Adult Fiction

By: Jess Everleee (Author), 2024, Paperback

Love can make even the most buttoned-up bluestocking come undone…

London, 1885

A lesbian in a lavender marriage, Jo Smith cuts a dashing figure in pin-striped trousers, working in her bookshop and keeping impolite company. But her hard-earned stability is about to be upended thanks to her husband’s pregnant paramour, who needs medical attention that no reputable doctor will provide.

Enter Dr. Emily Clarke, a tantalizing bluestocking working at a quaint village hospital outside the city. Emily has reservations about getting mixed up in Jo’s scandalous arrangement, but her flustered, heart-racing response to Jo has her agreeing to help despite herself.

There’s a world of difference between Jo’s community of underground clubs and sapphic societies and Emily’s respectable suburbs. Perhaps it’s a gap that even fervent desire can’t bridge.

But for those bold enough to take the risk, who knows what delicious adventures might be in store…

Lucky Lovers of London

Book 1: The Gentleman's Book of Vices
Book 2: A Rulebook for Restless Rogues
Book 3: A Bluestocking's Guide to Decadence

"We have all the time in the world, my sweet beautiful man."

It was the ending that scared off even gay editors back in the day. The last chapter of playwright Richard Willett's controversial lost novel of the eighties is an intimate victory dance of overt gay male sexuality at a time when not just silence = death, but for many sex = death. Now, perhaps, readers will be more open to celebrating it.

It's 1986 in New York City and 27-year-old Eric Summerfield knows that "yuppies" are supposed to be obnoxious, easily dismissed, but he envies the clarity of their delusions, their seeming ability to keep mortality at bay. He yearns, in fact, to be one of them. The catch: He's no Wall Street insider, but instead the underpaid employee of a Canadian chain bookstore in Midtown Manhattan, a Canuck himself, and gay, and AIDS suddenly seems to be everywhere, including in the body of his flamboyant friend and coworker Dale, who inexplicably singles out a reluctant Eric to be his chief caregiver. It's an experience that will change both of them.

Moving back and forth across time and place from youth in the 1960s and '70s-Eric's in Vancouver, Dale's on a farm in Kansas-to the pressure cooker of New York in the gay eighties, A Friend of Dorothy's is also a timeless, universal coming of age novel, in which the crucible of illness compels one young man to reach for something greater.

PR A I S E FOR A Friend of Dorothy's

"Nothing can have prepared you for the wit and insight, the eccentricity and inspiring optimism with which this consistently surprising young writer depicts a year at the heart of his generation's greatest calamity." -- Joseph Pintauro, author of Cold Hands and Raft of the Medusa

"There is a knowingness, a sense of timing, a compassion and forgiveness under all the action, character to character. What Richard Willett has-in abundance-is love for the people he is chronicling and, by recording, saving." -- Allan Gurganus, author of The Practical Heart, Plays Well with Others, and Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All

"The writing is poignant, realistic and fine; the reader is pierced and instantly seduced by the characters' appeal and immediacy." -- Harlan Greene, author of The German Officer's Boy, What the Dead Remember, and Why We Never Danced the Charleston

Richard Willett's short stories have been published in Christopher Street, Hawaii Review, American Writing, Karamu, and Oxalis, among others, as well as short-listed for New American Library's Men on Men: Best New Gay Fiction, edited by David Bergman. His short play about AIDS Boys Will Be Boys was included in the anthology Art & Understanding: Literature from the First Twenty Years of A&U, and he is also the author of the plays Triptych, Random Harvest, The Flid Show, Tiny Bubbles, 9/10, A Terminal Event, and Grief at High Tide, presented off-off-Broadway and at theaters across the country. Honors include an Edward F. Albee Foundation Fellowship and a Tennessee Williams Scholarship, designation as a finalist for the Dramatists Guild National Fellows Program and the Sundance Labs, and listing twice in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Nicholl Top 50. He lives in West Hollywood, California.

Visit richardwillettwriter.com.

From the bestselling author of Husband Material comes a lush, sweeping queer historical romance where sparks fly between childhood friends after a life-changing separation—perfect for fans of Bridgerton, Evie Dunmore, and Lisa Kleypas!
 

