Review: The World’s a Stage by Gail Sterling

After his younger sister is killed in a tragic accident, William Palmer’s family flees their quiet Warwickshire village for the bustling metropolis of Elizabethan London. The deaths of his parents and the marriage of his remaining sister soon separate William from his family. Taken on by a company of actors in an era where women [...]

Review: Pacific Nights by Lynn Lorenz

On a deserted island in the Pacific, surrounded by the enemy, two very different men learn to rely on each other for survival. Mike is an uneducated rascal, one step ahead of prison and a court-martial. He’s given one chance to redeem himself: if he wants to stay out of jail, he has to keep [...]

Review: Stand and Deliver by Scarlet Blackwell

When Lucien Mayer, 14th Earl of Ravensberry is taken hostage by a gang of highwaymen, he is drawn to the damaged, reclusive Ambrosius and the dangerous, brooding Dante. Torn between escaping and satisfying his body’s needs, his life will never be the same again.
Review by Erastes
Oh dear, I thought. Another kidnap/rape-non con turns to [...]

Review: Bounty of the Heart by JM Snyder

For seven years, Emmett Ward has harbored amorous feelings toward his partner, Jack Robison. A chance encounter brought them together—Emmett slaved in an illegal warehouse run by a Korean criminal known as the Dragon Lady, when Jack, a notorious bounty hunter with his sights set on her son Lin Ji, was captured. Emmett helped Jack [...]

Review: Warrior Prince by J P Bowie

Set in the early turbulent years of the Roman Empire, and seen through the eyes of three men, Warrior Prince tells the story of a love that will not be denied, of courage in the face of adversity, of political intrigue, betrayal and death. Against this backdrop of death and mayhem, Lucius and Callistus, two [...]

Review: 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: 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: Redemption: King of Swords by A J Wilde

In this sequel to Shadow Road: The Page of Swords, Bailey is now training under Lord Charles, and he’s working hard toward his goal of taking over as The Shadow, just as Charles took the position over from his late lover, Robert.
Things are not easy for either of them, though. Bailey yearns for Charles’ [...]

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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: Oscar Wilde and the Ring of Death by Gyles Brandreth

Talented and witty, and with a fabulously successful play playing to packed houses, Oscar is the toast of the town. On one of his club nights he plays a game with his guests, “who would you murder” and sets into motion events which look like they will result, not only in his own death, but [...]

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: The Partisans by Martin Brant

Ethan Jones came to France long before the war started. He loved Paris—the lively cafés, the easy friendships with the artists and writers and whores. When the Germans invade France, everything changes.
Two years after he joins the Resistance, Ethan takes an assignment in occupied northern France. The objective: Team [...]

Review: The Silurian Book One The Fox and the Bear by L.A. Wilson

Set entirely in the Dark Ages of post-Roman Britain, The Silurian is narrated in grim detail by Prince Bedwyr, The Fox. The Fox, who tells of his life with Arthur, of his own life and struggles, of the many different acts that make up the power of warriors who live in Dark Age war-bands, committed [...]

Review: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

Like the comic books that animate and inspire it, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is both larger than life and of it too. Complete with golems and magic and miraculous escapes and evil nemeses, even hand-to-hand Antarctic battle, it pursues the most important questions of love and war, dreams and art, across [...]

Review: Better Angel by Forman Brown, writing as Richard Meeker

Written in 1933, this classic, touching story focuses on a young man’s gay awakening in the years between the World Wars and became an instant underground classic. Kurt Gray is a shy, bookish boy growing up in small-town Michigan. Even at the age of 13, he knows that somehow he is different. Gradually he recognizes [...]

Review: Hyacinth Club by B A Tortuga

Devlin Montebanc knows that a Victorian man needs a place to go, some place he can be at ease, enjoying his port, his cigars, and some special male companionship. That’s why he maintains the Hyacinth Club, a traditional men’s club with a twist.
The sophisticated men of the Hyacinth Club find their [...]

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: A Cold-Blooded Scoundrel by J S Cook

In London, with Jack the Ripper’s crimes still raw in the great city’s memory, a well-known male prostitute is brutally murdered, the head neatly severed, and the body set on fire. Detective Inspector Phillip Devlin of Scotland Yard, mid-thirties and secretly gay, is called to the murder scene by plainclothes constable Freddie Collins, and soon [...]

