Passion's Shadow

Lindsay Brennan's devotion to her job, Sondra Pinchot's alcoholism, and Samantha Pinchot's affair bring the three women together and force them to consider the price of their addictions. Reprint.

Literature & Fiction

Conn, Nicole

Contemporary

BERKLEY

Centers on a Seattle-based architect who struggles against her own budding passions for her client and her client's daughter

United States

Simon&Schuster

The creator of the film Claire of the Moon unfolds the story of two teenagers destined to be lovers but conspired against by the stars, and two angels who are given the task of bringing them together. 15,000 first printing.

ANGEL WINGS

Touchstone Books

A lesbian novel by the writer and director of the film, Claire of the Moon, centers on a Seattle-based architect who struggles against her own budding passions for her client and her client's daughter. 25,000 first printing. Tour.

Parenting & Relationships

Love it or hate it (and there doesn't seem to be any in-between!), Nicole Conn's Claire of the Moon is without question one of the most influential lesbian films ever made. Here is the novel on which it was based. The story of brash, beautiful Claire, whose heterosexuality is pushed into question by a lesbian academic, is smart, sexy, challenging and surprising. In addition to writing the novel, Nicole Conn also wrote and directed the film version of Claire of the Moon. She is also the author of Passion's Shadows, Angel's Wings, The Wedding Dress and She Walks in Beauty. She lives in Los Angeles with her partner and their daughter.

Claire of the Moon: A Novel

Alyson Books

Claire of the Moon: One Woman's Journey into Her Sexual Identity : A Novel

Romance

Naiad Pr

Lambda Book Report, October 2001 
Paris Then, Hollywood Now by Joy Parks 
Readers who approach this latest offering from Naiad Press expecting a light lesbian romance are in for a big surprise. She Walks In Beauty is so much more. It’s something fine and rare, a book of substance, a meaningful story that will linger with readers long after the last page is turned. 
In fact, She Walks In Beauty is actually two novels. One is the story of Spencer Atwood, the successful, attractive Hollywood filmmaker who is driven to block out the abuses and pains of her childhood by chasing fame (and women) at any expense. When Spencer’s out of control ambition causes her to lose both the woman and child she loves and the high-profile work she needs, she runs away to a cabin on the Oregon coast. Alone, without meetings and phone calls to occupy her, Spencer becomes obsessed with clearing an overgrown path from her cabin to the beach. The physical labor gives her the time and solitude to sort through her life and stirs her original desire to be a writer to the surface. In an effort to reclaim both her dreams and her real identity, she begins to write the interior novel, Cynara. 
And what a novel it is. Chased from her family home by her brother Charles, the young and talented Lilian Harrington makes her way to New York, where she completes a collection of poetry too raw to be published by any woman. Borrowing her pen name from one her favorite poets, she emerges as Byron Harrington, and, through a chance meeting with Dorothy Parker, falls in with the illustrious crowd of writers and intellectuals who meet daily at the Algonquin Hotel. 
Under the tutelage of gay-man-about-town Parnell “Rabbit” Walbrook, Byron moves to Paris, and finds herself transformed into a stylish {and handsomely androgynous) member of the Paris literary milieu. Her poetry is published by Sylvia Beach, and through Rabbit and Sylvia, she meets the lesbian intelligentsia that helped to make Paris the literary center it was in the decades between the wars — women like Gertrude Stein, Natalie Barney and Djuna Barnes. But to pay for this lifestyle, she begins to churn out a series of pulp detective novels. Her books become a tremendous success in America with no one the wiser that Byron Harrington is really a young American woman in her 20s. And eventually, patient readers are well rewarded with a wonderfully erotic passage in which Byron finally discovers her own lesbian desires. 
Just when she realizes that she has grown tired of writing books instead of literature, Byron is called home. Here, in addition to dealing with her beloved father’s impending death, the evil brother who drove her away and her own cynical detachment from her writing, she meets Cynara. This is the enigmatic woman who will steal her heart and force her to be braver than she ever has been before or risk losing everything once again. 
While I have no doubt that the interior novel could stand on its own, the story of how Spencer comes to write Cynara is much more than a mere frame. Readers who wonder where writers get ideas, those who want to know how life gets transformed into fiction, will immediately see the parallels between Spencer’s experience and that of her main character. Both Spencer and Byron/Lilian have dealt with abusive childhoods and both share the need to achieve great things, to be “good” enough to rise above their guilt and shame. Both share the disappointment and anger that comes from knowing that their work has fallen short of their expectations, the self-loathing of “selling out.” And both have loved women that neither of them can forget. This echoing of experience not only demonstrates the creative transformation that is part of the process of writing; it instills a sense of depth and multi-dimensionality that envelops the readers from first page to last. 
She Walks In Beauty is a richly layered, genuinely stirring novel that doesn’t shy away from difficult themes. It combines one of the most fascinating and elegant periods in lesbian history with the money- and power-driven crassness of current day Hollywood. And best of all, it tells a tremendously sensual, magnificently human story that lets readers come away believing in the healing power of love and creative expression. She Walks In Beauty is the story of a writer writing about a writer writing. As such, real readers with a taste for real literature will find it really difficult to resist.

She Walks in Beauty

Literary

Elena. A wife who will not question her loyalty to a husband she does not love nor her duty to a church whose tenets she does not fully accept. Peyton. A lesbian trapped in an arid relationship and a life that has brought her success but scant emotional sustenance. Their eyes first meet across the distance of a public park. One glance is all it takes for ignition. A slow-building sexual fire soon becomes a conflagration that engulfs both their lives. But no matter how compelling the attraction, no matter how intensely love may reach into the depths of either of their souls, reality is inflexible. Elena’s husband is pastor of a church; her son is the center of her life; and she is haunted by a burden of grief and guilt that fixes her firmly in the conventional life she leads. From Nicole Conn, novelist and multi-award-winning director of little man, writer-director of the legendary lesbian film Claire of the Moon, comes this powerful love story--a luminously romantic film as evocative as it is erotic (and already famous for its Longest Kiss in Cinema History)and now a novel that reveals every moment of Elena’s unforgettable journey.

Elena Undone

Bella Books

From writer-director Nicole Conn, creator of the film which has captured lesbian hearts everywhere... the whole story. Every detail of the beautifully erotic, haunting tale of one woman's journey to herself.  And of another woman's journey through fear to intimacy.  Claire Jabrowski, weary of wandering through a maze of one-night stands... Dr. Noel Benedict, the therapist who cannot heal her own loss and despair... Two women who have paid a great price for their place in the world meet at a writer's colony on the brooding coast of Oregon.  Follow their journey through strife and denial to heated courtship... to self-discovery... to intimacy... to love. Originally published by Naiad Press 1993.

Claire of the Moon

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Conn, Nicole. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Conn, Nicole

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Conn, Nicole. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Passion's Shadow

Passion's Shadow

ANGEL WINGS

Passion's Shadow

Passion's Shadow

Claire of the Moon: A Novel

Claire of the Moon: One Woman's Journey into Her Sexual Identity : A Novel

She Walks in Beauty

Elena Undone

Claire of the Moon