2019 Winners

Action Adventure

Over the Crescent Moon by Karen D. Badger

Makaya Kapule and Spencer Bennet are from vastly different backgrounds…Makaya from Hawaii and Spencer from Vermont. They met and fell in love as members of the National Fencing Team. On hiatus from their grueling training schedule, Makaya and Spencer fly to Hawaii to attend her sister’s traditional Hawai’ian wedding, at which, Spencer meets Makaya’s family for the first time. While there, Makaya’s brother takes them water skiing, and an over-confident Spencer finds herself in danger when she fails to anticipate the raging fury of ocean whitecaps. She wakes up some time later to find herself alone on a deserted beach and with her world about to be turned upside down.

 

Young Adult

Tank Baby by Iza Moreau

For the first 7 years of her life, Elodie Fontaine was part of an ultra-secret psychology experiment in China. Now, at 17, she is trying to put that behind her and simply be a normal Florida teenager. She plays on her high school tennis team, is a nerd-in-good-standing in the Math and Science Club, and has come to terms with the fact that she is interested in girls rather than boys.

 

 

 

 

 

Drama

Burn it Down by K. Aten

Ash Hayes was failed by the system at the tender age of sixteen and suffered an addiction. As a result she lives her life weighed down by the guilt of her past. To atone for childhood misdeeds, Ash trained as a paramedic after high school and eventually became a firefighter with the Detroit fire department, along with her childhood best friend Derek. Friend, confidant, brother, he has been her light in an otherwise dark life. When tragedy strikes on the job, injury and forced leave from the department are the least of her concerns. Suffering from even more guilt and depression after the loss of her two closest friends Ash is set adrift in a sea of pain.

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When Mia Thomas buys the house next door, Ash finds friendship in the most unlikely of places. It’s Mia’s nature to help and to heal. Many would say she has a knack for finding the broken ones and leading them into the light. But Ash’s secret still lives deep inside her. Before the firefighter can even think of a future, she has to amend her past. Like the phoenix of legend, Ash has to burn her fears to the ground before she can be reborn.

Erotica

The Good Girl by Madeleine Taylor

I’m a good girl. I work hard, look like your average girl, do everything in moderation, and I certainly don’t make a habit of going into strangers’ hotel rooms dressed in sexy lingerie and killer heels. That is, until I meet her.

When a mysterious woman buys me a drink at a hotel bar in New York, I never expect her to impact my life the way she does. From the moment she lays eyes on me there’s little point fighting my desires because she seems to know them better than I do…

The Good Girl is the naughty debut novella by Madeleine Taylor, author of lesbian erotica.

 

Fantasy

Duchess Rampant by Alison Naomi Holt

Blending the lyrical and mystical with pulse-pounding action

Epic fantasy featuring strong women characters

Aurelia “Bree” Makena, the Duchess of Danforth, waits on a beach near Port Emnal in front of her three thousand troops. As the waves lap against the hooves of her battle mare, Lioth, Bree watches the enemy ships deploying more warriors against her than she’d ever thought possible.

Victory may prove an insurmountable task.

But wrestling victory from defeat is only the beginning. The real attack is one that if successful will defeat her Anacafrian king more surely than an arrow driven through his heart.

You are invited to enter Ar’rothi, a world as vividly realized as Narnia or Middle Earth, a world where animal spirits guide humans towards enlightenment, and in which an orphaned girl and a warrior duchess must join forces against an evil that threatens everything they have learned to love.

Fiction

Jobyna’s Blues by Jane Alden

Jobyna’s Blues is a multi-generational love story, set in post-WWI American South and flashing forward to the mid-1960’s in New York City and London.

In 1924, Jobyna, the Empress of the Blues, and Lily, a dancer in her chorus line, fall in love as they travel in a custom train car and play to adoring crowds in theaters from Nashville to New Orleans to Mobile. Life is both exciting and dangerous in the young country, only sixty years past the Civil War.

Looking forward to the mid-1960’s, Jobie Greene, a folk singer in Greenwich Village, meets the charismatic English pop star, Deedee. They struggle to manage their long-distance relationship and their careers against a backdrop of social change.

The connections between the love stories and the women’s challenges and triumphs, as they echo through time, keep us surprised and challenged and rooting for their happy endings.

Historical

Over the Crescent Moon by Karen D. Badger

Makaya Kapule and Spencer Bennet are from vastly different backgrounds…Makaya from Hawaii and Spencer from Vermont. They met and fell in love as members of the National Fencing Team. On hiatus from their grueling training schedule, Makaya and Spencer fly to Hawaii to attend her sister’s traditional Hawai’ian wedding, at which, Spencer meets Makaya’s family for the first time. While there, Makaya’s brother takes them water skiing, and an over-confident Spencer finds herself in danger when she fails to anticipate the raging fury of ocean whitecaps. She wakes up some time later to find herself alone on a deserted beach and with her world about to be turned upside down.

