Showing titles in Historical

Peg Brennan hasn't held a sword since she was captured at sea and imprisoned 10 years ago. But as her fingers slide around the hilt of the rapier beside her, she knows that the life she has made for her bastard son in Bath is about to change for the worse - and still she cannot stop herself. What she doesn't know is that a darker threat will soon arrive to drag her back into the blackness that can only exist in a pirate's heart.

Joseph Asten, a handsome, 23-year-old farmer living in the Allegheny River Valley shortly after the Civil War, secretly longed for intimacy and love with other men. He devised a misguided plan to marry a woman who knew of his "dual nature," then his life took some unexpected, fateful turns.

England during the early 1820s was a hostile place for unmarried women without family or home. After losing upper class standing because of her father's gambling habit and scandalous suicide, Annalee Stewart believes her fortunes improved when she is hired as companion to the young but sickly and frail Lady Lenore Blackstone. Although the adjustment from being a member of the wealthy class to finding oneself suddenly in service to it promises to be difficult, Annalee has no choice but to accept where fate has thrown her.

In 1906, Mikhail Kuzmin published Wings, the first book in Russian to discuss same-sex relationships in a positive light. With Vanya Says, Go!, Wayne Goodman retells the story from the perspective of the young man at the heart of the tale. The original work contained only three sections, but a fourth has been added to round out the story and provide some closure.

A young Native American transvestite navigates the margins of hate in a small desert town in the 1980s.

This short story is set in Europe before the start of World War Two, Jillian tours the clubs as a jazz singer to put a little adventure into her life. She gets more than she bargains for when she does a little favor for the girl who has her eye. She winds up running for her life and discovering a calling that gives her a purpose in life that is bigger than herself.

WWII. 1942. Will's brother is fighting the war in the Pacific, but Will is forced to remain behind. Will takes his brother's place in the academic world of Indiana University, where he meets two students and two soon-to-be-legendary men who will change his life forever. Will thought he was the only boy attracted to other males, but when he sneaks into Professor Kinsey's marriage course he realizes his mistake. Will meets Ben, who he suspects is not unlike himself.

Being a gay man in the 1940s was not easy. When a zealous journalist discovers Cedric "Sudsey" Mervin's carnal bent and blackmails him on the verge of playing the New Year's Eve Countdown, the popular pianist finds himself renewing acquaintances from the old neighborhood in order to raise needed funds and protect his secret - a situation that entangles him deep within a web of crime, deceit, and a powerful mafia family, and binds his destiny to a rare piano that has already claimed the souls of everyone who ever owned it.

After Constantine's death, his son, Constantius, took power as Caesar Augustus, high ruler of the empire in Byzantium - the new capital of Rome and home of the Senate - then executed all that remained of their family save his two cousins, Gallus and Julian. Constantius appointed Julian, only 23, Caesar of the West, custodian of Rome against the pillaging tribes. An academic at heart, no one in the empire believed he stood a chance leading the armies of Rome - until one day in Gaul.

In Nazi-occupied Paris, most Frenchmen tread warily, but gay nightclub singer Yves Lacroix puts himself in the spotlight with every performance. As a veteran of France's doomed defense, a survivor of a prison camp, and a "degenerate", he knows he's a target. His comic stage persona disguises a shamed, angry heart and gut-wrenching fear for a sister embedded in the Resistance.

The much-anticipated sequel to Purgatory follows the flight of Confederate Private Ian Campbell and Union soldier Drew Conrad from the battlefields of the Civil War. Weary and wounded, the pair dare not drop their guard not only because enemies on both sides can be found along the way to a family homestead in West Virginia - Ian and Drew are lovers and society's view of sodomy hounds them both.

In 1933 in the Shenandoah Valley, there isn't a place for Lum (short for Columbia), a 33-year-old intersex woman. She travels by schedule from one branch of the family to another, assisting with cooking, childcare, and housework. Always an outsider, even in her own family, Lum secretly collects postcards of people like the Dog-faced Girl, imagining their stories, and nurtures her lifelong friendship with Smiley, an African-American man who sells furniture, odds and ends, and a little moonshine.

Long before "Don't ask, don't tell", gays served in the military - sometimes openly - more often in secret. In this volume the author imagines what their lives might have been like. Within, you will find tales of historical fiction mixed occasionally with supernatural horror, including: a French fusilier fighting guerrillas and growing disillusionment in Napoleonic Spain; soldiers encountering the unthinkable during the 1812 occupation and retreat from Moscow; and more.

Once a renowned tournament fighter known as the "Lion of Kent", William Raven joined the Templars in the Holy Land to escape his past and the political machinations of his enemies. Called to protect travelling pilgrims bound for Jerusalem, William comes face to face with Guy de Metz, his lover from the past. But Guy is no longer the foppish young noble William knew.

The Third Reich is on its knees as Allied forces bomb Berlin to break the last resistance. Yet on an airfield near Berlin, the battle is far from over for a young mechanic, Felix, who's attached to a squadron of fighter pilots. He's especially attached to fighter ace Baldur Vogt, a man he admires and secretly loves. But there's no room for love at the end of the world, never mind in Nazi Germany.

Aristide, Léandre, and Perrin pledge only three loyalties in life: their king, their captain, and their passion for each other. So when the musketeers discover a plan to accuse M. de Tréville of treason, their reactions vary from the desire to kill the messenger, Benoît, to the need to unmask the man behind the plot to discredit their captain. The first two suspects, the English ambassador and Cardinal Richelieu, prove to be innocent, and the musketeers are forced to delve deeper into the inner machinations of the French court.

When sword-for-hire Teodoro Ciéza de Vivar accepts a commission to "rescue" Lord Christian Blackwood from unsuitable influences, he has no idea he's landed himself in the middle of a plot to assassinate King Philip IV of Spain and blame the English ambassador for the deed. Nor does he expect the spoiled child he's sent to retrieve to be a handsome, engaging young man.

Three women, united by love and kinship, struggle to conform to the social norms of the times in which they live. In 1931 Katherine Henderson leaves behind her small town in Kansas and the marriage proposal of a local boy to live on her own and work at the Sears & Roebuck glove counter in Chicago. There she meets Annie - a bold, outspoken feminist who challenges Katherine's idea of who she thinks she is and what she thinks she wants in life.

It is 1914 and The Great War is underway. When the call to arms comes, Nicholas Southwell won't be found hanging back. It's a pity he can't be so decisive when it comes to letting his estate manager Paul Haskell know what he feels before he has to leave for the front line. In the trenches Nicholas meets a fellow officer, Phillip Taylor, who takes him into the unclaimed territory of physical love. Which one will he choose, if he's allowed the choice?

Set in World War II in 1943, Troop Train Nights is a 4,050-word short story about two young G.I.s on a train, on their way to war. One is a closeted gay former swimmer and gymnast, teed off because the army has seen fit to make him a clerk-typist. The other is a womanizing, muscular, overconfident Italian-American paratrooper from Detroit. They are reluctantly paired off on a train trip to a port of call where they will ship overseas. This is the tale of their experiences and an unlikely connection.