TWO LEFT FEET, gay Premier League football...soccer in the US...version of the trendy gay romance series we all love

TWO LEFT FEET
KALLIE EMBLIDGE
Dell Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A Premier League football star must defend his roster spot—and his heart—when a threateningly talented and handsome midfielder joins his team in this utterly charming debut romance, a profound love letter to the world’s most popular sport.

Oliver Harris is football royalty in London. Ordinarily the star of the Camden Roses is calm, cool, and collected, keeping his club relevant with his prowess in the midfield and mighty left foot. But this season, the threats There’s Camden’s management to contend with—complete with a new, prickly Dutch coach, eager for better results—and a mid-season injury, which sidelines him when his team needs him most. When a recruit is called up to fill in, Oliver fears he’ll be replaced. If he can mentor this younger talent, then they might just have a chance at winning, together.

After a string of lackluster performances in his native Spain, Leonardo Davis-Villanueva is looking for one last shot at the club he always dreamed of, where he once played in the youth academy. Oliver immediately finds confident, eager Leo irritating. He can barely go through the motions, let alone coach him, without outright hostility. When he comes to admire Leo’s skill and warms to his humor and energy, though, he begins to see Leo as a friend—and then, to his mounting horror, as something more.

Leo craves Oliver’s attention and partnership; Oliver can’t afford to fall in love with his teammate. He’s always kept a tight lid on his sexuality in a league that’s never had a player come out. As the season heats up, a lot more than football hangs in the balance. Can Oliver—and Leo—win when it counts most?

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My Review: Oliver, our MC, is a shitty guy: self-obsessed, entirely focused on what's happened *to* him in his life; he's basically a straight man. Except he really wants sex with other guys. Like lots of straight victimvictimvictim men I've known, he thinks he ought to be able to do what he wants to who he wants and be left alone about it. There I agree with him, within consensual boundaries. He's got thhe social awareness to stay on the DL in the Premier League. It's as homophobic a culture as the NHL of Heated Rivalry (in)fame.

So meeting Leo, a hottie with skills equal to his own before his playing career temporarily ended in injury, and slowly, reluctantly falling in love with him follows the grumpy/sunshine, enemies-to-lovers trope nexus. Leo is boundlessly enthusiastic, willing to get in the big fat middle of anything because he's sure it will come out right. As Oliver moves from injured mentor to teammate and partner in an amazing player collaboration with Leo, he realizes he's never been so happy, the team's come out of their scoring slump, and if this beautiful amazing man will have him he wants to be the partner he deserves.

All at once we're in the press-conference-having, coming-out-to-mom part of the story. After the first third-plus of having to put up with his B.S. of pity-poor-me he's healed by Luuuv. Then...finis.

This is a debut novel or I'd have the marshmallow fork out and the logs a-flamin'. I'm going with three stars for what feels like the usual rookie error of not giving the reader intimacy building between the men...even the sex scenes were, well, infrequent and lacking urgency...and an extra half-star for realizing there's a gap in the market that can be filled with a bit of effort. I'd like to see this further honed, fined down into a dart to pierce my wall of ignorance about football; the author doesn't demonstrate a lot of knowledge I can't glean from Wikipedia. I'd call it a competent job of work that could, if seriously expanded on, become a series I'd read.

At the very least it would need to give me more connection and interconnection between the guys, even if it does slow-burn as slowly as this story does; less inner-gaze tediousness..nothing gets resolved until everything gets resolved all at once!...and more of the men exploring their borning connection.

Not for football addicts.

DEAR BI MEN: A Black Man's Perspective on Power, Consent, Breaking Down Binaries, and Combating Erasure

DEAR BI MEN: A Black Man's Perspective on Power, Consent, Breaking Down Binaries, and Combating Erasure
J.R. YUSSUF
North Atlantic Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: An unapologetic guide for readers who are Black, masc, and bi—unlearning biphobia, coming out, combatting erasure, and embodying your whole self

Through cutting social analysis, personal stories, and need-to-know advice, Dear Bi Men reclaims bi+ visibility in a culture of erasure—and unapologetically centers Blackness in a practical and deeply researched guide to navigating life, work, and relationships as a Black bi+ man.

Popular representation of bi and pansexual men is growing, but we’re not there It’s mostly white. It collapses bisexual identity into tired, hypersexualized tropes. And it fails to interrogate the deeply entrenched stereotypes that You’re confused. You just don’t know you’re gay. You’re greedy. You must be great in bed.

Author, peer counselor, and creator of #bisexualmenspeak J.R. Yussuf pushes back against these stigmas and misconceptions, exploring how white supremacy reinforces biphobia and dictates what society thinks it means to “be a man.” He contextualizes discourse around queerness and bisexuality within a larger framework that honors readers’ intersecting identities. And he offers deeply practical advice, sharing how to:

Unlearn internalized biphobia and homophobia

Navigate an increasingly hostile digital landscape

Think about coming out: who to tell, why to tell them, and how to do it

Fight back against erasure and stigma

Navigate sex, dating, partnerships, marriage, friendship, and work

Understand your bi+ sexuality through a political lens

Process Black bi+ representation

Rich with personal narratives, insightful analysis, and practical advice, this book is a powerful resource for Black bi+ men to reclaim their identity, counter biphobia, and get empowered—and an offering to all readers looking to fight back against the erasure and dehumanization wrought by patriarchy.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Remember the giant internet kerfuffle that ended up in Kit Connor, of Heartstopper fame, being forced to come out as bi, or be outed? He was really young at the time, but he also stood on a giant mountain of white privilege.

Now imagine all that intrusive noisy chatter, all that nasty probing questioning of your sincerity, your motives, your sense of yourself suddenly, unpleasantly open for free debate...while in the hole that anti-Black racism carries in its shot pouch. Add in a hefty amount of religious, cultural, gendered homophobia.

Man needs help. Here it is.

A lot of what Author Yussuf says is applicable to other bi men in the process of figuring out what to say, to do, to present to the world; but the added levels of Black support, uniquely insightful areas of discourse tied in with the author's long experience among Black bisexual men from an insider's PoV, and this resource is definitely uniquely valuable to those men. It does not, as a result, exclude other men.

There is no room for any of the -phobias in Author Yussuf's book. A thing I see A LOT in queer spaces is more, or less, polite transphobia directed at transmasc men. It gets the same treatment in here as other Othered identities: "you're good, come in and let's talk, what's eatin' away at you?" Author Yussuf genuinely presents all maleness with guidance on inner and outer self-presentation. Because in the end that's also self-preservation. A strong core belief in one's worth and identity as good and capable of offering and receiving good, healthy interactions predicts success in life lived inside heteronormative society.

It's hard for me not to say this is a great gift for every male, regardless of sexual identity. I can't tell you what to do about your giftees, but for any but the most removed from self-reflective spheres of influence, this is no bad idea for Yule.

