Showing titles in Historical

Impoverished Julian Parker returns to London with one goal: marry an heiress. He'll do whatever it takes, even if it means denying his desire for men. After all, with a fortune comes happiness and social acceptance—which have eluded Julian his entire life.

He was about to be tried for treason. His gay lover had been ordered to kill him. He was trying to evade a clever inspector from the Privy Council as well as the Black Plague. And he had hired a bumbling actor named Shakespeare to front for his writings. It was obviously time for Christopher Marlowe to fake his own murder.

In 1932, New York City, top reporter Lorena "Hick" Hickok starts each day with a front page byline - and finishes it swigging bourbon and planning her next big scoop. But an assignment to cover FDR's campaign - and write a feature on his wife, Eleanor - turns Hick's hard-won independent life on its ear. Soon, her work, and the secret entanglement with the new first lady, will take her from New York and Washington to Scotts Run, West Virginia, where impoverished coal miners' families wait in fear that the New Deal's promised hope will pass them by.

He is a devilish and handsome ex-football player, now a rising sports agent at one of the hottest firms in the country. She is the uncompromising Yancey Harrington Braxton, an up-and-coming Broadway star who oozes charm and bleeds ambition. Both believe that in each other they've finally met their match. A lavish wedding is planned, and the ultimate power couple plans to spend their lives in holy matrimony. But just before the nuptials, fate and a little comeuppance from the past threaten the happy couple's future.

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 year is 1967, and Tim Halladay has graduated William & Mary, looking forward to studying drama at Yale, when he finds himself drafted into the United States Army. His college education makes him an object of ridicule and suspicion among the other members of C Company - Charlie Company. Of course, he has to hide his homosexuality. Tom Baker's newest novel is an honest portrayal of a young man fearful of his secret being discovered, at a time when seeking out the comfort of another man's touch could mean arrest, imprisonment, and a disgraceful court martial.

Eliza Macy is struggling to conceal her financial trouble as she waits for her whaling captain husband to return from a voyage. In desperation, she turns against her progressive ideals and targets Meg Wright, a pregnant free Black woman trying to relocate her store to Main Street. Meanwhile, astronomer Maria Mitchell loves running Nantucket’s Atheneum and spending her nights observing the stars, yet she fears revealing the secret wishes of her heart. On a sweltering July night, a massive fire breaks out in town, quickly kindled by the densely packed wooden buildings.

Everything must come to an end, and as Eli contemplates the loss of Malachi in a London ripped apart by war, he knows that the final battle looms ever closer. Where is Ethan? Eli can feel him, their love for each other calling through time, but history conspires to keep them apart as Morbius uses him for the final game. Desperate to find a way to end the war, Eli once again delves into the distant past in search of answers, but as Jack the Ripper taunts him from the pages of his dead lover’s diary, Eli is left despondent.

As his family falls apart day by day, Robin finds himself pulling away from the unquestioned, unexamined life that has been carefully laid out for him. Small acts of rebellion lead to larger questions of what it means to stand on his own. Falling into a fevered triangle with two other outcasts, Todd Spicer and Scott Schatz, Robin embarks on an explosive odyssey of sexual self-discovery that will take him beyond the spring-green lawns of suburbia, beyond the fraying fabric barely holding together his quickly unraveling family, and into a complex future, beyond the world of normal boys.

"En route to polite exile in the Galapagos Islands (field work, to quote the dean of my university), I have found myself marooned on a deserted tropical paradise. Deserted, that is, except for my savior, a mysterious American called Marcus. He is an inventor and the proof of his greatness is the marvelous new clockwork arm he has created to replace the unsightly one that was ruined in my shipboard mishap."

Meet Haskell Hodge. At 16, he’s already garnered some fame as a former child actor and star of a popular cereal commercial. But that doesn’t do much for him when he’s dumped at his aunt’s house in the suburbs of Los Angeles to face an assortment of neighborhood bullies. He thinks he might be gay. In fact, he could be the only gay person in the valley, maybe on the entire planet. Even if he does manage to find a boyfriend, their relationship would have to be secret and invisible.

Yale Tishman es uno de los muchos amigos de Nico que se han reunido para honrar su memoria en una pequeña fiesta. A la misma hora, no muy lejos de allí, se celebra en una iglesia el funeral oficial, organizado por la familia, que ha dejado bien claro que sus amigos no son bienvenidos. Es Chicago, es 1985, y esos amigos son homosexuales. En otros tiempos, tal vez, Yale lo habría tenido todo para ser feliz: una relación estable, un grupo de amigos muy unido y una carrera prometedora. Sin embargo, es Chicago, es 1985, y el SIDA causa verdaderos estragos.

In 1963, in a Siberian prison, former nuclear specialist Valery Kolkhanov has mastered what it takes to survive: the right connections to the guards for access to food and cigarettes, the right pair of warm boots, and the right attitude toward the small pleasures of life so he won’t go insane. But one day, all that changes: Valery’s university mentor steps in and sweeps him from the frozen camp to a mysterious unnamed city. It houses a set of nuclear reactors, and surrounding it is a forest so damaged it looks like the trees have rusted from within.

