The Lavender House Series by Anya Birch
Six sapphic love stories set in a Pacific Northwest college town
Lavender House is a coffee shop on the first floor of a dusky purple Victorian in Millhaven, a small port city nestled against Puget Sound in the Pacific Northwest.
Bea Navarro has run it for over twenty years, the door always open, your drink ready before you reach the counter, the room arranged to make it easier to be who you are. Ardmore College sits across the street, old brick and old trees, a hundred years of students and faculty and the life of a small liberal arts institution trying to live up to its own ideals.
The people who gather at Lavender House are ordinary people living ordinary lives, teaching, coaching, cooking, writing, organizing, loving. They are good at their work and good to each other. Their stories are set against real struggles, because that’s where real people live.
These books believe that joy is not a retreat, that love is not a refuge from the world, but a way of building a better one.
Six books. Six sapphic stories. One community that keeps choosing each other. Come in. Bea knows your order.
What’s true in Millhaven
Queerness is in the water, across a range of ages, bodies, and lives
Fat characters are desired as whole people
Consent is part of the pleasure
Kids are real people with their own lives, and adults take them seriously
The characters face real stakes drawn from work, family, and institutions
The found family in Lavender House carries across all six books
Every book ends well. Not every book ends the same way.
Welcome to the World of Lavender House
BOOK 1: Close Reading
Buttoned-up literature professor Margot Voss is paired with warm, vibrant ecologist Priya Anand for a year-long project. A tender slow burn.
BOOK 2: Taped Up
Soccer coach Sam Rivera and athletic trainer Lani Park have spent four years running a women's soccer program side by side... and four years not saying what's underneath it. A friends-to-lovers romance.
BOOK 3: The Daily Special
Newly out dining services director Claudette Williams asks adjunct philosopher Nadia Bloom for something she's never had. A warm, adult romance.
BOOK 4: Hypothesis
Neuroscientist Zara Holt finally makes a move on Rowan Chen, the writer who’s been quietly smitten with her for over a year. A gentle opposites-attract romance.
BOOK 5: Office Hours
The new professor in the history department, Lena Rodriguez, is the woman PhD candidate Tess Okafor recently spent one unforgettable night with at a conference. A romance about a past that won't stay where they left it.
BOOK 6: Last Call
The series comes home. Bea Navarro has spent twenty-five years behind the counter at Lavender House. Then Vivienne Rahman, the woman who left, walks back through the door. A poignant second-chance romance.
Who is Anya Birch?
Anya Birch is the pen name for two married queer women writing sapphic literary romance from the Pacific Northwest. Both came to fiction from academic careers because fiction could hold what scholarship couldn’t. They have twelve published books between them, including award-winning titles and bestsellers, and this is their first collaboration. They live with their two kids and one snuggly dog, and have been meaning to get the garden going for several years now.
Contact: anya@anyabirch.com