14 must-read queer books like Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth

If you liked the queer plot in Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth , here is a list of 14 books like this:

Similar categories in Penelope Rosemont's The Story of Mary Maclane & Other Writings book and Emily M. Danforth's Plain Bad Heroines

Similar categories in Jessa Crispin's I Await the Devil's Coming book and Emily M. Danforth's Plain Bad Heroines

Similar categories in Victoria Lee's A Lesson in Vengeance book and Emily M. Danforth's Plain Bad Heroines

• lesbian
• lgbt
• fiction
• horror
• mystery
• queer

"Just so,"

-Victoria Lee, A Lesson in Vengeance

"For coffee-stained girls in libraries."

-Victoria Lee, A Lesson in Vengeance

"The question isn't whether magic is real. It's whether I can touch it without being consumed by it."

-Victoria Lee, A Lesson in Vengeance

"The poems circle the same question: how one’s soul could possibly endure when life’s beauty vanishes from reach."

-Victoria Lee, A Lesson in Vengeance

Similar categories in Chuck Tingle's Camp Damascus book and Emily M. Danforth's Plain Bad Heroines

• lesbian
• lgbt
• fiction
• horror
• adult
• queer

"Then again, does it really matter if you're just evil, as opposed to over-the-top cartoonishly evil?"

-Chuck Tingle, Camp Damascus

"That acknowledgement could arrive after several decades, or it could happen tonight, but the time will come. Eventually, I'll have to fully contend with this simple fact: the love I was promised was …"

-Chuck Tingle, Camp Damascus

Similar categories in Ashley Herring Blake's Iris Kelly Doesn't Date (Bright Falls, #3) book and Emily M. Danforth's Plain Bad Heroines

• lesbian
• lgbt
• fiction
• adult
• queer

Similar categories in Mona Awad's Rouge book and Emily M. Danforth's Plain Bad Heroines

• gothic
• adult
• fiction
• horror

"If I had beauty, I decided then, I would never throw it away. I would never give it up."

-Mona Awad, Rouge

"I mean, we all have our dark days. Very dark days, sometimes. When our demons come out to play. No one lives entirely in the light, right?"

-Mona Awad, Rouge

"That I can’t protect you from my terrible places that I still go, can’t help but go because no one protected me, no one saved me, no one ever held out their hand and walked me away. But I’m trying to…"

-Mona Awad, Rouge

Similar categories in Julia Armfield's Our Wives Under the Sea book and Emily M. Danforth's Plain Bad Heroines

• lesbian
• gothic
• lgbt
• fiction
• horror
• adult
• queer

"El océano profundo es una casa embrujada: un lugar donde se mueven en la oscuridad cosas que no deberían existir."

-Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea

"She refused almost every aspect of my help, the way women will when they've been bred to accept little more than the baset civility."

-Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea

"I don't know why I expected you to read my mind,' I say, when I call back to leave her a message, 'I was just doing what I always do, assuming the world revolves around me."

-Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea

"The space around us is a claw half grasped, holding tight without quite crushing, and I wish, in the idle way I always wish these days, that I felt more confident in my ability to breathe."

-Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea

Similar categories in T. Kingfisher's What Moves the Dead (Sworn Soldier, #1) book and Emily M. Danforth's Plain Bad Heroines

• gothic
• fiction
• horror
• mystery
• historical fiction
• adult

"You shouldn't joke about fairies."

-T. Kingfisher, What Moves the Dead (Sworn Soldier, #1)

"The dead don’t walk. Except, sometimes, when they do."

-T. Kingfisher, What Moves the Dead (Sworn Soldier, #1)

"Most of us go to the Devil without him having to personally oversee things."

-T. Kingfisher, What Moves the Dead (Sworn Soldier, #1)

"I had a strong urge to step back from them, and an even stronger urge to poke them with a stick."

-T. Kingfisher, What Moves the Dead (Sworn Soldier, #1)

Similar categories in Kiersten White's Mister Magic book and Emily M. Danforth's Plain Bad Heroines

• adult

"Magic never forgets the taste of your friendship."

-Kiersten White, Mister Magic

"This version of him isn't perfect. None of them are. New isn't the same as perfect. Growing up isn't inherently loss, it's just change."

