Romantic Wednesdays: Spotlight on LGBTQ Romance

Posted by guest blogger Tracy Timmons Gray

If you’re looking for love stories, then the Library is a great place to start! There, you’ll find loads of romances, from mysteries to historicals, from sci-fi to contemporary, and you’ll find a ton of books that star LGBTQ main characters falling in love and finding that awesome Happily Ever After.

But where to start?

    For Contemporary readers, especially all you fans  who love it when things heat up with firefighters, there’s From the Ashes by Seattle writer Daisy Harris. Or you can dive into the hot dish Hungry for Love by local writer Rick. R. Reed. Yum! For a spicier meal, there’s the three novellas in Uncommon Romance by Jove Belle, or if you’re looking for a fun college romance, come skip class with Anne Tenino’s Frat Boy and Toppy. And if you’re looking for a story collection to pick up, there’s the Best Lesbian Romance 2014.

 

For mystery and suspense readers, there is quite the selection to investigate! Josh Lanyon’s Come Unto These Yellow Sands finds a professor and his sheriff lover embroiled in a murder case. In Radclyffe’s Above all, Honor, a secret service agent must do what she can to protect the daughter of the president. You can find a mystery close to home in the Tacoma-set suspense Mounting Danger by Karis Walsh. Or you can follow Californian PI Cole McGinnis in the first of his mysteries Dirty Kiss by Rhys Ford. (Watch out! Trouble is also close behind Cole.) And if you like something a little more paranormal (with ghosts!) in your mystery, check out A Reason to Believe by Spokane author Diana Copland.

For Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, and Sci-Fi romance readers, you won’t have to quest far to find some amazing reads. There’s sci-fi intrigue in Deep Deception by Cathy Pegau, fairy tale feels in Kim Fielding’s Brute, a grim vampire reality in Jordan Castillo Price’s Hemovore, treasure-hunting adventure in Talya Andor’s Convergence, and a fantastical setting (and more) in Megan Derr’s The Engineered Throne.
             

For historical fans, we don’t have to dig too deep to find gems. From WWII pilots in Aleksandr Voinov’s Skybound to the golden age of cinema in Morticia Knight’s Hollywood Bound, from one part of historical England in Sarah Waters’ Tipping the Velvet to another in Emma Lanner’s A Margin of Promise, and for all ye fans of hot highlanders, there’s The Laird’s Forbidden Lover by Amelia Gormley.

And that’s just the beginning! You’ll find way more rainbow love on the shelves of your local Seattle Public Library. Grab your favorite cozy reading spot and enjoy! (And let us know what you think!)

And for those wanting to meet some of these awesome authors, join us on Sept. 20 starting from 5:30pm at the Hotel Monaco’s Paris Ballroom for the Gay Romance Northwest Book Festival, a free event featuring over 50 LGBTQ romance authors, tons of swag, loads of books for sale, and more! We hope to see you there!