Here are 100 books that Locked in Silence fans have personally recommended if you like
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This is a list for those who love a tough guy with a soft heart. If you crave a story with passion, heat, and that zing of a good thriller, then this is the list for you. I love a romance wrapped around a strong plot. I need a book to stimulate my mind and give my old heart its “Aw, shucks,” moment. I’ve been fascinated by those who serve and the long-term effects it has on mental health. These books tackle the effects of PTSD, trauma, and its consequences. I believe the romance genre, when done well, is one of the best for examining this darkness.
This book changed my perception about what a romance book could be. I have never been so swept away by a single narrative and never been so haunted. It inspired me and broke me. The story is long and complex. It’s about a young CIA operative who joins the Agency just before 9/11 and how that one event shaped his life for years to come. It’s a fascinating fictionalised insight into LGBTQ rights in the military during this period, the horrors of the war, the consequences, the personal narratives, and the terrible implications of the wilder political landscape on those who have to fight. It’s full of love, romance, heartbreak, action, violence, torment, and ultimately, salvation. It’s the kind of book which teaches you to see the world through different lenses. One of the most extraordinary gay romance political thrillers I’ve read.
On September 11th, 2001, Kris Caldera was a junior member of the CIA’s Alec Station, the unit dedicated to finding and stopping Osama Bin Laden.
They failed.
Ten days later, he was on the ground in Afghanistan with a Special Forces team, driven to avenge the ghosts that haunted him and the nation he’d let down. On the battlefield, he meets Special Forces Sergeant David Haddad. David – Arab American, Muslim, and gay – becomes the man Kris loves, the man he lives for, and the man he kills for, through the long years of the…
This is a list for those who love a tough guy with a soft heart. If you crave a story with passion, heat, and that zing of a good thriller, then this is the list for you. I love a romance wrapped around a strong plot. I need a book to stimulate my mind and give my old heart its “Aw, shucks,” moment. I’ve been fascinated by those who serve and the long-term effects it has on mental health. These books tackle the effects of PTSD, trauma, and its consequences. I believe the romance genre, when done well, is one of the best for examining this darkness.
This is the first in a long-running series about two very different police officers in Baltimore. Cole builds two characters who are fire and ice, both wounded and broken by their pasts and unable to accept the future is anything but bleak. The investigations are fast-paced and clever, often touching on difficult subjects with a deft hand of a skilled writer. The romance is a very slow burn, but the growing attraction between these two men is worth the wait. These books are savage at times, but also lyrical and beautifully written. The characters, the city, the murders, they make everything so very real. Again, we learn what it’s like to be a gay man in a hetero-normative world and how difficult it is to succeed.
Read the complete first two seasons of this thrilling, action-packed investigative suspense romance with two strong-willed detectives, an undeniable slow burn attraction, and a terrifying puppetmaster in the shadows before Season Three returns!
ABOUT THIS EPISODE
When a string of young queer men turn up dead in grisly murders, all signs point to the ex-boyfriend—but what should be an open-and-shut case is fraught with tension when BPD homicide detective Malcolm Khalaji joins up with a partner he never wanted. Rigid, ice-cold, and a stickler for the rules, Seong-Jae Yoon is a watchful presence whose obstinacy and unpredictability constantly remind Malcolm…
This is a list for those who love a tough guy with a soft heart. If you crave a story with passion, heat, and that zing of a good thriller, then this is the list for you. I love a romance wrapped around a strong plot. I need a book to stimulate my mind and give my old heart its “Aw, shucks,” moment. I’ve been fascinated by those who serve and the long-term effects it has on mental health. These books tackle the effects of PTSD, trauma, and its consequences. I believe the romance genre, when done well, is one of the best for examining this darkness.
I stumbled over this book and soon found myself hooked. It’s a romance, yes, but the research into conflict and its effects put it up there on my list of thrillers. It’s not strictly speaking a thriller, it’s more of a military action story and romance, but the characters are wonderful. The way they react to the war zone conflict, the effect it has on the unit and the reporter embedded with them, it has a wonderful ring of truth. And that’s what I’m always looking for in a good romance, the ring of truth. You have to really feel the RPGs coming in, and Garrett does an amazing job of making you really feel it.
There are a hundred reasons why falling for a gorgeous, tattooed soldier is a terrible idea. An office romance with tanks and guns?
No thanks.
Besides, Connor Regan has other things on his mind. After his brother’s death, he finds himself bound for Iraq to embed with an elite SAS team. He sets his boots on the ground looking for closure and solace—anything to ease the pain of James’s death.
Instead he finds Sergeant Thompson—a moody, inked Adonis with a sinfully rare smile.
Nat is a veteran commander, hardened by years of combat and haunted by the loss of his…
Burne’s been hiding out in the forest since deserting the King’s Guard. Each time he tries to return to the village, he begins to panic. And then one day, he encounters a handsome stranger picking flowers and hides behind a tree instead of talking.