-Kiersten White, Mister Magic

"I think you've told me thank you more in the last day than anyone else has in years. It's like--when there's a stack of dishes, if my husband actually does them , I tell him thank you. But when I do …"

-Kiersten White, Mister Magic

Similar categories in Emily M. Danforth's Plain Bad Heroines book and Emily M. Danforth's Plain Bad Heroines

• lesbian
• gothic
• lgbt
• historical
• fiction
• historical fiction
• mystery
• horror
• adult
• queer

"Eleanor Faderman knew many books. But never before had she read a book that seemed to know her."

-Emily M. Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines

"She was a person like this: full of opinion and firm standing, she planted her flag in more topics than you could quite believe she could actually care about."

-Emily M. Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines

"I like it so much better when nobody expects anything from me and then I surprise them by delivering anything at all." "That bar’s so low you’re gonna stub your toe on it."

-Emily M. Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines

"So many things felt so routinely disappointing to her that it seemed a shame to waste this evening on that mild unhappiness, one that she could admit to herself possibly wasn't deserved."

-Emily M. Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines

Similar categories in Alexis Henderson's House of Hunger book and Emily M. Danforth's Plain Bad Heroines

• lesbian
• gothic
• lgbt
• fiction
• historical fiction
• horror
• adult
• queer

"To love is to devour"

-Alexis Henderson, House of Hunger

"In the end there are only those who eat and those who bleed. - Countess Lisavet Bathory"

-Alexis Henderson, House of Hunger

"I’ve staked my time on it, and when you’re as busy as I am there’s no gamble so big as that."

-Alexis Henderson, House of Hunger

"I’ve built you a house out of my bones and still it’s as if you believe there are cracks in it."

-Alexis Henderson, House of Hunger

Similar categories in S.T. Gibson's A Dowry of Blood (A Dowry of Blood, #1) book and Emily M. Danforth's Plain Bad Heroines

• lesbian
• gothic
• lgbt
• fiction
• historical fiction
• horror
• adult
• queer

"Water your mother's flowers with their blood."

-S.T. Gibson, A Dowry of Blood (A Dowry of Blood, #1)

"People aren’t meant to live forever. I know that now."

-S.T. Gibson, A Dowry of Blood (A Dowry of Blood, #1)

"You must never overthink any good and pleasurable thing."

-S.T. Gibson, A Dowry of Blood (A Dowry of Blood, #1)

"Desire makes idiots of all of us. But you already knew that part, didn't you?"

-S.T. Gibson, A Dowry of Blood (A Dowry of Blood, #1)

Similar categories in Jade Song's Chlorine book and Emily M. Danforth's Plain Bad Heroines

• lesbian
• lgbt
• fiction
• horror
• adult
• queer

"Nearly every human memory is corrupted by the fact that it is a memory of being human"

-Jade Song, Chlorine

"Would a mermaid who stays at home, much-loved, with two beautiful parents and loving sisters who share everything, be worth memorializing? No."

-Jade Song, Chlorine

"Humans break so easily. They break their bones, their bodies, their hearts. I, too, as a girl, once broke. My head. And when this happened, I, like many other humans, did not allow myself the time an…"

-Jade Song, Chlorine

Similar categories in Andrew Joseph White's The Spirit Bares Its Teeth book and Emily M. Danforth's Plain Bad Heroines

• gothic
• lgbt
• historical
• fiction
• historical fiction
• horror
• queer

"He's...he's doing the same thing I do. His hands are fluttering. Like mine. Oh God, he's like me."

-Andrew Joseph White, The Spirit Bares Its Teeth

"I should not have to keep fixing the damage done to us. It would be so easy to not hurt us and the Speakers can't even do that. It's more work to hurt us. It's more work to be cruel - and yet they co…"

-Andrew Joseph White, The Spirit Bares Its Teeth

"I do not get to savor the masculine cut of my clothes, or the illusion of short hair, or the feeting joy of my skin feeling like mine. Instead, I have to worry if my boyhood is convincing enough to k…"

-Andrew Joseph White, The Spirit Bares Its Teeth

"My name is Daphne.' Daphne? In that moment, it's as if I've peeled the skin away from the chest of a patient, revealing a beating heart. A boy could not say that name as if terrified the syllables wi…"

-Andrew Joseph White, The Spirit Bares Its Teeth

Similar categories in Samantha Allen's Patricia Wants to Cuddle book and Emily M. Danforth's Plain Bad Heroines

• lesbian
• lgbt
• fiction
• horror
• adult
• queer

Similar categories in C.E. McGill's Our Hideous Progeny book and Emily M. Danforth's Plain Bad Heroines

• gothic
• lgbt
• historical
• fiction
• historical fiction
• horror
• adult
• queer

"We had built here, in this half-ruined boat house on the edge of the Moray Firth, a temple to our own strange gods- to Chemistry and Anatomy and Electricity."

