A Body to Dye For


Grant Michaels - 1990
    When a vacationing National Park ranger turns up dead in Boston, Stan is implicated in the murder, and must find the killer to clear his own name. With an eye for detail and a mettlesome spirit, Stan finds plenty of clues, but he also confronts the police lieutenant assigned to the case, a man with little tolerance for the world of fashion and style, or for Stan's cheeky attitude. With a sharp tongue as his best defense, a most unlikely detective uses even more unlikely techniques to close the loop and get the killer.

The Next


Rafe Haze - 2014
    A romance springs to life as two strangers merge with a common goal: to catch a killer they suspect occupies one of the apartments across the courtyard. But their romance must hurdle the main protagonist's suffocating, unresolved demons as well as encroaching, life threatening danger. But if they make it through, they can both bring life back to their lives.

Sleepwalker


Jordan Castillo Price - 2010
    That was a year and a half ago. Now he's working a dead-end security job and living in his cousin's two-flat. Thanks to the mysterious George, he's got gaps in his memory too big for his pocket notebook to fill. Jesse Ray Jones is the taxidermist who's trying to help the Faris Natural Sciences Center secure the MAHPS Grant, a funding that would keep the foundering organization afloat for a few more years. He looks like a skatepunk and talks like a science major, which pushes Web's every last hot-button. It's lust at first sight…but hooking up proves difficult when a supervisor at the Center is found bludgeoned to death in the petroglyph alcove—and Jesse and Web are the primary suspects. this novella-length m/m thriller is 40,000 words or approximately 135 pages

Don't Look Back


Josh Lanyon - 2009
    Was this for real? Was he going to go through with it? Peter blinked up as his tie was unfastened, tossed aside, his shirt unbuttoned, laid wide. The evening breeze -- scented of smog and jasmine -- felt cool against his overheated skin, like the lightest breath...Peter Killian, curator at Constantine House in Los Angeles, wakes in the hospital to find himself accused of stealing a tenth century Chinese sculpture. Peter knows he’s not a thief -- but that’s all he knows. Why is hot and handsome Detective Mike Griffin so sure he’s guilty -- and so hell-bent on seeing Peter arrested?And why is Peter having these weird dreams about an unseen lover who somehow reminds him uncomfortably of Michael Griffin?

Fadeout


Joseph Hansen - 1970
    When entertainer Fox Olson's car plunges off a bridge in a storm, a death claim is filed, but where is Olson's body? As Brandstetter questions family, fans, and detractors, he grows certain Olson is still alive and that Dave must find him before the would-be killer does. Suspenseful and wry, shrewd and deeply felt, Fadeout remains as fresh today as when it startled readers more than thirty years ago.

Light Up the Dark


Suki Fleet - 2016
    His only company, the cold man who promised to keep him safe from harm, Lance. But when Lance dies, Nicky’s assurance of safety disintegrates and his world suddenly becomes a lot more real and a lot more dangerous. Scared to leave the house, Nicky longs for daylight. He employs a gardener to clear the over-grown bushes and vines that have nearly swallowed Thorn Hall whole.The last thing Nicky expects a little light to do is show him something to fight for.Eighteen months in a young offenders’ institute has taught Cai two things: he occupies the playful puppy end of the How Dangerous Are You? spectrum, and he has an unfortunate knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.Desperate for a job, he takes the first offer he gets. Even though Thorn Hall creeps the hell out of him and he barely knows one end of a pair of garden shears from the other.Things start to fall apart when Cai is drawn into Nicky’s strange world of sticky notes and secrets. Cai finds he is now a target, blamed for a crime he didn’t commit. Desperate not to go back to prison, he digs deep and risks all the good things in life to help Nicky run. But now Nicky has someone he wants to protect, he knows he can’t run any more.

The Butcher's Son


Dorien Grey - 2001
    Then drag queens and female impersonators get into the act and Dick is required to sleuth out who is hot and who is not.

The Next One Will Kill You


Neil S. Plakcy - 2016
     Angus wants more adventure than a boring accounting job, so after graduating with his master’s degree he signs up with the FBI. He’s assigned to the Miami field office, where the caseload includes smugglers, drug runners, and gangs, but he starts out stuck behind a desk, an accountant with a badge and gun. Struggling to raise money for his little brother’s college tuition, he enters a strip trivia contest at a local bar. But when he’s caught with his pants down by a couple of fellow agents, he worries that his extracurricular activities and his status as the only openly gay agent will crash his career. Instead, to his surprise, he’s added to an anti-terrorism task force and directed to find a missing informant. It’s his first real case: a desperate chase to catch a gang of criminals with their tentacles in everything from medical fraud to drugs to jewel theft. With every corner in this case—from Fort Lauderdale’s gay bars to the morgue—turning to mayhem, Angus quickly learns that the only way to face a challenge is to assume that he'll survive this one—it’s the next one that will kill him.

