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Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 304 - On the Shelf for January 2025

Saturday, January 4, 2025 - 14:48

Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 304 - On the Shelf for January 2025 - Transcript

(Originally aired 2025/01/04 - listen here)

Welcome to On the Shelf for January 2025.

And there it is—boom!—the start of another year. This is going to be a year of many changes for me, though perhaps fewer changes for the Lesbian Historic Motif Project at the moment. In less than four months, I’ll be retired and working on all my writing projects full time. It already feels like it’s still too far off and yet galloping down on me. I’ve already worked through about half of my retirement-preparation checklist and much of the rest are things related to my day-job that can’t be set in motion until I’m much closer to the date. I hope that this time next year, I’ll be able to talk more about my own fiction projects, which should have moved from periodic note-taking to active writing.

And since it’s January, we’re open for submissions for the 2025 fiction series for the podcast. So if you’ve been working on a story, it’s time to get it polished up and sent in for consideration. Every year I think that it would be hard to beat the previous season in terms of quality and diversity, but so far I’ve always been delightfully surprised. If you’re submitting a story, make sure to check the submission guidelines (see the link in the show notes) to make sure you’re aiming for the right target.

Publications on the Blog

This year I’ve had the impression that I’m falling down on my blogging schedule for the Project. In theory, my goal is to have at least one post per week, but there have been long gaps where I didn’t get anything up. Evidently I’ve made up for that with several flurries of posting, because when I went back and counted, I made 45 individual posts on books and articles, representing 6 books (usually blogged in multiple posts), 11 isolated articles and one collection of 15 articles, and one guest blog. I spent a lot of this year on research in support of specific podcast topics. As I’ve mentioned previously, I’ve started to focus the podcast on developing material for the sapphic history sourcebook. So rather than working through my backlog of general and random material, I’ve been going through my bookshelves and files to pull materials to fill in some of the blank spaces in my outline.

But there’s still room for indulging in books that are just plain fun. This month, it was Stephen Turton’s Before the Word was Queer: Sexuality and the English Dictionary 1600-1930, which studies how vocabulary for queer subjects has been handled in dictionaries of the English language, leading up to a deep dive into the biases and gatekeeping that made the Oxford English Dictionary a badly flawed resource for the topic. Any time you hear someone confidently saying that “English didn’t even have a word for lesbians until the end of the 19th century” you’re seeing the damage done by over-reliance on a resource that deliberately and systematically censored the existence of women loving women. Ahem. I do get a bit passionate on this topic, because it pops up so much, not only in casual conversation among non-specialists, but even among historians. There are so many misperceptions about sapphic history, but I hope to whittle away at a few of them.

The winter holidays also gave me the time to read several other publications for blogging, so let’s see if I can keep the momentum going.

Recent Lesbian/Sapphic Historical Fiction

And one thing that has constant momentum is the flow of new lesbian and sapphic historical fiction. I found one November book that hadn’t previously come to my attention.

Christmas At Caldwell House (The Caldwell Family #2) by Eden Hopewell is a short story following up on the author’s novel For Love and Liberty, set in early 19th century Philadelphia.

A year after their love defied society and sparked change in the Caldwell mill, Sarah and Abigail are building a life together. But Christmas at Caldwell House stirs more than holiday cheer—it brings unresolved tensions, lingering doubts, and shadows of the past to the surface.

As Sarah faces a bittersweet return to the city she fled, Abigail’s determination to create a holiday of unity is tested by old wounds and unexpected challenges. Together, they must confront the ghosts of who they were to protect the future they’re striving to build.

Several December books get included this month. First up is Bold Privateer, a short work (maybe novelette length?) by Jeannelle M. Ferreira that ties in very loosely with her novel The Covert Captain.

Charlie Linley is far from her family. Noor Bakri was stolen from hers. Together they work out what home looks like, in spite of the Royal Navy, the Revolutionary War, and themselves. Or: sometimes your government wants to blow you sky-high, your family is not what anyone expects, and getting by on hope looks like piracy.

