Frozen Embers by Sasha Skye

Rescued from the freezing streets, Ashley finds himself in the arms of an angel – a handsome doctor who nursed him back to health. Little did he know that he’d crept into Oliver’s heart, and the other man wants him to stay warm in his arms forever.
Review by Erastes
Short review for a short story.  It’s [...]

Review: Lola Dances by Victor J Banis

Sometimes funny, sometimes tragic and often bawdy, Lola Dances ranges from the 1850 slums of the Bowery to the mining camps of California and Montana, to the Barbary Coast of San Francisco. Little Terry Murphy, pretty and effeminate, dreams of becoming a dancer. Raped by a drunken profligate and threatened with prison, Terry flees the [...]

Review: Finding Jason by Lyndi Lamont

When Jason Huxley, Regency dandy and man-about-town, acquires a new valet, he finds himself fighting the unnatural inclinations he thought he’d outgrown.
Alfred Threadgill lost his first lover at Waterloo, but now wrestles with his desire for his new employer. He suspects that finding Jason could be the best thing that ever happened to him. But [...]

Review: Another Chance by Shawn Lane

Ten years ago, Aubrey St. Clair, Viscount Rothton, watched the man of his dreams, Daniel Blake, the Earl of Graystone, walk out of his life after a brief sexual encounter. Now Graystone returns to London after the death of his wife and Aubrey is given another chance with his dream man. But Daniel is determined [...]

Review: Past Shadows by Charlie Cochrane, Jardonn Smith, Stevie Woods

Through the centuries, lives and loves have been lost to the shadows. Stevie Woods brings redemption and a new love in DEATH’S DESIRE; Jardonn Smith has a frisky ghost showing two men the pleasures of love in GREEN RIVER; and Charlie Cochrane’s tale of future love is predicted by a ghost in THE SHADE ON [...]

Review: A Heart Divided by J M Snyder

Confederate Lieutenant Anderson Blanks has grown weary of the War between the States. When a wounded soldier is heard, dying in the darkness, Andy takes a lantern and canteen in the hopes of easing the soldier’s pain. Andy is shocked to discover none other than Samuel Talley, his first love and a young [...]

Review: Games With Me(vol.1) by Tina Anderon and Lynsley Brito(illus.)

Ex Civil-War surgeon George Callahan is a man haunted by his past. Unwilling to deal with the demons of his childhood he turns to opium, and finds back-alley employment with the heartless brothel keepers of San Francisco’s Chinatown. In Volume 1 of this gorgeously illustrated gay historical drama, Dr. George Callahan searches for a Chinese [...]

Review: Bend in the Road by Jeanne Barrack

Bend in the Road, set in Eastern Europe in the 1880s, introduces us to two couples that find safe havens in the insular world of a traveling Yiddish theater troupe. IN THE LION’S DEN brings us Daniel Bercovich, a young man in the first throes of finding his identity. Can the man he comes to [...]

Review: All Shook Up by J M Snyder

The year is 1883. Eduard van De Lier is a Dutchman overseeing a spice plantation on the island of Java, in the South Pacific. His obsessive attraction to dark-skinned men is just one of his many secrets. His wife Marien knows of his indiscretions, but as she’s content with their Colonial lifestyle, she stays silent. [...]

Review: Forbidden Love (anthology) – Various

Four m/m stories with a historical flavour by Stormy Glenn, H. C. Brown, Anna O’Neill, Aleksandr Voinov.
(I’ll only be reviewing 3 of the stories, as the Poisoned Heart, by Anna O’Neill is a time-travelling/paranormal story, so doesn’t qualify for review here.
Review by Erastes
My Outlaw by Stormy Glenn
After getting injured and losing his horse during a [...]

Review: Carnal Cravings by Keta Diablo

Craven and his friend Anthony discover they’re in over their heads the night they’re caught spying on Beresford Hall. But when Craven meets the dark, mysterious Dominic Beresford, he wonders if fate really does step in and take you by surprise when you least expect.
Review by Erastes
A short story of less than 40 pages, this [...]

Review: The Desire for Dearborne by V.B. Kildaire

Leander Mayfield is the only surviving son of a poor farmer… or so he believes until the day he learns he is in fact the new Earl of Dearborne. Still recovering from a lingering illness, the sensitive young man travels to Great Britain to claim his estate and embarks upon a bewildering new life.
Julien Sutcliffe, [...]

