( Born under a bad sign... )

The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth

When Cameron Post's parents die suddenly in a car crash, her shocking first thought is relief. Relief they'll never know that, hours earlier, she had been kissing a girl.

But that relief doesn't last, and Cam is soon forced to move in with her conservative aunt Ruth and her well-intentioned but hopelessly old-fashioned grandmother. She knows that from this point on, her life will forever be different. Survival in Miles City, Montana, means blending in and leaving well enough alone (as her grandmother might say), and Cam becomes an expert at both.

Then Coley Taylor moves to town. Beautiful, pickup-driving Coley is a perfect cowgirl with the perfect boyfriend to match. She and Cam forge an unexpected and intense friendship—one that seems to leave room for something more to emerge. But just as that starts to seem like a real possibility, ultrareligious Aunt Ruth takes drastic action to 'fix' her niece, bringing Cam face-to-face with the cost of denying her true self—even if she's not exactly sure who that is.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post is a stunning and unforgettable literary debut about discovering who you are and finding the courage to live life according to your own rules.

Setting: Montana, early 1990s

Coming of age, rural literature, 1990s, young adult

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White

Endorsement from submitter #1: "In an alternate London, boys born with violet eyes become Speakers, mediums who can communicate with the dead, and girls born with violet eyes become their wives. 16-year-old Silas Bell is desperate to avoid becoming another man's wife, but his attempts end with him institutionalised and diagnosed with 'Veil Sickness', a disorder turning violet-eyed girls mad. When the ghosts of former patients appear to beg him for help, he must solve the mystery of what, exactly, happens to everyone society throws away."

Endorsement from submitter #2: "T4T and autistic representation"

Mors vincit omnia. Death conquers all.

London, 1883. The Veil between the living and dead has thinned. Violet-eyed mediums commune with spirits under the watchful eye of the Royal Speaker Society, and sixteen-year-old Silas Bell would rather rip out his violet eyes than become an obedient Speaker wife. According to Mother, he’ll be married by the end of the year. It doesn’t matter that he’s needed a decade of tutors to hide his autism; that he practices surgery on slaughtered pigs; that he is a boy, not the girl the world insists on seeing.

After a failed attempt to escape an arranged marriage, Silas is diagnosed with Veil sickness—a mysterious disease sending violet-eyed women into madness—and shipped away to Braxton’s Sanitorium and Finishing School. The facility is cold, the instructors merciless, and the students either bloom into eligible wives or disappear. So when the ghosts of missing students start begging Silas for help, he decides to reach into Braxton’s innards and expose its rotten guts to the world—as long as the school doesn’t break him first.

Setting: Victorian London, 1883

The Sworn Soldier series (What Moves the Dead, What Feasts at Night, What Stalks the Deep) by T. Kingfisher

When Alex Easton, a retired soldier, receives word that their childhood friend Madeline Usher is dying, they race to the ancestral home of the Ushers in the remote countryside of Ruravia.

What they find there is a nightmare of fungal growths and possessed wildlife, surrounding a dark, pulsing lake. Madeline sleepwalks and speaks in strange voices at night, and her brother Roderick is consumed with a mysterious malady of the nerves.

Aided by a redoubtable British mycologist and a baffled American doctor, Alex must unravel the secret of the House of Usher before it consumes them all.

Setting: Turn-of-the-century

Horror, fantasy, gothic, mystery, historical fiction, turn-of-the-century, retelling, novella, series, adult

One Night in Hartswood by Emma Denny (14th Century Oxfordshire #1)

Endorsement from submitter: "One Night in Hartswood takes the premise of "what if we were queer and ran away together" but they actually DO run away together. And it all goes well and no one gets shot with anything. A big gay medieval romantic romp about yearning and being bad at talking about your feelings."

Oxford 1360

When his sister’s betrothed vanishes the night before her politically arranged marriage, Raff Barden must track and return the elusive groom to restore his family’s honour. William de Foucart ― known to his friends as Penn ― had no choice but to abandon his fiancé, and with it his own earldom, when he fled the night before his enforced marriage. But ill-equipped to survive on the run he must trust the kindness of a stranger, Raff, to help him escape. Unaware their fates are already entwined, their unexpected bond deepens into a far more precious relationship, one that will test all that they hold dear. And when secrets are finally revealed, both men must decide what they will risk for the one they love…

Setting: Medieval Oxfordshire, 1360s