 

Mystery

Steel City Confidential by Anne Hagan

Clients hide things from their lawyers all the time. Pam Wilson makes it an art form.

Pam’s been on the run from the law for years and she was getting away with it. The statute of limitations ran out on most of her crimes. For her spouse Charlotte? Not so much. Though they were aging, they looked forward to enjoying their golden years and, hopefully, forgetting about the past.

Life got complicated when Charlotte became gravely ill, their daughter got pregnant with the child of a married man…a married man someone took shots at from a rare motorcycle Pam happens to own. When the man was shot again and killed in his office at Pitt a couple of weeks later, the police found all signs pointing to Pam.

Rochelle ‘Ro’ Rabinowitz, a second-generation Pittsburgh lawyer, and her little firm take on Pam’s case pro-bono. Ro thinks it’s a slam dunk for the defense and hands the case off to her new associate and – she hopes – her future partner in the firm, Dominique, to get her feet wet in a courtroom. Clients are never completely honest with their lawyers and Ro and Dominque soon learn this one is no exception.

New Author

Moving Violations by McGee Matthews

When interim police chief Molly Gorman pulls Amy over, more than the antics on the motorcycle catch her eye. She discovers Amy Gilbert spends her days repairing cars in her family garage and is intrigued. The only holdup? Amy occupies her nights playing softball and drinking with her wild best friend, who offers incredibly bad advice about love. After several run-ins with a certain drunken mechanic, Molly wonders if Amy is really worth the trouble. When Amy disappears, she has to put her mixed emotions aside to work the case.

 

 

Romance

A Window to Love by Annette Mori

Two life events, two paths colliding, two souls destined to meet.Mandie Carter lives an uninspired life. No passion, no romance, and just when she thought things couldn’t get worse, life throws her a curve ball. Desperate to shake things up, she stumbles on an ad for skydiving in the newspaper. Could diving out of a plane be what it takes to jumpstart her life?Gail Forrester is barely hanging on. Buried under mountains of debt, only her much in demand architectural designs keep her afloat. Working around the clock to satisfy her hungry clients, she can’t seem to catch up. That is, until she is brought to a painful halt by a bus. Now, they must find a way forward together through what life and destiny has in store for them. Only then can they hope to step into that window to love.

Science Fiction

Black Flag: Safe Passage by Rachel Ford

Kay Ellis designed the perfect bank for an intergalactic crime syndicate, the Conglomerate. Now the Conglomerate has a bounty on her head. Privateer Captain Maggie Landon is planning a hit on the Conglomerate’s high security bank. But the system is unbeatable – to everyone but its designer.

In order to escape a Conglomerate hitman, Kay needs someone with a ship, and willing to go toe-to-toe with the Conglomerate. To get her gold, Maggie needs Kay, and her knowledge of the bank.

Kay agrees to assist for a share of the loot, and passage to Union territory. Along the way, she and Maggie find their attraction to one another complicates their straightforward business relationship.

They successfully pull off the heist. But when a crewmember betrays them for a larger share of the loot, they almost lose everything – and discover that the real treasure was what they had all the time in each other, and in their crew.

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Lost & Found: A Mystic Meteor Tale by Elle Hyden

Two lost souls are on a collision course. One searching for a life partner while the other mourns the loss of hers.

Selina is at a crossroads. No job, no home to call her own, and no partner. She has to turn her life around, but in which direction? Returning to her Native American roots, she seeks mystical aid from the spirit world, to find the life she hungers for.

Rea has been able to find a measure of solace after her wife’s death but longs for the crack in her heart to heal. Sighting a falling star, she sends her wish out into the universe, where it’s heard by the most unlikely allies.

Selina and Rea’s paths crossed many times in the past, but they’d never connected. Now they are being inescapably drawn together by fate, desire, and a touch of the mystical. Will love and trust prevail over loss and fear, so they can have their shot at being found forever?

Join them on their souls’ journey through the Lost & Found.

Lesfic Bard Awards is a participant in the Amazon Associates program.  Every click on the buy links above contributes a small % of the sale of the books to help us support our awards, advertising, and the promotion of the authors who are finalists and winners.

2019 Finalists

Action Adventure

Compound Interest by Annette Mori

The kick-ass women in The Organization are back and they have their sights set on a few new recruits. Not everyone is jumping for joy at the choices, considering subterfuge is front and center in the games the new recruits have been playing. Dani is supposed to get her happily ever after, but she’s not sure what’s real anymore including Candy’s feelings for her. When a new enemy takes Candy captive, Dani vows to uncover the truth by insisting on going on the mission to save her. Candy is not what she seems, and that presents a new set of complications for Dani and her feelings. The Organization continues to have challenges when those damn book magicians and book witches keep popping back in to warn them of new catastrophes on the horizon. She doesn’t have time for their warnings until their enemies intersect once again to keep them working together.