Vale Richard Stevenson, 1938-2022: KNOCK OFF THE HAT

KNOCK OFF THE HAT
RICHARD STEVENSON
Bywater Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$18.95 paperback, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A dishonorably discharged World War II vet takes a job as a private investigator and begins looking into a sudden and extraordinary wave of gay-bashing in Philadelphia.

It's steaming August in post-war Philadelphia. Clifford Waterman, dishonorably discharged from the Army for "an indecent act with a native" in Cairo, can't go back to his job as a police detective and is struggling to make a go of it as a private investigator. He's soon hired to help a young man caught in a gay bar raid who can't afford the $500 bribe a corrupt judge demands to make a "morals charge" go away.

In the blink of an eye, an entire gay neighborhood is suddenly under siege, and Waterman has to find out why the cops, courts, and the city powers that be have unleashed a wave of brutal gay-bashing—astonishing even for that time and place.

Kept moving by Jim Beam, bluesy jazz, and a stubborn sense of outsider's pride, Waterman makes his way through Philadelphia's social, political, and financial swamp to rescue a few unlucky souls and inflict at least a bit of damage to the rotten system that would lead to the Stonewall rebellion in New York City 22 years later.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Vale Richard Stevenson, 1938-2022. This story was to launch a new series of historical mysteries that will not now see their fruition. As a standalone, this is not the most satisfying read for us who read our mysteries to see ma'at served, order restored, evil accounted for.

Why then bother to read it? Because this past could easily become our collective future.

Its thrust is the (I had hoped) well-established truth that gayness is only made problematic by the systems designed to make it so; those are always systems of greed, exclusion, and therefore profit.

Waterman is a decently well-delineated character whose embrace of Otherness resonates with me. I get entirely his desire to stand up and say, "Enough is enough," in the face of those who want only one thing: More. He says "enough" in the face of the yawning voids that scream for, demand, extort, and ruin in search of More.

I hope the pathology of organizing your life in pursuit of More is obvious. I hope the courage to say "enough" exists in greater quantity than the laziness or apathy to let the loudest, the nastiest, the least likely to forgive have their way unopposed.

Because there is no end to, no satisfaction in, no glut capable of ending the search for, More.

A MURDEROUS BUSINESS, first Harriman & Mancini lesbian-led historical mystery

A MURDEROUS BUSINESS (Harriman & Mancini #1)
CATHY PEGAU
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Cathy Pegau's sharp, captivating historical mystery about two women in turn-of-the-century New York solving murder and fighting the heteropatriarchy.

There can be a blurry line between what is ethical and what is legal.

Margot Baxter Harriman took the reins of B&H Foods after her father passed. It’s not easy being a business woman in 1912, but she is determined to continue what her grandparents started decades ago, no matter what it takes.

When Margot finds Mrs. Gilroy, her father’s former assistant, dead in the office with a half-finished note confessing to nebulous misdeeds, she seeks out help from a very discreet, private investigator to figure out what's going on. Her company, and her good name, depends on determining the truth, otherwise she could lose everything, including her freedom.

Loretta “Rett” Mancini has run her father’s investigation operation since he started becoming increasingly forgetful. When Margot offers her the chance to look into the potential scandal with B&H, she jumps at the chance.

But the more the two dig, the more it becomes clear that Margot's company may be too far lost...and her life is at stake.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Superior iteration of a sleuthing odd couple, platonic edition. The lesbian protagonists are each trying to prove themselves by solving this crime. Rett Mancini's life partner, a nurse called Ceecee, is not terribly filled out as a character, but she isn't backgrounded...her existence is a source of stress between Rett and her private-dick dad. Her mother's not fussed, interestingly, by having an "abnormal" daughter.

Margot inherits her father's food-canning business, and bashes her nose into the harsh reality that she lives in a gilded cage. The canning business is in crisis due to an adulteration scandal. In 1912, that was huge news: next to the Titanic's recent sinking, the still-new Food and Drug Administration (FDA as we know it today) was still rooting out abusive and dangerous practices in the US food chain because of the rampant fraud that led to its founding. Discovering her father's retired right-hand woman dead, inside the office she so recently left, with an unfinished note to Margot that lacks specificity but hints at skulduggery, Margot hires Rett at the moment Papa Mancini chucks her out of the family detective agency for being unnatural.

Margot needs the business to stay open, for practical and ego reasons. Rett needs the spondulix from Margot to live, and wants badly to show her homophobic father he's wrong about her ability to do the work despite being abnormal. Rett summons a common stage entertainer, magicianesque Shiloh, to assist with the details of solving Margot's case. There blooms a lovely fondness between those ladies, as wealthy, sheltered Margot begins her journey out of closet and cage...within limits, I'll wager, that will present problems as Margot is already trying to run the canning business and date a common entertainer on the sly. What could add more spice to a love than that?

Which leads me to explain my rating. This is a good, cozy mystery, set in a time of upheaval and possibility. Some of the very best US institutions were created; some people were freer than ever before; and some were not. My tribe, the queers, were decidedly not included among the social-loosening winners for very long. The excitement of ever-improving quality of life inventions and products was heady. A hefty dose of that comes through in the alternating narration of chapters between Margot and Rett. Unlike most series-starting novels, Author Pegau resists making the central sleuthing duo a couple...thank all those useless gods for that! It felt liberating, and lifted my opinion of a well-written, interestingly placed, but not really surprising story up a notch. Had the main duo been made a romantic couple I'd've rated it a 3.5 and relegated it to a short review to be forgotten.

It took vision for Author Pegau to see how much more good, positive story-developmental material there was in making the couples in her lesbian-demimonde asymmetric in almost every way, but still show how true and heartfelt their interconnectedness is.

Kudos, Author Pegau, and when's the next one coming? Put me on the list, please.

MIDDLE SPOON, enjoyable novel of throuplehood's pains and problems

MIDDLE SPOON
ALEJANDRO VARELA
Viking Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

One of Electric Literature’s Best Novels of 2025!

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A whipsmart, blazingly funny novel about heartbreak, unconventional love, and the way society could be, from National Book Award finalist Alejandro Varela

The narrator of Middle Spoon appears to be living the dream: He has a doting husband, two precocious children, all the comforts of a quiet bourgeois life—and a sexy younger boyfriend to accompany him to farmers markets and cocktail parties. But when his boyfriend abruptly dumps him, he spirals into heartbreak for the first time and must confront a world still struggling to understand polyamorous relationships. Faced with the judgment of friends and the sting of rejection, he’s left to wonder if sharing a life with both his family and his lover could ever truly be possible.

With a big heart and just the right dose of the anxieties that define the modern era, Middle Spoon skewers the unspoken rules we still live by—from taboos around intimacy to the shortcomings of Oscar season, pop culture, and gluten-free food—offering a surprising perspective on love, loss, and reinvention. Equal parts heart-wrenching and uproariously funny, Middle Spoon is for anyone who has longed, nursed a broken heart, or grappled with love at its messiest.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: You know that break-up letter you never sent? The one you found a while later when you were calmer? You remember how that felt, reading the minute-by-minute lavage of your just-lanced boil of hurt and anger?