The Bawdy Suffragettes by Sapphic Shelley from InkPour is another short work. Both the title and the author’s pen name suggest this may lean strongly toward erotica, but the cover copy had enough solid historical references that I figured I’d give it the benefit of the doubt. (Please note that I don’t exclude books from these listings for being erotic, but I don’t tend to include books where it looks like the historic setting is thin window-dressing on something that’s primarily erotica.)

Elizabeth follows the mysterious Jenny Farrell into the daring suffragette world of London after she burst into Elizabeth's structured world that morning like a ray of defiant sunshine, forever altering her perspective. Now, Elizabeth found herself entangled in Jenny's risky mission to spread awareness, though she couldn't deny the exhilaration of rebellion pulsing through her veins.

Little did Elizabeth know, this chance encounter would ignite an unbreakable bond and launch her down an unexpected path toward forbidden love. When their impassioned fight for equality introduces Elizabeth to the alluring Delilah, she's forced to confront desires she never knew existed.

The era between the world wars in England is the setting for Unspoken Verses by S.P. Blackthorn.

In the wake of World War I, two women in 1930s England navigate the tumultuous landscape of forbidden love, societal constraints, and the weight of family expectations.

Amelia is a gifted writer born into privilege, her future seemingly written out for her by her powerful family. Yet beneath her refined exterior lies a rebellious spirit, one that is drawn to Carina, a married woman living a quiet life by the river. Their love—unspoken but undeniable—flourishes in the secrecy of stolen moments, but as the world around them spirals toward change, so too does the danger that looms over their bond.

In the shadow of an oppressive society and a brutal war that refuses to end, Amelia and Carina must choose: continue their quiet rebellion or break free from the chains of their past. As the tension between them and their families grows, they must confront the most difficult choice of all—their own survival or the survival of their love.

The January releases have a nice spread of historic settings, beginning with the French court in the late 16th century. If you’re familiar with the tv series The Serpent Queen, this next book is set in the era when Catherine de’ Medici was pulling strings as dowager queen of France: A Traitorous Heart by Erin Cotter from Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.

Paris, 1572. Seventeen-year-old Jacqueline “Jac” d’Argenson-Aunis is lady-in-waiting to her best friend and former lover, the French Princess Marguerite “Margot” de Valois, but she dreams of more. If Jac plays her cards right, one day, she’ll become a full member of the Societas Solis, a secret society of spies—just like her uncle and guardian, Viscount Gabriel d’Argenson-Aunis.

But it’s hard to think about her own ambitions while France is on the brink of war, and the only thing that might save the country is an alliance—a marriage between the Catholic Princess Margot and Henry, the awful son of the Huguenot queen. Who would be the perfect person to play matchmaker? Jac, of course.

Jac resents lying to her best friend almost as much as she resents the brazen and arrogant King Henry, but it’s her one chance to prove to the Societas Solis that she belongs among their ranks before her uncle can marry her off or worse. The more time Jac spends in the French Court’s clandestine corners, though, the more she starts to wonder if Henry is…not as terrible as she once believed. And the Societas Solis may not be what they seem.

Politics. Spies. Chaos in the French court. Perhaps even witchcraft? Everything’s more dangerous when love is involved.

Those Fatal Flowers by Shannon Ives from Dell braids together various timelines in a historic fantasy suggested for fans of Madeline Miller, Jennifer Saint, and Natalie Haynes.

Before, Scopuli. It has been centuries since Thelia made the mistake that cost her the woman she loved. As the handmaidens charged with protecting Proserpina, the goddess of spring, Thelia and her sisters are banished to the island of Scopuli, cursed to live as sirens—winged half-woman, half-bird creatures. In luring men to their death, they hope to gain favor from the gods who could free them. But then ships stop coming and Thelia fears a fate worse than the underworld. Just as time begins to run out, a voice emerges, Proserpina’s voice; and what she asks of Thelia will spark a daring and dangerous quest for freedom.

