Shadows of a Dream

Two divides perfectly into four, not five.

Zara Keller is a survivor turned piano phenomenon living for a big dream. When she’s invited to spend the weekend with four long-time friends outside of London, she has little use for luxurious Fullerhill Manor—but Lady Jillian Stansfield might be a different story.

The obligations thrust on Jillian Stansfield as Lady of the Manor center on home and family. Even her best friends expect her to put aside the desire for a meaningful life and carry on her legacy through marriage and children. Will the arrival of a fifth person be enough to tip the balance of their “gang of four” in her favor?

Zara challenges Jillian to pursue grander plans and stirs something new and profound, compelling Jillian to be true to herself and make the hardest decisions of her life. But when tragedy strikes, saving Jillian may cost Zara the goal of a position at the Royal College of Music, and the chance at love. 

Content advisory: This book contains instances of trauma and homophobia.

Gathered for the first time in one collection, these short stories from Lee Lynch represent a quarter century of passionate portrayals of lesbian women. Lynch chronicles the lives of old women who fall in love, a Black firefighter seeking her place in the feminist community, bar dykes unwilling to back down, the denizens of lesbian-owned Café Femmes, and Henny—who runs an urban fruit stand while regaling her baby butch assistants with tales from her life. Iconic characters from Lynch's novels also make an appearance: Frenchy Tonneau from The Swashbuckler and Annie Heaphy from Toothpick House.

Lee Lynch’s work is considered among the classics and a cornerstone in the large and permanent foundation of lesbian literature.

When Toya meets Folami and joins the activist collective RiseUP!, she thinks she’s found her life’s purpose. Folami’s sensuality and her passion for social justice leave Toya feeling that, at last, she’s met someone she can share all parts of her life with. But when a controversial police shooting blurs the lines between the personal and the political, Toya is forced to examine her identity, her passions, and her allegiances. 

Folami, a mature and dedicated activist, challenges Toya’s commitment to the struggle while threatening to pull her back into the closet to maintain the intense connection they share. However, Nina, a young, free-spirited artist, invites Toya to explore the intersections between sexual and political freedom.

With the mounting tensions and social unrest threatening to tear the community apart, can Toya find a safe place to live and love while working to uplift her people?

What if Sodom and Gomorrah, those synonyms for debauchery, were in fact perfect societies? What if the avenging angels were genocidal terrorists, and the "one righteous man" who escaped the annihilation was a murderous fanatic and the rapist of his own daughters? Justice is a long time coming, but finally the serene waters of the Red Sea give up the secret of a millennia-old lie. While surrendering to biblical wantonness with a film actress, sculptor Joanna Boleyn, discovers that righteousness can conceal its own depravity, that art tells more truth than scripture, and that challenging authority can be mortally dangerous.

From Toothpick House to The Raid, Lee Lynch has given us our most heart-touching stories of lesbian life. Join her again in Morton River Valley when Texan Paris Collins comes to town and gets to know the characters from the acclaimed Morton River Valley trilogy.

Paris Collins changes jobs and homes every two years. Always, she leaves behind an astonished lover who refused to believe that Paris would move on. Now she's taken a job in a dying New England industrial town where she meets Peg Jacob, a tempting local from an old Yankee family. Paris gets caught up in protecting the town from environmental threats and education budget cuts. And in protecting an angry gay kid from an impoverished, frightened and angry town. Does she also want to protect herself from Peg Jacob?

Jacqueline "Jaq" Bergeron—New Orleanian, suffragist, freethinker—drove an ambulance on the battlefields of Europe during the Great War. She returns home and finds herself isolated in rural East Texas, keeping house for her war-hero husband as she awaits his promised divorce and plans her escape. But then she meets Molly.

Molly Russell lives for her music, which sustains her as she cares for her son and husband, and suffers her mother-in-law. When she meets Jaq, a world she never imagined opens to hera world entirely out of reach.

With the storm of war still raging in Europe and other battles to be fought at home, can two women bound by the land and family ties find the freedom to love and build a life together?