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A steamy bacchanal bending through time and space, replete with the occasional God, mythic creatures, and oh-so-many men. For centuries the godling Nerites luxuriated in a shifting sexual paradise, hopping from one bathhouse to another—from disco-era Manhattan to Feudal Japan and back to where it all started: ancient Rome. When the dark shadow of his half-brother, the sinister Obsidio, descends, his deadly kiss leaves bodies cooling in steam room corners. Nerites must adopt a new role: as defender of these hidden havens, his eternal orgy becomes a race across history itself.

"The Lurid Sea is either the most lyrical filth I’ve ever read, or the most sexually explicit legend of ancient Rome ever put on paper. Probably both." Wayne Hoffman, author of Hard and An Older Man

A "mythology-themed pornographic paean to the art of fellatio." Publishers Weekly

With the Storm Lord dead, Cordelia Ross and Simon Lazlo return to Gale, to normality, but when they find the populace poisoned by the drushka, it’s clear the aliens must be dealt with before life can be anything near normal. In the north, Patricia Dué takes control of Gale’s mine with Jonah, the servant she created in Dillon Tracey’s old body. She thinks controlling the humans’ only source of metal will bring her power, but her past won’t be banished so easily.

Amidst the chaos and conflict, a prophet predicts that true calamity is still to come, and the only way to stop it may be a murderous widow looking for revenge. As factions splinter and reconnect, the fate of Calamity lies uncertain, and even the prophets can’t see every ripple on the horizon.

Advance Praise for Somewhere Over Lorain Road

"The author pulls all the stops out in this gripping story of love, tragedy, and redemption set against the backdrop of a murder investigation...a five-star win with the best mystery novel I have read in years." – Alan Chin, author of First Exposure, The Plain of Bitter Honey, and Buddha's Bad Boys

“Darker and more powerful than its outline might suggest.” – Daniel Curzon, author of Something You Do in the Dark

For more than forty years, the stain of horrific allegations against their father has haunted the Esker sons. When three little boys were murdered in 1975, their dad was suspected of the crimes. The immense strain of the unsolved case shattered the family, sending the brothers reeling into destinies of death, flight, and, in the case of Don Esker, shame-filled silence.

Years later, Don returns to the family home in North Homestead, Ohio, to help care for his dying father in his final months. His dad longs for the peace that will only come with clearing his name. If Don can find the killer, he can heal his family—and himself. His own redemption begins when he becomes romantically involved with Bruce, who joins the hunt and forces Don to confront the unthinkable answer they’ve uncovered.

Arrow Bay: a picturesque seaside city of parks, mountain trails, incredible views…and corpses. An unidentified vigilante, unhappy with plans to alter the idyllic character of Jake Finnigan’s hometown, goes to extreme ends—in disturbingly creative and fatal ways—to express their displeasure. The citizens of the village are growing increasingly concerned and agitated, wondering who will be next and if the killer walks among them. Jake and his partner Sam O’Conner, who insist that they do not poke their noses into murder investigations, suddenly land in the middle of an increasingly complex and bizarre case, and as the body count grows, find themselves falling under suspicion.

Kyle, a young newcomer to New Orleans, is haunted by the memory of his first lover, brutally murdered just outside the French Quarter. 

Marc, a young Quarter hustler, is haunted by an eccentric spirit that shares his dreams, and by the handsome but vicious lover who shares his bed. 

When the barrier between these men comes down, it will prove thinner than the veil between the living and the dead…or between justice and revenge.

The law of three is everything: three vampires for a coterie, three demons for a pack, and three wizards for a coven. Those alone or in pairs are vulnerable to the rest. Luc, Anders, and Curtis—vampire, demon, and wizard—sidestepped tradition by binding themselves together.

When something starts brutally killing demons in Ottawa, the three find themselves once again moving among the powers who rule the city from the shadows—this time working with them to try to stop the killings before chaos and blood rule the streets.

Hunting a killer who seems to leave no trace behind, the triad are forced to work with allies they don’t dare trust, powers they barely understand, and for the good of those they already know to be corrupt.

They have the power of blood, soul, and magic. But they have to survive to keep it.

The Maverick Heart is bored. That is until it discovers a top team of engineers and scientists in a barren, backwater system have created the Gate, a stable, artificial wormhole that will revolutionize interplanetary travel forever. Breaching the wall of secrecy around this radical new technology is a temptation too sweet for human partners Keene and Lexa-Blue to resist.

Elsewhere, Ember Avanti is a thief, with the highest of high tech toys in his arsenal. And he’s damned good at it, too. But sooner or later, every thief chooses the wrong mark. When he targets Quintaine DiaStellar, he soon learns the corporation will stop at nothing to make the Gate its own.

Ember’s team and the Maverick Heart crew must unite in a desperate attempt to stop the most vicious act of industrial espionage in the history of the Pan Galactum.

