Showing titles in Historical

The year is 1980, and Mount St. Helens hasn't erupted in over one hundred years. Surely, it won't happen now? Volcanologist Nova "Cano" Kane is the first to volunteer when the rumblings start, even if it means she'll have to face her biggest regret. When Cano fled Seattle four years ago, she left behind the woman she's never been able to forget. Geology professor Dr. Allison Albright has spent four years learning to live with Multiple Sclerosis and without Nova. Now her ex has waltzed back into Allison's university and the tension between them is building like that inside the mountain.

Sebastian Lewis never expected to become a duke. But with the sudden deaths of his cousin and uncle, Sebastian's position changes. He is determined to fulfill his new responsibilities with grace, even if it means remarrying, and even if the attractions of women, so often lauded by poets, fail to interest him.

Buying into the dream that education is the road out of poverty, a teen mom takes a chance on bettering herself, gets on welfare rolls, and talks her way into college. But once she's there, phallocratic narratives permeate every subject, and creative writing professors depend heavily on Freytag's pyramid to analyze life. So Ariel turns to a rich subcultural canon of resistance and failure, populated by writers like Audre Lorde, Tillie Olsen, and Kathy Acker. Wryly riffing on feminist literary tropes, We Were Witches documents the survival of a demonized single mother.

Bettina and Bart have grown up as best friends, so surely they will end up together? After all, Bettina is young, rich, headstrong...and gay. Bart is young, rich, charismatic...and also, definitely, gay. Any doubts are dispelled by, in short order: that ghastly kiss; a torrid encounter for Bettina in the school boiler-rooms; and an eye-opening Parisian visit for Bart. Society will never stand for it. What else can they do but enter into a ‘lavender marriage’ and carry on indulging their true natures in secret?

After Sappho is Selby Wynn Schwartz's joyous reimagining of the lives of a brilliant group of feminists, sapphists, artists and writers in the late 19th and early 20th century as they battle for control over their lives; for liberation and for justice. Sarah Bernhard—Colette—Eleanora Duse—Lina Poletti—Josephine Baker—Virginia Woolf... these are just a few of the women (some famous, others hitherto unsung) sharing the minutes of a novel as fierce as it is luminous—lush and poetic; furious and funny.

1881 - Special Agent Gillian Hamilton, magic caster for the Federal Bureau of Magic and Steam, has recovered from injuries obtained while in Shallow Grave, Arizona. Now back in New York City, Gillian makes an arrest on New Year’s Eve that leads to information on a gangster, known only as Tick Tock, who’s perfected utilizing elemental magic ammunition. This report complicates Gillian’s holiday plans, specifically those with infamous outlaw, Gunner the Deadly, who promised they’d ring in 1882 together.

In 1860s Montana Territory, Kate Beecher, a young woman from Boston, faces the hardships and hard choices of life on the frontier. Just 18 and quietly struggling against the social constraints of the era, Kate meets a woman who fires first her imagination and then her dreams. Jessie Forbes, a fiercely independent rancher, finds in Kate the passion she never knew she had been missing. This is the story of their struggle to love in a land, and time, as cruel as it was beautiful.

Three gay men in pre-Stonewall New York City find their fates thrown together in the police raid of a Village bar. The three men find themselves in a police wagon together, their hidden lives threatened to be revealed to the world. Blackmail, a private investigator, Gus’s disappearance, and Danny’s quest for retribution propel Disorderly Men to its piercing conclusion, as each man meets the boundaries of his own fear, love, and shame. The stakes for each are different, but all of them confront a fundamental question: How much happiness is he allowed to have . . .

Cana, Massachusetts, 1730. To the outside world, Reverend Nathaniel Whitfield and his family stand as godly pillars of their small-town community, drawing Christians from across the New World into their fold. One such Christian, physician Arthur Lyman, discovers in the minister's words a love so captivating it transcends language. As the bond between these two men grows more and more passionate, their families must contend with a tangled web of secrets, lies and judgments which threaten to destroy them in this world and the next

For Jacob and Daniel, two young gay men aboard a US Navy ship in WWII, the risks are high. Not only the risks of injury and death from Japanese planes and submarines, but the risk of discovery. Only a special kind of love is worth taking that chance. But from the moment Daniel meets Jacob's eyes across a battle-scarred deck, he knows he has to try. Being together requires figuring out what it means to be gay in an era when they could be discharged, imprisoned, or worse for admitting the desires of their hearts.

