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LGBTQ+

Review

The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses

by Chris Kahn

Our favorite otherworldly investigators, Mossa and Pleiti, Jupiter-residing gay gals with a whole lot of know-how, are back. Or at least Pleiti is back, having been called up to help a good friend’s cousin, Villette, who is about to undergo her donfense, a sort of doctoral defense. Reluctantly, Pleiti agrees, despite the lengthy trip out to Stortellen University, located at the furthest reaches of the planet. But there are problems. Number one is that Villette is being accused of plagiarism—a false accusation but hard to shake. Problem number two is the absence of Sherlock-like Mossa, who is a no-show, leaving Pleiti alone to keep Villette safe while missing terribly her affectionate relationship. Thankfully, this is a short novel, whereas the earlier works (The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles, The Mimicking of Known Successes) were novellas. This gives Older some room to play, including in the bond between Pleiti and Mossa and the wonderful use of language (since the early settlers, after all, spoke a breadth of languages). Don’t be lazy, look the non-English words up; it’s half the fun. A unique series that just keeps getting better.

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Review

He’s to Die For

by Brian Kenney

What the world needs now is more LGBTQIA+ romantic and suspenseful fiction, and fortunately Erin Dunn’s He’s to Die For delivers just that. It’s totally head over heels when NYPD Detective Rav Trivedi (British born, Ivy League educated, Dad’s a Lord, suits are bespoke, get the picture?) can’t take his eyes off rock star Jack Vale, who is as talented a musician as he is super hot. But here’s the one flaw: Jack is the lead suspect in a murder case, and Rav is leading the investigation. Fortunately, Jack is able to clear his name, although both he and Rav remain cautious about hooking up thanks to the media onslaught, their own private natures, and the threat of violence that continues to surround them. Meanwhile the dialog snaps, the stakes are high, and the pacing pops. Give yourself a treat and get a copy of He’s to Die For, which miraculously succeeds as a romance as much as it is a suspense novel. Yes it’s early in the year, but this is already one of my favorite novels of 2025.

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Review

The Betrayal of Thomas True

by Brian Kenney

It is 1715, and young Thomas True has managed to escape from his parent’s home, arriving in London, where he takes up residence with his uncle, a candlemaker to whom he becomes apprenticed. But that’s hardly the story. Eighteenth-century London was home to a flourishing, if risky, gay subculture, a world that seduces Thomas and that was centered around the molly houses. “Molly was a slur used for effeminate, homosexual men and the term was adopted to describe the clubs, taverns…where they met up in secret”, according to The British Newspaper Archives. And although the houses were called mollies, they attracted a range of men, from workers to aristocrats. It was a world where Thomas felt a sense of belonging, made all the more immediate with his discovery of beefy carpenter Gabriel Griffin (AKA Lotty), the doorman at Mother Clap’s Molly House. But when a young molly is found murdered, Gabriel goes in search of the rat who is exposing the men to the judicial system. Could it be someone he is close to? This book is that rare thing: both a strong historical novel that drops you into a richly rendered early 18th century and a powerful mystery that remains at the center of the book.

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Molten Death

by Chris Kahn

Kristen and Valerie, long a couple, are in Hawaii on vacation, partly to help Valerie come to terms with her brother’s death. They are staying with Isaac, who’s a surfer buddy of Leslie’s, a high-school science teacher, and a lifelong resident of the islands. During an early morning excursion to see the glowing lava rolling down the landscape, Valerie sees a boot in the lava and realizes that there is a leg attached. It is quickly consumed by the lava, and as she is the only witness, all doubt the truth of what she has seen. The police report goes nowhere, so Valerie takes on the task of finding the identity of both the victim and the killer herself. With the luck and determination of the amateur, and the friendly and open nature of Hawaiians, allowing for a few glitches, she succeeds. This is a Hawaii we seldom see in TV police dramas. The locals speak a pidgin dialect, the importance of which is carefully explained by Isaac, and the customs and practices date back centuries. The landscape is of course dramatic and beautiful and the descriptions of food and produce mouthwatering. There are recipes for some of the dishes at the end, and a glossary of words and phrases. This is billed as the first in a series, so expect more to come from our interesting characters.

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Review

The Case of the Missing Maid

by Brian Kenney

A wonderful foray into turn-of-the-19th-century Chicago, with women entering the workforce, immigrants transforming the city, and the LGBTQ community tucked away in hidden nightclubs. Harriet Morrow, all of 21 years old, is the first woman hired as a detective by the prestigious Prescott Agency—a decision that pleases almost no one, neither the male detectives nor the female typing pool. But working as a detective has always been a dream of Harriet’s, and now, with her parents dead and her younger brother to support, it’s a necessity. So too are the pants she wears, giving her the freedom to comfortably bike around Chicago while also exploring her identity as a lesbian. Within an hour on the job, Harriet gets her first assignment: to find a maid who has disappeared from one of the posh mansions on Prairie Avenue—and Harriet has only a few days to locate her. It’s magical how Osler transports us around Chicago, from the the large Polish community to queer social spaces to the ritzy homes of Chicago’s elite. Harriet is a wonderful lead character, and Osler brilliantly combines his protagonist’s growth into adulthood and Chicago’s emergence as one of the nation’s largest cities. This book is asking to be the first in a series

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Review

Murder in the Dressing Room

by Brian Kenney

By day, Joe is a dreary accountant in a hotel, but by night they (Stars uses “they” pronouns when mentioning Joe) are Misty Divine, one of London’s leading drag queens. Joe’s wonderful life is thanks to Lady Lady, their drag mother, who discovered them, set them up in the right sequins and heels, and pushed them out onto the stage. Until the night Joe drops by Lady Lady’s dressing room and finds her dead, sprawled out on the floor, her fingers clutching half a truffle, her mouth oozing foam. Joe’s life is upended as they and the other drag queens become the prime suspects. But unlike the other girls, Joe won’t let only the police handle the investigation, especially when it means Joe could end up behind bars. Maybe I’ll find out who did it, said a voice somewhere in the back of Joe’s mind. Maybe I could catch the killer.” So we’re off and running, despite the fears of Joe’s boyfriend, Miles, tracking down the drag queens and kings who perform at the club, and some suspicious-looking hangers on as well. There’s plenty of humor in the novel—check out a side story about a very important Judy Garland dress, as well as the continual banter between Joe and Miles—but at its essence, this is a serious work of crime fiction, wonderfully executed and leaving unanswered some important questions. It has all the makings of a great series.

