Loyalty, Love, & Vermouth
After a bitter and humiliating breakup,
For the next thirty-six hours,
“Eric Peterson’s debut novel is a heartwarming and charming tale of love,
After a bitter and humiliating breakup,
For the next thirty-six hours,
“Eric Peterson’s debut novel is a heartwarming and charming tale of love,
By Kadyan
A family saga of three women, their homestead called Willowra in the Australian outback, and the secrets that link them all.
Gabrielle fled Willowra for Sydney and the freedom to live as an out lesbian, leaving behind all those she loved, especially her cherished grandmother, Victoria. Years later, Gabrielle and her partner, Tess, return to Willowra when Victoria instigates a family gathering to reveal the long-kept secret surrounding her parents, Jason and Maggie, and her own tumultuous past.
As stories and secrets are uncovered, the threads of the past weave together the lives of Jason, Victoria, and Gabrielle and illuminate a new path forward for those who share the legacy of Willowra.
What does it mean to be a gay man in America today? This diverse collection of stories chronicling the challenges of gay life at various ages shines a light on the progress made and the progress still to come as family expectations, cultural norms, and religious practices continue to influence gay self-perceptions and out and proud identities in America. With openly gay celebrities, homoerotic images, and LGBTQ+ popular media, being gay is becoming increasingly mainstream. Are gay men still different?
By Frederick Smith and Others
Elijah Golden and Justin Monroe are uncle and nephew with eclectic careers, friends, and family in LA, trying to center Black Joy in their lives.Then their worlds turn in ways nobody expects.
Elijah, a dedicated thespian, auditions by day, does theater by night, and works two jobs on weekends. With enough life for three people, he keeps his recently divorced partner Zaire coasting on bliss…until secrets and real-life dramas test their love.
Justin, Elijah’s uncle, is a single father with teenage twins, and a tv journalist who’s been replaced at the anchor desk when new management arrives. No longer in the public eye, living true to his sexuality is something Justin can finally do. Dating and romance—Justin’s ready for fun. Conflicts with fatherhood and career—he’ll have none.
Elijah and Justin seek happily-ever-afters, but are they too busy to notice <i>happy</i> when it’s there?
By Victoria Villasenor and Others
Comprising both the renowned and emerging voices of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color authors, this thoughtfully curated collection of short stories explores the intersection of racial and queer identity.
Handsome, intelligent, street-smart, ruthlessly ambitious, and omnisexual, young Addison Grimmins has been hired by the Lord Exchequer of England to be his second and to do what Lord R. cannot do himself. After a country estate wedding, the Marchioness of R. is discovered missing. Is it a kidnapping or…a more sinister plot? Addison vows to find her and bring her back no matter what it takes. It is the 1880s and despite only letters, bribed information, and telegrams as communication; despite only horse, coach, and train service as transportation, Addison tracks Lady R. across Europe, via the strangest people and places: from Venetian palaces to opium dens. Who and what he discovers about her, and more fatefully about his own life, will lead Addison to the crisis of his life, an extraordinary decision, and a stiletto duel with his most implacable foe.
When Franklin—Fin—Ness makes up his mind it tends to stay made. Running, med school, and caring for his healing mother are things Fin never second-guesses. More stubborn than his mind, his heart picked Orion a long time ago. Seeing Orion again proves his heart is still invested, but his temper and fears about their past repeating have Fin wondering if following his heart is worth losing his mind.
Musician and drifter Orion Starr expects ghosts at his mother’s funeral in his rural Georgia town. He never expects one to be his former crush, Fin. Especially since he ghosted the guy in college. The surprises keep coming as Orion waits to spread his mother’s ashes. He runs into friends, an old bully, and the cops, but the redheaded Fin threatens to make Orion do something he hasn’t done in years—look forward to the future.
By R Kent
When your life falls apart, couldn’t you just be someone else? Especially if that someone else was you all along anyway?
