Historical - 20th Century Genre

Word Count: Click here to reveal45128 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealGay (Click here to hide)

Summary: Welcome to the Mating Games on Ice! After discovering the nefarious actions of Councilman Troy, Ricky, Ian, and Joop, along with their mates and Councilman Eagan and his mate, are on a mission to stop Troy’s plans. To do that, they must attend The Winter Mating Games in Siberia. Darby Sellers has always wanted to find his mate. Unfortunately, the summer games did not pan out for him. Overhearing the conversation about going to the winter games, Darby decides to hitch a ride, dragging his best friend, Jayden Donovan, along. Councilman Camden Krill was just learning about the abominations Troy was creating to take over as ruler of their world. While waiting to meet with Eagan and his friends he receives a call from a man with the most musical voice Krill had ever heard. While making their way to the mating game grounds, Eagan's men had been attacked, some were taken hostage, and the rest were dispersed into the Siberian lands. Being the special shifter he was, Krill had little to fear. However, this night he feared a lot. He feared that those taken would be killed, or worse. He feared those left out in the freezing lands would perish. His biggest fear was that the little lady bug shifter with the lyrical voice would die before he ever got the chance to meet him in person and discover if fate had finally shined on him and brought him his true mate.

Word Count: Click here to reveal67429 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealGay (Click here to hide)

Summary: During the War to End All Wars, Roddy Sayer survived his trip down the Ruzizi with his beloved, Charlie Pearson. He survived the sinking of the Konigin Marie Christine he and Charlie engineered. But now it’s 1922, his beloved is dead after working on a dig in Egypt to unearth royal tombs, and Roddy is alone, with odd, erotic dreams of an Egyptian prince ensnared by the machinations of a high priest. Is he losing his mind? Thomas Fortescue-Smythe, who flirted with Roddy and made advances toward him before, finds him again. Tommy persuades Roddy to come to his family home in England, and eventually, to share his bed and his body. But when Roddy sees an Egyptian man and knows it is the same man who was the high priest in his dreams, can he keep himself and Tommy safe?

Word Count: Click here to reveal135000 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealGay (Click here to hide)

Summary: “Please donate generously to Mrs. Roosevelt’s charity. Every penny raised from this series of concerts along the eastern coast of the United States will help with the resettlement and care of child refugees from war-torn continental Europe.” Over dinner with J Edgar Hoover in Washington, Tommy Haupner is shocked to learn that his forgotten and empty Swiss bank account has been topped up regularly with staggering sums of money … deposits that originate in Nazi Germany. Could this bank account have something to do with anonymous letters posted to him at home in London, their contents a single blank slip of paper on which are written two words: NAZI GOLD? When he returns to Britain, he soon discovers that not only is his own life in danger but also those of his nearest and dearest who become pawns in a savage game of revenge.

Word Count: Click here to reveal25,421 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealGay (Click here to hide)

Summary: Patch Burke is the son of a miner. He lives with his mother in the forgotten coal community of St. Charles, Virginia. They are barely making ends meet, but they do what they can to survive. While they may lack material possessions, they find strength in their love for one another. Butch is an orphan who was left behind after his father died from Black Lung Disease. Feeling desperate and lonely, he contemplates leaving the place he once called home. Fortunately, hope arrives when he encounters Patch, a kind neighbor boy. What begins as a friendship soon blossoms into a beautiful love. Patch persuades his mother to welcome Butch into their home, creating a sense of family. However, when bad news threatens to tear them apart, they must unite to overcome the challenge and protect everything they hold dear. Join best-selling authors Daniel Elijah Sanderfer and C.C. Black in this poignant tale about overcoming hardship, having faith, and embracing chosen family amid life's struggles.

Word Count: Click here to reveal140000 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealGay (Click here to hide)

Summary: Two years after finishing his tour of duty in the Occupational Forces in Japan, Damson O'Reilly arrives in Siena, Italy. Sight-unseen at a local auction, he buys an abandoned Tuscan farmhouse in which he aims to write, paint, and start a new life. The house, passed over at auction, becomes an impulse buy when it's put up for a final time. He's prepared for a semi-ruin, happy to turn his hand to renovating the house - however, what he's totally unprepared for are three dead bodies, one of which he stumbles over when he arrives at La Mensola, the name of his isolated farmhouse on the road between Siena and Montepulciano. Against the backdrop of a series of grisly murders, The Road to Montepulciano is the story of a young man, still suffering the scars of war, who, despite betrayal of trust and surrounded by a complex web of lies, finds friendship, love and the warmth of community.

