Showing titles in Historical

Japan, 1825: Low-ranking samurai Uchida Tomonosuke is a devotee of the way of manly love, but he has never pledged himself to another man. Until one day he accidentally crosses paths with Ichi, a beautiful blind masseur who challenges everything he thought he knew about love between men. Ichi is independent and confident, but his blindness means he is considered a non-person in the rigid social hierarchy.

When archaeologist Anna Baring announces the founding of the Lady Adventurers Club in May 1923, none of the other three members expect to ever meet again. After all, they live halfway around the world from each other. What could possibly bring them together once more? Then they each receive an unexpected letter. Anna has found a tomb that promises to be even grander than that of King Tutankhamun, and she wants them to come to Egypt for the opening. It's the find of the century. The tomb will make old Tut look like a pauper. But will the women of the Lady Adventurers Club get to see it?

Raef, a lonely merman, spends his days watching the dashing Lord Haverford from afar and dreaming of love. When Haverford is robbed by a pirate, Raef vows to reclaim the stolen goods, hoping his victory will buy him the happiness he yearns for with Haverford. But Jon Kemp does not match what Raef knows about pirates, and the simple quest Raef anticipated turns out to be an epic journey. For while Jon might be a nobler man than Raef believed, he's still a pirate. Love and loyalty are not on Jon's agenda, and he certainly has no plans to love someone not entirely human....

Fin Tighe is clinging to respectability by his nail-bitten fingers. He may be the illegitimate son of an English earl, but he hasn’t spoken to his father in a decade, and his engineer’s salary is barely enough to support him and his cousin Aurelie. And Fin’s evenings spent in the clandestine gay community may be legal through a loophole in the Napoleonic Code, but they leave him vulnerable. So, when Fin’s employer, Gustave Eiffel, announces that he needs additional investors to pay for his pet project, a 300-meter tower that will dominate the city’s skyline, Fin jumps at the chance.

American Jane Dawson is in search of balance in her life—because she falls on her face—a lot. Now, surrounded by thousands of acres of sheep-poop and social landmines, her romantic sheepdog hero, Moss, stands by her side, looking handsome and dignified while his luxurious hair is swept by unseen winds—until he eats the sheep-poop, that is. Full of history, mythology and legend, there is more to the odd little town than its idyllic sheep-filled pastures. A

In the years before the Mexican Revolution, Mexico is ruled by a tiny elite that apes European culture, grows rich from foreign investment, and prizes racial purity. The vast majority of Mexicans, who are native or of mixed native and Spanish blood, are politically powerless and slowly starving to death. Presiding over this corrupt system is Don Porfirio Díaz, the ruthless and inscrutable president of the Republic. Against this backdrop, The City of Palaces opens in a Mexico City jail with the meeting of Miguel Sarmiento and Alicia Gavilán.

1923 in Midland, Texas, and Miss Dara falls in love with her best friend - who also happens to be a girl. Terrified, Miss Dara takes a job at Sugar Land Prison for men, hoping to keep her secret attractions under lock and key. Once there, she befriends inmate and soon-to-be legendary blues singer Leadbelly, who sings his way out (true story) - but only after he makes her promise to free herself from her own prison. Sugar Land is a triumphant, beautiful debut novel about the heart’s refusal to be denied what the heart wants.

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.

World Fantasy Award winner Tanith Lee channels the allusive Esther Garber to tell these dark, erotic tales of lesbian ardor and obsession. The ''fatal women'' found within these pages lead exotic lives and adventures and have grim secrets. From fin de siecle Paris to Egypt of the 1930s and contemporary England, the Garber novellas create feverish dreams of danger, scandal, and sensuality.

In 1901, a handsome young man named John Glenarm halts his world traveling when he inherits a mysterious unfinished Tudor mansion, Glenarm House, deep in the Indiana forests. In order to fulfill the conditions of his grandfather's will, he must live a year in the massive house, studying the architectural library. If he fails, the estate goes to a mysterious person named Oliver Armstrong.

