Man's World


Rupert Smith - 2010
    In modern-day London, Robert searches for fulfillment in a world of sex, drugs, designer clothes, and hip gay clubs, during which he records his experience on his blog. Half a century earlier, Michael kept a secret diary in which he chronicled the dangers of negotiating the closet and the laws that could land himself and his friends and lovers in prison. Past and present collide when Robert moves into a new block of flats and discovers that history is alive and kicking on his doorstep. Funny, sexy, and moving, this tale demonstrates how much the world has changed, and remarkably, how much it can remain the same.

By The Currawong's Call


Welton B. Marsland - 2017
    Determined to honour his calling as best he can, he throws himself into the footy mad, two-pub town, navigating the dusty streets, learning the gossip, and striking up a friendship with Jonah Parks, the resident police sergeant and local bona fide hero. A police officer and a priest often find themselves needed at the same place, and Jonah and Matthew’s friendship deepens quickly, as they set about their business of protecting the bodies and souls of Dinbratten’s residents. When a bushfire threatens the town, and Matthew’s inexperience with fire endangers the church buildings, Jonah comes to the rescue, and a reckless kiss in the midst of the chaos takes their friendship to forbidden. Neither Matthew nor Jonah can go back to the way things were before, but continuing their relationship puts everything at risk: their jobs, their friends, even their lives. In the outback town of Dinbratten where everyone knows everything about everyone else, how can they ever expect to keep a secret this explosive?

The Bells of Times Square


Amy Lane - 2014
    This year, however, his grandson Blaine is pushing Nate through the Manhattan streets, revealing his secrets to his silent, stroke-stricken grandfather.When Blaine introduces his boyfriend to his beloved grandfather, he has no idea that Nate holds a similar secret. As they endure the chilly death of the old year, Nate is drawn back in memory to a much earlier time . . . and to Walter.Long before, in a peace carefully crafted in the heart of wartime tumult, Nate and Walter forged a loving home in the midst of violence and chaos. But nothing in war is permanent, and now all Nate has is memories of a man his family never knew existed. And a hope that he’ll finally hear the church bells that will unite everybody—including the lovers who hid the best and most sacred parts of their hearts.

At Swim, Two Boys


Jamie O'Neill - 2001
    Powerful and artful, and ten years in the writing, it is a masterwork from Jamie O’Neill.Jim Mack is a naïve young scholar and the son of a foolish, aspiring shopkeeper. Doyler Doyle is the rough-diamond son—revolutionary and blasphemous—of Mr. Mack’s old army pal. Out at the Forty Foot, that great jut of rock where gentlemen bathe in the nude, the two boys make a pact: Doyler will teach Jim to swim, and in a year, on Easter of 1916, they will swim to the distant beacon of Muglins Rock and claim that island for themselves. All the while Mr. Mack, who has grand plans for a corner shop empire, remains unaware of the depth of the boys’ burgeoning friendship and of the changing landscape of a nation.

Lovers in Arms


Osiris Brackhaus - 2012
    Army Captain Frank Hawthorne returns to Germany, against orders, to testify at the Nuremberg trials. He's attempting to save the life of Johann von Biehn, a former Nazi Officer. No one at the trials knows that three years ago, at the height of the war, Frank had been sent to kill the very man he is now defending - and that Johann is the love of his life. Frank must not reveal what happened between them during the war, but that leaves Frank with hardly any evidence to counter Johann's notorious career as a Nazi.

Lessons in Love


Charlie Cochrane - 2008
    Bride's College, Cambridge, England, 1905.When Jonty Stewart takes up a teaching post at the college where he studied, the handsome and outgoing young man acts as a catalyst for change within the archaic institution. He also has a catalytic effect on Orlando Coppersmith.Orlando is a brilliant, introverted mathematician with very little experience of life outside the college walls. He strikes up an alliance with the outgoing Jonty, and soon finds himself having feelings he's never experienced before. Before long their friendship blossoms into more than either man had hoped and they enter into a clandestine relationship.Their romance is complicated when a series of murders is discovered within St. Bride's. All of the victims have one thing in common, a penchant for men. While acting as the eyes and ears for the police, a mixture of logic and luck leads them to a confrontation with the murderer... can they survive it?