Now it's a récit! A really long one, but that's what it is. Everything, not just the narration but every thought, feeling, event, opinion, is entirely the (unnamed, how much more evidence of it being a récit can one have?) narrator's. This is not entirely a good, or a bad, thing. It's fun when the narrator is processing why the departed party of the third part in the dissolved throuple, Ben, would just...dump him. (I have thoughts on this.) It's fun when he processes his rage at and hatred for the same groups I hate and rage over. Gluten-free food IS a satanic scheme to immiserate the planet further.

It is also, as a result of being so much up the narrator's tailpipe, a longer read than one would first think. I took a week to finish it. The intense angst, the ongoing anxiety issues...all are real, honest, told to us with sensitive thought before presenting them; and I want to shake this self-absorbed yutz until his eyes roll in opposite directions for being clueless and insensitive.

Well done, Author Varela! He evokes a very powerful reaction. Like The Town of Babylon, I had to reach into my reactions to fully experience the events portrayed...no surface-skating will do. Effort put in generates pleasure offered up, though. Ben never responds to these emails, written at the behest of the narrator's therapist but never sent; yet his text suggests he's either spoken to Ben or to his therapist to think through what Ben's reasons might be. I get it. It's the narrator's head, it's not meant to be in shared space. It's a récit!

But it's also the narrator. He is very much the guy you know who really doesn't realize how self-absorbed he is. He writes scathing letters to the Oscars showrunners because of things he doesn't like. Okay, he doesn't send them but—dude! I'm aware it's perceived as a man thing to be self-absorbed, but it's really a cultural universal far as I can see; still, what was Ben thinking? (We never find out.)

What else happens as a result of spending over 300pp in the narrator's head is that it feels like a hundred pages shoulda been condensed out of the count. It's a lot. It's fun, and the ending worked for my grinchly heart, but this is a time when a bit less would've said more.

A story I liked, a narrator I didn't much, and an ending I enjoyed. I call it another win for Author Varela.

THE TRUE TRUE STORY OF RAJA THE GULLIBLE (and His Mother), as usual a solid, fun, enjoyable Rabih Alameddine read

THE TRUE TRUE STORY OF RAJA THE GULLIBLE (and His Mother)
RABIH ALAMEDDINE
Grove Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$28.00 all editions, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers: Fiction For the week ending March 1, 2026

Time's The 100 Must-Read Books of 2025 selection

WINNER of the 2025 National Book Award for Fiction!

The Publisher Says: From National Book Award finalist and winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction comes a tragicomic love story set in Lebanon, a modern saga of family, memory, and the unbreakable attachment of a son and his mother

In a tiny Beirut apartment, sixty-three-year-old Raja and his mother live side by side. A beloved high school philosophy teacher and “the neighborhood homosexual,” Raja relishes books, meditative walks, order, and solitude. Zalfa, his octogenarian mother, views her son’s desire for privacy as a personal affront. She demands to know every detail of Raja’s work life and love life, boundaries be damned.

When Raja receives an invite to an all-expenses-paid writing residency in America, the timing couldn’t be better. It arrives on the heels of a series of personal and national disasters that have left Raja longing for peace and quiet away from his mother and the heartache of Lebanon. But what at first seems a stroke of good fortune soon leads Raja to recount and relive the very disasters and past betrayals he wishes to forget.

Told in Raja’s irresistible and wickedly funny voice, the novel dances across six decades to tell the unforgettable story of a singular life and its absurdities—a tale of mistakes, self-discovery, trauma, and maybe even forgiveness. Above all, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) is a wildly unique and sparkling celebration of love.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: One thing the gay youngest child learns early and often: "tag, you're it!" never ends. End-of-life care for difficult parent? "Tag, you're it!" It comes to us all.

And don't our siblings just love it. Our parents, well, it's complicated...and it never really uncomplicates. Raja grows up gay in a country whose religious majority strongly discourage public gayness. That right there's a novel's worth of coming of age, coning out, coming to terms with the world as it is. And what do you know! That IS most of the novel...just not in real time. Raja and Zalfa (his mom) interact as a function of their shared history. (Note to closeted boys: your mother knows. Your dad's more iffy, but your mother knows.) Their zingers and barbs all relate to the devastation of Lebanon, the loss of functioning civil society, and the endlessness of sneaking and hiding that gay lads insist is necessary when it mostly isn't. At home, anyway.

Since Zalfa is such a force of nature and since he's made responsible for her care in his tiny home, Raja thinks running away from that home sounds wonderful. (Never mind it's his own home.) As a novelist manqué, he never expected to get an offer from a writing program for a residency, still less one that will take him to the US...pretty damn far from Beirut. Bliss!

You clever readers! You already know that dodge absolutely never works. What happens in the US is best described as "madcap." If one were to write a gay version of Topper, with a seriously bossy mother in place of wife, and make the ghosts more numerous, it would be this story. (Side note to the Hollywood story editors who haunt my blog (snort): Buy this book! I have some casting ideas, too!)

What caused him to run away is what causes most gay sons to run away. His mother, who loves him and whom he loves, is the emotional center of his world. There is no room to expand, to rummage, to poke into the dark corners and see what's there, at the center of the family circle. Leaving Mother is a rite of passage that never gets skipped in a healthy life. Or even a complicated, eventful, not-always-happy one that only tangentially flirts with mental health.

Author Alameddine is a perennial favorite of mine. We're the same age, we're both literature and book lovers, we've seen a world utterly, completely up stakes and shift away from what we'd thought were Eternal Verities. I feel...at ease...reading his work because I recognize the assumptions, I get the emotional valences, and I like being there. I enjoyed the experience I had coming to the table with Zalfa and Raja, sitting down to listen to their conversation, and learning from each one's actions exactly how much they really love each other.

If I have a cavil with The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother), it's that the nature of a novel of the memory, the inevitability of flashback in its use, tends to decrease the impact of the events so recalled. In this story's structure, there are not multiple timelines; there are memories recalled. In both of those use cases, as the timelines are each about Raja and Zalfa, I know for sure that I'm not here to find out what happens but how what happened felt. And feels.

It is a minor thing, but a real one. I'm hearty in my recommendation to get yourself to Beirut via Author Alameddine's memory palace. It is a very nice place to spend a day reading and thinking and laughing.

LAMB: A novel in snapshots, what it felt like to be young and queer and there

LAMB: A novel in snapshots
TROY FORD
Sweet Flag Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 paperback, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: D is shaken when his mercurial friend Lamb vanishes just before they're set to move in together. The news of his death three years later shadows him like a ghost.

Sifting through Lamb's journals decades later, D uncovers a raw, intimate portrait of a sensitive misfit navigating a world that never understood him.

From their first meeting at an elite all-boys school to the chaos of 1990s San Francisco, Lamb's story unfolds in a tangle of tenderness and rebellion, anguish and adventure. Through journal entries, letters, poetry, and stories, Lamb is a coming-of-age in snapshots that captures the dazed spirit of young men searching for belonging in the aftermath of the AIDS crisis.