Review: Paxton’s Winter by T. D. McKinney

Review by Leslie H. Nicoll
Rancher Paxton Terhune has lived a cold, lonely life for three hard years. A lynch mob took his lover, hanging him in front of Pax. A corrupt mine owner put a price on his head, chasing Pax from his own lands and into the high country. But Zane Steadman, a bounty [...]

Review: Pure Folly by Madelynne Ellis

Review by Leslie H. Nicoll
When Alastair Romilly de Vere accepts a dare to spend a night in a haunted folly, it’s not the prospect of a ghostly presence that he finds daunting. Alastair is desperately in love with his cousin’s fiancé, Jude, the man who is to be his companion for the night; an attraction [...]

Review: Paragon of Animals by J S Cook

A year after serial killer John Whittaker’s reign of terror was brought to a swift and righteous conclusion, London finds her streets darkened with the blood of innocents once again. Disfigured bodies with vile, ritualistic markings are turning up at an alarming rate, and the police are at a loss to apprehend the killer, who [...]

Review: Those Who Cherish by Jamie Craig

Exiled to an abandoned presidio in southwestern Texas, Father Alonzo Vargas is accustomed to being utterly alone except for his white donkey, Angelica. He is also fully acquainted with the corrupt and rotten sheriff, John Cullen, the man responsible for his semi-permanent exile. When he finds a victim of the sheriff hanging upside down from [...]

Review: Rainbow Plantation Blues by Robert L Sheeley

In 1850, Jonathan Thomas, a young, personable, and aristocratic Southern gentleman, has returned to his antebellum home from an Ivy League school in the North. His father is dying and Jonathan is sole heir to the family’s lavish, prosperous, and renowned Rainbow Plantation. While up North, two major revelations had seriously shaken his self-image. His [...]

Review: Banshee by Hayden Thorne

Nathaniel, or Natty as his family calls him, is a young man at a crossroads. His mother wants him to spend time with her family, far better off than his father, who is a poor vicar. His father would rather he do just about anything else, and his cousins have no interest in getting to [...]

Review: Confessing A Murder by Nicholas Drayson

Purporting to be an anonymous memoir found in an attic, its author is an arrogant but brilliant homosexual whose life has crossed with that of Charles Darwin with startling regularity.  He is writing it on a small island in the Java Sea of which he is the only human inhabitant. Aware that his life will [...]

Review: Two Irish Lads by Gerry Burnie

When cousins Sean and Patrick McConaghy set sail from Ireland in 1820 to settle in the wilderness of Upper Canada, they have no idea what obstacles and opportunities await them in this new land. Sean and Patrick know little about clearing land, building a shelter and farming. But with hard work [...]

Review: The Officer and the Gentleman by J.P. Bowie

A young Scotsman and a Cavalry Officer embark on a forbidden love affair as the winds of war threaten to tear them apart. When Robert Alexander Macdonald locks eyes with Captain Charles Wentworth at a social gathering in London, it’s not long before they are also locking lips and engaging in a covert love affair. [...]

Review:Homesteads and Horseradish by Kiernan Kelly

Brace is none too happy to find a greenhorn building a sod house at the base of his mountain. In fact, he’s determined to run the little fellow right off his land. Unfortunately for Brace, Gaylord Quinn has nowhere else to go, and he has a patent from the US Land Office saying he has [...]

Review: A Gift of Ash and Frost by Chrissy Munder

When new residents come to the Grange, Mathias applies for a job at the house and is hired on at the housekeeper’s request for the Christmas season. He finds there a temptation of the body and heart in the form of the house’s master, one that he is ill-equipped to handle or resist … not [...]

Review: Eye of the Storm by Lee Rowan

It’s the Winter of 1802 and the long war between England and France has entered a fragile truce. But the lives of Commander William Marshall and Lieutenant David Archer, have become more complicated than ever.
As a Commander, Will is accustomed to making tough decisions. Can he give an order that will surely put his Davy [...]

Review: In Bear Country II Barbary Coast by Kiernan Kelly

Bear and Pride are leaving their home in the mountains, at least for a little while. Pride dreams of visiting the Pacific Ocean, so they’re off to the Barbary Coast, ready to see San Francisco. While taking on provisions in Denver, they meet a man named Beckett who asks them to go on something of [...]