This is a list for those who love a tough guy with a soft heart. If you crave a story with passion, heat, and that zing of a good thriller, then this is the list for you. I love a romance wrapped around a strong plot. I need a book to stimulate my mind and give my old heart its “Aw, shucks,” moment. I’ve been fascinated by those who serve and the long-term effects it has on mental health. These books tackle the effects of PTSD, trauma, and its consequences. I believe the romance genre, when done well, is one of the best for examining this darkness.
I love a well-written historical thriller with a flair for romance and this one is great. I know how hard it is to write a good historical thriller. I’ve done many for the medieval period, but this one specialises in the Roman period. A notoriously difficult period to write about for fiction. I couldn’t find anything wrong in there. The dynamic between the protagonists is very well handled and the action is superb. The politics and thriller aspects are deftly handled, never bogging down the action. Thoroughly enjoyable trip to ancient Rome.
** 103,000 word historical romance **Quintus Furius Varus is one of the best lanistas in Rome. Tall and strong in build, fearsome in manner, and sharp of wit, he trains the best gladiators bound for the arenas of Rome. When Senator Servius Augendus seeks personal guards, he attends the Ludus Varus for purchase of the very best. He puts to Quintus an offer he cannot refuse, and Quintus finds himself in Neapolis, contracted as a trainer of guards instead of gladiators.Kaeso Agorix was taken from his homelands of Iberia and delivered to Rome as a slave. Bought by a senator…
Raised crisscrossing America, I developed a ceaseless wanderlust that took me around the world many times. En route, I collected the stories and characters that make up my work. Polish cops and Greek fishermen, mercenaries and arms dealers, child prostitutes and wannabe terrorists: I hung with them all in an unparalleled international career that had me smuggle banned plays from behind the Iron Curtain, maneuver through Occupied Territories, and stowaway aboard a ‘devil’s barge’ for a three-day crossing from Cape Verde that landed me in an African jail. Greece, where I’ve spent some seven years total, stole my heart 50 years ago.
If there is something written by Tennessee Williams that I’ve not read, I’d be surprised. All I’ve known about his personal life is that he was gay, but what that meant to him, or how he expressed it, were mysteries to me until I read Leading Men, a fictionalized account of Tennessee Williams’s 30-year love affair with Frank Merlo.
Set largely in Italy, it’s filled with dazzling characters and backstage intrigue. It’s also a heartbreaking novel about life in the shadows of greatness.
A book that hasn’t left me since I read it and I’m sure to read it again.
An expansive yet intimate story of desire, artistic ambition, and fidelity, set in the glamorous literary and film circles of 1950s Italy
In July of 1953, at a glittering party thrown by Truman Capote in Portofino, Italy, Tennessee Williams and his longtime lover Frank Merlo meet Anja Blomgren, a mysterious young Swedish beauty and aspiring actress. Their encounter will go on to alter all of their lives.
Ten years later, Frank revisits the tempestuous events of that fateful summer from his deathbed in Manhattan, where he waits anxiously for Tennessee to visit him one final time. Anja, now legendary film…
I usually write queer fiction with an urban fantasy or magic realism bent, although I’ve dabbled in dystopian novels and a couple of romance novellas. I have an interest in bringing to light modern queer works that aren’t rooted in erotica or romance because I know firsthand the misconceptions that are placed on writers of gay fiction. And too often I’ve had to find tactful ways to explain what I write when people assume I’m limited by genre.
This is the first of a trilogy of which any book in the series is worth reading. In this farce written long before marriage equality, a gay man hatches an outlandish scheme to throw a wedding, just for the expensive gifts. What follows is a comedy that incorporates blackmail and the mafia. You read this novel for pure pleasure, enjoying the clever one-liners while the plot spirals out of control. Flamboyant, camp, and ridiculously funny.
Set in contemporary New York, this book revolves around four characters, all either unemployed or barely employed. The calamities begin when Gilbert, who is gay, and Moira, an arch bitch, devise a seemingly brilliant plan to swindle their respective monied families - by getting married.
As a young doctor, Carl Holman has experienced the horrors of World War I and the death of his lover, a fellow officer. Back home after the War, he befriends a young jazz musician who he hopes will become a companion he can share his life with. But this is…
I am an anthropologist who has written or edited more than a dozen books on topics that range from the lives of trans sex workers, to the anthropology of fat. I have conducted extensive fieldwork in Papua New Guinea, Brazil, and Scandinavia. I work at Uppsala University in Sweden, where I am a Distinguished University Professor of Anthropology, and where I direct a research program titled Engaging Vulnerability.
