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Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 327 - On the Shelf for November 2025

Saturday, November 1, 2025 - 07:00

Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 327 - On the Shelf for November 2025 - Transcript

(Originally aired 2025/11/01)

Welcome to On the Shelf for November 2025.

Is everyone enjoying the season of spooky stories and pumpkin-spice lattes? We’ll have a seasonal story later this month as the fourth quarter fiction episode, but first I’ll be setting up some background in the mid-month episode. Back when I was doing an episode every week—and how I managed that I no longer remember—I’d occasionally reprise a previous episode to give myself a little break. It’s been about five years since I did a reprise and this time it isn’t for lack of content but to provide context for the fiction. Our story will be an alternate view of Christina Rossetti’s classic poem “The Goblin Market”—a view that addresses the shadows of prejudice and anti-Semitism that haunt the poem’s imagery. Maya Dworsky-Rocha’s story “Ma’am This is a Fruit Stand” rather assumes that the audience is familiar with Rossetti’s work, so to create the optimal context for its reception, I decided to repeat the Goblin Market episode before airing it.

This month’s story won’t be the last I have on tap—I have a pair of shorter works already lined up to air in January. But January is also when submissions will be open for next year’s fiction series. I’m always delighted by the quality of work I have to choose from, but I’m also always deeply anxious when the majority of submitters wait until the last few days of the month to send their work in. There’s no absolute benefit to submitting earlier or later, but you’ll make this podcast host much happier if I’m not spending most of the month freaking out that I won’t get enough submissions. So spread the word, read the submissions guidelines (linked in the show notes), and get those stories in as early in January as you can so I can relax!

News of the Field

If you follow the podcast through my blog, I’m working on a minor update to the site. Podbean, my podcast host, provides a player widget for each episode, which I’ve been noting down but not using because I couldn’t just plug them into the existing blog structure. Well, after a very productive work session with my web consultants, I now have a field for entering the player widget. So going forward, you can play the episode directly from the blog with the transcript. It’ll take me a while to go back and add the widgets to the back catalog—all 325 episodes!

Another thing we started working on for the website is more on my authorial side and will take a while to set up, but I hope to have my own storefront eventually, to sell my self-published work as well as autographed copies of my other books. And who knows? Maybe someday there will be podcast merch. If I ever figure out what people might be interested in. What would you love to have in the way of Lesbian Historic Motif Project merchandise?

Speaking of books, I’ve been putting in some serious work on the book version of the Project, though there’s still a very long way to go. At the moment I’ve been working through the introductory material, talking about what the purpose of the book is, what the content will be, and setting out some background for understanding my approach to lesbian and sapphic history. It’ll probably be a couple years before I’ll have a finished draft, despite having a lot of existing text to work with already. You have to keep in mind that I’m also writing some novels at the same time.

Publications on the Blog

And, of course, even as I work to codify my research in fixed form, I continue to read and process research articles and books. I find it entirely too easy to spend all my time working on blogs for the Project and let my other projects languish, so I’m trying to restrict myself to only a couple of posts per week. That makes 8 articles since I last reported. I’ve been organizing my most recent haul of downloaded articles into thematic groups, and this month was all ancient Greece all the time.

There were two articles analyzing the ambiguous possible lesbian hints in Anacreon’s poem 13: Hayden Pelliccia’s “Ambiguity against Ambiguity: Anacreon 13 Again” and J.F. Davidson’s “Anacreon, Homer and the Young Woman from Lesbos.” Four articles add to the body of Sappho scholarship. I rather liked J.C.B. Petropoulos’s “Sappho the Sorceress: Another Look at fr. 1 (LP)” which compares one of the poems to the texts of love magic. In contrast, I hated George Deverux’s “The Nature of Sappho's Seizure in Fr. 31 LP as Evidence of Her Inversion” which claims Sappho’s description of her physical responses to be proof of her internalized homophobia and deviance. Yeah. Two articles—André Lardinois’ “Subject and Circumstance in Sappho's Poetry” and Glenn W. Most’s “Reflecting Sappho” are more conventional studies of the content and reception of Sappho’s work. Sappho is presented as inspiration and touchstone in the work of another female poet in M.B. Skinner’s “Sapphic Nossis”. And finally Ruby Blondell and Sandra Boehringer analyze Lucian’s courtesan dialogue as a satire of philosophical discourse in “Revenge of the Hetairistria: The Reception of Plato’s Symposium in Lucian’s Fifth Dialogue of the Courtesans.”