Review: Frost Fair by Erastes

Review by Leslie H. Nicoll
Before the climate changed, Londoners were occasionally treated to a sporadic festival triggered by the freezing of the Thames River. This was known as the Frost Fair, where merchants hauled their wares onto the surface of the river, and citizens flocked to impromptu markets, drawn by the [...]

Review: Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen by Connie Bailey and J.M. McLaughlin

When Sir Daltrey Powell summons his niece’s old, stuffy piano teacher for a dressing-down, he’s more than surprised when the young, handsome Professor Northlund Merrit presents himself. Despite their dispute, Daltrey is convinced: He will do what he must to fan the spark he saw in Northlund’s eyes to flame.
Review by Hayden Thorne
This story [...]

Review: Two Spirits by Walter L Williams, Toby Johnson

With its sweet tale of inter-racial romance between a young Civil War survivor from Virginia and a Navajo berdache/two-spirit healer of the Old West, this novel demonstrates gender variance as a source of spiritual power and documents “same-sex marriage” as indigenous to the American continent.
Reviewed by Ruth Sims
Two Spirits combines a moving love story [...]

Review: Dealing Straight by Emily Veinglory

Richard is worn out, used up, and just plain cynical. Son of a wealthy Bostonian banker, he came west to gamble and carouse when his life fell apart. Though a sensitive and moral man, he finds a reckless life easier to bear—since he has no one to care about and no real hopes for his [...]

Review: Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander by Ann Herendeen

HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN: 978-0-06-145136-2

Andrew Carrington is the ideal Regency gentleman: heir to an earldom, wealthy, handsome, athletic—and gay. When he decides to do his duty to his family, he wants marriage on his terms: an honest arrangement, with no disruption to his way of life. But in the penniless, spirited—and curvaceous—Phyllida Lewis, a self-educated author of [...]

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: Regency by Megan Derr

Review by Hayden Thorne
BOOK DESCRIPTION:
Four short stories and one novella with a regency flavor. A lazy prince and his stiff secretary have long despised each other, but the annual Masque changes everything. Gideon has always led a quiet life, free of scandal, until a carriage accident on his way home one night. Pierce has everything [...]

Review: The Erotic Etudes-Opus VI by E.L. van Hine

Robert Schumann, the Romantic composer, was a vibrant and complex man. Schumann’s public biography was carefully cleansed by his wife, his survivors, and his friends, but his own letters and diaries give indication of a series of passionate affairs with both sexes that sparked the creative outpouring of music that defined his artistic life. It [...]

Review: Speak Its Name by Charlie Cochrane, Lee Rowan and Erastes

A Three novella anthology from Cheyenne Publishing
Featuring:
Aftermath by Charlie Cochrane
Gentleman’s Gentleman by Lee Rowan
Hard and Fast by Erastes
Expectations riding on young Englishmen are immense; for those who’ve something to hide, those expectations could prove overwhelming.
Aftermath
When shy Edward Easterby first sees the popular Hugo Lamont, he’s both envious of the man’s social skills and ashamed [...]

Review: A Hidden Beauty by Jamie Craig

Poetry drew them together. Forbidden love bound their hearts.
A student of letters, Micah Yardley wants one thing: To meet Jefferson Dering, a poet he’s long admired from afar. After hearing his idol speak at Harvard, Micah travels to Jefferson’s home in Wroxham, entertaining visions of discussing poetry over dinner and drinks. What he experiences exceeds [...]

Review: The Alienist by Caleb Carr

New York City, 1896. A serial killer is on the loose, gruesomely preying upon cross-dressing boy prostitutes. Police detectives are making no progress solving the ghastly crimes. In fact, someone with power or influence seems to be bent on silencing witnesses and thwarting any investigation. Reform-minded police commissioner, and future president Theodore Roosevelt is determined [...]

Review: Kestrel on the Horizon by Angelia Sparrow and Naomi Brooks

Blurb from Naomi Brooks’ site here:
Kestrel on the Horizon” is the first in a projected series of pirate novels. Nathaniel Collins never expected to be a slaveholder. But the sad blue eyes of the man on the block spurred him to an impulse purchase. Adlai had expected to inherit his white father’s estate, not be [...]

Review: Cane by Stevie Woods

From the blurb: Sint Marteen 1855. Privileged young Pieter may have grown up on a sugar cane plantation, but that doesn’t mean he agrees with the way his father runs things. He falls in love with Joss, one of his father’s slaves, and their affair sets off a chain of events that is destined to [...]

