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 20 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. 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.