Seniors and fraternity brothers at Beta Kappa, Brandon Benson and Phil Connor begin playing a manipulative game of love and seduction with increasingly higher stakes, without a care about the damage they leave in their wake. But the primary problem with the seduction game is sometimes the players’ emotions can get involved…but it’s too late to turn back from the destructive path.

Gregor Slavinsky went overboard. Or did he? He was murdered. Or was he? It’s up to Detective Heath Barrington and his partner, police officer Alan Keyes, to find out as they search for clues and a missing twenty-five thousand dollars aboard an old lake steamer and throughout 1947 Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

They are up against gangsters, con artists, and a very seductive Grant Riker, a fellow policeman who could come between Heath and Alan, upsetting their romance. 

The three of them race the clock to find the truth amidst lies, secrets, and possible scandal, while riding the waves of a potential love triangle.

An anthology of short fiction featuring the finalist selections from the 2017 Saints+Sinners Literary Festival.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Introduction by Michael Thomas Ford
• Moonshine by Michael Chin
• The Gay Restaurants of New York by William Moeck
• The Gods Are Stacked Against Us by Sheila Morris
• Jesus Year by Dale Corvino
• Must Love Animals by Louis Flint Ceci
• Temporary Adhesions by P.D. Walter
• Leaves by James Penha
• Curo The Filthmonger: A Tale of Art and Survival in the Cold Embrace of Outer Space by J. Marshall Freeman
• Passing Through by John Morgan Wilson
• Obituaries by Thomas Westerfield
• The Fool by Ellis Anderson
• Oni and Marie by Debra Curtis
• Slaying the Dragon by W. C. Smith
• Beauty Marks by David James Parr
• Bear Food by Alise Wascom

Travis Gaines and Stephen Davis are as close as two best friends can be. Born less than a month apart, they grew up as neighbors in a small northern New Hampshire town. After college, they make their way together to Boston, craving the excitement and fast pace of New England’s biggest city. 

As they get their bearings in Boston, Travis falls hard for Benson, a senior executive at the financial services firm where he works. Benson is wealthy, handsome, and well connected among Boston’s well heeled. At first it seems like Benson is everything a guy could ever want, but behind that glossy veneer is a dark side that threatens to tear Travis and Stephen’s friendship apart and change their lives forever.

Advance praise from Foreword Reviews:

"A Careful Heart is a romance novel by way of domestic abuse. Sound improbable? Perhaps, but Ralph Josiah Bardsley takes on that often-neglected subject within the genre well. The book follows two best friends from childhood to early adulthood. One finds romance, and the other thinks he has but realizes that the “perfect guy” comes with a devastating price....Bardsley crafts the family dynamics of both characters well, giving enough information to enrich the story without lingering too long on secondary characters....Violence in relationships can affect anyone, as A Careful Heart compellingly proves."

Naos is bored. Alone in space, life should be idyllic. No more random thoughts intruding on her brain; no bodies clogging her senses. But what is there to do besides stare at the planet below and wonder what it would feel like to be Calamity’s only god?

War between the other gods shouldn’t be too hard to start. The Storm Lord has a bad temper, and after being abandoned by Simon Lazlo, source of immortality, he’s easy to provoke. And the Sun-Moon live closely with Calamity’s plains-dwelling people and their new neighbors, a pack of humans and aliens led by the intriguing ex-soldier Cordelia Ross. With a plague ravaging their numbers, it will be easy to set them at each other’s throats.

A little war, a bit of death, and the chance to be Calamity’s only deity? It’s a game to keep even the most fickle goddess entertained.

Long ago, the Olympian Gods conquered and nearly destroyed an earlier race known as the Titans. Echidna, Mother of Monsters, was imprisoned in Tartarus. Centuries later, she has escaped. Entering the modern world, Echidna finds the old Gods are gone, and vows to destroy every descendant of the Olympians.

In the contemporary Pacific Northwest, Adrian and Annelise have lived comfortably—unaware of their Olympian birthright and its significance. When Adrian is introduced to Zack, sparks fly and their initial contact slowly turns to romance.

Echidna unleashes a brutal attack and Zack reveals his Divine lineage. Now he must teach the twins about their own heritage, and how to wield their unique powers for the battle to come. The final battle between Titans and Olympians will be held in the Underworld. Modern weapons have no place and only magic can prevail.

Praise from Publishers Weekly: "Andrews-Katz packs his first full-length fantasy solidly with Greek mythology...Andrews-Katz’s experience writing gay romance comes through in hot scenes between Zack and Adrian, and in the flow of the friendships in his sympathetic depictions of both teasing and support in the queer community."

