Gabriella West: 19 books

What happens when a lesbian falls in love with her best male friend--and he's married? San Francisco, mid-1990s. In this poignant short personal memoir, Gabriella West revisits her twenties to explore a confusing friendship with a married couple that started promisingly, but became a painful...

At 15, Cathy Quinn is a complex teenager living—and feeling trapped—in 1980s Dublin. As the book opens she discovers that her charming older brother Stevie, who's gay, is falling in love with the one boy in school whom she likes. Over her last two years of school, Cathy struggles with her dysfunctional...

Most of us have heard of ADHD (Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder), so why is it so common for women not to be diagnosed until they are in midlife? While boys manifest their ADHD in hyperactive behaviors, female sufferers tend to internalize their symptoms, contending with anxiety, depression,...

"I want to be more like the islands themselves: warm, spicy, tolerating storms of rain and wind, beautiful, fertile, changeable, adventurous, enduring." In this honest and compelling short travel memoir, the author and her partner, Selena, travel to Kauai, Hawaii's garden island,...

Could our food actually be the main cause of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)? Did you know that the amount of allowable food dyes in our diet has increased five times between 1955 and 2007? Food dyes have now been officially linked to hyperactivity in children with learning...

Italy, 1980s. The shy unnamed narrator and her tougher English friend, Liz, are booksmart but inexperienced 18-year-old students on a budget traveling around Northern Italy by train. As they share adventures, wine and conversation, their edgy friendship not surprisingly begins to deepen. But...

Shy young Caroline Singleton has come from England to Ireland in 1915 to work as a governess at Thornley Hall, the country home of Lord and Lady Wilcox. But the beautiful, willful housemaid Grace Sheridan, with her fierce dedication to Ireland's freedom, opens Caroline's eyes to desires she has never...

Warwickshire, England, 1260. Will Talbot is leaving home at fourteen to spend the next few years in training at nearby Kenilworth Castle as a squire. Kenilworth is the home of the ambitious Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, who is married to Eleanor, the youngest sister of King Henry III. Will's...

Enter the dark and deceptive world of Venice in the 1600s. Piero is a young boy from a working-class family who is chosen by the priests of the royal court to be castrated and to sing in their choir. Several years pass. Androgynous and girlish, yet troubled by the grim turn his life has taken, Piero...

New York, 1930. Bubbly young blonde Betsy Parker is left a widow at only 25, after her older banker husband commits suicide in the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash of 1929. Her family has sent her off on a voyage to England by ocean liner to recover. Innocent and curious to explore, Betsy attracts...

English professor Jack, an embittered older man in 1990s San Francisco, has a vivid flashback to his turbulent, secret love affair in North Beach in the early 1950s with tormented young artist Ray, who cares only about ambition and his art. An intense, gripping story about a doomed relationship that changes the course of a man's entire life.

France, 1266. Will and his lover, Stephen, are safely ensconced at Montargis Abbey, a Dominican convent two days' ride south of Paris, where the widowed Lady Eleanor de Montfort has chosen to live out her days in peace and seclusion with her young daughter. Will and Stephen fall into a pleasant routine...

Dorothy Richardson (1873-1957) was an English novelist who pioneered the "stream of consciousness" technique in her long novel "Pilgrimage," which was published in 13 volumes over the 1920s and 1930s. Shy and from a humble background, Richardson's work is now overlooked, but in...

Three months past his breakup, Aaron is adrift, the only thing sustaining him being his weekly therapy sessions with Marc. But Marc's feelings for Aaron have changed, and this unlikely couple must transition to a new and risky adventure: falling in love at breakneck speed while trying hopelessly to...