-C.E. McGill, Our Hideous Progeny

"There is something romantic about feeding a predator from the palm of your hand, I think- a creature which might bite you if it chooses, but chooses not to. But how does one turn such awful beauty to…"

-C.E. McGill, Our Hideous Progeny

"I will always hold dear to my heart that fact that I was the first to see those golden eyes open, to see its reptilian pupils narrow and focus on my own- for in those eyes I saw, for the first time, …"

-C.E. McGill, Our Hideous Progeny

"I suppose that is why it often makes me sad to read about history, or even natural history, as you do; I cannot help but think of everyone whose tale cannot fit in one book, those poor creatures who …"

-C.E. McGill, Our Hideous Progeny

Similar categories in Tamsyn Muir's Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1) book and Emily M. Danforth's Plain Bad Heroines

• lesbian
• lgbt
• fiction
• horror
• mystery
• adult
• queer

"Evidence,"

-Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)

"Too many words,"

-Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)

"Harrow said, “But you're God."

-Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)

"Death first to vultures and scavangers."

-Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)

Similar categories in Elisabeth Thomas's Catherine House book and Emily M. Danforth's Plain Bad Heroines

• gothic
• fiction
• horror
• mystery
• adult

"I couldn't be here anymore. I couldn't be in me. But I couldn't be anywhere else, either. I had nowhere else to go."

-Elisabeth Thomas, Catherine House

"Tonight, we celebrate the precious quiet of wintertime,' she said. 'And how lovely is this time of silence and work and anticipation and decay?' She looked up. 'Here at Catherine, we know not to fear…"

-Elisabeth Thomas, Catherine House

"You are in the house and the house in the woods. The woods are in the house. The stairs are in the house. Down the stairs is the hallway, and at the end of the hallway is the ballroom. You are in the…"

-Elisabeth Thomas, Catherine House

Similar categories in S.T. Gibson's An Education in Malice book and Emily M. Danforth's Plain Bad Heroines

• lesbian
• gothic
• lgbt
• fiction
• horror
• adult
• queer

"Right and Wrong don't exist. They're fairy tales made up by priests and parents"

-S.T. Gibson, An Education in Malice

"I wasn't in the habit of confessing my sapphic proclivities as a sin, since I didn't consider them to be one, but my idolatry of Carmilla definitely counted as something worth confessing."

-S.T. Gibson, An Education in Malice

"She kissed me with a martyr’s agonized desperation, like I was the only sword she ever wanted to fall on. I kissed her right back like the cutting edge of a blade, trying to inflict as much damage as…"

-S.T. Gibson, An Education in Malice

"I was, I knew full well, a creature composed of strange desires. They'd always been with me, these hungers. As a child I played villain in every game of 'capture the princess,' tying my pretty playma…"

-S.T. Gibson, An Education in Malice

Similar categories in Chuck Tingle's Bury Your Gays book and Emily M. Danforth's Plain Bad Heroines

• lgbt
• fiction
• horror
• mystery
• adult
• queer

"The studio might be a ruthless capitalist machine," he opines, "but we're not evil."

-Chuck Tingle, Bury Your Gays

"Your stories aren't worth your life." My stories are my life, I think, but I don't say this."

-Chuck Tingle, Bury Your Gays

"I'm honestly kind of surprised. You've got a flair for drama, Misha. I thought you might get hard over some final sacrifice for love, or whatever. I mean, you're the writer, not me, but that's got Em…"

-Chuck Tingle, Bury Your Gays

"The path I've been led down is one of senseless catastrophe, a classic Hollywood tale of the man who plummets to rock bottom just moments before he would have crested the peak. [...] I'm living out t…"

-Chuck Tingle, Bury Your Gays