Word Count: Click here to reveal125000 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealGay (Click here to hide)

Summary: The action-packed sequel to the best-selling thriller, The Road to Montepulciano On the night of the ninth of June 1944, four days after the Allied liberation of Rome, four nuns are murdered in a railway carriage at the Vatican City railway station. Sixteen years later, returning to Tuscany after a gruelling book signing tour of Australia, Damson O’Reilly finds his partner, Giancarlo (no longer a detective but now a well-known and successful lawyer) engrossed in a slander case between Italy’s screen heartthrob, Mario Celestino, and a high-profile, fascist industrialist, Giovanni Scavola. The case uncovers buried secrets, secrets that bring to light the involvement of both men in the WW2 crime and which lead to kidnapping, torture and murder, culminating in a dramatic, bloody outcome that will rock the Italian nation to its core.

Word Count: Click here to reveal47500 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealGay (Click here to hide)

Summary: Michael O’Leary is devasted by the loss of his beloved Stiles Long. The thought of returning to their home in St. Louis is more than he can bare. Having received the news that, he has inherited a Manor in England, he decides to go there. Hoping that he can find a way to begin his life anew. What he finds are secrets. So many secrets, he can’t determine who is friend and who is foe. He is now Lord Whit. The owner of a vast amount of land, a village, named Whitcomb, employees on grounds, land tenants and villagers all look to him for guidance. Michael also finds family. His cousins George, who is nearly his double, and Evaline, whose personality changes with the wind. There’s also, Vicar Joseph Williams, a man who isn’t what he appears. A visit from his dear friend, Lizzie Ferguson, leaves him missing his old life even more. Just before the new year, he receives a haunting telegram from Lizzie, promising the new year was going to bright for him. Without Stiles, his life seems lost, then New Year’s Day 1912 arrives and…

Word Count: Click here to reveal128000 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealGay (Click here to hide)

Summary: As bombs rain down over London during the Blitz, Major Tommy Haupner negotiates the rubble-filled streets of Bloomsbury on his way to perform at a socialite party. The explosive event of the evening is not his virtuosic violin playing, but the 'almost-blond' American who not only insults him, but then steals his heart. The Seventh of December follows a few months in the lives of two Intelligence agents in the early part of World War Two. Set against the backdrop of war-torn occupied Europe, Tommy and his American lover, Henry Reiter, forge a committed relationship that is intertwined with intrigues that threaten the integrity of the British Royal Family and the stability of a Nation at war. Neither bombs nor bullets manage to break the bond that these men form in their struggle against Nazism and the powers of evil.

Word Count: Click here to reveal13069 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealGay (Click here to hide)

Summary: When Leo Wayland accepts a job as head of the new horror unit at Maiden Studios, he knows what is expected. Make cheap movies that earn their money back fast. It doesn't matter that he dislikes horror. He just needs to escape his assistant director's position at a rival studio. But he didn't expect to be assigned a terrible title and a leading man, all before he even had a script, or that his leading man would be Everett Reid, the actor who rejected a very young Leo’s advances, only to disappear from movies altogether a few years later in a cloud of scandal. Everett Reid will do anything for a chance to get back the career he lost and away from teaching at a theater camp for children. And if it means working with Leo Wayland again, he can do that too. Especially now that Leo is all grown up and not so untouchable. With only three weeks, a flamboyant stage actor, twelve scantily clad women, and a sound stage full of coffins may not seem like the makings of something great. But really, that all depends on what you are hoping for.