When Viola Carroll was presumed dead at Waterloo she took the opportunity to live, at last, as herself. But freedom does not come without a price, and Viola paid for hers with the loss of her wealth, her title, and her closest companion, Justin de Vere, the Duke of Gracewood.

Only when their families reconnect, years after the war, does Viola learn how deep that loss truly was. Shattered without her, Gracewood has retreated so far into grief that Viola barely recognises her old friend in the lonely, brooding man he has become.

As Viola strives to bring Gracewood back to himself, fresh desires give new names to old feelings. Feelings that would have been impossible once and may be impossible still, but which Viola cannot deny. Even if they cost her everything, all over again.

By: KJ Charles (Author), 2023, Paperback

Bridgerton goes Gothic in this sweeping Regency romance by celebrated author KJ Charles.

Major Rufus d'Aumesty has unexpectedly become the Earl of Oxney, master of a remote Norman manor on the edge of the infamous Romney Marsh. There he's beset on all sides, his position contested both by his greedy uncle and by Luke Doomsday, son of a notorious smuggling clan.

The earl and the smuggler should be natural enemies, but cocksure, enragingly competent Luke is a trained secretary and expert schemer―exactly the sort of man Rufus needs by his side. Before long, Luke becomes an unexpected ally...and the lover Rufus had never hoped to find.

But Luke came to Stone Manor with an ulterior motive, one he's desperate to keep hidden even from the lord he can't resist. As the lies accumulate and family secrets threaten to destroy everything they hold dear, master and man find themselves forced to decide whose side they're really on…and what they're willing to do for love.

Readers Rave about KJ Charles:

"KJ Charles is one of the best romance novelists writing today. Historical romance at its finest." ―Sarah MacLean, New York Times bestselling author

"Once again KJ Charles has produced an absolute masterpiece!" ―Joanna Shupe, USA Todaybestselling author

"A romantic, swashbuckling tale from start to finish." ―Manda Collins, bestselling author of A Lady's Guide to Mischief and Mayhem

When an aspiring archaeologist teams up with her childhood enemy for a treasure hunt, they find it impossible to bury their growing feelings, in a charming queer historical romance from the author of A Shore Thing.
 
Elfreda Marsden has finally made a major discovery—an ancient amulet proving the Viking army camped on her family’s estate. Too bad her nemesis is back from London, freshly exiled after a scandal and ready to wreak havoc on her life. Georgie Redmayne is everything Elfreda isn’t--charming, popular, carefree, distractingly attractive, and bored to death by the countryside. When the two collide (literally), the amulet is lost, and with it, Elfreda’s big chance to lead a proper excavation. Now Elfreda needs new evidence of medieval activity, and Georgie needs money to escape the doldrums of Derbyshire. Joining forces to locate a hidden hoard of Viking gold is the best chance for them both. 
 
Marsdens and Redmaynes don’t get along, and that’s the least of the reasons these enemies can’t dream of something more. But as the quest takes them on unexpected adventures, sparks of attraction ignite a feeling increasingly difficult to identify as hatred. It’s far too risky to explore. And far too tempting to resist. Elfreda and Georgie soon find that the real treasure comes with a steep price… and the promise of a happiness beyond all measure.

By: Jess Everlee (Author), 2023, Paperback

A PASTE MUST-READ ROMANCE BOOK OF 2023

“Readers will want to savor every word of Everlee’s splendid debut, the launch of her Lucky Lovers of London series, like a fine vintage wine.”
—Booklist, on The Gentleman's Book of Vices

Jess Everlee follows up her sparkling debut The Gentleman's Book of Vices with this charming queer historical romp, in which two lifelong best friends find romance as they join forces to save the one place where they can truly be themselves.

London, 1885

David Forester and Noah Clarke have been best friends since boarding school. All grown up now, clever, eccentric Noah is Savile Row’s most promising young tailor, while former socialite David runs an underground queer club, The Curious Fox.

Nothing makes David happier than to keep the incense lit, the pianist playing and all his people comfortable, happy and safe until they stumble out into the dawn. But when the unscrupulous baron who owns the Fox moves to close it, David’s world comes crashing down.