Young Adult

In the Blink of an Eye by Karen D. Badger

Tara Charland is an ordinary fifteen-year-old kid. She likes music, playing on her phone, going to the mall, dancing with her peeps, and movie nights with her moms and siblings. She especially likes spending time with her new girlfriend, Kelly. Ah…the idyllic life of a teenager! Then, one day, on a chilly Thursday morning, in the midst of leaf-peeping season in her Southern New York town, it all came crashing down. Tara never did pay much attention during those darned lock-down drills. In a million years, she never thought it would actually happen. You see…that’s the problem…she never thought. Tara and Kelly, her brother, Seth, and their best friends, Steve and Karissa are caught in the crosshairs. In the blink of an eye, their lives, and the lives of everyone they loved, changed forever.

Drama

High October by Elena Graf

Liz Stolz and Maggie Fitzgerald were college roommates until Maggie confessed to her parents that she’d fallen in love with a woman. Maggie gave up her dream of becoming an actress and married her high school boyfriend. Liz became a famous breast surgeon. Maggie is performing in a summer stock production near the Maine town where Liz is now a general practitioner. When Maggie breaks her leg in a stage accident, she lands in Dr. Stolz’s office. Is forty years too long to wait for the one you love?

Erotica

The Victorian by Lydia L Vaughn

Alicia Brenner isn’t adulting very well.

After her parents kick her out for being gay, she moves to a new city and tries to start over. But when she loses her job and goes to the bar to drown her sorrows, she makes out with a couple she’s never met, and wakes up to a strange bed and an even stranger offer – stay at the house and become an artist.

Pearl, who is all business (both at work and play), and Danna, who beguiles Alicia from the start, are a phenomenal couple and impossible to resist. Together, they run The Victorian, a unique artist colony and auction house, where the artists are eclectic and the patrons are loyal and have deep pockets.

After passing her “interview” with flying colors, she begins her journey into art and self-discovery. Before long, The Victorian and the artists she’s come to know mean everything to Alicia. When the house, too, is threatened, what will she do to survive?

Fantasy

The Dragon Commons by Tiffany Clavecil

The year is 2048.

The Tiered Nations are a consumer society reduced to their stomachs. Here, a denizen’s prestige is measured by their greed and consequently, their expanding waistline. Hadryn and his best friend Thaddius belong to the military branch, and they arrive at the morgue to investigate an unusual death: a limb-hewn corpse which appears to have been mauled when animals are no longer of this world. Meat products, as with all foods, are grown in laboratories and manufactured as “cubed food.”
Before Hadryn and Thaddius can further their examination of the body, two letters arrive for Hadryn. One is from a woman, Oshin Rysing, who is Hadryn’s long-time epistolary paramour, living outside the Tiered Nations in a rebel colony which resists the gluttonous ways of the city, and the second letter is from his father to notify Hadryn that Hadryn will be wedded to an unknown man, as is customary for young women of marrying age. Hadryn attends his engagement banquet with the intention of confronting his father, but strange occurrences of people who seem to be infected with a terrible disease leading to self-cannibalism arise, and a creature out of nightmares emerges.

Hadryn ventures out of the Tiered Nations for answers and to seek out Oshin. There, he meets Ardyce, a dragon, who tells him of gods, legends, and an age-old battle between her people and the mysterious race known as Wyrms.

Fiction

Living by Lise Gold

During her morning exercise, yoga instructor Cam Saunders finds herself rescuing a young woman who has walked into the sea, seemingly intent on taking her own life. When the woman in question turns out to be a famous actress, Cam promises to keep her secret safe.
Six months later, America’s sweetheart Ella Temperley is working hard to get her life back on track, grieving the loss of her twin sister and fighting a deep depression. Despite her fame, she feels alone in the world and keeps thinking of the woman she owes her life to.
After Ella shows up in Cam’s life again, the two become closer than they ever imagined possible. But what happens when friendship turns into attraction? Living is a slow-burn coming-out romance about loss, love and life.