Review: Ghosts by Olivia Lorenz

Hua Mu Yun is a cynical ex-soldier, damaged by the chaotic battles of China’s warlords era. Unable to stand human contact, he’s become a criminal, denying his more honorable past. Leng Ruo Fei is the spoiled and beautiful darling of the Peking Opera. Trained as a dan (female impersonator), his voice brings people to their [...]

Review: Ardennian Boy by William Maltese and Wayne Gunn

Ardennian Boy from coauthors William Maltese and Drewey Wayne Gunn, is historical romance and literary erotica blended into one masterful novel. Maltese’s sensuous prose retells the tumultuous love affair between poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine, while Gunn’s lyrical translations of their bawdy gay poems, woven naturally into the fabric of the story, enlighten even [...]

Review: In Bear Country by Keirnan Kelly

Pride hasn’t had an easy life. No matter what he does, things seem to go bad. This time, though, he’s not sure he can get out of his predicament, and he figures he might just have to call it quits. Bear is a mountain of a man, making a home where most folks wouldn’t, and [...]

Review: Gadarene by CB Potts and Tina Anderson

In the notorious Five Points slum of 1870’s Manhattan, Galen ‘the Mongoose’ Driscol steps out of jail and back into the arms of his transgendered lover, Wira Boruta. When Galen tells Wira that he’s tracked down the man who tried to kill them as children, Wira is unwilling to listen, and pleads with Galen to [...]

Review: Honor Bound by Wheeler Scott

 
from the blurb: Christian has just come home to England, leaving his commission in the Army, so he can do his duty by the family now that his brother, the heir, is dead. Prodded by his crusty dowager of a grandmother, he sets out to find a wife and produce heirs. He thinks he’s done [...]

Review: Longhorns by Victor J Banis

 
Review by Erastes
From the blurb: The Double H cowboys are a tough bunch, and none of them are gay – exactly- but they have been out there on the prairie for several weeks, herding cattle, and new thoughts have begun to enter their minds. Enter Buck, a handsome young drifter with a silly grin, an [...]

Review: Doctor Reynard’s Experiment by Robert Black

Walter Starling – newly engaged as a footman in the house of Dr. Richard Reynard – is shy, naive, and religiously inclined. His sheltered upbringing hasn’t prepared him for the world he encounters hidden behind the facade of upper-class Victorian respectability.
Dr. Reynard, dashing bachelor and celebrated London surgeon, is bored of the empty rituals [...]

Review: The Filly by Mark Probst

Review by Hayden Thorne
FROM THE AUTHOR’S BOOK PAGE:
Escaping into the fantasy of his books when he’s not working in the general store, Ethan Keller has lived a sheltered life in his mother’s boarding house. One day, an enigmatic cowboy passing through the small Texas town takes an immediate liking to the shy seventeen-year-old. Ethan is [...]

Review: Hot Valley by James Lear

It’s New England, 1861, and the troubles in the southern states seem a long way off for Jack Edgerton, the spoiled son of a prominent Vermont family. Howver, when he meets and falls in love with Aaron Johnson, the sexy son of a slave on the run from Virginia, Edgerton’s world is turned upside down. [...]

Review: A Different Sin by Rochelle Hollander Schwab

 
Review by Erastes
Wow. What a read!  I had few expectations of this book – I’d seen it around here and there, in this limited genre the same books are bound to crop up from time to time – but the cover always put me off.  However, eventually I ordered a copy and it arrived  (and it’s a signed copy [...]

Review: Teleny, att. to Oscar Wilde, et. al.

Reviewed by Hayden Thorne
REVIEW:
It’s fairly common knowledge now that Teleny’s authorship continues to be debated among scholars. Was Oscar Wilde truly a part of the novel’s creation? If so, which scenes or chapters did he himself write? John McRae’s introduction (a very worthy read in itself) to the only annotated and unabridged edition (published by [...]

Review: Silk & Poison by Barbara Sheridan and Anne Cain

Subtitle: Book One of the Dragon’s Disciple trilogy

Review by Alex Beecroft
Review:  Toshiro Itou is an ambitious young man in 19th Century California.  His mother sent him to a father he never knew so that she could pursue her own ambitions with her powerful lover.  Bitter and rebellious, when he chances to meet the top ranking [...]