Word Count: Click here to reveal144000 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealGay (Click here to hide)

Summary: New York City, 1924 Once their paths cross, their worlds will never be the same. Danny Moore and his crew only meant to rob the hotel suites of rich guests. He wasn’t supposed to find himself in gangster Ricky il Sacchi’s room. And il Sacchi wasn’t supposed to wind up dead. Now Danny has the attention of another notorious gangster. Carmine Battaglia is intrigued by the Irish thieves who would have made off with a huge score if not for il Sacchi’s death. They’re cunning, careful, and exactly what he needs for his rum running operation. But Danny’s already lost two brothers to the violence between New York’s Irish and Sicilian gangs, and he’s not about to sell his soul to Carmine. With gangster’s blood on his hands, Danny needs protection, whether he likes it or not. And that’s to say nothing of the generous pay, which promises to pull him and his crew—not to mention their families—out of destitution. Working together brings Danny and Carmine to a détente, then to something so intense neither can ignore it. Something nearly enough to make them both forget the brutal tensions between their countrymen. But the death of Ricky il Sacchi hasn’t been forgotten. And someone is determined to make Danny bleed for it. The Venetian and the Rum Runner is a 144,000-word gay historical romantic suspense novel set during Prohibition and the Roaring Twenties. CW: graphic violence, PTSD

Word Count: Click here to reveal54000 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealGay (Click here to hide)

Summary: Silas Thornwood's worst nightmare has come to life. Darien's familiar Pip is gravely injured, and Darien and Jasper have been kidnapped. Someone ruthless and violent is holding the man Silas loves prisoner, for purposes he doesn't want to imagine. Silas needs help from his friends to locate and rescue Darien. And when he does, those responsible― whether sorcerer, human, or demon― are going to be truly, utterly sorry…

Word Count: Click here to reveal84000 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealBisexual, Gay (Click here to hide)

Summary: Sam and Ulysses have finally moved in together. Unfortunately, the new apartment is not quite the safe haven they'd hoped for--their neighbors have a ghost problem, and the building has a spider infestation. To make matters more complicated, Ulysses's brother Laz is back from Vietnam, and he's not happy about Sam's presence in Ulysses's life. Laz's anger isn't their only challenge. When their magical bond starts acting up, Ulysses's increasing discomfort and attempts to fix it drive a wedge between him and Sam just when it becomes apparent that the spiders are no accident and a shadowy cult may mean them harm. Maybe they're not done with Sam's grandfather, Julius Sterling, after all.

Word Count: Click here to reveal85000 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealGay (Click here to hide)

Summary: A steamy, queer retelling of The Postman Always Rings Twice After a beef with the mob, Sal Minovich has to get out of New York City pronto. He gets as far as Beacon, New York, otherwise known as Nowheresville, and talks his way into a situation working as a handyman at a fading motor lodge. It’s not a bad place to hide out for a while and sock away some cash until he figures out his next step. Then Sal meets the young manager, Will, and things get a whole lot more interesting. Pushed out by his homophobic father, Will hooked up with a small-time real estate investor, and now, six years later, he’s trapped in an unhappy relationship that might also be abusive. Sal thinks he and Will should run away together and leave their pasts behind. But Will won’t leave without a payout for all the time he’s put in. Do they have to get George out of the way to have their happily-ever-after?

Word Count: Click here to reveal13700 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealGay, Lesbian, Straight, Transgender (Click here to hide)

Summary: Seven queer stories about our favourite literary figures. Lord Byron encounters a gorgeous ghost in Verona. An author seeks to share her truths. Feste discusses love and revenge. Oscar Wilde discovers more than he expected in a deep Colorado mine. La Belle Dame sans Merci shares her perspective. An engineer is astonished to find a lost manuscript in an old cellar. While Virginia Woolf contemplates peace during another world war…

Word Count: Click here to reveal104842 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealBisexual, Lesbian (Click here to hide)

Summary: A linguistic genius, Portia Sebring is recruited to decipher Russian codes for the Venona Project. While at Arlington Hall, she meets Nigel Mann, a CIA officer known as Mr. Freeze. Portia’s father is behind the meeting. Rumor has it she’s a lesbian, and in the late ’50s, her sexuality could negate any veracity to the codes she deciphers. A match with an equally cold man who won’t distract her from her work seems the ideal solution. But Portia and Nigel develop strong feelings for each other and marry to start a family. However, the lifetime together they anticipate is cut short when Nigel’s jet crashes. Devastated, but with a young son depending on her, Portia has no choice but to go on after Nigel’s death. Her son Quinton joins the US Equestrian Team for the 1980 Summer Olympics, but doesn’t compete due to the government’s boycott of the Games. To distract him, Portia takes him to France, and it’s there that Quinton first feels an attraction for someone of his own sex. Since Portia herself had a same-sex affair in her early twenties, she’s very accepting of this. Along with her trusted bodyguard Gregor, she watches as Quinton finds a career in the intelligence community, following in her footsteps, and also finds a partner worthy of his love. She’s happy for her son, but sure that she won’t love again, since Sebrings have their “one” and she's lost hers. But is she right?