A Tales of the City for Generation X—a dark afterparty of gay awakening both aching and unforgettable.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: A very sweetly remembered lover from the first years of knowing you're queer will always call your heart home. It's this book that tells you why it did for Author Ford.

We all grow older with this kind of memory of our coming of age, if not always coming out. It's the nature of being adolescent in the modern world...finding one's tribe, feeling one's first romantic love (for most anyway) are very deep experiences. Bound up with our particular time and place, they're all a stew of heady, intense, immediate sensations and thoughts and things learned.

It felt very *right* to be in D and in Lamb's heads from the time just that crucial bit ahead of them.

You can't go home again; but you can remember it, you can summon the sensations thoughts feelings to your older self. There are times that is what you need and should seek out. This book will likely do that for boys born in about 1959 through 1966. It felt good to be young then, even if you weren't *happy* you felt you *could* be.

To all y'all born after 1980: I'm so sorry my generation fucked up so very badly. We did you out of this glorious sadness, and we're only ever going to pay for it.

THE AYATOLLAH'S GAZE: A Memoir of the Forbidden and the Fabulous, spoiled brat tells his story...it has a MAJOR warning in it

THE AYATOLLAH'S GAZE: A Memoir of the Forbidden and the Fabulous
MAJID PARSA
Neem Tree Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$22.95 hardcover, available now

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: An unflinching exploration of what it means to be gay in a society where homosexuality is punishable by death.

The dawn prayer calls echo through the streets. As many make their way to mosques, for some it signals the end of another illegal gay party. Under the cover of darkness, smiles on lips and sweat on foreheads, the gays of Tehran blend back into daily life. Hidden in plain sight, they plan when and where they will meet again.

In an unparalleled true story, Majid Parsa recounts how a childhood of war, prayer and obedience was upended by a teenage sexual awakening and ultimately, pride. He lifts the heavy veil of persecution to reveal the fabulous and flamboyant gay scene right at the heart of the Islamic Republic of Iran, flourishing under the ever-present shadow of the grand Ayatollah and morality police.

Eye-opening and at times laugh-out-loud funny, The Ayatollah’s Gaze is a story of self-discovery in a country where Sharia is the law.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I flinched. Hard.

This privileged git takes insanely unnecessary risks in a country where he is not the only one who will suffer for them. If it was just him, knock yourself out; it's his family, too, and we are not talking about mere social ostracization as a penalty.

So no, "Majid" you pseudonymous twit, I didn't laugh because I was worried for your family. You don't seem to have bothered to, so I felt the need to point it out.

What makes this read one I don't just want to bury and forget is the clear and present danger represented by the jesus nuts and incels who want to enact the same kind of repressions on US gay men and the entire QUILTBAG community. This is why I suggest reading a sample to ee if you vibe with the style, because it's on Amazon only.

I'm repulsed by the kind of world the christofascist white nationalist people want. Look at what it drives decent people to do simply in order to exist. Then tell me if the forces of oppression and repression do not merit your active resistance.

TOO GOOD TO GET MARRIED: The Life and Photographs of Miss Alice Austen, biography of a recovered queer elder

TOO GOOD TO GET MARRIED: The Life and Photographs of Miss Alice Austen
BONNIE YOCHELSON (foreword by Victoria Munro & Jessica B Phillips)
Empire State Editions (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$39.95 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Explore Gilded Age New York through the lens of Alice Austen, who captured the social rituals of New York’s leisured class and the bustling streets of the modern city. Celebrated as a queer artist, she was this and much more

Alice Austen (1866–1952) lived at Clear Comfort, her grandparent’s Victorian cottage on Staten Island, which is now a National Historic Landmark. As a teenager, she devoted herself to photography, recording what she called “the larky life” of tennis matches, yacht races, and lavish parties.

When she was 25 and expected to marry, Austen used her camera to satirize gender norms by posing with her friends in their undergarments and in men’s clothes, “smoking” cigarettes, and feigning drunkenness. As she later remarked, she was “too good to get married.” Austen embraced the rebellious spirit of the “New Woman,” a moniker given to those who defied expectations by pursuing athletics, higher education, or careers. She had romantic affairs with women, and at 31, she met Gertrude Tate, who became her life partner. Briefly, Austen considered becoming a professional photographer. She illustrated Bicycling for Ladies, a guide written by her friend Violet Ward, and she explored the working-class neighborhoods of Manhattan to produce a portfolio, “Street Types of New York.” Rejecting the taint of commerce, however, she remained within the confines of elite society with Tate by her side.

Although interest in Austen has accelerated since 2017, when the Alice Austen House was designated a national site of LGBTQ history, the only prior book on Austen was published in 1976. Copiously illustrated, Too Good to Get Married fills the need for a fresh and deeply researched look at this skillful and witty photographer. Through analysis of Austen’s photographs, Yochelson illuminates the history of American photography and the history of sexuality.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: This isn't an obvious fit for the usual definition of #WITMonth I've been working with. Indulge me for a moment: In society, now as much as in Austen's time, there is a phenomenon called "code switching." It's a kind of translation your queer friends know well, and your young friends, your opposite-gender friend;, we are most all of us doing a bit of code-switching.

What Author Yochelson does in this magisterial biography of lesbian artist and bon vivant is a translation of Austen's code-switching between woman of substance and closeted (as all were then required to be)...if only barely...lesbian in a long-term partnership.

It occurred to me to call this a translation when I read more about how Austen "{rejected} the taint of commerce...{and} remained within the confines of elite society with Tate by her side." This was a woman who spoke one language, of intimacy and sapphic love, at home, and a very, very different one among her public social circle. Austen documented, and Author Yochelson caringly and carefully examines, the world of women we would otherwise never know existed.

What this book does with skill and panache is the very thing the presently installed in government social reactionaries hate the most: Demonstrate in words and pictures that queerness, its existence and its joyfulness, has always existed and thus is among the real identities others can ascribe to.

There is more shock in the world of today at these intimate, fun-having images than there was in the earlier Gilded Age, because the sexual lives of others are more publicly known and thus easier to discuss...and judge...than the private lives of the day. Gossip was then shameful, vulgar, low; and is now journalism, casually reported and widely and openly discussed. Reality TV and celebrity journalism are thoroughly established in respectability.

It is a world I suspect Miss Austen would thoroughly dislike.

This house, this family, is Miss Austen's native world. Gossip about personal lives, while surely (humanly) indulged in, would not be done in public by these folk. Officially. Behind hands and doors and fans, sure! Thus the need to code-switch constantly would've kept Miss Austen and later Miss Tate (her partner) as well quite busy and alert.

The ladies in question in later life

The value of this explication of life among the hidden sapphic sisters of the era can't be overstated. Aesthetically we're all much richer for the re-emergence of these images; societally, we are hugely enriched by this evidence of the way diversity has flourished and enriched the culture of every era.

Look carefully, these were shocking, as tame as they seem now!