As befitting the cheeky title, this book – about what it means to be, and to become, a gay man – is incisive, erudite, and a lot of fun to read. A pioneer of queer theory (and with this intervention, I suspect, a renegade from it), David Halperin is an unapologetic camp. He challenges received wisdom about how gay sensibility supposedly is misogynist, passé, irrelevant or dead, and his reflections on everything from Joan Crawford’s pizazz,to the current state of gay marriage, vacillate between being capacious and withering. “Sometimes I think homosexuality is wasted on gay people” he sniffs at one point, dispensing a delightful, and typically barbed, aperçu.
No one raises an eyebrow if you suggest that a guy who arranges his furniture just so, rolls his eyes in exaggerated disbelief, likes techno music or show tunes, and knows all of Bette Davis's best lines by heart might, just possibly, be gay. But if you assert that male homosexuality is a cultural practice, expressive of a unique subjectivity and a distinctive relation to mainstream society, people will immediately protest. Such an idea, they will say, is just a stereotype-ridiculously simplistic, politically irresponsible, and morally suspect. The world acknowledges gay male culture as a fact but denies it as…
I’ve been writing queer historical romances/murder mysteries since the third grade when I accidentally wrote a pretty homoerotic Sherlock Holmes fanfiction despite being too young to know what any of those words meant. I’m now both a writer and reader of the genre and while I’m delighted that so many other people love gay historical romance as much as I do, I feel like I always see the same few books recommended. I wanted to share some of my lesser-known favorites so that they can get the love they richly deserve and so that there are more people who can geek-out about them with me!
I love finding a great new book, and then realizing it’s only the first in the series of many, many more!
A cross between queer romance and Golden Age detective fiction, I love being drawn into the charming English university setting with each novel and curling up to find out how the two professors are going to solve a cozy murder while falling even deeper in love.
Will there be punting on the Cam? Shakespeare puns? Edwardian-era tailoring? Yes, yes, and yes!
As a gay writer who has navigated some difficult life changes of my own, including cancer, a gay bashing, and the death of an early love, I always enjoy finding writers whose gay characters must deal with their own challenging life issues. Whether it's a coming-of-age tale, a puzzling mystery, or a suspenseful fantasy, each character comes to terms with accepting who he is in an often hostile world.
This book took me back to my own childhood of imagination and fantasy and brought back so many memories. It's a fun, easy read, and quite entertaining. The characters are engaging and well thought out, and the charming descriptions of his home life, along with those of his rather eccentric mother, are a delight.
"Gut-splittingly funny...a deeply moving account of a boy's attempt to control his world with his own brand of magic." --People magazine, 4 stars.
Tracey Ullman once described Eric Poole as "the best undiscovered writer I ever met." Now the world can enjoy his achingly honest wit and gift for capturing real life characters in this memoir about growing up in the 1970's with an obsessive-compulsive mother and a crush on Endora from Bewitched.
The dragons of Yuro have been hunted to extinction.
On a small, isolated island, in a reclusive forest, lives bandit leader Marani and her brother Jacks. With their outlaw band, they rob the rich to feed themselves, raiding carriages and dodging the occasional vindictive pegasus. Thanks to Marani’s mysterious invulnerability,…
I’ve always been drawn to artists who expose their lives in a way that makes you feel you know them. The best of them have a raw honesty that shows their flaws, their wounds and struggles and hopefully the lessons they learned. Nobody likes bragging, but we’re captivated by accounts that echo our own secrets, embarrassments, and darker emotions, especially if told with a sense of humor. For decades, I’ve been addicted to the confessional lyrics of Joni Mitchell and have always been drawn to the unguarded openness of certain memoirs and the roman-à-clef or thinly disguised autobiography. In showing us their vulnerabilities, these authors have been heroic.
If I have to pick one of David’s books, it’s Arkansas - Three Novellas.
The first of them, Saturn Street, came out of the time he volunteered at Project Angel Food, a nonprofit where I worked as a chef. David described us chefs as “fussy” (we were) in his intimate account of a driver who delivers meals to a client homebound with AIDS, a man the driver falls in love with. David also alludes to one of my favorite episodes of Star Trek.
In The Term-Paper Artist, we get an even more confessional novella in which a writer by the name of David Leavitt trades the writing of term papers for the sexual favors of attractive college boys. Whether a true story or a fictionalized one, it doesn’t get more emotionally honest than this and it’s a novella as funny as it is outrageous.
Here are three novellas of escape and exile, touching and funny and at times calculatedly outrageous. In "Saturn Street," a disaffected L.A. screenwriter delivers lunches to homebound AIDS patients, only to find himself falling in love with one of them. In "The Wooden Anniversary," Nathan and Celia - familiar characters from Leavitt's story collections - reunite after a five-year separation. And in "The Term-Paper Artist," a writer named David Leavitt, hiding out at his father's house in the aftermath of a publishing scandal, experiences literary rejuvenation when he agrees to write term papers for UCLA undergraduates in exchange for sex.