Book Shopping!

I haven’t picked up any new books for the project, but I did acquire two lovely publications from the London Topographical Society that will be valuable for my Restoration-era series: The A to Z of Charles II’s London 1682 and The Whitehall Palace Plan of 1670. My fiction work has involved some intensive map work as I’ve sought out and studied maps of Marseille and Paris for the next Alpennia book. Given the rather drastic changes Paris went through in the early 19th century, I’m incredibly lucky to have a map and some tourist guidebooks dating to within a couple years of my setting. At this point I’ve mapped out all the most important locations in Paris for my story. Have I mentioned that a great deal of Mistress of Shadows will be taking place in Paris? It’s a bit terrifying to be working with an actual location rather than being able to make things up.

Recent Lesbian/Sapphic Historical Fiction

One way or another, making things up is the most fun part of fiction, so here are the books that authors have made up for you in the past few months.

I have three September books that only just came to my attention. Kerri Reeves’ No Love for an Outlaw looks like it has a bit of a southern gothic feel.

1931, North Georgia.

Silvia Copeland just buried her mama. The mill is breaking her down, the town is choking her spirit, and there’s nothing left to hold her in Briarsville but grief and sawdust. When her oldest friends drag her into a backwoods bootlegging operation, she sees a chance to escape for money, danger, and the open road.

But the ridge has teeth. Bodies are turning up nailed to trees, gutted and marked with strange symbols. Black-eyed hounds stalk the woods. And something older than sin itself is stirring beneath the mountain.

Caught between loyalty to her makeshift family and a growing, complicated love for a woman who seems bound to the land itself, Silvia is forced to decide how far she’ll go and what she’s willing to sacrifice before the ridge takes everything.

It’s always a delight to reimagine traditional stories in sapphic versions—the “what ifs” of history. Velis Aenora transforms the traditional Korean love story of Chunhyang and Cheong into sapphic form in Twin Flames of Namwon.

In this bold reimagining of Korea’s most cherished folktales, Chunhyang, famed for her defiance of corrupt power, and Cheong, remembered for her selfless sacrifice, discover not only resilience—but each other.

Bound together as Twin Flames, they resist tyranny, confront the hunger of the serpent, and vow their love beneath the willow by the Namwon river. This is not the story of maidens waiting to be saved. This is the story of two women who burn against shadow, rewriting legend with the fire of their bond.

The repressive mid 20th century is the setting for Neon Nights by William Ellison.

In the smoky heart of 1950s Chinatown, where neon signs flicker with secrets and jazz pulses through hidden lounges, Ellie Chen navigates a world of forbidden love and perilous intrigue. Caught between family duty and her electrifying bond with Maggie, a daring rebel with a knack for forgery, Ellie defies a society that demands conformity. As corrupt agent Baxter tightens his grip, threatening raids and deportation, their romance blooms in stolen glances and heated caresses, each moment a rebellion against a world poised to crush them. From underground safehouses to chaotic dance floors, the community weaves a tapestry of resistance, laced with dark humor—slipping disguises, bumbling spies, and shattered heirlooms sparking laughter amid danger. Ellie uncovers family secrets tying her to wartime legacies, while betrayals from kin and allies unravel a conspiracy that could topple empires or tear her world apart. With every kiss a vow and every escape a gamble, Ellie and Maggie race through fog-lit alleys, their love a beacon in the neon night, promising futures uncertain but fiercely claimed.

Just as they slip into the mist, a cryptic note from a vanished ally surfaces, hinting at a final trap. Will their defiance outshine the shadows, or will Baxter’s vendetta claim them first?

The October releases are delightfully diverse in settings and content. First up is Raised for the Sword by Aimée, which I’m currently in the middle of reading. (I should add the disclaimer that the author was the translator for the French edition of my Daughter of Mystery so I may be a bit biased.)

France, 1560. The wars of Religion are tearing the kingdom apart. Being a Huguenot is more often than not a death sentence. Meanwhile, at court, nobles play and scheme. To that court comes Isaure de Montfaucon, sent by her father to become part of Catherine de Médicis’ entourage, and hopefully to find a husband.

Another father sends his child to the French court, but all is not as it seems. Enguerrande de Vaubernier has never worn a skirt and has been raised as a boy. As a Huguenot, and as a woman disguised, she could be executed at any time. A fateful duel puts an end to aspirations, and Enguerrande has to flee, but not without the young woman who has unwittingly stolen her heart, even though a future together seems impossible.

