward an act of irrevocable violence. Unfolding with a propulsive ferocity, These Violent Delights is an exquisitely plotted excavation of the depths of human desire and the darkness it can bring forth in us.

Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Tokas were the talk of pre-war Paris. Photographed by Cecil Beaton and Man Ray, painted by Picasso and written about by Hemingway, they were at the heart of Parisian cultural and literary life. Alice, convinced that Gertrude was a genius, cooked for her, typed her manuscripts and fought to obtain the fame she was convinced Gertrude was due. Alice said Gertrude was the happiest person she had ever known, and was besotted with her for the many years they were together. They were indomitable, charismatic, and wildly eccentric, driving around in ‘Auntie', their Ford, with Basket, their cherished poodle. In Gertrude and Alice, award-winning writer Diana Souhami brings these two extraordinary women, and the fascinating world in which they moved, to vivid life.

This early work by Radclyffe Hall was originally published in 1928 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'The Well of Loneliness' is a novel that follows an upper-class Englishwoman who falls in love with another woman while serving as an ambulance driver in World War I. Marguerite Radclyffe Hall was born on 12th August 1880, in Bournemouth, England. Hall's first novel The Unlit Lamp (1924) was a lengthy and grim tale that proved hard to sell. It was only published following the success of the much lighter social comedy The Forge (1924), which made the best-seller list of John O'London's Weekly. Hall is a key figure in lesbian literature for her novel The Well of Loneliness (1928). This is her only work with overt lesbian themes and tells the story of the life of a masculine lesbian named Stephen Gordon.

How do little kids grow up to become inspiring leaders? Find out in this beautiful board book for little ones with big dreams. Everyone, from Nelson Mandela to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was once a small child learning about the world. Read how a diverse array of kids discovered what they were passionate about, worked hard, and followed their dreams to make a positive difference as adults. With adorable illustrations of leaders as young kids, then as inspiring adults, these leaders will seem like friends to your little one, and kids will see that great leadership and change really can be achieved by anyone. Meet lawyer and jurist Ruth Bader Ginsburg who learned the value of education and independence from her mother, young Nelson Mandela whose childhood experiences led him to challenge racist behavior, Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi as he grew from a shy young boy into a respected leader who let peaceful protests do the talking, and Emmeline Pankhurst whose understanding of the world motivated her to fight for gender equality. Let your little one turn the pages and see that, like these incredible individuals, they can strive for positive change, make a difference, and become successful leaders of the future. Turn the pages and be inspired by: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Nelson Mandela, Emmeline Pankhurst, Mahatma Gandhi, Rosemarie Kuptana, Martin Luther King, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

From Australia's #1 best-selling YA author Lynette Noni comes a dark, thrilling YA fantasy about Kiva, a girl forced to heal prisoners of war who must wager her life in a series of deadly elemental trials, all to save the rebel force's queen. Perfect for fans of Sarah J. Maas and Sabaa Tahir.