I think this work of translation from lives once unable to be spoken openly to the mass medium of publishing, as a rescue operation of identity and artistry previously masked and ignored, is worth the purchase price. There are over 100 photographs in the text. It is a treasure trove of lesbian life in the first Gilded Age. It is also a human life's worth of creative joy and pleasure shared.

It is, most importantly in my eyes, my elder sibling in queerness restored to me, guiding me through the world's rage and hate by her example. Celebrate that beauty and gift.

THE SOUTH, Booker-Prize longlisted first queer love in Malaysia

THE SOUTH
TASH AW
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

One of The Guardian's The best fiction of 2025 list!

Time's The 100 Must-Read Books of 2025 selection

A New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2025 selection

Longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize.

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: A luminous and intimate novel about the weight of inheritance, the bonds of loyalty, and the awakening of love, set against the backdrop of a changing Malaysia.

The South unfolds during a visit by the Lim family to their rural clan estate after a long absence. Jay, in his mid-teens, and his two older sisters are less than thrilled to leave their city for the remote house in the south, but their parents, Sui Ching and Jack, are adamant.

Jay finds he's expected to share a room with Chuan, the son of the estate's overseer, a bit older than Jay but seemingly much more mature and capable in the world. The two soon form an intense bond, but with their very different backgrounds, and even more disparate expectations for the future, the course of their relationship is always an unspoken question.

Meanwhile, change presses in, including the destruction of the farm's beloved orchards, and the sale of the estate is mooted. The relationships between Chuan's father and Jack and Sui Ching go deep, but pressures both internal and external threaten to sever old bonds and upend an entire way of life. The South, at once sweeping and intimate, is a masterful portrait of a family navigating a period of great transformation.

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My Review: Farms feed us. At the vast, unceasing exaction of labor, they feed us. Do they feed farmers? That is, do farmers get fulfillment and satisfaction from the labor they do? (Are there people being farmers in 2025?) And the cost of that labor, the relationships it bends to exigencies city-dwelling consumers don't worry their pretty heads about, how is it borne? Never equally...Nature seems to forbid anything like ease in farming, droughts, excesses of rain, it is literally always something on the socially elite Lim family's inherited land.

Author Tash Aw has done that thinking in this story. He observes and occasionally examines the workings of a family with a farm in Malaya (as it was at the beginning of the narrative) as they farm, live, love, doubt, together and apart. It's a book of calm, eerie stillness as the characters live lives they begin to question...is this necessary? am I necessary to it? am I doing good for the world?...and analyze how things are and aren't making them happy. Love is in the air between boys whose families have known each other most all their lives; loves slides out of mom Sui and dad Jack's grasp; love, true to its reputation, ruins everything with its exquisite torturous promises of pleasure, happiness, belonging that are so elusive to the Lim siblings. “We feel as though our entire world changes when we get older, every object, every person, has been rearranged into some strange new configuration, but in fact nothing at all has changed.” Nor will it ever. That realization stymies and disheartens many. I find it exhilarating in its challenge to redistribute attention, wisdom, knowledge within the unchanging reality of Life.

Maybe Jay Lim won't get Chuan, the boy he loves (In that moment, forever seems like a comforting notion. But at that age, what does either of them really know about time?), maybe Jack Lim will stop him as his culture demands despite his own complicated past, maybe Sui Lim won't be able to move past regrets for things undone. Maybe Malaysia's long tradition of relative harmony among its constituent groups is about to blow up into full-on Sinophobia. What will the Lims do then? We can't call it an orchard if it no longer bears fruits pretty much sums up the dilemmas in the whole book.

Family drama is evergreen because family is universal. Jay's older sisters are plumping for connection in the form of religious nuttery, the other in the embrace of rejection. (Parents believe this, so she rejects it; a stance adolescence damn near demands.) Jay's struggles with finding queerness in his world, knowing it's there and just out of his reach, is how I know the author understands me across generations and cultures: "This emptiness feels like hunger but Jay thinks that it is really a longing, though he doesn't know what he is longing for."

I was delighted to read this story of queer self-discovery against a backdrop of cultural and economic shifts that both enable and inhibit the journey. It is not a negative, but an observation, that hearing from so many points of view does not center queerness in the story quite the way I'd thought it would based on how it's marketed. It wasn't enough Jay to make the queer angle the only one in the telling, so I took three-quarters of a star back.

But how very beautiful and quietly profound and enfolding this read was! I recommend it to all including the "eww-ick" homophobes.

SWANSEA BOY, a voice from a past I lived through, with much to say to the many who didn't

SWANSEA BOY
SEAN MATHIAS
Aurora Metro Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$18.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Swansea Boy is a coming-of-age play of deep humanity, gentle humour, and unwavering compassion.

In 1980s Swansea, a young man discovers his sexuality and finds the courage to tell his parents that he is gay. While finding his way as an artist in London, he reconnects with a young man who becomes the love of his life, only to face heartbreak and loss when he discovers his partner has contracted AIDS.

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My Review: As a gay man whose early adulthood was precisely coincident with the AIDS epidemic, this playscript's subject matter is my life.

All the events, the loss of a lover, the surprise of laughter as the world closes its darkest curtains against you in your hour of most acute need, all were visceral and real to me.

I don't know what more to say about the topic. My issue, as always, is with *how* it's said: I'm not an actor so reading a script is not the way to hook me in to a story. I think it speaks loudly to the quality of the writing that I got up over three stars in my rating schema. An ordinary play or film script would struggle to reach above two stars. Author Mathias has a powerful voice that transcends my impatience with his chosen form of presentation.

THE MEMORY HUNTERS, Tsai's first fantasy novel in The Consecrated series of anti-colonialist sapphic tales

THE MEMORY HUNTERS (The Consecrated #1)
MIA TSAI
Erewhon Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$23.80 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Inception meets Indiana Jones in this propulsive fungal science fantasy following a headstrong academic and her equally stubborn bodyguard as they unearth an ancient secret that rocks the foundations of their society—and challenges their unspoken love for one another.

Kiana Strade can dive deeper into blood memories than anyone alive. But instead of devoting her talents to the temple she’s meant to lead, Key wants to do research for the Museum of Human Memory. . . and to avoid the public eye.

Valerian IV's twin swords protect Key from murderous rivals and her own enthusiasm alike. Vale cares about Key as a friend—and maybe more—but most of all, she needs to keep her job so she can support her parents and siblings in the storm-torn south.

But when Key collects a memory that diverges from official history, only Vale sees the fallout. Key’s mentor suspiciously dismisses the finding; her powerful mother demands she stop research altogether. And Key, unusually affected by the memory, begins to lose moments, then minutes, then days.

As Vale becomes increasingly entangled in Key’s obsessive drive for answers, the women uncover a shattering discovery—and a devastating betrayal. Key and Vale can remain complicit, or they can jeopardize everything for the truth.

Either way, Key is becoming consumed by the past in more ways than one, and time is running out.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Memorycelium? Mycelium accumbens? We're gonna need a bigger vocabulary for brain stuff. After this apocalypse, there's now a fungal component to our species, in the form of a mycelial memory-sharing capability.