Isaure and Enguerrande travel through France to Navarre, looking for safety in a country where being different can cost you your life. When the mask falls, will everything change, or will they feel closer than ever?

I held over The Salvage by Anbara Salam from Tin House Books from last month’s listings because Anbara is our author guest this month. Check out the interview later in the podcast.

It is 1962, and Marta Khoury, a trailblazing marine archaeologist, has been called to Cairnroch, a small island off the east coast of Scotland. A Victorian shipwreck, dragged from arctic waters, holds the remains of a celebrated explorer and the treasures of his final expedition. But on her first dive down to the ship, Marta becomes convinced she has seen a dark figure lurking amid the wreckage.

When the Cuban Missile Crisis and the deep chill of a record-breaking winter keeps Marta stranded on Cairnroch, she forms a relationship with Elsie, a local woman working in the island’s only hotel. When the ship's artefacts inexplicably disappear, Marta and Elsie have to brave the freezing conditions to search for the missing objects before anyone else catches on. As something eerie seems to follow her at every step, Marta must confront if the haunting is a figment of her imagination, the repercussions from a terrible mistake from her past, or if something more sinister is at play that will trap her and everyone on the island―and their secrets―in an icy wilderness.

I don’t usually include re-issues in these listings, but every rule has its exceptions. Dani Collins has a out-of-print collection of sort spicy historic romance stories entitled Lovers and Liaisons and has now issued them as individual titles. Only one of the stories is sapphic: A Lady for a Highwayman.

Robbing aristocrats at pistol-point is a last resort for Velvet. Her fortunes have fallen and she has no choice. She really shouldn’t have stolen a kiss when she stole a young woman’s locket, though. Especially because that young woman was resourceful enough to track her down!

Facing a marriage she doesn’t want, Annabelle finally experiences passion—in an unexpected kiss. She wants more, but meeting Velvet again--for a passionate encounter--is only half the battle. Annabelle is still expected to marry and Velvet will never survive being exposed as a thief.

Time is running out, what options do they have, beyond living the life of fugitives?

Ishtar Watson specializes in imagining queer lives in ancient history. In My Mother's Spear from Dark Elves LLC she tackles the cultural mixing in 2nd century Roman Britain.

Cynna is a Sarmatian horse archer with no hope or future, who fights for an empire she despises. Meala is a Caledonian warrior who carries her mother's spear and father's shield into battle to fight for her people, claim her warrior birthright, and escape her parents' will that she marry a man. These two brave women will meet upon the field of battle, where they will find themselves, each other, and learn who their true enemy is.

Set in what is now southern Scotland along the Antonine Wall, this story brings the ancient world of Iron Age Scotland alive through the eyes of two women fighting to find their places in the world while they struggled against the Roman steel and their own inner turmoil. Can they escape the might of Rome and their own traumatic pasts?

Phoenix is the 9th Intertwined Souls novel by Mary Dee from AUSXIP Publishing.

1958. Sydney, Australia. When Zoe becomes the target of a vicious smear campaign by Australia's revered decorated war hero turned radio host, she’s quickly plunged into a battle of public opinion to defend her art and wartime service. Recovering from a grueling surgery and with her 30th birthday fast approaching, Zoe fights to protect her integrity.

Meanwhile, Eva's company, Lambros Industries, is under siege. With their professional reputation on the line after a slew of government contracts mysteriously disappear or are outbid, Eva can’t escape the creeping suspicion that someone is targeting them. Their adversary has been playing the long game... to what end?

Combining the trends of gothic novels and roaring 20s, S.M. Namkoong gives us Ophelia.

After a brief stint in Italy working under a master painter, Lawrence Stoner returns to America craving inspiration. Drawn to the wild coast of Maine, she takes up residence in a seaside hut, hoping to secure a commission from one of the wealthy summer elites.

Shortly after putting out an ad, Lawrence receives an invitation to dine at Ashmore Hall. Despite the whispered warnings and ghost stories, Lawrence accepts and is immediately captivated by its enigmatic and beautiful mistress, Ophelia Aldane.

The number of dead continues to rise, but Lawrence finds herself hopelessly ensnared in Ophelia’s web of allure. As those closest to her begin to fall prey, Lawrence feels Death drawing nearer with every passing day. Lawrence must confront the darkness or risk being consumed as well.

Between Two Silences by Shanon O'Brien is set in 1943 Stockholm during the height of World War II.