Noah’s never feared a little high-stakes gambling, but as he risks his own career in hopes of helping David, he realizes two things:

One: David has not been honest about how he ended up at The Curious Fox in the first place.

Two: Noah’s feelings for David have become far more than friendly.

What future lies beyond those first furtive kisses? Noah and David can hardly wait to find out…if they can untangle David from his web of deception without losing everything Noah has worked for.

Lucky Lovers of London

Book 1: The Gentleman's Book of Vices
Book 2: A Rulebook for Restless Rogues

By: Joanna Lowell (Author), 2024, Paperback

"Glorious.... Every scene in this book is a treasure."--The New York Times

Named a Best Romance of the Year by The New York Times and Parade

A delightfully queer Victorian love story, featuring a boldly brash trans hero, the beguiling botanist who captures his heart, and a buoyant bicycle race by the British seaside — from the author of The Duke Undone.

Former painter and unreformed rake Kit Griffith is forging a new life in Cornwall, choosing freedom over an identity that didn't fit. He knew that leaving his Sisterhood of women artists might mean forfeiting artistic community forever. He didn’t realize he would lose his ability to paint altogether. Luckily, he has other talents. Why not devote himself to selling bicycles and trysting with the holidaymakers?

Enter Muriel Pendrake, the feisty New-York-bound botanist who has come to St. Ives to commission Kit for illustrations of British seaweeds. Kit shouldn’t accept Muriel’s offer, but he must enlist her help to prove to an all-male cycling club that women can ride as well as men. And she won't agree unless he gives her what she wants. Maybe that's exactly the challenge he needs.

As Kit and Muriel spend their days cycling together, their desire begins to burn with the heat of the summer sun. But are they pedaling toward something impossible? The past is bound to catch up to them, and at the season’s end, their paths will diverge. With only their hearts as guides, Kit and Muriel must decide if they’re willing to race into the unknown for the adventure of a lifetime.

By: Selby Wynn Schwartz (Author), 2024, Paperback

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR
LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE
Finalist for the Publishing Triangle's Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction
Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the New Yorker, Washington Post, TIME, and The Guardian

“A work of stirring genius, a catalogue of intimacies and inventions, desires and dreams."
―Jacob Brogan, Washington Post

An exhilarating debut from a radiant new voice, After Sappho reimagines the intertwined lives of feminists at the turn of the twentieth century.

“The first thing we did was change our names. We were going to be Sappho,” so begins this intrepid debut novel, centuries after the Greek poet penned her lyric verse. Ignited by the same muse, a myriad of women break from their small, predetermined lives for seemingly disparate paths: in 1892, Rina Faccio trades her needlepoint for a pen; in 1902, Romaine Brooks sails for Capri with nothing but her clotted paintbrushes; and in 1923, Virginia Woolf writes: “I want to make life fuller and fuller.” Writing in cascading vignettes, Selby Wynn Schwartz spins an invigorating tale of women whose narratives converge and splinter as they forge queer identities and claim the right to their own lives. A luminous meditation on creativity, education, and identity, After Sappho announces a writer as ingenious as the trailblazers of our past.

“This book is splendid: Impish, irate, deep, courageous. . . . Brava!”―Lucy Ellmann, author of Ducks, Newburyport

(An Uncommon Partnership)

Alexos Fox, an introverted academic and polio survivor, is naturally quite sad when the long-time butler of his household, the man who all but raised him, retires. He is not at all prepared for the old man's replacement: his exceedingly attractive and painfully tempting nephew.

Unbeknownst to Alexos, his old butler chose Henry Sutton hoping the two of them might marry their interests together, and the gentleman is as suspicious as he is entranced when the new butler comes to him with talks of a secret marriage between them.

M/M erotic romance, rated E, 100k. Set 1927, primarily in West Sussex, England.

Featuring themes of disability, chronic pain, piercings and tattoos, loneliness and isolation, bodily autonomy, class dynamics, a butler/gentleman relationship, joyful non-monogamy and casual sex.