I'm shuddering convulsively, yet really intrigued; this is not the first fungal horror-tinged sci-fantasy of this millennium. Amatka, T. Kingfisher's What Moves the Dead; decades ago, Anne McCaffrey's Pern novels featured "Thread," the mycorrhizal threat to all Pernese life; the pop-culture phenomenon that is The Last of Us...all using the fungi to bring the scares, to reduce humanity to something fungal's prey or at the least its dependent.

I was also really impressed that Author Tsai didn't use her bullhorn to blare romantasy at me. The women are, um, entwined (it's only now occurring to me how very fungal a lot of romantic metaphors can sound) but are learning to trust instead of falling in lust/love. That comes(!) afterwards, and after a great deal of personal discovery. Vale, solid guardian and uberpractical peasant, learns more than skill with weapons is needed to keep Key, highly pressurized and stressed entitled solipsist that she is, from coming to greater harm. Vale has to learn that Key's social heritage is more than a gilded footstool to climb over everyone else; it requires Key to adhere to certain modes of being that both of them are discovering have costs to their benefits. It's a slow-burn bi awakening, not instaluuuv, and it requires some deep reflection on both their parts, to fully *get* how they fit together.

What else it requires for these women to accept their love bond is Vale's conventional, clearly queer boyfriend's response to the situation. As they become A Couple, Vale and Key aren't frictionlessly gliding into place at each other's side. The family that Vale is supporting with her guardian job over Key has to have precedence over all as she's their support; Key's position in the social, quasi-religious (my take is it really isn't religious in terms I understand, it's more like academic orthodoxy on steroids) order of memory hunters is intensely important and demanding; it's all threatened by multiple axes of the events in the story.

Key's latest memory extraction is such that its details really put the burner on high under the stewpot. This is one strong indicator that this is a series-starting tale. There's a received wisdom about why this world that Key works to uphold through her memory extraction is how it is. Key accidentally makes a discovery that flies in the face of the received wisdom. Hijinks ensue.

And how! Vale has some awful blowback, Key learns (begins to learn anyway) that not everyone is protected by talent and position, they both start pulling on loose threads...we all know how much authoritarians love people asking questions! especially impertinent ones with the word "why" at their core...and, well, there's A Lot going to happen here pretty quick. Just not in this book.

Key's not a bundle of joy to read about. Her entitlement shines bright. It makes her insensitive to Vale's practical needs. Jing, Vale's "boyfriend," just needs to come out already, he's so hot for his own guardian Cal. Vale needs to step up her boundary-setting game big time. She might want to look in a mirror once in a while to see why she's getting attention. But honestly I forgave them all because this is clearly book one in a series. Most all these are scene-setting issues for future resolution.

I was also willing to put the hazy world-building on hold for the same reason. "But WHY" becomes less urgent when you know there will be another book. I'm eager for it. Though if Jing and Cal don't end up together, and if Key's mother the high priestess doesn't get unalived early in the next story, I'm kicking off big time.

NO BODY NO CRIME, interesting exploration of the old saw's veracity

NO BODY NO CRIME
TESS SHARPE
MCD Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Murder either bonds you or breaks you.

Rural PI Mel Tillman knows this well. She's seen her fair share of bloody cases and botched cover-ups. But killing with someone? That is a different kind of mess all together, and Mel's got real experience with it.

No one's heard from Toby Dunne since Chloe Harper's sweet sixteen party—because the birthday girl and sixteen-year-old Mel buried him so deep in the backwoods, no one's ever finding him. Mel loses little sleep over it—Toby had been terrorizing them.

What she does lose sleep over is Chloe, the girl with whom she survived that horrible night in the woods. Chloe, the girl she fell in love with. Chloe, the girl who disappeared and hasn't been seen in more than six years.

Tasked with locating Chloe by her family, Mel can't resist the call of a good chase, or finding the one who got away with her heart (and with murder). When Mel finds an armed and vigilant Chloe living off-grid in a highly booby-trapped patch of Canadian wilderness, she realizes that Chloe had been expecting someone other than her ex to come looking for her. The thing that's kept Chloe going for years is that she's kept Mel safe by running. Now, the truth must come out as they run for their lives once again.

Because when they buried Toby Dunne in the backwoods, they buried something else, too. Something Toby took. And the powerful family he stole it from? They'll do anything to get it back.

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My Review: Crimes are sticky. Like blood, though obviously not all crimes are bloody, but if you've ever cleaned up after a nosebleed you know the phenomenon. The crime here is...complicated. Some people deserve to be unalived. Sometimes a crime is simply balancing the scales.

Those are the best stories to read. They ask us to distinguish among shades of grey. I prefer this to black-and-white stories more often than not. In this case, Mel and Chloe commit a crime. It's not murder, because the killing was richly deserved self-defense. It was what they did afterwards that was the crime: They tried to conceal the body. This is where stuff gets sticky. *gleeful hand-rubbing*

As a work of fiction, then, we've got seriously good stuff to work with. What works the best for me, an old cisqueer white guy, is the soul-searching the young women do together. It feels like the sorts of conversations I had with the boys I wanted to...be with...when I was that age. It's part of a narrative strategy that shifts PoVs to tell parts of the story without an omniscient narrator taking us out of the immediacy of the action...which the soulful chats stop dead. So, well, where's your personal balance point? Do you want the action before the bonding talks? I don't, so this worked for me.

What I didn't really connect with as well was the overly specific conflict between Mel and Chloe. They debate extremely small points and so I get uninvested. It's in character for people this age, but it just gets so tiresome to someone who can think "in three months this will not matter." But more importantly there are just too many voices competing for attention, which gives me a headache. Shaving it down to just Mel and Chloe, I cared more about their actions and their thoughts. Rick is funny, and a fun character, but could easily and profitably been limited to appearances within the women's PoVs.

I'd say this read is solidly executed, though not perfectly for my reading tastes. If you've watched Yellowjackets and resonate with its flow, this book will delight you. It was a solid "A" in my reading.

LIGHTBORNE: A Novel, the best stories are in History

LIGHTBORNE: A Novel
HESSE PHILLIPS
Pegasus Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$27.95 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A thrilling reimagining of the last days of one of the most famed Elizabethan playwrights—Christopher Marlowe—and of a love that flourishes within the margins.

Christopher playwright, poet, lover. In the plague-stricken streets of Elizabethan England, Kit flirts with danger, leaving a trail of enemies and old flames in his wake. His plays are a roaring success; he seems destined for greatness. But in the spring of 1593, the queen's eyes are everywhere and the air is laced with paranoia.

Marlowe receives an unwelcome visit from his one-time mentor, Richard Baines, a man who knows all of Marlowe’s secrets and is hell-bent on his destruction. When Marlowe is arrested on charges of treason, heresy, and sodomy—all of which are punishable by death—he is released on bail with the help of Sir Thomas Walsingham.

