Around the World in 80 Days Mini Reading Challenge: Ontario and British Columbia

Can a fragile recluse and a public figure hiding from the press find love?

Can a reclusive, church-averse butch and a lesbian bishop escaping a media storm find love?

Is a future possible when the past hasn't been healed?

Nurse Practitioner Scout Neal intentionally keeps her life uncomplicated. Then she takes the lead on a hospital initiative and starts working with Professor Kit Delaney, a trans woman. Deeply attracted to each other, they discover that until they heal their pasts, they cannot make a future together.

Gripping at times, heartrending at others, What We All Long For is an ode to a generation of longing and identity, and to the rhythms and pulses of a city and its burgeoning, questioning youth.

Dionne Brand’s multicultural infusion follows the stories of a close circle of twenty-something second-generations living in downtown Toronto—and the secrets they hide from their families.

Tuyen is a lesbian avant-garde artist and the daughter of Vietnamese parents who’ve never recovered from losing one of their children while in the rush to flee Vietnam in the 1970s. She rejects her immigrant family’s hard-won lifestyle, and instead lives in a rundown apartment with friends—each of whom is grappling with their own familial complexities and heartache.

A mysterious rhyme book and a full moon bring two time-crossed couples together.

Pam only wanted to commune with the universe while reading a rhyme in the antique book she’d purchased from the local New Age shop. She did not expect guests, especially those summoned from one hundred years in the past.

An addictively gripping coming-of-age story about an all-consuming, insidious love affair between a college freshman and a mysterious older woman, from an unforgettable new voice in fiction

With atmospheric, electric prose that captures the anxiety and emotional intensity of young adulthood like never before, The Adult is about sex, yearning, poetry, and learning to free one­self from the expectations of others. Bronwyn Fischer is an immensely talented new writer to watch.

In the year following her mother’s death, Sophie navigates a complicated love triangle between a new flame and a past partner.

When Sophie meets the glamorous poet Maggie, who is the downtown product of a hundred cool queer bars, she falls into a bewildered infatuation, but secrets emerge that threaten to crumble the foundation of her relationship with Alex and Maggie both.

Award-winning writer Karen X. Tulchinsky’s debut novel, Love Ruins Everything (originally published in 1998 by Press Gang), follows the adventures Nomi Rabinovitch, a sweet but insecure and bumbling butch lesbian as she recovers from a broken heart and negotiates her way back into the dating scene in San Francisco.

Summoned home to Toronto to attend her mother’s surprise second wedding, Nomi is drawn into the AIDS activism of her gay, HIV-positive cousin, Henry and Julie Sakamoto, the new woman of her dreams, as they battle to expose uncomfortable truths about the origins of the epidemic. As in real life, humour, romance and tragedy are woven though this warm, funny and thought-provoking portrayal of queer life at the end of the last century. Insomniac Press is proud to reissue Love Ruins Everything for a new generation of readers to enjoy.

She was only passing through...until she saw her.

Emily Rivers doesn’t have time for love, and she certainly doesn’t have time for yet another flirty tourist just passing through her family’s campground—no matter how much the butterflies in her stomach are trying to tell her Kim Jefferies is way more than a regular tourist.

Country girl meets city girl: game, set, match.

Trish Rivers has never wanted more than a safe and predictable life spent running the cafe at her family’s campground, but that was before she realized falling for your sister’s girlfriend’s best friend doesn’t fit into ‘safe and predictable,’ especially when you’ve never fallen for a girl before.

An age-gap lesbian celebrity romance about how much you’d risk to have your dream.

When medical physics student Rachel meets her celebrity crush, she can hardly believe her luck. A-lister Cate Whitney needs help preparing for her role in a film about Marie Curie, and Rachel is just the person to help her. Could these sparks lead to something more? And is Rachel ready for the pressure of dating a famous actress?

An award-winning novel of lesbian identity and camaraderie amid violence and war

Ruth Wheeler is the one-armed caretaker of a motley crew of boarders living in her rooming house in Vancouver, British Columbia. The miscreants and outcasts in residence include a sexually confused academic, a one-time-dope-addict-turned-law-student, a high-minded deserter of the Vietnam War, a socially conscious female radical, and a gay man on the run from the cops. Despite personal differences and a turbulent outside world teeming with police brutality, the renters’ affection for one another grows and they form a progressive and idealistic “chosen family.”

Think positive. Don’t worry; be happy. Keep calm and carry on.

Perfect for fans of John Green’s Turtles All the Way Down and Nina LaCour’s We Are Okay, this is the poignant and uplifting story of Maeve, who is dealing with anxiety while falling in love with a girl who is not afraid of anything.

An atmospheric novel firmly rooted in the Pacific Northwest, Shepherd's Derelict is a portrait of a troubled found family and the sacrifices we make for love.

What does it take to build a life from broken pieces? For Michelle Shepherd, the question is essential. On the foundations of an erratic and sometimes violent childhood, Michelle has carved out tentative success as an artist in British Columbia while caretaking her elderly father and his expat Vietnam war buddies. Michelle’s father begins drinking and making risky, possibly criminal choices just as she falls in love with a woman named Celeste—two situations for which she has little adult experience and few skills.

Dr. Kate Morrison doesn’t know how or why someone would create human bombs that are triggered by touch.

But when Sergeant Andy Wyles blocks Kate from touching the patient who collapses in her Vancouver ER, Kate joins the investigation to demand answers, regardless of the danger. As the two women work together to find those responsible for creating an army of human weapons, Kate finds it increasingly difficult to ignore her feelings for the fiercely protective and unrelentingly perceptive cop. The investigation escalates, and Kate gradually begins to trust Andy, not only with her safety but also with the difficult details of her past. With lives at risk and her heart on the line, Kate must search for a way to defuse the bombs and save her patients, even as she questions the intensifying connection between herself and Andy.

Tough, resourceful Caitlin Reece, is one of the most unconventional women ever to appear in a mystery novel.

A former public attorney, she left law to conduct her own brand of justice. The uncompromising private detective once again prowls her terrain of Victoria, British Columbia, investigating a case as dramatic and immediate as today’s headlines.