Review: One Man Drowing by Steph Minns

Running away in 1762 from a dull life in fashionable Georgian Bath, Jesse Sunderland joins an ocean-going merchant ship. Just nineteen years old, naive and keen for adventure in the expanding world where England rules the seas and dominates the colonies, he has to not only deal with the harshness of this life at sea [...]

Review: Cabin Fever by B.A. Tortuga

Horace is a loner, a mountain man with a claim to a tiny stream of gold and a lonely cabin in the woods. When he finds young Walker wandering lost in his mountains just before the snow flies, he decides he’s found exactly the kind of companionship he craves.
Walker is young, naive, and totally unprepared [...]

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: Death of a Blues Angel by Sarah Black

Rafael Hurt comes from Mississippi to play Blues guitar, and he’s hiding a dangerous secret. When a young girl is found murdered during Rafe’s first gig at The Blues Angel, Rafe and Deke Davis, a veteran reporter, have to find the killer before the secrets of the past explode into racial violence and destroy any [...]

Review: Spurs & Saddles: Oil Well Ben and the Hollywood Rustlers by Lucius Parhelion

When Ben gets a chance to leave his New Mexico home to visit his childhood friend in Hollywood, he jumps at it. 1930s Beverly Hills is full of bait and switch tricks that Ben just isn’t used to, especially when he meets up with Johnny, someone he knew a long time ago, better than he’s [...]

Review: Stealing Northe by Jamie Craig

Two outlaws and one widow turn to each other for comfort, but nobody expects lust to become a love affair…
Amy Northe hasn’t known a man’s company in the six years since her husband died. That all changes the night her son comes in from chores with two strangers in tow. Kenneth and Leon are [...]

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: The Lord Won’t Mind by Gordon Merrick

Looking at The Lord Won’t Mind from a historical perspective
Title: The Lord Won’t Mind
Author: Gordon Merrick
Published: 1970; republished in 1995
Length: 255 pages
Charlie Mills and Peter Martin are both young, handsome and well-endowed. They meet and fall madly in love. The book follows Charlie’s path from a closeted gay man to a person who accepts himself. [...]

Review: Divided Hearts by Terry O’Reilly

Review by Leslie H. Nicoll

When Jonathan and Nathaniel part ways, Nathaniel heads for the Ohio territory and a new life with Robert. Robert soon realizes his friend will never reciprocate his love fully. What can he do? Robert agrees to help the English translate in their negotiations with the Shawnee and in doing so meets [...]

Review: The Chap in Chaps by Deirdre o’Dare

In 1910, Charles Smythe inherits a ranch from his late uncle. With some misgivings about leaving his life in England, he finally arrives in Arizona Territory only to meet one of his employees, an experienced hired hand named Sombra. In Sombra, Charles finds not only the perfect man to teach him all he needs to [...]

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 [...]

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: 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 City and the Pillar by Gore Vidal

A literary cause célèbre when first published more than fifty years ago, Gore Vidal’s now-classic The City and the Pillar stands as a landmark novel of the gay experience.
Jim, a handsome, all-American athlete, has always been shy around girls. But when he and his best friend, Bob, partake in “awful kid stuff,” the experience forms [...]

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: The Handsomest Man in the World by David Leddick

In the shadow of the 1954 nuclear bomb tests on the Bikini atoll, two sailors begin a tender, passionate affair that will carry them all around the USA: to San Francisco, Manhattan, Fire Island and Washington DC. The lovers learn, with fumbling hands and lips, how to satisfy one another, but the erotic heat of [...]

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: Awakening by Terry O’Reilly

Review by Leslie H. Nicoll
Jonathon Carver, a young Puritan school teacher, meets the handsome Nathaniel Morgan, master cooper. He comes to recognize the longings he has had all his life as desire for the love of another man. Nathaniel provides that love.
Their love must be carefully guarded as they live in Colonial America at [...]

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: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: Over Here by Jamie Craig

Harvey Kramer shipped home from the European front with a damaged leg and memories of a man he couldn’t have. Ten years later, on the first official Veterans Day holiday, that man knocks on Harvey’s door and turns his world upside down.
Zach Jones never forgot Sergeant Harvey Kramer. Though he made it through [...]

Review: Hanged Man by Parhelion

Ray’s a former mob enforcer who heads west to live off his comfortable retirement, provided graciously by his ex-employers. He’s got it all. A new place, a new business, and he’s making a [...]