Two women. Two swords. One victor. An action-packed tale that exposes the brutal underside of Imperial Rome, Sword of the Gladiatrix brings to life unforgettable characters and exotic settings. From the far edges of the Empire, two women come to battle on the hot sands of the arena in Nero's Rome. Enslaved, forced to fight for their lives and the Romans' pleasure; they seek to replace lost friendship, love, and family in each other's arms. But the Roman arena offers only two futures: The Gate of Life for the victors or the Gate of Death for the losers.

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.

Amelia Cole—Lia for short—is one of the first women studying abroad at Oxford University in the 1920s. Finally free from her overbearing Brooklyn parents, she finds a welcome sense of independence in British college life. Lia quickly falls for Scarlett Daniels, an aspiring actress and hardheaded protester. Scarlett introduces her to an exciting gender-equality movement with high stakes. But when their secret love clashes with political uprising, their relationship is one of the casualties.

During the summer months of 1912, thousands of visitors arrived on passenger trains to visit the resort town of Culver, Indiana, and enjoy sparkling Lake Maxinkuckee. They stayed in the hotels that dotted the town and lake, and danced the night away on the floating dance pavilion, The White Swan. It was a time of new beginnings when everything seemed possible.

The writing's on the wall for Harry Kvist. Once a notorious boxer, he now spends his days drinking, and his nights chasing debts amongst the pimps, prostitutes and petty thieves of 1930s Stockholm. When women can't satisfy him, men can. But one biting winter's night he pays a threatening visit to a debtor named Zetterberg, and when the man is found dead shortly afterwards, all eyes are on Kvist. Kvist's struggle to clear his name will lead him from the city's slums, gangster hideouts and gambling dens to its most opulent hotels and elite nightclubs.

In the frigid winter of 1891, with the nation still reeling from the Barings bank crisis, Inspector Philemon Raft returns from an involuntary sabbatical and is tasked with solving the kidnapping of highly placed peer Alice Dewberry. Thrust into a sordid underworld where the upper classes indulge in disreputable overseas investments designed to fatten their pocketbooks, Raft finds himself at loose ends without his companion, Constable Freddie Crook.

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.

Introvert Gina Mulley is determined to become a tattoo artist, and to find somewhere she belongs in her conventional Long Island town. But this is 1985, when tattooing is still a gritty, male-dominated fringe culture, and Gina’s whimsical style is far from the norm. Luck is on her side: Gina’s older brother Dominic owns a tattoo shop, and he reluctantly grants her one year to prove herself.

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.

The uneventful life of a jeweler from Tel Aviv changes abruptly in 2011 after Fareed, a handsome young man from Damascus, crosses illegally into Israel and makes his way to the ancient port city of Jaffa in search of his roots. In his pocket is a piece of a famous blue diamond known as "Sabakh". Intending to return the diamond to its rightful owner, Fareed is soon swept up in Tel Aviv's vibrant gay scene, and a turbulent protest movement. He falls in love with both an Israeli soldier and his boyfriend - the narrator of this book - and reveals the story of his family's past.

A conqueror's decree can't separate Aillil Callaghan from his Scottish heritage. He wears his clan's forbidden plaid with pride, awaiting the day he becomes Laird, restores his family's name, and fights to free Scotland from English tyranny. An Englishman in his home? Abomination!

Orlando: A Biography is a groundbreaking English novel by Virginia Woolf that explores English history, gender roles, and sexual politics in a way few books have before or since. Inspired by the life of Woolf's friend and lover Vita Sackville-West—herself an accomplished poet and novelist—the story follows the life of an aristocratic nobleman who changes from man to woman and goes on to live for centuries, meeting all of the most influential and powerful figures in English history.

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.

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.

Alinta, raised in a simple land far from the white man, is suddenly thrust into their realm through no fault of her own. Suddenly, she must learn to survive amongst these strange, unfamiliar creatures. But not all white men treat her the same: Some see her as the frightened girl she is, and some see her as the amazing woman she is about to become. Follow along as this primitive aboriginal child/woman attempts to survive in a new and rapidly changing world.

Ellen, the narrator of Boyd's previous novel, The Revolution of Little Girls, this time pierces the heart of the sexual revolution in her quest to find a woman hero or - by default - to become one. Ferociously paced, Terminal Velocity delineates six wonderfully engaging characters: Artemis Foote, for whom being rich, talented, and beautiful is a kind of game; Jordan, a messianic fugitive who becomes Ellen's lover; Amethyst Woman, a Marxist/Leninist dentist; Ross, a red-diaper baby and now a columnist for Ramparts; and Pearl, an art history professor turned hippie.

A great novel of the 1956 Hungarian uprising against the Soviets, Another Love is a classic of Eastern European literature. Lieutenant Marosi of the Hungarian border patrol has found the body of Eva Szalnczky, an old school friend whom he has secretly been in love with for years. Eva was a lesbian, an outspoken critic of the communist regime, and a journalist whose stories were too hot to publish in the dangerous 1950s. Determined to find out the truth about her death, Marosi requests leave and heads for Budapest.