Integrity. Service before self. Excellence in all things. The U.S. Air Force core values matter to Second Lieutenant Harris Mitchell, out and proud since the military ditched its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. But though the Air Force may be gay friendly, Harris isn’t so sure about his demanding new boss, Brigadier General Seamus O’Neill—unit commander, cargo pilot, perfectionist, infidel—hiding behind bluster, a magnificent mustache, and a secret. Harris is certain that General O’Neill hates him. So what’s a lieutenant supposed to do when he discovers that he’s fallen in love?

The city of New Orleans was rocked to its very shaky foundations when the body of six-year-old beauty queen Delilah Metoyer was found, strangled, in the carriage house behind her family’s Garden District mansion. The crime was never solved, and the Metoyer family shattered in the aftermath of the crime. Thirty years later, Delilah’s brother asks Scotty to finally find his sister’s killer…putting Scotty and his friends and family into the crosshairs of a vicious killer.

A Scotty Bradley Mystery

“Different is a brave thing to be,” a mother tells her five-year-old daughter. During the 1960s and 1970s, when things for gays and lesbians were starting to change in larger cities, in the Midwest, different was not a safe thing to be. A memorable cast of characters, a sympathetic, believable, tight-knit community of friends and rivals, fill out the interconnected stories with butches, femmes, go-go dancers, and drag queens who try to find their way in an unaccepting culture by becoming a family of choice. Anyone who has ever been on the outside looking in will feel at home on “the levee.”

Reprint

Reylan’s last assignment for The Arcadia Trust brought a rebellious human servant under his roof, and a volatile werewolf lover named Jorgas into his bed, leaving the self-reliant Blood Shade—known to the outside world as vampires—in no hurry to risk his immortality for them again. 

Ian Baines seems to have it all—a career as a hotshot software programmer in Silicon Valley, a beautiful wife and family, a nice house in an upscale San Francisco neighborhood, and a past that he’s mostly managed to forget. Life takes an unexpected turn for Ian when he finds himself in Paris for a three-month work project where he meets former fashion photographer Luca Sparks. The unlikely friendship grows and Ian sees a new side to life as Luca takes him on a journey through the glamorous and lustrous Paris nightlife. But something strange starts to happen during their adventures in Paris—the two start to fall in love. Both battle their own demons on the road to self-discovery, ultimately learning how to come to peace with their feelings and their pasts.

Lambda Literary says... 

Outwardly, Ian Baines’ life has all the clichéd trappings of success:  a rising career as a software programmer at a Silicon Valley start-up; a beautiful, accomplished wife; two above-average sons; a fabulous house in an upscale San Francisco neighborhood. The long hours at his job, however, begin to strain his marriage and threaten to unravel his perfect family life. Against his better judgement, then, he accepts a three-month work project based in Paris, creating a database of the fashion house Môti’s collection. While in Paris, alone, he meets the former fashion photographer Luca Sparks who introduces him to the Paris that is hidden from tourists, and together they enjoy the glamorous Parisian nightlife. Their unlikely friendship soon develops into something deeper, until finally Ian is forced to make a choice.

Such is the basic story behind The Photographer’s Truth by Ralph Josiah Bardsley. The two protagonists appear to share little in common: Ian, the unkempt and logical American contrasts with the impeccable, artistic, and cosmopolitan Frenchman Luca. But neither man is entirely what he seems on the surface: for example, buried in their pasts are Ian’s single sexual experience with another man, and Luca’s marriage to a female photojournalist. Ian, in typical American fashion, is rather out of touch with his feelings, so it takes a while for what is obvious to the reader to dawn on him, namely that Luca is attracted to him and is courting him. Perhaps it is Ian’s liberal Californian upbringing, or being thrust into a milieu so different from his normal world, but Ian is not consumed with feelings of “I can’t be gay or Bi”; instead he is consumed by guilt over cheating on his wife.

Bardsley allows the relationship between the two men to develop at a believable pace; as the narrative unfolds, we gradually learn more about the two men at the center of the story, and how they evolve over the course of the romance. Ian narrates the story, so it is clear to the reader how drastically his attitudes and life change; but when Ian meets Luca’s friends, and through them learns Luca’s backstory, it becomes apparent to him (and the reader) that their relationship has also changed Luca. A notorious recluse, once he meets Ian he begins ignoring even his close circle of friends; he also quits smoking.

It used to be said that “the camera doesn’t lie”—at least without irony before the advent of Photoshop and Instagram filters—but the truth is that the photographer carefully constructs the photograph (using light, shadow, color, setting, etc.) in much the same way that the fiction writer constructs a scene in a chapter. Both use their respective media to tell a story, and both use lies to tell a deeper truth. Luca acknowledges how much artifice goes into making art when he explains to Ian that the “photographer must make a decision. He must decide what his subject looks like before he takes the picture. We have to decide what we want to see….What do you want to see?  What do you want your world to be?” Of course, Luca’s explanation of how to be a good photographer could just as easily be applied to the question of how to live one’s life in an authentic manner.