Review: Coming Home by Victor J Banis

Victor J Banis “Coming Home”, published by MLR Press in 2009, available either as a stand-alone ebook or in the print anthology “Esprit de Corps”, also MLR Press.
The swinging sixties, the Sunset Strip a smorgasbord of horny Marines, looking for a little action before heading off to Nam. A queen’s delight, and it’s all too [...]

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: Highwayman by Ali Katz

Janos Vesh is a man fighting his past and the stranglehold it has on his present and future. He acts out against the blackness that threatens to consume him by taking revenge as a highway robber on local landowners, similar to those who tormented his youth. Nothing but the comfort of his lover, Stefan, can [...]

Review: Hoofers by Kiernan Kelly

In Hoofers, by Kiernan Kelly, Dan Allen of Dancing Dan and his Magical Feet has just joined a new vaudeville troupe. He’s hoping for a good spot in the line-up, but he doesn’t hold out much hope for it when he discovers that the famous Foster Elliot not only is working the same troupe as [...]

Film Review: Bent by Martin Sherman

The powerful and moving film adaptation of Martin Sherman’s award-winning stage play. For almost 20 years, Bent has stunned theatre audiences around the world. Now adapted for the big screen by the author himself, this inspiring tale of love over oppression has even greater power and poignancy. Set amidst the decadence of pre-war fascist [...]

Review: The Folded Leaf by William Maxwell

Set in 1920s Chicago, The Folded Leaf follows two very different boys who find themselves forming an unlikely friendship. Lymie is thin, clever and terrible at sport. Spud is athletic and quick to fight and blithely accepts Lymie’s passionate devotion to him. The bond between them is obsessively close, until they leave home for [...]

Review: Black Butterfly by Mark Gatiss

With Queen Elizabeth newly established on her throne, the now elderly secret agent is reaching the end of his scandalous career. Despite his fast-approaching retirement, queer events leave Box unable to resist investigating one last case…Why have pillars of the Establishment started dying in bizarrely reckless accidents? Who are the deadly pay-masters of enigmatic assassin [...]

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: Regeneration by Pat Barker

Craiglockhart War Hospital, Scotland, 1917, where army psychiatrist William Rivers is treating shell-shocked soldiers. Under his care are the poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, as well as mute Billy Prior, who is only able to communicate by means of pencil and paper. Rivers’ job is to make the men in his charge healthy enough [...]

Review: Transgressions by Erastes

1642, England: David Caverlys strict father has brought home the quiet, puritanical Jonathan Graie to help his dreamer of a son work the family forge. With war brewing in Parliament, the demand for metal work increases as armies are raised.
The fair David is drawn to his fathers new apprentice. And though his father treats them [...]

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: Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault

At 20, when his reign began, Alexander the Great was already a seasoned soldier and a complex, passionate man. This novel tells the story of the boy Alexander, and the years that shaped him.

Review by Charlie Cochrane

It seems illogical to read a set of books starting with the last and working back to the first, [...]

Review: Funeral Games by Mary Renault

After Alexander’s death in 323 B.C .his only direct heirs were two unborn sons and a simpleton half-brother. Every long-simmering faction exploded into the vacuum of power. Wives, distant relatives, and generals all vied for the loyalty of the increasingly undisciplined Macedonian army. Most failed and were killed in the attempt. For no one possessed [...]

Review: I Do! An Anthology in Support of Marriage Equality

Do you support the right of any human being to marry the person they love? The right to say ‘I Do’ to a life of commitment and sharing with that one special person? We do. All profits from this anthology will go to the Lambda Legal Fund to help fight Prop 8.
There are 2 [...]

Review: Inkman’s Work by Steve Berman

Young Radford never thought he’d end up a pirate. Shanghai’d, he finds himself cursing the company he kept onboard the Alecto.
Wounded during a raid against a Dutch vessel, Radford is marooned on an island with a mysterious French tattoo artist referred by pirates as the Inkman. Can this man, wise in ways of the [...]

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: The Leather Boys by Gillian Freeman

They’re Britain’s ‘Wild Ones’ – the motorcycle cowboys who live for gas machines and faster girls – who ton-up along the Motorways, terrorising drivers and defying the law. Who experience sex too young, marry unthinkingly and live only for the next kick – whatever or whoever it is.
The Leather Boys is a savage, brilliantly [...]

Review: Vienna Dolorosa by Mykola Dementiuk

Vienna Dolorosa by Mykola Dementiuk is a full-length historical novel set in Vienna, Austria, in an inner city hotel managed by a transvestite and doubling as a brothel for men who like boys dressed up as girls. The entire book takes place during a one-day time period — March 12, 1938, the day Hitler [...]

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: A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood

When A Single Man was originally published, it shocked many by its frank, sympathetic, and moving portrayal of a gay man in midlife. George, the protagonist, is adjusting to life on his own after the sudden death of his partner, and determines to persist in the routines of his daily life; the course of A [...]

Review: Only Words by Tina Anderson & Caroline Monaco(illus.)

 
In 1941 Poland, silence is a way of life. Eighteen-year-old seminary student Koby Bruk has watched for two years as the people of his home town allowed the Germans to move in, displace homes and families, and impose their rule on the people who remain. When Koby is bullied by his classmate Irvine, he chooses [...]

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: Snowball in Hell by Josh Lanyon

It’s 1943 and the world is at war. Reporter Nathan Doyle is just back from the European Theater when he’s asked to cover the murder of a society blackmailer–a man who, Homicide Detective Matthew Spain believes, Nathan had every reason to want dead.
Review by Alex Beecroft
It is 1943. When the body of a [...]

Review: Lord John and the Hand of Devils by Diana Gabaldon

 
Review by Alex Beecroft
This is not a novel at all, but a collection of three long short stories.  (Or perhaps a short story and two novellas).  The three are ‘The Hellfire Club’, ‘The Succubus’, and ‘The Haunted Soldier’.  The Hellfire Club is set before ‘Lord John and the Private Matter’ and sees John investigating the [...]

Review: Captain’s Surrender by Alex Beecroft

Review by Erastes
From the blurb: “Ambitious and handsome, Joshua Andrews had always valued his life too much to take unnecessary risks. Then he laid eyes on the elegant picture of perfection that is Peter Kenyon.
Soon to be promoted to captain, Peter Kenyon is the darling of the Bermuda garrison. With a string of successes [...]