Historical

Donning the Beard by EA Kafkalas

A gender-bending, historical romance.
In 1777, when Gabrielle’s mother dies in childbirth she is left to be raised by her father Lord Guillemot, a soldier in the King’s Army.
Orphaned Madeline is sent to live with her aunt Aimée, the lord’s housekeeper, and work for Lord Guillemot. She is assigned to care for the lord’s daughter, Gabrielle, and finds her best friend and the love of her life.
Gabrielle’s father discovers that she has taught Madeline to read and write, and tries to put an end to their friendship. They thwart his plans only to find that he has arranged a marriage for Gabrielle to Damien. Her fiancé proves to be a vile man, and unbeknownst to Gabrielle, Madeline poses as Alexandre, a new suitor. Alexandre challenges Damien to a duel of swords.
When Gabrielle discovers her new love’s true identity, the fall out sends them on a journey that takes them out of the rising French Revolution into a magical theatrical world in England. There, with the help of an actor and their father’s paramour –the grand dame of theatre– Mademoiselle Babcock, they think their dreams of have come true.
When Gabrielle’s father is rescued from imprisonment and makes his way back to England, will their dreams be dashed or will they finally get their happily ever after?

Mystery

Payback by Charlotte Mills

A thrilling lesbian mystery about trying to right a past wrong…despite the consequences.

Detective Constable Kate Wolfe is sent to a Cheshire backwater after falling foul of a disciplinary hearing in London. But before she even has a chance to settle in, Kate finds herself in a situation there’s no coming back from. She’s reported as a troublemaker to her new boss, Detective Chief Inspector Helen Taylor, a no-nonsense veteran who once had an esteemed, high-profile career.
The pair investigate a spate of arson attacks, a dead body found in a burnt out building, and a missing architect while fighting their growing attraction for each other. The discovery of a dumped vehicle in a quarry lake sparks a series of events that will change their lives forever.

New Author

Lost & Found A Mystic Meteor Tale by Elle Hyden

Two lost souls are on a collision course. One searching for a life partner while the other mourns the loss of hers.

Selina is at a crossroads. No job, no home to call her own, and no partner. She has to turn her life around, but in which direction? Returning to her Native American roots, she seeks mystical aid from the spirit world, to find the life she hungers for.
Rea has been able to find a measure of solace after her wife’s death but longs for the crack in her heart to heal. Sighting a falling star, she sends her wish out into the universe, where it’s heard by the most unlikely allies.

Selina and Rea’s paths crossed many times in the past, but they’d never connected. Now they are being inescapably drawn together by fate, desire, and a touch of the mystical. Will love and trust prevail over loss and fear, so they can have their shot at being found forever?
Join them on their souls’ journey through the Lost & Found.

Romance

Coming Home by KJ

What would happen if your regular, ordinary, safe, everyday existence suddenly became…not any of those things? When Samantha Markson, Ordinary Person, is thrust into the life of Abigail Taylor, Not At All Ordinary Person, it proves to be an experience like she’s never had before. World famous actress, Abigail Taylor, is in Melbourne filming her new movie, and is accompanied by her nine year old daughter, Grace, because Abigail wants her to experience an Australian education for three months. Sam Markson is a teacher at one of the best schools in Melbourne, and is perfectly happy doing that, thank you very much, when she’s suddenly redirected from the classroom into the job as Grace’s teacher; a move so fast that even blinking would feel like slow motion. Sam has never met anyone like Abigail Taylor, and she starts to realise that her ordinary life might actually be missing something extraordinary.

Science Fiction

Subton Switch by Jessica Lucci

Subaquatic city, 1886. Verdandi, a fiery teen tinkerer, is held captive by an evil totalitarian government. She is blasted into a chaos of beauty and fear, depression and addiction.

Verdandi discovers that her only chance of liberty lies not only in trusting her friends, but in challenging her mind and body to fulfill her time travel quest. What begins in compulsion becomes necessity, and Verdandi finds herself torn between two very different worlds, with the only reconciliation being time.
The “Watch City” trilogy continues in “Subton Switch,” creating a testament of the power within us to change ourselves, and the world.

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Trick or Treat, Who’s my Sweet by BL Wilson

When wealthy, bossy, arrogant Delisa Winston discovers Nicky Gates, the man she just married as part of a business arrangement, is a woman pretending to be a man, she loses it, starting their marriage with a bang.

Nicholas/Nicolette Gates, a business person with varied tastes in women, mistakenly thinks that since Delisa is a lesbian, she’ll appreciate the revelation that she is gay as well.
Both parties think that they will continue on as before their marriage, dating who they want and enjoying the rewards of their merger. However, Nicky’s disclosure to Delisa has opened a whole new can of worms…and feelings.

Now it’s a question of what to do with the information Nicolette revealed to Delisa. Can the two women keep it a secret until they figure out what to do? Will they manage to stay married and keep their secret? If the secret gets out, what will happen to Nicolette and her company’s merger with Delisa? What will happen to Delisa’s companies and is she culpable? Do the women have a future together?

Lesfic Bard Awards is a participant in the Amazon Associates program.  Every click on the buy links above contributes a small % of the sale of the books to help us support our awards, advertising, and the promotion of the authors who are finalists and winners.