Seventeen-year-old Chrissy Taylor is orphaned to a stepmama who squandered their sizable inheritance on drinking and drugging. Now, with their ranch lost, they squat in a run-down, rented trailer on the outskirts of small-town-podunkville where Chrissy cares for her nine-year-old half sister, Luce. But landing on the wrong side of the tracks puts them on the radar of the local sheriff and social services.
There’s one saving grace to losing everything and moving away. Nobody knows her. Chris can now live who he truly is.
As Chris Taylor, he knows he’ll have to cowboy up to make enough money to keep his stepmama out of jail and his half sister out of foster care. There’s only one way a kid growing up in the shadow of a world champion bull rider can earn that kind of cash. But Chris never expected to chase a championship title of his own, even with a lifetime of training on bulls.
By Jane Kolven
Remy, the heir to the throne of the tiny nation of Montamant, is finally free of their royal chains as they start graduate school in Boston. No one here knows Remy is royalty or intersex. It’s the break Remy has been looking for—until they meet Sam, the sassy lesbian across the hall. Sam doesn’t tolerate Remy’s snobbery and won’t let anything distract her from getting a PhD in gender studies. But Sam understands Remy in ways no one else ever has, and Remy pushes Sam to see beyond her books.
As things are starting to heat up between them, Remy is summoned home. The queen has a cold and can’t perform her royal duties. There’s just one problem: the people of Montamant haven’t seen Remy since puberty and the changes might mean Remy’s not the princess they expect. When Remy asks Sam to come with them, it might be the chance they both need to conquer their fears and find true love.
Content advisory: This book contains instances of misgendering and references to medical procedures.
By Paul Willis and Others
An anthology of short fiction featuring the finalist selections from the 2021 Saints+Sinners Literary Festival.
By Lee Patton
For 21-year-old gay virgin Gabe Rafferty, the first decade of adulthood is unpredictable and intense.
Flat broke upon college graduation, Gabe navigates the passage from menial work to globetrotting corporate drudge, then strives for a real chance at professional fulfillment. His journey exploring his sexuality—from inhibited innocence, to first-love crises, to random hookups—doesn’t seem to lead to the more sensual, committed relationships he wants. Then he meets Marty, an African American art student, and Gabe must face his white working-class background and racist father for a chance at true love.
Throughout, he traverses the joys and hazards of loving a headstrong cast of friends, including a lesbian couple, and Candy, a straight female friend whose life intersects with Gabe’s in unexpected ways.
For Gabe, what happens after coming of age and coming out is a scramble to survive first journeys into sex, love, and livelihood.
By MJ Williamz
DJ Sander is transitioning, as a civilian, as a cop, and from female to male. A fresh-faced rookie, he’s excited to be working in New Orleans’s French Quarter, until he discovers his brothers in blue don’t follow the rules. In fact, they break them.
Ashleigh Jorgenson’s father is DJ’s partner. Raised in a cop family, Ashleigh knows right from wrong, but the more involved she becomes with DJ, the more she starts to question everything. Bobby “Stringbean” Aiello has been a friend of the family for as long as she can remember, and despite her deepening feelings for DJ, she knows there’s no way he’s right about Bobby.
DJ suspects Bobby is guilty of a major crime and it’s up him to prove it, even when threats and attacks on his life make it mission impossible. He’s determined to get to the bottom of things and keep Ashleigh from getting hurt, but who is the real enemy? The bad guys? Or the supposed good ones?
By Lyn Hemphill
Rose Pereira is drifting through life when she’s first introduced to Stare at the Sun, an up-and-coming indie band led by the puppy-eyed Harley. The energetic group pulls her in, and she finds herself living for the first time in ages. Especially when she meets a friend of the band, Max, a trans guy.
With his bizarre sense of humor, his gorgeous arms, and the way he talks about music, Max is a danger to her don’t-care attitude. He’s her best friend, in her corner no matter what, he makes her laugh, and he gets her.
Even when she screws everything up, Max is on her side. Pregnant with Harley’s baby, she absolutely can’t be in love with Max.
Rose is not in love. Because if you don’t fall in love, then you can’t get broken.