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Review

The Rivals

by Brian Kenney

The many fans of Jane Pek’s first book, The Verifiers, will be thrilled to get their hands on this new novel featuring the indomitable Claudia Lin. In this darker and tougher novel, with a robust comic streak and a deep foray into technology—featuring synths, the scary new generation of bots—Claudia can’t help but employ some espionage tropes as she investigates a corrupt matchmaking firm with the help of a corporate whistleblower. But there is plenty else to distract Claudia. Her family is falling apart at a prodigious rate; she is barely speaking to any of them. Romantic tensions are growing between Claudia and not one but two women, one of whom is the ever soignée Becks, Claudia’s one-time boss and major crush. Questions about sexual identity are sending these 20-somethings spinning in and out of the proverbial closet. While Inspector Yuan, a character created by Claudia, provides plenty of maxims throughout the text. Lots of fun, but also some real terror, in what is a brilliant depiction of New York City.

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Review

The Resurrectionist

by Willy Williams

As the third son of a modestly landed family, James Willoughby has been told from an early age that he must earn a living befitting his station. Being of “a diminutive stature,” James decides the military is not for him. Nor is the Church of England an appealing option. Despite his family’s opposition, the young man abandons his clerical studies at Oxford and heads north to Edinburgh to become a physician. It’s 1828, the Age of Enlightenment, and the Scottish city is a “shining beacon of medical discovery.” But James quickly learns that if he wants to develop anatomical knowledge and surgical skills, he must join one of the private schools in Surgeon’s Square. Unable to afford the additional tuition, James makes a bargain with his professor’s secretary and dissectionist, the charismatic Aneurin “Nye” MacKinnon, to serve as a lookout to prevent possible grave robbing in the Greyfriars kirkyard (graveyard) beneath James’s chamber window. The naive student soon discovers that he is aiding a gang of body snatchers who steal fresh corpses from churchyards for anatomical study at the medical schools. Nye explains to a horrified James that he is a Resurrectionist: “Our motivation is not in the value of the bodies we steal, but in the second life we give them.” Bedazzled by Nye’s scientific passion (and his dark sexiness), James plunges into this illicit, gritty underworld. However, their rivals in the body-snatching game, the sinister Burke and Hare, will murder anyone to corner the corpse market. Mixing a macabre gothic mystery with a sensitive coming-of-age tale and a touching queer romance, Dunlap has written an exciting, well-researched debut historical adventure. Bizarre, authentic details, like the mortsafes, or cages, that grieving families installed to protect the graves of their loved ones, make for an unforgettable read.

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Review

The Whitewashed Tombs

by Henrietta Thornton

This piercingly written tale of modern life in Ghana is preceded by a warning in Quartey’s heartfelt prologue that his novel includes scenes of violence against gay characters and should be approached with “caution and mindfulness.” That’s fair to say, but it must also be noted that the violence is in keeping with the story and not gratuitous, except on the part of the criminals. The effects of white-supremacist missionary work in Africa also loom large in the story, which centers around the murderous homophobia stoked in Ghana by an American evangelical Christian, Chris Cortland. His bigoted ways have brought him to Africa where he finds a home among those who believe that “homosexuality isn’t indigenous to Ghana.” The tale features many well-drawn characters, all presented in an opening character list (don’t be put off by the full to bursting cast here!). They fall into three main groups: trans women who are being murdered, with famous Ghanaian pop singer Henrietta Blay the focus; Emma Djan and the other private investigators who who make this police-procedural-esque, employed because “the police might not give the case high priority”; and the smarmy, self-righteous circle of Americans and Ghanaians around Cortland, whose behavior means the book could also come with a domestic violence warning. The murder mystery is compelling here, but readers will also be absorbed by the politics and religious machinations and the emotional brutality the mixing of the two creates.

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Review

Blessed Water

by Henrietta Thornton

Perhaps only in New Orleans can there be a gay novice nun who is also a novice private detective and who offers up prayers like, “Hail Mary, share with me your divine vision, because I can’t see a fucking thing.” The nun in question is Sister Holiday, who teaches in a private school, runs a support group for survivors of Catholic Church sexual abuse, and on the side partners with a former cop to run Redemption Detective Agency. When the two hit the banks of the Mississippi to meet a new client, Holiday finds herself wading into the water to catch a body before it floats away. It’s her parish priest, and that awful discovery isn’t the last. Returning to school, the nun finds that another priest is missing. He seemed a kind young man, not one of the priests that Holiday loathes for their fake piety and fondness for their parishioners’ money. While a storm rages, Holiday must face the contradictions that are her life and life in New Orleans as well as help her brother and others face their demons, all while trying desperately to solve the mystery of the missing priest. Douaihy’s first in the series, Scorched Grace, was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, among other accolades. Fans of that book, as well as all who love an irreverent and smart lead, will happily join Sister Holiday for her second outing.

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