Neutral Sweden is a cold, quiet sanctuary, but for war refugee Rivka Weiss, every silence holds a memory she can't escape. After fleeing unimaginable horrors—marked by the fading numbers on her forearm—she is placed in the care of a Swedish stranger. All Rivka wants is a place to stop moving.

Ingrid Björklund is a woman of rigorous order (Ice Lady!). Her world is meticulously measured by thick-cut bread slices, four clockwise coffee stirs, and a front door bolted out of discipline. When the guarded, silent Rivka arrives on her doorstep, Ingrid is forced to confront a life she has systematically kept simple. She sees the scar through Rivka's eyebrow and the pain in her eyes, yet she says nothing.

What begins as distance soon feels like a thread drawn taut, threatening to break the quiet order of Ingrid’s life and the protective shell around Rivka’s heart. From the deep cold of January to the bloom of May, their connection becomes a dangerous necessity.

World War II is also the setting for The Secret War (Hattie James #3) by Stacy Lynn Miller from Severn River Publishing.

In a factory hidden deep in the Brazilian jungle, the Germans are developing a long-range bomber capable of reaching the United States—a weapon that could tip the scales of World War II in their favor. With the clock ticking down to a sneak attack on American soil, singer-spy Hattie James’s mission becomes clear: she must gather intelligence and stop the Nazis before it’s too late.

But when a failed assassination attempt in Rio on the American Vice President puts her loved ones in jeopardy, Hattie realizes both developments are connected and that the price of failure is more than she can bear. With betrayal hiding around every corner, Hattie must confront the brutal reality of war as even those she once trusted—her fellow spies and closest allies—might have their own deadly agendas.

As alliances shift and enemies close in, she faces a desperate battle in the heart of the jungle—a fight to destroy the Nazi threat and save the lives of those she loves. The stakes are higher than ever, and Hattie must use all her wit, charm, and courage to survive.

 The November books start with a rather intriguing alternate Regency novel in which the handsome dukes are women—or at least one of them is: The Duke by Anna Cowan from MacMillan.

Kate, Duke of Howard, is known throughout Europe as a merciless autocrat not to be crossed. Consumed by a bitter rivalry, she avoids society and has vowed never to trap a woman into marriage with a monster like herself.

The beautiful, ambitious courtesan Celine Genet once threw herself on the mercy of the visiting Duke of Howard. She was desperate to escape the guillotine. But after a night of searing passion, the duke left her to the ravages of Revolutionary Paris and didn’t look back. Now Celine is in London and in possession of a dangerous letter that proves the Duke of Howard committed treason as a child - and possibly even murder.

Celine wants a titled husband in return for keeping the duke’s secret, leaving Kate no choice but to parade her around the most fashionable ballrooms. But as Celine takes society by storm, Kate finds herself growing fond of the woman set on destroying her. And as their attraction mounts, Kate faces an impossible choice: keep her childhood secret, or win the woman she loves.

Genta Sebastian takes up the popular Western motif of gender-crossing as the context for a sapphic romance in My Darling Clementine (Clementine #1) from Macoii Publishing

Clem Dennison, 23, lives as a man among men, passing as a male prospector in California where she is a respected author writing popular articles about the gold rush and the colorful people of the wild west. After a disturbing visit back east, she makes plans to return to the gold fields, joining a late-season wagon train headed for Sacramento. On the long train ride from Boston, she notices a fascinating young lady.

Kizzy Walker, 18, escapes her life in dreary Rocheport as the minister’s scandalous daughter, and jumps on the next train leaving. She arrives in Independence, Missouri as a single woman, alone, her only plan to chase the gold fever driving her west. While considering her limited options, she sees Clem and recognizes her as a woman who is passing. Kizzy chases her into the dark night to confront her, making herself a target for ruthless men.

Clem rescues the inexperienced, beautiful, impulsive woman, and finds herself in a passionate embrace. Kizzy gives her a key to her hotel room and invites her to visit after everyone’s asleep. She takes that chance and meets a woman unlike any other. No one else has ever seen through Clem before, much less thrown themselves into her arms.

She agrees to take Kizzy with her to California and teach her how to pan for gold, if the fascinating woman will marry her the next day, so they can travel in the wagon train as man and wife.

The publicity for Where There's Room for Us by Hayley Kiyoko from Wednesday Books says it’s set in a “reimagined 1880s England” though it isn’t clear from the description just how much it diverges from our timeline.