Kink-wise, enjoy size difference, switching roles, burgeoning D/s dynamics and mild sadomasochism, the aforementioned piercings and tattoos, and a lot of bathing and massage.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones & The Six comes an epic new novel set against the backdrop of the 1980s space shuttle program about the extraordinary lengths we go to live and love beyond our limits.

The stunning hardcover of Atmosphere features beautiful endpapers and a premium dust jacket!

“Thrilling . . . heartbreaking . . . uplifting . . . the fast-paced, emotionally charged story of one ambitious young woman, finding both her voice and her passion.”—Kristin Hannah, author of The Women

“NASA? Space missions? The ’80s? This is a collection of all the things I love.”—Andy Weir, author of Project Hail Mary and The Martian

Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s space shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space.

Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, who are kind and easygoing even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warmhearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane.

As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.

Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, it all changes in an instant.

Fast-paced, thrilling, and emotional, Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her best: transporting readers to iconic times and places, creating complex protagonists, and telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love—this time among the stars.

Radical Proposals Book 1

Lucien Saxby is a journalist, writing for the society pages. The Honourable Aubrey Fanshawe, second son of an earl, is Society. They have nothing in common, until a casual encounter leads to a crisis.

Aubrey isn’t looking for love. He already has it, in his long-term clandestine relationship with Lord and Lady Hernedale. And Lucien is the last man Aubrey should want. He’s a commoner, raised in service, socially unacceptable. Worse, he writes for a disreputable, gossip-hungry newspaper. Aubrey can’t afford to trust him when arrest and disgrace are just a breath away.

Lucien doesn’t trust nobs. Painful experience has taught him that working people simply don’t count to them. Years ago, he turned his back on a life of luxury so his future wouldn’t depend on an aristocrat’s whim. Now, thanks to Aubrey, he’s becoming entangled in the risky affairs of the upper classes, antagonising people who could destroy him with a word.

Aubrey and Lucien have too much to hide—and too much between them to ignore. Rejecting the strict rules and closed doors of Edwardian society might lead them both to ruin… but happiness and integrity alike demand it.

AN EDWARDIAN POLYAMOROUS ROMANCE

THE PAPERBACK EDITION OF THIS BOOK INCLUDES GUTTER ROSES: A RADICAL PROPOSALS SHORT STORY

Winner of the National Book Award
Winner of the California Book Award
Winner of Tournament of Books

Out in the desert in a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly but who has haunted the edges of his life: Juan Gay. Playful raconteur, child lost and found and lost, guardian of the institutionalized, Juan has a project to pass along, one built around a true artifact of a book―Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns―and its devastating history. This book contains accounts collected in the early twentieth century from queer subjects by a queer researcher, Jan Gay, whose groundbreaking work was then co-opted by a committee, her name buried. The voices of these subjects have been filtered, muted, but it is possible to hear them from within and beyond the text, which, in Juan’s tattered volumes, has been redacted with black marker on nearly every page. As Juan waits for his end, he and the narrator recount for each other moments of joy and oblivion; they resurrect loves, lives, mothers, fathers, minor heroes. In telling their own stories and the story of the book, they resist the ravages of memory and time. The past is with us, beside us, ahead of us; what are we to create from its gaps and erasures?

A book about storytelling―its legacies, dangers, delights, and potential for change―and a bold exploration of form, art, and love, Justin Torres’s Blackouts uses fiction to see through the inventions of history and narrative. A marvel of creative imagination, it draws on testimony, photographs, illustrations, and a range of influences as it insists that we look long and steadily at what we have inherited and what we have made―a world full of ghostly shadows and flashing moments of truth. A reclamation of ransacked history, a celebration of defiance, and a transformative encounter, Blackouts mines the stories that have been kept from us and brings them into the light.

This #1 New York Times bestseller is a "bold and subversive retelling of the goddess's story" that brilliantly reimagines the life of Circe, formidable sorceress of The Odyssey (Alexandra Alter, TheNew York Times).

In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child -- not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power -- the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves.

Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.

But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from, or the mortals she has come to love.