Three Nick Nowak Mysteries


Marshall Thornton - 2009
    Haunted by his abrupt departure from the Chicago Police Department and the end of his relationship with librarian Daniel Laverty, Nick Nowak is a beat cop-turned-dogged private investigator. In this first book of the series, Nick works through three cases: a seemingly simple missing persons search, an arson investigation, and a suicide that turns out to be anything but. While working the cases, Nick moves through a series of casual relationships until he meets homicide detective Bert Harker and begins a tentative relationship.

Lord John and the Hellfire Club


Diana Gabaldon - 1998
    Soon he is mixed up in the affairs of Sir Francis Dashwood and his notorious Hellfire Club.

A Midcoast Murder


Stephen E. Stanley - 2009
    Should he take early retirement or continue teaching? When his best friend, Rhonda Shepard, retires and moves to the coast of Maine to open a gift shop, Jesse offers to help her set up her business. Much to Jesse's surprise, Rhonda's gift shop in located in the town where Jesse grew up. Jesse must not only deal with relocation, but he must also reestablish ties that he had severed thirty-some years ago. Jesse purchases a run-down 1920's bungalow called Eagles Nest. The house was the site of a 1960's commune and has been more or less neglected in recent years. While digging a garden in the isolated back yard, Jesse and his pug dog, Argus, make a gruesome discovery. Police chief Tim Mallory is one of the first on the scene of the discovery. Tim and Jesse were in the same high school graduation class and have a shared history. Tim and Jesse begin the investigation of the unknown victim and struggle to renew their friendship. Thanks to Jesse's keen eye and the indestructibility of polyester fabric, the victim is initially identified as a student who disappeared in 1970. Jesse and Tim begin to research what they believe to be a cold-case file until threats to several former classmates help provide clues to the murder. While Jesse is investigating the murder, he is also struggling to deal with new relationships and the need to establish a sense of place for himself. The events of the plot allow Jesse to explore new areas of his life.

Closet


R.D. Zimmerman - 1995
    . . and again.

Simple Justice


John Morgan Wilson - 1996
    He is called back to the world of the living by an unexpected, and unwelcome, visit from Harry Brofsky, his former boss. Brofsky wants Ben to do some background work (strictly off the record) with another reporter on the investigation of a seemingly motiveless killing outside a local gay bar.Sucked in for reasons even he doesn't quite understand, Justice finds himself back in the life of gay bars, spurned lovers, dysfunctional families, and tawdry secrets--all the things he had been trying to escape. While fending off passes from his sexy, young female partner, he finds himself falling hopelessly in love with the man he must ultimately nail for murder--a killing that turns out to have far more personal and political implications than a simple bias crime.Simple Justice is a subtly plotted mystery that takes a piercing look at not only violent crime but violations of the heart and soul in the sometimes glamorous, more often dark and dangerous gay life of West Hollywood.

Death Trick


Richard Stevenson - 1981
    The gay son of a wealthy family has disappeared. Now it's up to private dick Don Strachey to get to the bottom of this mess--even if he has to cruise every gay bar in the city to do it Don Strachey isn't exactly the most sought-after private eye in Albany, New York. In fact, this gay P.I. has gotten to the point of having to write checks to pay his tab at the cheapest lunch counter in town. And he isn't sure that the latest one, for the grand total of two dollars and ninety-three cents, is going to clear. Then the phone rings. Billy Blount, the gay heir to one of Saratoga Springs' upper-crust families, has disappeared, and his parents want him back. On top of that, Billy, a young and outspoken gay activist, is wanted for the grisly murder of the man he slept with on his last night in Albany--a man he'd never met before that night Set in the glorious, promiscuous pre-HIV late 1970s, Death Trick: A Murder Mystery is a fast-paced excursion through the seamy underside of gay Albany. From gay discos where the hard-pumping music never stops, to the city's infamous baths, to the dark alley behind the local precinct house, this hard-bitten private dick searches for answers to the questions that plague Billy's parents and the police. With his faithful companion (and unfaithful lover) Timmy, plus a cast of characters that includes drag queens, ex-jock gay bar owners, homophobic cops, male hustlers, and wealthy suburbanites, Strachey begins a chase that leads him to seedy gay bars, posh suburban homes, and pricey mental institutions where they use electric shock to destroy "sick" gay tendencies.

The Master of Seacliff


Max Pierce - 2006
    Brought up by a harsh and stingy aunt and uncle in New York City after the death of his parents, young Andrew dreams of life as an artist in Paris. He has talent enough but lacks the resources to bring his dream to fruition. When a friend arranges for him to work as tutor to the son of a wealthy patron of the arts, Andrew sees a chance to make his dream come true and boards a train heading up the Atlantic coast. His destination is the estate called Seacliff, where he'll tutor his new charge and save his pay to make the life he dreams of possible. But danger lurks everywhere and nothing is quite as easy as it seems.Seacliff: A dark and brooding cliff-top mansion enshrouded in near-eternal fog, dark mystery, and suspicion - perhaps a reflection of the house's master. An imposing Blackbeard of a man, Duncan Stewart is both feared and admired by his business associates as well as the people he calls friends. And his home, in which young Andrew must now reside, holds terrible secrets, secrets that could destroy everyone within its walls.