Review: American Hunks by David L. Chapman and Brett Josef Grubisic

The “American hunk” is a cultural icon: the image of the chiseled, well-built male body has been promoted and exploited for commercial use for over 125 years, whether in movies, magazines, advertisements, or on consumer products, not only in America but throughout the world.
American Hunks is a fascinating collection of images (many in full color) [...]

Review: Lessons In Power by Charlie Cochrane

The ghosts of the past will shape your future. Unless you fight them.
Cambridge Fellows Mysteries, Book 4
Cambridge, 1907
After settling in their new home, Cambridge dons Orlando Coppersmith and Jonty Stewart are looking forward to nothing more exciting than teaching their students and playing rugby. Their plans change when a friend asks their help to clear [...]

Review: Lessons in Discovery by Charlie Cochrane

Review by Leslie H. Nicoll
Lessons in Discovery by Charlie Cochrane – Cambridge Fellows Mysteries, Book 3
Orlando’s broken memory may break his lover’s heart.

Cambridge, 1906.
On the very day Jonty Stewart proposes that he and Orlando Coppersmith move in together, Fate trips them up. Rather, it trips Orlando, sending him down a flight of stairs and leaving [...]

Review: His Master’s Lover by Nick Heddle

In 1919 His Lordship declares that the Western Front may now be secure but the home front is still being undermined by Prime Minister Lloyd George and all his damned meddling . Only the humble gardener, Freddy has the intelligence to make money out of the new garden city full of homes fit for heroes [...]

Review: Lessons In Desire by Charlie Cochrane

With the recent series of college murders behind him, Cambridge Fellow Jonty Stewart is in desperate need of a break. A holiday on the beautiful Channel Island of Jersey seems ideal, if only he can persuade Orlando Coppersmith to leave the security of the college and come with him. Orlando is a quiet man who [...]

Review: Ship of Dreams by Reilly Ryan

An attraction fated to go down in history…if they survive.
Liar. Thief. Con man. James Hyde keeps these labels well hidden under the veneer of a high-class gambler. He knows how to charm his way to where the money is, and right now it’s aboard the world’s most luxurious ship, ripe for the taking. From the [...]

Review: A Class Apart by James Gardiner

The Private Pictures of Montague Glover.

A Class Apart is a selection of photographs and letters culled from the archive of Montague Glover (1898-1983) documenting the intimate, rarely recorded lives of gay men in Britain from the First World War to the 1950s.  The book features Glover’s three obsessions: the Armed Forces, working-class men, and his [...]

Review: Whistling in the Dark by Tamara Allen

New York City, 1919. His career as a concert pianist ended by a war injury, Sutton Albright returns to college, only to be expelled after a scandalous affair with a teacher. Unable to face his family, Sutton heads to Manhattan with no plans and little money in his pocket but with a desire to call [...]

Review: “Napoleon’s Privates” by Tony Perrottet

NAPOLEON’S PRIVATES
2,500 Years of History Unzipped
by Tony Perrottet
Harper Entertainment, ISBN 978-0-06-125728-5
From the blurb on the author’s website:
What were Casanova’s best pick-up lines?
(They got better as he got older).
Which Italian Renaissance genius “discovered” the clitoris?
(He could have just [...]

Review: The Vesuvius Club (Graphic Novel) by Gatiss and Bass

Review by Hayden Thorne
BOOK DESCRIPTION:
Mark Gatiss presents the first adventure of Lucifer Box rendered in every detail. Lucifer Box, the greatest portraitist of the Edwardian Age and England’s most dashing secret agent, investigates a series of bizarre disappearances and plunges headlong into low life and high society. Who is killing Britain’s most prominent vulcanologists? What [...]

Review: The Vesuvius Club by Mark Gatiss

Review by Hayden Thorne
BOOK DESCRIPTION:
This sex-filled farce is part James Bond, part Austin Powers. Lucifer Box is a portrait painter and a rake who catches the eye of all the ladies. But there are two things these women don’t know about him. First, Lucifer is His Majesty’s top secret agent. Second, Lucifer is a mad, [...]

Review: The Loom of Youth by Alec Waugh

Review by Hayden Thorne
BOOK DESCRIPTION:
And if the modern reader after turning a page or two finds his attention held and wants to go on reading it will mean that this book has become at last what in fact it was always meant to be—a realistic but romantic story of healthy adolescence set against the background [...]

Review: Maurice, directed by James Ivory

Review by Hayden Thorne
FROM MERCHANT IVORY PRODUCTIONS:
The traditional bildungsroman, or novel of education, ends with a marriage. E.M. Forster’s Maurice (1914), the second of his novels to be adapted by Merchant Ivory, takes on a subject that no major novel in the genre had ever addressed: the problem of coming of age as a homosexual [...]

Review: Master of Seacliff by Max Pierce

Review by Erastes
Andrew Wyndham takes a post as tutor to the son of the weathly Duncan Stewart at the mysterious and beautiful mansion “Seacliff” surrounded by rugged seas and mysterious fogs. Mysteries and scandal follow in traditional gothic fashion.
It’s not going to be a surprise to anyone that I enjoyed this book. First it’s an [...]