I asked for Empress of the World by Sara Ryan when I was in sixth grade. My oblivious mother told the mother of the boy who was my Secret Santa that I wanted it. I'm sorry, Sean, for making you buy a book about a lesbian YA love story lmao

Malinda Lo's Huntress is absolutely choice YA fantasy, with a wonderful love story. Ash is a retelling of Cinderella as a lesbian story - it's beautiful and heartbreaking and mysterious. Lo also wrote Adaptation, an apocalyptic sci fi novel where the love interest girl is an alien pretending to be human - I haven't read that, but it's right up my alley

I don't know how obscure these are, but here are a few of my favorites that I don't always hear people mention...

• The Gilda Stories by Jewelle L. Gómez
• A Thin Bright Line by Lucy Jane Bledsoe
• Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta
• Patience & Sarah by Isabel Miller
• The Jane Lawless series by Ellen Hart
• Prairie Silence: A Memoir by Melanie Hoffert
• Eight Bullets: One Woman's Story of Surviving Anti-Gay Violence by Claudia Brenner
• Saving Alex: When I Was Fifteen I Told My Mormon Parents I Was Gay, and That's When My Nightmare Began by Alex Cooper
• The Disappearing L: Erasure of Lesbian Spaces and Culture by Bonnie J. Morris (not obscure on here but I had to mention it anyway!)

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See is about a lesbian in ancient China, but it's sad as fuck. That being said, it's a great book.

'my lesbian experience with loneliness' is a manga that's an incredible work, but it is an incredible work by exactly the sort of autistic lesbian woman who would 100% be a trans target for indoctrination if not japanese and has already been targeted by mtfs as 'just like me!' because she's autistic and desires women as opposed to their own autistic desire to personify their maladaptive daydreams of being their straight male made-to-anime-idealization internet avatar in a display of a complete lack of empathy for the rights and feelings of actual women.

so yes, tras have done their absolute best to kill it, but it's quite good.

to bring it to lighter things than the parasitism that does its best to ruin everything, there are many very, very good manga by lesbian women for lesbian women that's romantic, called 'yuri' or 'GL (girl's love). there's also the occasional just-lesbian-things manga. if so, they usually use the term 'bian', as 'lesbian' in japan has of course been turned into a slur.

Girl Mans Up by M.E. Girard. If you don't mind YA fiction, it's about a teenage butch lesbian who has some body dysphoria, but explicitly denies a transgender label. The story is about her overcoming internalized misogyny. I found it extremely relatable as someone who was very male-identified growing up.

Rita Mae Brown has lots of other titles too. I’ve enjoyed a bunch of them!

Not sure how much I'll be able to help as a straight woman who strongly dislikes romance stories, but I'll try...

Mary Oliver's poetry is really great and she's one of my favorite poets. She was also a lesbian but her poems are mostly about nature. I reread Wild Geese ( https://www.poetry.com/poem/123017/wild-geese ) whenever I feel the need to ground myself.

Untamed by Glennon Doyle (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52129515-untamed ) I'm not done with this book yet but I'm really loving it. The author is bi (or possibly just acted straight because of social pressure?) and falls for a woman after her husband's affair. I love the author's writing. She's just so funny and witty and wise when she comments on life. She's like a funny best friend you just love to chat with. In parts of the book she's in the process of divorcing her husband and in other parts she's married to her wife, meeting her, or proposing, so I'm not sure if this book meets your criteria.

Not sure if any of these are really "obscure", but this is the best I can do. Hope you find some good books!

Maybe it's not lesser known or obscure, but have you read The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall? It's considered the first lesbian novel, and was written and published at a time when "lesbian" wasn't that common of a term yet. (Invert was more often used). Plus it was banned in England for "obscenity" after a court trial.

I’m not a lesbian, but I love all of Sarah Waters’ books about lesbians. A good love story is a good love story.

If you are interested in the history of lesbian fiction/lesbians in fiction:

• Sex Variant Women in Literature, Jeanette Foster
• Chloe plus Olivia, Lillian Faderman
• The Lesbian in Literature, Barbera Grier

I don’t know if it’s obscure but it’s very new. Spear by Nicola Griffith is a retelling of King Arthur with a lesbian as the protagonist. The author is also a lesbian. It’s absolutely wonderful. I also loved Hild (same author). Protagonist doesn’t exactly say she’s gay but she’s either gay or bi (it’s the first book, 2nd written but in the process of publishing) and it takes place in like 7th century England so the characters don’t say their gay but Griffith goes out of her way to describe life pre-Catholic church in which people had sex and formed relationships with whomever they chose. It’s also amazing.

If you like poetry, H. D. / Hilda Doolittle. The imagist movement is my favorite and she is the queen of it. Maybe not obscure but not many people talk about imagism.

Also poet Jacqueline Suskin - i think she is bisexual so some of her poetry mentions having loved men but a lot of it is about loving women. More obscure because she is contemporary. The book I have by her is Help in the Dark Season