Now, Roanoke. Thelia can't bear to reflect on her last moments in Scopuli, where she left behind her sisters. After weeks drifting at sea, Thelia’s renewed human body is close to death. Luckily, an unfamiliar island appears on the horizon—Roanoke. Posing as a princess arriving on a sailboat filled with riches, Thelia infiltrates the small English colony. It doesn’t take long for her to realize that this place is dangerous, especially for women. As she grows closer to a beautiful settler who mysteriously resembles her former love, Thelia formulates a plan to save her sisters and enact revenge on the violent men she’s come to hate. But is she willing to go back to Scopuli and face the decisions of her past? And will Proserpina forgive her for all that she’s done?

Told in alternating timelines, Those Fatal Flowers is a powerful, passionate, and wildly cathartic love letter to femininity and the monstrous power within us all.

Jane Walsh continues her series of Regency romances with Seducing the Widow from Bold Strokes Books

Miss Cassandra Belvedere and Miss Louise Sheffield were once debutantes vying for the same gentleman’s attentions. Bitter rivalry turned to passion—but at the end of the Season, Louise chose the earl instead of the girl.

Fifteen years later, Cass strides back into London Society to demand Louise’s help. After all, it’s the least she can do after destroying Cass’s life. Her family’s glove making business is in peril, and the elegant Louise, now the widowed Countess of Atwater, wields enough power to bring Cass’s gloves into fashion.

But Louise didn’t expect the attraction between them to burn stronger than ever, or that society would turn on her for associating with Cass. Bold, brash Cass has the real power—to unravel Louise’s strait-laced life and show her that their passion is worth fighting for.

Nothing could prepare them for the Season of a lifetime—or a second chance to fall in love.

In a similar setting, Theresa Meiningen offers a short seasonal story Her Ladyship's Christmas Companion. Alas, that the cycles of publicity mean that I almost never manage to promote Christmas stories in time for folks to read them at the right season!

Honor Holt has never been the sentimental sort. The daughter of a banker, she has always seen the world in facts and figures. With little desire to marry, and even less desire to remain in her father's home, she takes a posting as a governess in the countryside. There she hopes to find a career, or at least some decently fresh air.

But instead she finds Lady Jane Linton, the spinster aunt of Honor's charge. Quiet and plain, Jane has been relegated to caretaker of her nephew for much of his life, and she resents the sudden arrival of a governess meant to take her place. Tempers - and sparks - fly as the two realize they have more in common than they do apart. Will the pair of them manage to find the relationship they never thought possible? Or will these two 'queer' souls remain separated forever.

And all at Christmas too!

And now we skip to mid-20th century New York with The Songbird by Stacy Lynn Miller from Severn River Publishing.

In the glamorous world of 1940s New York, Hattie James is a rising star, enchanting audiences at the iconic Copacabana Club. But her glittering life is shattered by a shocking phone call: her father, a respected diplomat, has been arrested for espionage, accused of aiding Nazi Germany. As her world crumbles, Hattie is plunged into a whirlwind of danger and deceit.

Following her father's dramatic escape and alleged betrayal, Hattie is coerced by the FBI to aid their hunt. Her mission: infiltrate Rio de Janeiro's high society and uncover the truth about her father's loyalties.

In the sultry heat of Rio, Hattie poses undercover as a singer at the Halo Club, owned by enigmatic Maya Reyes. Each performance at this vibrant hotspot brings her closer to the dark secrets entangling the city, and every note she sings could lead to her father—or to a trap set by those who wish to silence her.

When Maya’s sister suddenly goes missing, Hattie unearths a shocking connection between her father and the mysterious SS leader Heinz Baumann. With stakes higher than ever, Hattie finds herself thrust even deeper into a dangerous undercover operation that threatens to put more than just her own life at risk.

Other Books of Interest

I’m putting The Spirit Circle by Tara Calaby from Text Publishing into the “other books of interest” category because I cannot for the life of me figure out what time period the book is set in. (And when I went looking for hints in Goodreads reviews, it appears that even reading the book doesn’t entirely clarify the question.) So this may be a historical. I’m not sure.

For Ellen Whitfield, the betrothal of her dear friend Harriet to Ellen’s brother has brought both loss and solace. But when Harriet suddenly breaks off the engagement, ostensibly at the insistence of her deceased mother, Ellen is bewildered. And when she learns that Harriet is involved with a spiritualist group led by the charismatic Caroline McLeod, she fears losing her friend altogether.

