Two professors.
Three kids.
Two dogs.
One coffee shop.
And a whole winter of almosts.
Get the book free before it's out in the world.
Margot Voss is precise, private, and very good at keeping people out. Priya Anand is warm, brilliant, and completely, unapologetically herself. When their university pairs them for a research project neither one volunteered for, they recognize something in each other immediately… and spend the next five months pretending they don't.
Close Reading is a tender, slow-burn sapphic romance set in Millhaven, a Pacific Northwest college town where a found family has been gathering for twenty years at a coffee shop called Lavender House. It's a story about being truly known by someone who isn't looking away, and it's yours, free, right now.
Our ARC team is currently full. Pre-order your copy of Close Reading here.
ABOUT THE SERIES
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.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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.
ABOUT THE PRESS
Tehom Center Publishing is an independent nonprofit press publishing feminist and queer authors, with a commitment to elevate BIPOC writers.