Kit presumes Walsingham to be his friend; in fact, the spymaster has hired an assassin to take care of Kit, fearing that his own sins may come to light. Now, with the queen's spies and the vengeful Baines closing in on the playwright, Marlowe's last friend in the world is Ingram Frizer, a total stranger who is obsessed with Kit's plays, and who will, within ten days' time, first become Marlowe's lover—and then his killer.

Richly atmospheric, emotionally devastating, and heartrendingly imagined, Lightborne is a masterful reimagining of the last days of one of England's most famous literary figures.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I doubt too many unabashedly gay men throughout history are as well-known to modern audiences as Marlowe. He is one of the few in History whose sexuality does not get the "oh, no of course he was just as straight as string" treatment from the "eww-ick" homophobes. Goodness knows they've tried, but it never gets past the "no he isn't because I said no he isn't" level of argument.

No, he was, and he said so too loudly for History to get their anxious denials to be believed.

The delight of this novel, however, is the unnerving time it chooses to bring to life, that terrible last bit of existence after Marlowe left prison for the last time knowing he was not going to be allowed to live much longer for fear of what he knew becoming public knowledge. It was not an unreasonable fear, Marlowe was not a reticent man. It was possible to provoke him into indiscreet speech; he knew embarrassing truths; therefore....

It's never, ever been safe to know things about powerful people that can't be said in public. I suspect that Marlowe, poor lamb, besides being a startlingly bad judge of character was also just as addicted to risk as he was to tobacco. In the story we're told here, by a scholar of Marlowe, his life, and the times, Ingram Frizer is not with Marlowe by mere happenstance but in the role of minder while the decision of what to do about him and the risks he poses to the great and the good is determined. What actually occurs follows the official version established at law...but the unspoken and unspeakable parts are revealed.

I would give this wonderfully textured, nuanced work more stars were it not for something I'm sorry to say is a failing of mine in reading about my bygone ancestral queers: I want writers to choose a side, I want to know what they think, in every case but this one. I'm not saying Marlowe was straight, or gay, or any other modern label because I really believe you can't impute an identity to someone whose worldview quite simply didn't contain it. The torturer should as plausibly think of himself as a serial killer and a sadist if Marlowe was taking the identity "queer." "Sodomite" meant someone who performed acts of sodomy, not someone's fundamental identity. It's no small point to me.

The author, in the epilogue, presents really fun-to-read ideas about Marlowe from days gone by, from the "no he isn't because I said no he isn't" brigade, and from those like me who say identities aren't fungible. He's got sound reasoning for his viewpoint. If Marlowe was alive today he'd very likely be in a leather club somewhere making some platoon of horny men very happy. But he isn't.

For me that's a problem buying into this character. YMMV, and I seriously hope it will. Oh, and Frizer? A real man. I would not be one bit surprised if the role he plays in this story is not precisely the role he played in Deptford.

HE'S TO DIE FOR, fun, entertaining gay rom-com/mystery with good opposites attract energy

HE'S TO DIE FOR
ERIN DUNN
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$18.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Brooklyn 99 meets The Charm Offensive in this sparkling romantic murder it's murder cute in the first degree when a detective finds himself falling for the lead suspect in a career-making case.

At 29, Detective Rav Trivedi is the youngest member of the NYPD’s homicide squad, and his future looks bright. He may be a bit of an outsider in the department—an ivy-league educated gay Brit with a weakness for designer suits—but his meteoric rise and solve rate prove he belongs.

So when his CO assigns him lead on the high-profile murder of a record executive, Rav is ready for action. He won’t be distracted by TV crews, tabloids, or what’s trending on social media, nor by the ridiculously hot rock star with a clear motive and no alibi.

This is it, his shot, and he is not going to screw it up—certainly not by falling in love with his number one suspect…

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My Review: Told in third person from Rav's PoV, this story of opposites attracting is the exact kind of cuteness booster-shot of a story I've been needing as my world darkens. You'll note the link above to my review of The Charm Offensive, which was a good story well-told, much the way this one is.

What makes it a half-star less of a good read than that one is really simple: Switching the PoV from the anxiety-suffering character to the neurotypical character lessens the impact of anxiety into the (ironically) anxiety-inducing "this is a burden" feeling that all anxiety-suffering people I've ever known dread.

I'll also mention the mystery plot was...underwhelming...though not in any way substandard. Given how much time it took up, it was as thorough as it could be in being a mystery; it's akin to a mystery short story, though, and those are never top of the heap for me. I'll also bring up the low-steam aspect of the romance, to be fully informative. It was fine for me because it was one strand of the story among several.

It sounds as though I didn't like the story, and I promise I did! I loved the way these two really different men learned to talk to, not at or past, each other. I liked the moments of sweet sharing, bringing each other into the other man's thought processes and history. I battened on the sense that they were building something for each other, out of themselves, as a loving demonstration of need. That it was done using both humor and flirtatious silliness was the way it made me invest in it not simply roll my eyes.

It's in that context that Rav and Jack connected most deeply...their struggles to be able/allowed to exercise their strengths to really satisfying degrees. Rav's very pretty, very posh, and very much expected to glide through his job while making the department look good. Doing actual detective work? Not really in the cards. Like Jack, he's supposed to do and keep doing what others want. Unlike Jack, Rav doesn't get panic attacks that are used against him.

All told a really enjoyable summer's afternoon of reading. I hope to see more from Author Dunn, and might even pick up a book two of these men if one appeared.

SPHINX: A Neo-Gothic Novel from Brazil, interesting artifact of transness' long history among humans

SPHINX: A Neo-Gothic Novel from Brazil
COELHO NETO (tr. Kim F. Olson; intro M. Elizabeth Ginway; afterword Jess Nevins)
Modern Language Association of America (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$32.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A work of supernatural fantasy that questions gender divisions

At his boardinghouse in Rio de Janeiro, the Englishman James Marian is seen as handsome but eccentric. Then another boarder learns Marian's a fusion of a female head and a male body, Marian is the creation of a surgeon with occult powers. Despite his wealth and mysterious abilities, Marian is unable to live fully as either a man or a woman, traveling the world in order to repress his sexual desire and withdraw from society.

Sphinx explores the binaries of science and magic, body and spirit, male and female, attraction and horror, presenting its sexually ambiguous protagonist with sympathy. Ornately descriptive, this 1908 neo-gothic novel exemplifies the era's taste for the sensual and the fantastic. With echoes of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, it stands as a classic of Brazilian science fiction.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Like Frankenstein, I'd call this speculative fiction, and reserve "science fiction" and even "science fantasy" for tales from the Radium Age; I think this book is more ancestral to what we think of as SF than developmentally connected. I think your pleasure in the read will more lie in the context of its times and its author's life, than in its mannered nineteenth-century prose. Be certain to read the modern contextualization materials to get the best effect from the read.

It is very surprising to me that, over a hundred years ago, the topic of sex being a fluid construct was happening in public discussion. The suppression and repression of queer people of all stripes is a long-term project of the hateful exclusionary reactionaries in society. Put a name to something as a means of understanding it, and it also functions as a target. Well, there is not and has never been a tool that did not do double duty as a weapon.