Word Count: Click here to reveal91,916 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealBisexual, Gay (Click here to hide)

Summary: Johnny Smith's luck has been bad from the moment the Stock Market crashed and he'd been forced to leave an exclusive boarding school, and he sees no reason to believe it will ever change. But then he meets Church Chetwood, a dashing, devil-may-care director of motion pictures, and his life is turned topsy-turvy when Chetwood takes him along on what the man promises will be the adventure of a lifetime. Johnny doesn't care, as long as he's with his Mr. Chetwood. The year before, Church had hired Captain Johansen to take him to the mysterious island of Iwi Po'o on the tramp steamer August Moon. There he'd found and captured a sabretooth tiger and brought the animal back to the States. "Chetwood's Kitty," so dubbed by the press, is the reason he has to leave New York so precipitously -- people had died and the law is after him. The only bright spot is the kid he'd come across in a saloon. Church thinks he's had the best idea of his life when he decides to take Johnny along with him to the South Seas. He and Captain Johansen plan to make a living transporting goods from one island to another, and they have every intention of avoiding Iwi Po'o. But a treacherous stowaway has plans to take the August Moon for himself, and convinces the men to mutiny. Johnny, Church, the skipper, the ship's cook, and the wireless operator, accompanied by the little girl Johnny had rescued from prostitution, find themselves in a lifeboat, with Iwi Po'o the only spot of land. The last time Church was on this island, twelve men lost their lives to what lived there. Will Johnny, Church, and their friends somehow manage to make it our alive this time?

Word Count: Click here to reveal73994 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealDemisexual, Gay (Click here to hide)

Summary: Who do you trust when no one is who they seem? Germany 1944 Fleeing German physicist Dr Kristopher Lehrer and his lover, Resistance fighter Michel, are caught up in an Allied bombing campaign.  Separated from Michel after discovering an injured RAF pilot in the Black Forest, and pursued by the SS for the information he carries, Kristopher is frantic to reunite, unaware that Michel has been recruited by the Allies for a rescue mission. Time is running out. The Gestapo is closing in. How can they decide who to trust, when the dagger pointed at Kristopher’s back could be wielded by a friend? Author’s note: This is the third edition of Winter Duet. The first and second editions were released by another publishing house.  This story has been re-edited, and uses UK spelling to reflect its setting.

Word Count: Click here to reveal127000 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealGay (Click here to hide)

Summary: “There’s no deal unless you tell me who killed Lucretia, Thomas! For the love of God, I have to know—” “She was shot by an assassin.” “But who was this assassin? Who shot her?” he demanded again angrily, leaning forward over the table. “I did,” I said, after a suitably dramatic pause. He threw his head back and laughed loudly, his arms crossed on his chest. “You?” he said once he’d regained his breath. “You? Thomas Haupner, the violinist? The would-be army officer from some stupid, derelict relic of the British Empire, a trained assassin?” After returning from a secret mission in occupied France for His Royal Highness, George, the Duke of Kent, Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Haupner is looking forward to a cup of tea, a hot bath, and the sleepy head of his American lover, Major Henry Reiter on his shoulder when he wakes up the next morning. However, along with items Tommy has recovered for the duke, he has also discovered a secret stash of documents, which, when opened, prove to be a poisoned chalice. Tommy and Shorty find themselves caught up in a dangerous web of lies, enemy agents, assassins, and traitors. In an effort to save the reputations of not only their friends, but men and women high in both society and in the government, they themselves become victims of I.K.S., a former World War One international extortion ring, which has risen, phoenix-like, from the ashes of bomb-devastated London.