With unforgettably vivid characters, mesmerizing language, and page-turning suspense, Circe is a triumph of storytelling, an intoxicating epic of family rivalry, palace intrigue, love and loss, as well as a celebration of indomitable female strength in a man's world.

#1 New York Times Bestseller -- named one of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, the Washington Post, People, Time, Amazon, Entertainment Weekly, Bustle, Newsweek, the A.V. Club, Christian Science Monitor, Refinery 29, Buzzfeed, Paste, Audible, Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Thrillist, NYPL, Self, Real Simple, Goodreads, Boston Globe, Electric Literature, BookPage, the Guardian, Book Riot, Seattle Times, and Business Insider.

A New York Times Editors’ Choice: “A mind-bending romp through a gender-fluid, eighteenth century London . . . a joyous mash-up of literary genres shot through with queer theory and awash in sex, crime, and revolution.”

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New Yorker • HuffPost • Kirkus Reviews • Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award • Shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize • “A dazzling tale of queer romance and resistance.”—Time

Jack Sheppard and Edgeworth Bess were the most notorious thieves, jailbreakers, and lovers of eighteenth-century London. Yet no one knows the true story; their confessions have never been found.

Until now. Reeling from heartbreak, a scholar named Dr. Voth discovers a long-lost manuscript—a gender-defying exposé of Jack and Bess’s adventures. Is Confessions of the Fox an authentic autobiography or a hoax? As Dr. Voth is drawn deeper into Jack and Bess’s tale of underworld resistance and gender transformation, it becomes clear that their fates are intertwined—and only a miracle will save them all.

Writing with the narrative mastery of Sarah Waters and the playful imagination of Nabokov, Jordy Rosenberg is an audacious storyteller of extraordinary talent.

Praise for Confessions of the Fox

“A cunning metafiction of vulpine versatility . . . an action-adventure tale with postmodern flourishes; an academic comedy spliced with period erotica; an intimate meditation on belonging.”—Katy Waldman, The New Yorker

“Confessions of the Fox is so goddamned good. Reading it was like an out-of-body experience. I want to run through the streets screaming about it. It should be in the personal canon of every queer and non-cis person. Read it.”—Carmen Maria Machado, National Book Award finalist for Her Body and Other Parties

“A hat tip to Moby-Dick . . . a running footnote hall of mirrors to rival Borges . . . one of the most trenchant calls for progressive action that I have read in a very long time.”—The New York Times Book Review

“An ambitious work of metafiction, a sexy queer love story . . . a bold first novel.”—Entertainment Weekly

A swoon-worthy debut queer Victorian romance in which two debutantes distract themselves from having to seek husbands by setting up their widowed parents, and instead find their perfect match in each other—the lesbian Bridgerton/Parent Trap you never knew you needed!

Gwen has a brilliant beyond brilliant idea.

It’s 1857, and anxious debutante Beth has just one season to snag a wealthy husband, or she and her mother will be out on the street. But playing the blushing ingenue makes Beth’s skin crawl and she’d rather be anywhere but here.

Gwen, on the other hand, is on her fourth season and counting, with absolutely no intention of finding a husband, possibly ever. She figures she has plenty of security as the only daughter of a rakish earl, from whom she’s gotten all her flair, fun, and less-than-proper party games.

“Let’s get them together,” she says.

It doesn’t take long for Gwen to hatch her latest scheme: rather than surrender Beth to courtship, they should set up Gwen’s father and Beth’s newly widowed mother. Let them get married instead.

“It’ll be easy” she says.

There’s just…one, teeny, tiny problem. Their parents kind of seem to hate each other.

But no worries. Beth and Gwen are more than up to the challenge of a little twenty-year-old heartbreak. How hard can parent-trapping widowed ex-lovers be?

Of course, just as their plan begins to unfold, a handsome, wealthy viscount starts calling on Beth, offering up the perfect, secure marriage.

Beth’s not mature enough for this…

Now Gwen must face the prospect of sharing Beth with someone else, forever. And Beth must reckon with the fact that she’s caught feelings, hard, and they’re definitely not for her potential fiancé.

That’s the trouble with matchmaking: sometimes you accidentally fall in love with your best friend in the process.