Owen is only confident in two places: at work, supporting clients through IT woes, and when he’s sitting around a gaming table in the role of a smooth and charming bard. He’s never acted on the crush he’s had on his physiotherapist—and total cubcake—Toma. Even though Owen’s no longer Toma’s patient, and his crush hasn’t dialed down in the slightest, Owen can’t figure out how to make a move.
When a friend decides to play a prank involving Owen’s contact list, Owen spends the morning of April Fools’ day inadvertently texting smooth and charming thoughts about Toma... to Toma himself.
By the time Owen discovers the prank, things are completely out of control. Discussions of thighs and awards for the World’s Best Chest have been handed out—not to mention they’ve set an accidental coffee date—and there’s no taking that sort of thing back. When this joke finally gets told, Owen’s convinced he’ll be the punchline, but with a little luck and some nudging from his friends, the last laugh might be the best of his life.
It’s 1937, and Heath Barrington is a naïve twenty-two-year-old about to set sail across the Atlantic on theQueen Mary. While on board, he meets the handsome Lord Simon Quimby, who invites Heath to his estate. Heath falls for Simon hard, but Simon soon becomes withdrawn and distant. Is Simon all he appears to be, or is there more to him than meets the eye? And what of the old gypsy curse Simon claims his family is under? Did it really cause his mother’s death, his sister’s suicide, and his father’s murder, or did Simon have something to do with it all? It’s up to Heath to uncover the truth, despite his heart telling him otherwise.
In this prequel to the Detective Heath Barrington Mystery series, Heath discovers that first love changes you forever and drives you to become the person you’re destined to be.
As a baron’s youngest son, Hector Somerville has no real prospects. He will not inherit, and he’s overshadowed by two perfect brothers. While searching for ways to improve his situation, Hector finds respite in an invitation to a country estate—and has a second chance at rekindling his illicit affair with Viscount Wentworth, captain of HBMS Dragon. The upcoming fortnight could be everything Hector dreamed of since their disastrous parting.
Wentworth has forsaken love, and yet, memories of guilt and heartache resurface. He loved a boyhood friend once, Hector’s older brother William, until the man left him, trampling his heart in the process. Years later, he wonders if he ever fell out of love. Is his heart bound by William, or can he create a life with Hector?
By Jane Kolven
Sometimes it takes everything going wrong to make you see how right things are.
Dana Gottfried is a stressed-out Jewish lesbian who’s just quit her job and wants to get home to see her grandmother. When her car breaks down in Indiana on Christmas Eve, Dana is stranded—until she’s rescued by Charlie, a pig farmer who doesn’t identify as male or female. Although they come from different worlds, Dana is intrigued by Charlie’s sense of humor and kindness. Despite her better judgment, Dana says yes when Charlie offers a ride.
But the journey home is paved with detours. From car accidents to scheming ex-girlfriends to a snowy and deserted Chicago Loop, everything that could go wrong on their road trip does, but it leads Dana on a path of self-discovery that just might end in love.
Content advisory: This book contains instances of misgendering.
By St John Karp
Andre met his best friend Amy on a night like tonight. The way Amy tells it she had to stop him from climbing over the bar at Aunty Bob’s to punch the bartender, though if you ask Andre he’ll say, “What? That never happened. I don’t even know what you’re saying to me right now.”
Now Amy is worryingly missing in action, and Andre goes to Aunty Bob’s on a quest to find her. No sooner does he walk in with his depressingly heterosexual date than his best hat is spirited away by a lesbian in the throes of breaking up with her girlfriend. She in turn has it stolen from her when she starts a fight with two twinks at the bar. The hat makes its way around Aunty Bob’s from one head to another, giving glimpses into the dozens of stories playing out at the same time, unaware of each other but colliding in catastrophic ways. Can Andre find Amy before this party devolves into a nightmare of broken hearts, malevolent drag queens, and spontaneous human combustion? Or has it always happened this way, every night, at Aunty Bob’s Quake City Club?