Feminist scholar Hannah Stern finds herself working at the Library of Congress, assigned to catalogue a donation of rare lesbian books. But it’s more than a one-year job in Washington: it’s a mission handed to her by a powerful and mysterious goddess, The Overhead Herself. When a series of desperate, haunted phone calls from the ghosts of lesbian writers directs her to rescue even more at-risk books, Hannah begins a journey into the love affair between banned writers and newly-out readers. Will hearing others’ fond memories of lesbian books from the 1920s and 1970s help Hannah save their legacy for future generations? Or will Isabel, Hannah’s partner and the mystical proprietor of Sappho’s Bar and Grill, have to summon her magic to save the entire bar membership?

Each month for a full year, the holiday parties and theme nights at Sappho's Bar & Grill spin lonely Hannah Stern into the past when she least expects it. Through her sexy encounters with foremothers ranging from Lilith to Sappho, through Radclyffe Hall to the All American Girls Baseball League, Hannah learns much about herself and women’s survival across time.

Novel Approaches to Lesbian History tells a tale about history and community in our allegedly post-identity era, examining contemporary novels that depict lesbian characters in recognizable historical situations. These imaginative stories provide a politically vital, speculative past in the face of a sketchy, problematic archive. Among the memorable characters in some 200 novels are pirates, cowgirls, and famous artists, ghosts and time travellers, immigrants and lovers. The best lesbian historical novels are conscientious and buoyant as they engage critical historiographical questions, but Novel Approaches also discusses the class and race biases that weigh on the genre. Some lesbian historical novels are based on archival evidence, others on conjecture or fantasy, but all convey the true fact that identity is elusive without a past, without which its future is nearly impossible.

WINNER of a silver Foreword INDIES Book of the Year award Are there moments in your life when your femaleness is a source of power or hardship? When does your voice ring its clearest? When have you been silenced? Feminine Rising: Voices of Power and Invisibility brings together international poets and essayists, both award-winning and emergent, to answer these questions with raw, honest meditations that speak to women of all races, nationalities, and sexual orientations. It is an anthology of unforgettable stories both humorous and frightening, inspirational and sensual, employing traditional poetry and prose alongside exciting experimental forms. Feminine Rising celebrates women’s differences, while embracing the source of their sameness—the unique experience of womanhood.

An award-winning journalist explores the pain of bearing witness: “A valuable portrait of what it is like to live with PTSD . . . striking candor.” —The New York Times Book Review Back in California after reporting on Haiti’s devastating 2010 earthquake, Mac McClelland can’t stop reliving vivid scenes of horror. She’s plagued by waking terrors, violent fantasies, and crippling emotional breakdowns. She can’t sleep or stop crying. It becomes clear that she’s suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Her bewilderment about this sudden loss of control is magnified by the intensity of her feelings for Nico—a French soldier she met in Port-au-Prince and with whom she connected instantly and deeply. In this book, the foreign correspondent tackles perhaps her most harrowing assignment to date: investigating the damage in her own mind. She probes the depths of her illness, explores our culture’s history with PTSD, delves into the latest research, and spends time with veterans and their families. She learns that while we associate PTSD with wartime, it is more often caused by other types of trauma, and can even be contagious. Irritable Hearts is a searing, personal medical mystery that unfolds at a breakneck pace. But it is also a love story, as McClelland fights desperately to repair her heart so she can give it to the kind, patient, and compassionate man with whom she wants to share a life. Ultimately, it is a remarkable exploration of vulnerability and resilience. “Unforgettable.” —Roxane Gay, New York Times–bestselling author of Hunger “[A] deft, emotionally engaged memoir . . . As much as the love story at the heart of the book is a great romance, it’s also a very funny one. McClelland is not the sort of person who needs to idealize either herself or the man who became her husband. It’s a grown-up relationship story. And as a bonus, Irritable Hearts has a section on trauma and triggers that adds useful context to many of our present debates about discourse on the Internet.” —The Washington Post “McClelland pulls back a dark, heavy curtain on the costs paid by those who travel to the far corners of the planet to gather difficult news on difficult subjects . . . Writing like this takes courage, perhaps as much—or even more—than reporting from a war-ravaged land.” —San Francisco Chronicle

The bibliography lists nearly 5,000 compositions by 200 composers of jazz and "art" music, indicating where scores or realizations can be purchased, rented, or borrowed, and which Boston area libraries have them in their collections.