Trick of Time


J.L. Merrow - 2013
    At first he thinks it's all a film set, and is sure that the strikingly handsome young man leaning against a lamppost must be the leading man…What starts as a sordid transaction with a beautiful rent boy quickly turns into something much deeper, drawing him back again and again as he gets to know Jem and craves meaningful encounters with him.But Ted doesn't understand the exact conditions necessary for his trips through time—and for Jem, time may actually be running out. Now Ted has one last shot to get back to Jem and save their relationship, before it's too late…27,000 words

Kindred Hearts


Rowan Speedwell - 2011
    Women love him, men admire him, and it seems there is nothing he can’t do, whether it’s seducing a society wife or winning a carriage race. Little does Society suspect that the name means nothing to him, the fortune is in his father’s controlling hands, and he has no interest in his wife except a very distant friendship. Society bores him, and he takes dares because he only feels alive when he’s dancing on the edge... until his wife’s brother comes home from the wars. Decorated war hero Major Charles Mountjoy jerks Tris out of his despair by inspiring feelings of passion Tris had never suspected himself capable of. Almost as terrifying as those feelings for Charles are the signs Charles might return his affection—or, even worse, that Charles sees the man Tristan has been trying so valiantly to hide from the world.

The Sailor Who Washed Ashore


Frank W. Butterfield - 2018
    And Tom Jarrell is having a hard time coping with each day. He's recently been made a widower, having lost his wife and daughter (Sarah and Missy) in an accident out on the DeLand Highway back in April. Fortunately, his good friend, Ronnie Grisham, is keeping an eye on his ole pal, making sure he eats and deposits the insurance checks in the bank when they come in. And, thanks to Sarah's foresight, two or three have shown up in the mail. Finally, Tom manages to get himself together and takes the train north to visit his grieving in-laws and check into a sanitarium in Wisconsin to get help with his profound sense of loss and the fact that he's turned to drink to help numb the pain. Six weeks later, Tom is back. He feels like a new man. And, on the advice of his friend, Ronnie, he decides to open up an office on Beach Street in downtown Daytona and put out his shingle as a lawyer. One day, as Tom is dictating another letter to Allied Southern Insurance up in Nashville, Howie Kirkpatrick walks in the door. The kid, who is probably 21, if that, looks like he's been through the ringer. He's sunburned, needs a shave, and has a problem he hopes Tom Jarrell can help him with. He's not sure, but he thinks he just might have killed his best friend, Skipper Johnson, out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Howie's arrival is like a pebble that starts an avalanche. Dark secrets in sunny Daytona Beach are about to be revealed and who knows what might happen when they are. * * * Where Perry Mason meets Flamingo Road with a gay twist! Set in the sultry south and by the beach, the Daytona Beach series of novels are about Tom Jarrell, an attorney who's just starting his own private practice, and Ronnie Grisham, Tom's private eye, long-term friend, and new-found lover. These stories begin with Tom and Ronnie finding each other after a devastating loss and continue as the two men bring together a kind of family that neither of them could have ever imagined having. Come take a stroll along the World's Most Famous Beach right after the Second World War. Truman is president, the men are home from Europe and the Pacific, and the Red Scare is just getting started. It's a time and a place that no longer exists. Take a dive in and see if you might wanna stay for a while.

Nova Praetorian


N.R. Walker - 2018
    Tall and strong in build, fearsome in manner, and sharp of wit, he trains the best gladiators bound for the arenas of Rome. When Senator Servius Augendus seeks personal guards, he attends the Ludus Varus for purchase of the very best. He puts to Quintus an offer he cannot refuse, and Quintus finds himself in Neapolis, contracted as a trainer of guards instead of gladiators. Kaeso Agorix was taken from his homelands of Iberia and delivered to Rome as a slave. Bought by a senator to be trained as a guard, his fate is handed to the man who would train him. Absent free will, Kaeso knows his life is no longer his own, though he soon realises the gods have favoured him when he learns his new master has a kind heart. Quintus and Kaeso forge a bond that far exceeds the collar at Kaeso's neck, and together they discover the senator's move for promotion has an ulterior motive. Thrown into a world of politics and conspiracy, of keeping enemies close, they move against time to save Rome before traitors and the gods themselves see to their end. And in doing so, see the dawn of the nova praetorian--the new guard--rise.