James Marian is a character whose lineaments do not fit the world as it is. Marian's body and mind have been deliberately altered, as a kind of proof of concept in a modern interpretation, an experiment in the parlance of the times. The way the melding of a male with a female was accomplished is both surgical and mystical in its origin. That suits the time of its writing but feels...odd, a cheat...in the SF landscape of today. I encourage you to read this story as a meditation on the experience of transness, a concept barely formulated in 1908, and certainly not familiar to the reading public.

This is a read for the most curious among you. It has pleasures to offer; it is flawed in execution; it stands as proof there are no new thoughts among humans, if transness as an acquired physical state was conceptualized in 1908.

Binaries are rare in nature. Spectra are the norm. It's long past time to apply that knowledge of facts to humans as well as all other entities in nature.

MISS VEAL AND MISS HAM, touching, moving story of lesbian life and love in 1950s England

MISS VEAL AND MISS HAM
VIKKI HEYWOOD
Muswell Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$8.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Public companions, private lovers.

1951: behind the counter of a modest post office in a Buckinghamshire village Miss Dora Ham and Miss Beatrix Veal maintain their careful facade as respected local spinsters. But their true story is one of passion, and together they have built a life of quiet dignity and service in rural England.

Their true story is one of suffragist activists who fell in love at a rally in the 1900s, danced in London's secret gay clubs between the wars, and comforted one another during the first night of the Blitz. Now over the course of one pivotal day their carefully constructed world begins to fracture. Through Beatrix's wry perspective we witness the severe impact of post-war changes on their peaceful existence. Changes that will lead to heart-breaking decisions for Miss Veal and Miss Ham.

At the heart of this intimate, moving and witty novel is a story of resilience, the dignity of love that cannot be spoken, and the challenges that come when the future no longer feels safe.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: The antique dramatic structure of setting the action of your tale over the course of one day is antique for a reason: Focus. Audience focus, author focus, character focus, are all enhanced...even compelled...by setting all the action in one day. Author Heywood does that very well in Veal and Ham's life-challenging day.

These women are, very quietly, living as open a queer life as is possible in most of the world even today. Keep your head down, do your job, and people will mostly ignore you. Best you can hope for is that it will be a benign form of ignoring, not one of silent sneering. Veal and Ham, since they do work that's useful and even pleasant to the villagers they serve, get a big dose of selective attention on their service not on their behind-the-scenes lives; their dishonesty, though, in not being open does create mild ill-will instead of quiet acceptance. It's the last piece of even qualified good luck the ladies have on this terrible day.

Losing one's home ia an absolute emotional tornado. Veal and Ham, after moving out of London to escapr the Blitz, have lived the quiet village life...with excursions back to London for lesbian companionship...for a decade. In fact, the world around them is not the world they know, and still less the world they knew as suffragettes. The economic realities of the 1950s are austere and unforgiving, they are focused on survival as the people adjust their lives to being one among many markets not The British Empire. The main income Veal and Ham have had, expensive candy, is drying up in this new world so they can no longer make a go of it as they have been earning steadily less.

Does any of this ring any bells?

In the story we're told, no plan is in place for their future. They are...numb...at the overwhelming nature of losing home, livelihood, and status all at the same time. The one intention they had formed, a very permanent one, is for several reasons not carried out. But what are they to do? A mild enough venting of feelings against their odious landlord isn't a plan for a future.

Does there need to be a future? Are we...am I...so deeply conditioned as to find an ambiguous ending intolerable? No; not at all. I'm only giving this book four stars because it is a solid piece of plotting and a lovely job of writing about one day in a long life together. It is a complete story, as is the later-published (1973) original ending of Mrs. Dalloway called Mrs. Dalloway's Party. It was excised for a reason; where the novel ends is exactly where it should. Likewise, in this book, there are things as missing that should not be. Or, if a truly satisfying one-day novel was to come to being here, a different ending point (at 97%, if you're a curious Kindle reader) should have been chosen. As it stands, this is a marvelous story only a bit away from being excellent.

It is still a story I hope you will find and read.

THE BETRAYAL OF THOMAS TRUE, good plot, better idea, decent execution

THE BETRAYAL OF THOMAS TRUE
A.J. WEST
Orenda Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$26.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: It is the year 1710, and Thomas True has arrived on old London Bridge with a dangerous secret. One night, lost amongst the squalor of London's hidden back streets, he finds himself drawn into the outrageous underworld of the molly houses.

Meanwhile, carpenter Gabriel Griffin struggles to hide his double life as Lotty, the molly's silent guard. When the queen of all 'he-harlots', Mother Clap, confides in him about a deadly threat, he realises his friends are facing imminent execution.

To the horror of all mollies, there is a rat amongst them, betraying their secrets to a pair of murderous Justices, hell-bent on punishing sinners with the noose.

Can Gabriel unmask the traitor before it's too late? Can he save hapless Thomas from peril, and their own impossible love?

Set amidst the hidden world of Georgian London’s gay scene, The Betrayal of Thomas True is a brutal and devastating thriller, where love must overcome evil, and the only true sin is betrayal…

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I came out of my seat when I read "...love must overcome evil, and the only true sin is betrayal..." in the book's synopsis. It could not have been more directly aimed at my sweet spot, and timed more exactly as needed.

I still think that. I'm not one bit taking away from the author's acumen or clarity of vision. I only wish I'd had more...fun. It's a good plot, it's executed competently, but there is a lack of that indefinable *something* in the characterizations that gets me to invest in them and their plight.

After thinking and thinking about this issue, after probing my experience of the read for a solid while, I've come to the only logical conclusion. I was introduced to the stakes before I'd invested in the people. I knew what was going on but did not yet care that it was going to happen to these men. This same issue arose for me in the Shardlake historical mysteries.

I'm delighted by the evocative insults...discover them yourselves, they are priceless nuggets of invective...and engrossed in the setting of London's "molly houses" as reconstructed here. Honestly, having been immersed in this story's world, I think I'd know how to comport myself unobtrusively in this arcane, hidden world's manners and speech.

Because the stakes, the heinous betrayal of men like me by one of our own to the vile, revolting scum enforcing their distorted "morality" on pain of death, were instantly relatable to me, I found myself unwilling to put the book down. I think it was a single five-hour session that finished it off for me. That's pretty good going for three-hundred-ish pages! And blessings on the publisher for opening the proceedings with a Dramatis Personae list of real and molly-names!

I hope that makes clear the real pleasure of the story for me. I did not just slog through the pages. I finished the book because it was not one I could imagine leaving unfinished. That's praise indeed from a seasoned old campaigner like me. I think anyone who would like to see just what it costs to live your own truth in a way that satisfies your human need to give and receive love, amid a world full of messages threatening you with harm up to and including death for doing it, would like it.

History buffs eagerly flagged down to come into this authorial spiderweb of facts and research gems. Gay men over fifty sought especially vigorously...you'll see why. Believe me...learning the dreadful fate of our kind in a time only slightly less hateful than now will energize your resistance.