When her brother unexpectedly inherits an English estate, the outspoken and infamously daring poet, Ivy, swaps her lively New York life for the prim and proper world of high society, and quickly faces the challenges of its revered traditions–especially once she meets the most sought-after socialite of the courting season: Freya Tallon.

Freya’s life has always been mapped out for her: marry a wealthy lord, produce heirs, and protect the family’s noble status. But when she unexpectedly takes her sister’s place on a date with Ivy, everything changes. For the first time, she feels the kind of spark she’s always dreamed of.

As Ivy and Freya’s connection deepens, both are caught between desire and duty. How much are they willing to risk to be true to themselves—and to each other?

Other Books of Interest

I have two titles in the “other books of interest” group.

The Fault Mirror by Catherine Fearns from Quill & Crow Publishing House is a dual-timeline story in which the framing story is not sapphic, but the embedded one is. That makes it hard to tell how prominent the sapphic content is and how central the historic setting is.

Everyone sees the house they want to see... Paris, 1900: Amidst the decadence of the Belle Époque, American heiress Lydia Temple falls in love with ethereal aristocrat Séraphine de Valleiry, and builds her a whimsical castle in the Swiss mountains. The Chateau des Miroirs becomes a bastion of spiritualism until it is taken over by sinister forces during the First World War. And then it disappears. Or did it ever really exist? Oxford, 2035: Elderly professor Cyrus Field is rapidly losing his sight and his will to live, when student Haydn Young presents him with a collection of letters previously lost to history. These letters may contain the answer to the philosophical problem that has been his life’s work. But does he really want to know the truth? With war closing in, Cyrus and Haydn must decide whether to risk everything in the quest for knowledge. The mystery of the Chateau des Miroirs reverberates through the generations, connecting two souls that are destined to find each other.

The second title is even a bit more marginal as a historical, relying on magic and reincarnation: As Many Souls as Stars by Natasha Siegel from William Morrow Paperbacks.

1592. Cybil Harding is a First Daughter. Cursed to bring disaster to those around her, she is trapped in a house with a mother paralyzed by grief and a father willing to sacrifice everything in pursuit of magic.

Miriam Richter is a creature of shadow. Forged by the dark arts many years ago, she is doomed to exist for eternity and destined to be alone—killing mortals and consuming their souls for sustenance. Everything changes when she meets Cybil, whose soul shines with a light so bright, she must claim it for herself. She offers a bargain: she will grant Cybil reincarnation in exchange for her soul.

Thus begins a dance across centuries as Miriam seeks Cybil in every lifetime to claim her prize. Cybil isn’t inclined to play by the rules, but when it becomes clear that Miriam holds the key to breaking her family curse, Cybil finds that—for the first time in her many lives—she might have the upper hand. As they circle each other, drawn together inescapably as light and dark, the bond forged between them grows stronger. In their battle for dominance, only one of them can win—but perhaps they can’t survive without each other.

What Am I Reading?

And what have I been reading? I’m back to mostly audiobooks and coming to rely more and more on what I can borrow from Libby.

I had started reading Angel Maker by Elizabeth Bear in print but kept getting slowed down by the dialect-heavy writing style. As with poetry embedded in stories (like Tolkien) I find I have to sub-vocalize dialect in order to parse it, which is an entirely different reading style than usual. So I switched over to audio and enjoyed this fun romp through alternate history with all the steampunk bells and whistles but that addresses real historic social issues as well.

In general, I’m not a fan of horror, so even though T. Kingfisher is an auto-read for me, I sometimes shy away from the titles marketed as horror. But although A House with Good Bones is pervaded with a sense of growing menace, it never felt too scary for me. There is artful depiction of the everyday awfulness of ordinary people.

I’ve been continuing my read-through of Martha Wells’ Murderbot series. This month I listened to Rogue Protocol, Exit Strategy, and Fugitive Telemetry, finally catching up to re-listen to Network Effect. On re-listen, I think my original impression of Network Effect was skewed by listening to it out of order, because a lot of the interpersonal stuff made far less sense when I was coming in at the middle of the series. On the other hand, my impression stands that the story is very heavy on the blow-by-blow combat descriptions, which just isn’t my thing.

I’ve also started a re-read of my own Alpennia series to help get my brain in the right space for working on Mistress of Shadows.

Author Guest

As mentioned previously, this month we’re happy to welcome Anbara Salam to the show.

Show Notes

In this episode we talk about:

A transcript of this podcast is available here. (Interview transcripts added when available.)

Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online

Links to Heather Online

Links to Anbara Salam Online

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