Wild Rides and Other Lesbian Erotic Adventures

This outstanding collection of lesbian erotica written from 2003 to 2015 focuses on butch lesbians and the women they love, showcasing some of Lambda Award winner Green’s best work across her career. Most of the attention is on rough and working-class characters such as Toby, a muddy-jeans-wearing bull rider who makes bad decisions in “Bull Rider,” and Ree, a veterinarian in “Pulling” and “Finding Carla,” but Green also makes room for a wide range of female characters and experiences across history with standout stories that include reuniting with a long-lost lover shortly after the Civil War (“Jessebel”), a soldier snatching an intimate moment outside of a military base in Vietnam in the 1960s (“Lipstick on Her Collar”), and a woman experiencing a haunting in a cellar in Montana (“Spirit Horse Ranch”). Green challenges preexisting ideas of the erotic—some of the stories are eerie or even distressing, and a few are not explicit, though all are charged with sexual energy—and balances raw, intense emotions and passions with sweet tenderness. This is a wonderfully varied look at lesbian love throughout history. (Mar.)