Manhattan, 1962. Frederick Bailey is a quiet, cultured, closeted architect reluctantly drawn into the effort to save Pennsylvania Station from being demolished. But when he meets Curt, a vibrant, immature gay activist more than half his age, he is overtaken by passions he hasn't felt in years, putting everything he cares about - his friends, his family, his career and reputation - at risk. As the elegant old train station is dismantled piece by piece to make way for the crass new Madison Square Garden sports arena, Frederick must undergo a reckoning he has dreaded all his life.

On every visit to Madame Delacroix's brothel, Nathaniel Travers requests the same man. Stunningly handsome and highly skilled, Jasper not only shares Nate's fondness for wickedly erotic games and black leather corsets, but he has become a trusted confidant. And Jasper's the only person who knows Nate longs for a committed relationship with his childhood friend, Peter Edmonton. Unrequited love hurts, but it hurts even more when the object of affection is in love with another.

France, 1916. The Great War. High above the carnage in the trenches, British and German aces joust like knights of old for control of the skies. The strain and tension of living every day on the edge of death leads to dangerous choices and wild risks. When British ace Bat Bryant's past catches up with him, he strikes out in panic and kills the man threatening him with exposure. But there's a witness: the big, handsome American pilot Cowboy Cooper.

This audiobook journeys back to 1957 Los Angeles, where James Whale, the once-famous director of such classics as Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, is living in retirement, haunted by his past. Rescuing him from his too-vivid imagination is his gardener, a handsome ex-marine. The friendship between these two very different men is sometimes tentative, sometimes touching, often dangerous - and always captivating.

Set in the Civil War era of the 1860s, this novel tells the story of a feckless Virginian who finds himself captivated by a Two-Spirit male highly respected among the Navajo. It is a story of tragedy, oppression, and discrimination, but also an enlightening story of love, discovery, and beauty. Two Spirits illuminates the truth of what the United States did to the largest indigenous people of this nation. Full of suspense, plot twists, and endearing romance, this novel will captivate listeners.

“In the States, celibacy had never been my strong suit. In Paris, it was a crime against nature—a mortal sin.” With this cheeky response to her new city, Henri Adams—recently released from the tyranny of Prohibition and freshly appointed as an art correspondent for En Vogue magazine—sets out to discover the literary, artistic, and more unmentionable pleasures of Paris during the Roaring Twenties

In this second novel of the Elliot Blake series, Elliot is promoted to Head of Claims at his insurance company. While he's investigating a death claim filed on behalf of Leonard Lehnert, the star of a radio show called The Shadow’s Voice, he discovers private letters written during the Second World War that upend his investigation and his relationship with his lover, Vito Vellucci. Vito's letters give a voice to the lives and loves that had to be lived in the shadows, and reveal a hidden past, never acknowledged by the world at large.

Thomas Derrik is about to have the worst Christmas of his life. Three days before the holiday, he finds out the father he doesn't get along with is arriving on Christmas Eve, his ex-lover and new brother-in-law will be staying at his estate until the New Year, and his beloved brother, Edmund, has died. , Edmund's last holiday scheme may well save Thomas's Christmas: Henry Appleby, a young lord fresh from the Continent, has arranged to court Thomas.

It's been a long time since Jane Havens, Mistress of Havenswood, felt the joy and promise of by-gone days when her family home, Havenswood, was a thriving and powerful farming estate. Together with her elder brother Cole, who drowns his sorrow in alcohol, Jane does what she can to lead the fading estate through the hard times that fell upon the family after their father, a Union Army Colonel, died shortly after the Civil War. Jane and Cole try to raise their little brother, Henry, a wild young boy with no direction, no manners and no one to marshal his considerable natural abilities into a productive, young gentleman.

Olivia Hampton's lifelong love of dark literature led her to accept a job as a cataloger for Julian Dunraven's extensive but extremely disorderly library. The only problem is that the position requires her to work at Dunraven Castle, the remote and mysterious home of the Dunraven family. In Victorian America, a young lady had to either earn her keep or be married off to the best man for her hand. Olivia accepted the position at Dunraven Castle.