1816. Mary, 18 years old, is staying in a villa on Lake Geneva with her lover Percy Shelley. She is tormented by his infidelities, haunted by the loss of her baby daughter. Then one evening with friends, as storms rage outside and laudanum stirs their imaginations, Lord Byron challenges everyone to write a ghost story, and something fierce and wild awakens in Mary. Memories surface of the long, strange summer she once spent with a family in Scotland, where she found herself falling in love with the enigmatic Isabella Baxter. She learned tales of mythical beasts, witches and spirits.

Three years after Whiskey War, Dax and Rose live the high life at the Foster House, running the poshest speakeasy on the west coast. Half Moon Bay is about to claim its place as the top tourist destination in Northern California, with a second club and the remodeled Seaside Hotel under Grace Parsons's ownership and Dax's management. Repeal of Prohibition is on the horizon with the prospect of making their illegal liquor businesses legitimate. Dax's fractured friendship with Charlie Dawson is the only blowback from her battle with Frankie Wilkes

Everyone connected to the court of Louis XIV has something to hide. For the Baroness Marie Catherine, it is the pleasures she seeks outside of her unhappy marriage, indulging in a more liberated existence of decadent salons and discussions with writers and scholars. At the centre of her illicit freedom is her lover Victoire Rose de Bourbon, Mademoiselle de Conti, the androgynous, self-assured countess.

Settembre 1939. Aldo, ventenne fiorentino, giunge a San Domino, l’isola delle Tremiti scelta dal regime fascista come confino per chi era accusato di omosessualità. I cosiddetti “femminielli” alloggiano in due baracche fatiscenti, con un secchio a fare da gabinetto e un camino mal funzionante per le notti più fredde. Sono perlopiù siciliani, perché arrestati per un omicidio avvenuto anni prima a Catania e tuttora impunito, che continua a perseguitarli.

Lancelot, the greatest Knight of Camelot is almost flogged to death, exiled, and stripped of the King's grace. Separated from the man he loves and the kingdom he calls home, he travels from England to Europe to begin a lonely, desperate life when he meets someone who will alter his perspective forever.

1553: deeply divided England rejoices as the rightful heir, Mary Tudor, sweeps to power on a tide of populist goodwill. But the people should have been careful what they wished for: Mary's mission is to turn back time to an England of old. Within weeks there is widespread rebellion in favour of her heir, her half-sister, Princess Elizabeth, who is everything that Mary isn't. From now on, Elizabeth will have to use her considerable guile just to stay alive.

Paris, 1866. When Baroness Sylvie Devereux receives a house-call from Charlotte Mothe, the sister she disowned, she fears her shady past as a spirit medium has caught up with her. But with their father ill and Charlotte unable to pay his bills, Sylvie is persuaded into one last con. Their marks are the de Jacquinots: dysfunctional aristocrats who believe they are haunted by their great aunt, brutally murdered during the French Revolution. Sylvie and Charlotte will need to deploy every trick to terrify the family out of their gold – until they experience inexplicable horrors themselves.

History professor Ned Brummel is living happily with his partner of 12 years in small-town Maine when he receives a phone call from his estranged friend - Jack - telling him that another friend - Andy - is very ill and possibly near death. As Ned boards a plane to Chicago on his way to his friend's bedside, he embarks on another journey into memory, examining the major events and small moments that have shaped his world and his relationships with these two very different, very important men.

Can two outcasts find refuge in one another's hearts? Dr. Vance Phelps lost everything in the War Between the States - her career and her faith in herself. Mae is a frontier madam, used to standing and fighting alone. She guards the well-being of the lost young women who come under her care - she just never expected one of them to be a doctor. A bold story of redemption amidst the wild landscape of the heart, where lost promises find new hope.

When a sharp cry wakes Jean in the middle of the night during a terrible tempest, she’s convinced it must have been a dream. But when the cry comes again, Jean ventures outside and is shocked by what she discovers—a young woman in labor, drenched to the bone in the bitter cold and able to speak barely a word of English.