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: Aubade by Kenneth Martin

Review by Hayden Thorne
BOOK DESCRIPTION:
It is the beginning of the summer, and Paul has just left school. Estranged from the people around him and unable to communicate with his parents, he feels lonely and unloved. But his life suddenly changes when he meets a young medical student whom he renames Gary. Their relationship develops through [...]

Review: A Warrior’s Hope, by Sabrina Luna

From the Blurb:
As political unrest swirls in the palace of Tutankhamun, Commander Thabit, a Warrior of Amun-Ra, is eager for a stolen moment with his lover, the royal scribe, Akil. Leading his men to the border to face an unfamiliar tribe of renegades, Thabit isn’t sure when he’ll return home to Thebes…or his beloved again.

Review [...]

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: 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: 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: Angel’s Evolution by T A Chase

“I’m a monster. Or so my father would have me believe. I’m imprisoned in a world I hate and fear. As heir to my father’s title, I’m expected to marry, but my secret desires may keep me from fulfilling those expectations. One night a stranger kisses me. In his touch, I see the possibility of [...]

Review: A Good Man is Hard to Find by Jeanne Laws

Review by Alex Beecroft
Kade Black Eagle is a bounty hunter in the Wild West.  When he is shot by the man he’s pursuing, his one regret is that he never told his old friend, Warren (Ren) Hayes that he loved him.  When Kade unexpectedly recovers, therefore, he decides to finally take the chance of telling [...]

Review: Time and Place by Alan Sheridan

Review by Fiona Glass
Okay, I’ll admit it – this book had me baffled. It was billed as a fictionalised biography based on the diaries of a real-life actor, Mark Sheridan, as written by his descendant Alan Sheridan, but I have to admit I couldn’t tell if this was the case, or if it was [...]

Review: Discreet Young Gentleman by M.J. Pearson

Review by Renee Manley

Book Description
All hell breaks loose when Dean Smith, Earl of Carwick, is tricked into being discovered in the company of Rob, a handsome male prostitute. Now Dean needs to repair his broken engagement to a wealthy heiress…and Rob is the only one who can identify the man who set him up, proving [...]

Review: Raised by Wolves Volume 1: Brethren by W A Hoffman

Review by Erastes
(From Frontiers Magazine)
Brethren is the story of John Williams, Viscount of Marsdale (known for most of the book as Will), sent by his estranged father to manage the family’s sugar plantation in 1667 Jamaica. On his arrival, he instead joins up with the Brethren of the Coast (a predominantly gay tribe of buccaneers [...]

Review: Living Upstairs by Joseph Hansen

by Renee Manley
From the Publisher
When Hoyt Stubblefield ambles into the cavernous bookstore on Hollywood Boulevard where nineteen-year-old Nathan Reed works, his good looks and wry Texas charm hold the boy spellbound. Within a week, Nathan has packed up his few belongings and moved in with Hoyt – into his upstairs rooms in a rickety old [...]

Review: Smokescreen by Stevie Woods

Lord Richard Douglas (known as Chard to his best friend Julian) has just returned from the continent with a new wife. Sir Julian – seeing them together realises he loves his friend in a way that would not be acceptable to law or society.
Review by Erastes
This is a very simplistic story which way overstayed its [...]

Review: An East Wind Blowing by Mel Keegan

Set in the very depths of the Dark Ages, in the northeast of a country not yet known as England. The Romans have recently departed, though fragments of their world still linger on. The native Britons are being pressed back by the barbarian Angles from over the water, as they sail in on the east [...]

Review: Lord John and the Private Matter by Diana Gabaldon

Trouble befalls Lord John Grey (fresh from minor roles in Gabaldon’s bestselling Outlander novels) when he accidentally discovers that the Hon. Joseph Trevelyan, his cousin’s betrothed, may have what those in 1757 termed “the pox” or “the French disease” syphilis. Before he can figure out an appropriate way to handle this delicate matter, he becomes [...]

Review: The Price of Temptation by M J Pearson

Stephen Clair, the notorious Earl of St. Joseph, has a lover he can’t afford, a social calendar that’s out of control and a libido that rules his life. If he can’t get control of all of them, he will fall into financial ruin. Could the youthful, handsome and dependable Jamie Riley be the solution to [...]