So it is that practical, sceptical Ellen moves into the gloomy East Melbourne mansion where Caroline, along with her enigmatic daughter Grace, has assembled a motley court of the bereaved. Ellen’s intention is to expose the simple trickery—the hidden cabinets and rigged seances, the levers and wires—that must surely lie behind these visits from the departed.

What she discovers is altogether more complicated.

What Am I Reading?

And what have I been reading in the last month? I somehow managed to fit in a lot more than usual. (In fact, between when I first started drafting the script for this show and when I finalized it for recording, I finished another book.)

Tasha Suri’s The Burning Kingdoms series comes to a satisfying conclusion with The Lotus Empire, which is a really tricky thing to do when you’re dealing with empire and colonialism and apparently-doomed friends-to-lovers-to-enemies-to-something sapphic relationships. It’s a fairly harrowing series, and I’m glad that the author managed to pull it off.

Somewhat less satisfying was the latest installment in Sherry Thomas’s Lady Sherlock historic mystery series, A Ruse of Shadows. One of the things that hooked me on this series was the convoluted, multi-layered, unreliably-narrated plots that only made complete sense on a second reading. But either the plots have tipped over into merely bewildering, or I’ve lost interest in working quite that hard to follow the plot, because this time I just felt confused and uninterested. I probably will stop after this installment, but I still cherish how delighted I was with the first handful of her books.

As noted above, Jeannelle M. Ferreira has come out with a shortish work Bold Privateer, which is an independent prequel to her novel The Covert Captain. “Independent” as in, you have to be paying close attention and double-check some references to figure out that they connect at all, so if you haven’t read the latter, it won’t affect your enjoyment. As I noted in regards to the author’s recent collection The Fire and the Place in the Forest, for me the secret to Ferreira’s work is to experience it more as narrative poetry than as traditional prose. Her writing is impressionistic and lush. The story has a central sapphic relationship, set among violence but not tragedy.

I’m not sure whether it would be appropriate to call Hari Conner’s graphic novel I Shall Never Fall in Love sapphic, though certainly “likely to appeal to fans of sapphic regencies.” The plot is based to varying degrees on Jane Austen’s Emma, with a transmasculine character in the Knightly role. Lovely artwork, and I really enjoyed the first quarter or so of the story. Then it slipped into a beat-for-beat retelling of Emma, even down to much of the dialogue, and I enjoyed it less than I would have something entirely original. Don’t get me wrong: I love Austen-inspired queer re-workings, but I’m not fond of anything that borders on a search-and-replace approach.

I also would have liked to enjoy Emma-Claire Sunday’s regency romance The Duke’s Sister and I more than I did. The romance plot itself was fine, but I didn’t feel like there was much besides the romance plot—or at least not much beyond the bare bones of the plot-tokens necessary for the mechanics of the romance, like one heroine’s secret career as a portrait painter. While the story wasn’t in conflict with the historic setting, neither did it feel particularly embedded in that setting. Like a number of other mainstream sapphic historical romances I’ve read lately, the plot seems like a boat bobbing on the surface of the ocean of history, while the passengers remain dry.

So what do I mean by wanting historicals that are more immersive? I always come back to the example of K.J. Charles, whose Masters in this Hall was the only print book I read this month (as part of my program to fill in my gaps in her backlist). It’s a relatively short caper-style second-chance romance involving side characters from her Lily White Boys series, in which Christmas revels at a country mansion are the setting for trapping a villain and redeeming some reputations.

The last book, finished just this morning, is T. Kingfisher’s dark fantasy (almost horror) A Sorceress Comes to Call. The plot is – well, let’s call it “allusive of” rather than “based on” the fairy tale of the goose girl and her talking horse. There’s a horribly abusive mother (whose comeuppance is similar to the climax of my fairy tale The Language of Roses), a sympathetic ingenue, and a lovely second-chance romance involving an older woman. Big content notice for violence and coercion.

Looking forward to maybe shifting back to more print reading this year, what with the upcoming changes in my life.

Show Notes

In this episode we talk about:

Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online

Links to Heather Online

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