Protection


S.A. Reid - 2011
    Tough, smart, and ruthless in a fight, he quickly makes a name for himself inside. But Gabriel, saved from the noose by a social crusader, is serving two life sentences. And life is a very long time to endure Wentworth with no comforts but prison food, card games and cigarettes. To survive endless days without the touch of another human being...Five years after Gabriel’s incarceration, Joey Cooper arrives at Wentworth. Every convict claims imprisonment through a miscarriage of justice, but Joey is truly blameless. Trained at Oxford as a physician, the young doctor is innocent of prison culture and too handsome for his own good. Facing eighteen years behind Wentworth’s towering gates, Joey cannot hope to survive without protection. And protection is just what Gabriel MacKenna offers. At a price...

Let There Be Light


R. Cooper - 2010
    But tensions are mounting again, and agent Robert “Hart” Hartley-Battridge has uncovered plans that indicate someone is planning to kidnap one of their most brilliant minds—the tempestuous Karol Zieliński. Hart is only too familiar with the hotheaded, beautiful scientist. He spent years working alongside Karol, concealing his love for him, convinced he would have been just one in a string of conquests lured into Karol’s bed. Then a mission gone wrong left Hart scarred and near death, and Karol abruptly quit the Service and never approached Hart again. But the new threat is about to close the distance between them. For one day and one night, Karol will have only a single guard to watch over him, and Hart doesn’t trust anyone but himself to keep Karol safe. Twenty-four hours in the presence of the man he loves, a man he hasn’t seen in three years. Hart expects Karol to have forgotten him. But Karol remembers their every mission—especially the last. And he has a surprise for Hart so daring and unprecedented it brought danger—and Hart—back to his door. With peace and Karol’s life on the line, Hart needs to accept that he was never a conquest. That for him, Karol would change the world.

The Charioteer


Mary Renault - 1953
    There he befriends the young, bright Andrew, a conscientious objector serving as an orderly. As they find solace and companionship together in the idyllic surroundings of the hospital, their friendship blooms into a discreet, chaste romance. Then one day, Ralph Lanyon, a mentor from Laurie’s schoolboy days, suddenly reappears in Laurie’s life, and draws him into a tight-knit social circle of world-weary gay men. Laurie is forced to choose between the sweet ideals of innocence and the distinct pleasures of experience. Originally published in the United States in 1959, The Charioteer is a bold, unapologetic portrayal of male homosexuality during World War II that stands with Gore Vidal’s The City and the Pillar and Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories as a monumental work in gay literature.

Behind These Doors


Jude Lucens - 2018
    The Honourable Aubrey Fanshawe, second son of an earl, is Society. They have nothing in common, until a casual encounter leads to a crisis.  Aubrey isn’t looking for love. He already has it, in his long-term clandestine relationship with Lord and Lady Hernedale. And Lucien is the last man Aubrey should want. He’s a commoner, raised in service, socially unacceptable. Worse, he writes for a disreputable, gossip-hungry newspaper. Aubrey can’t afford to trust him when arrest and disgrace are just a breath away. Lucien doesn’t trust nobs. Painful experience has taught him that working people simply don’t count to them. Years ago, he turned his back on a life of luxury so his future wouldn’t depend on an aristocrat’s whim. Now, thanks to Aubrey, he’s becoming entangled in the risky affairs of the upper classes, antagonising people who could destroy him with a word. Aubrey and Lucien have too much to hide—and too much between them to ignore. Rejecting the strict rules and closed doors of Edwardian society might lead them both to ruin… but happiness and integrity alike demand it.  An Edwardian Romance.

Into Deep Waters


Kaje Harper - 2012
    And against all odds, and the many risks involved, we fell in love and have managed to stay together for the last 60 years. Now, as our time together inevitably gets shorter and shorter, I can’t wait any longer for the right to finally marry the man I’ve loved all these years.Photo Description: Two young men stand in the riveted steel doorway of a ship. The one inside the doorway is young and classically handsome, hatless, with wavy dark hair falling over his forehead. His eyes are narrowed against the sunlight and a small smile hovers on his lips as he braces himself in the doorframe. The man in front of him is younger still. His attractiveness is more the flush of youth and good health than perfection of features. He grins, squinting in the brightness, dressed in the white hat and shirt of the WWII US Navy. Although the two men stand only casually close together, the sailor in front has one hand raised, over his shoulder, to keep a firm grip on the shirt of the man in the doorway behind him.This story was written as a part of the M/M Romance Group's "Love is Always Write" event. Group members were asked to write a story prompt inspired by a photo of their choice. Authors of the group selected a photo and prompt that spoke to them and wrote a short story.Read it online or find it in Love Is Always Write: Volume 11 - Bonus Volume.