Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in LGBTQ+

On an autumn day in 1686, eighteen-year-old Nella Oortman knocks at the door of a grand house in the wealthiest quarter of Amsterdam. She has come from the country to begin a new life as the wife of illustrious merchant trader Johannes Brandt, but instead she is met by his sharp-tongued sister, Marin. Only later does Johannes appear and present her with an extraordinary wedding gift: a cabinet-sized replica of their home. It is to be furnished by an elusive miniaturist, whose tiny creations mirror their real-life counterparts in unexpected ways. 

It is 1921 and at Cassowary House in the Straits Settlements of Penang, Robert Hamlyn is a well-to-do lawyer and his steely wife Lesley a society hostess. Their lives are invigorated when Willie, an old friend of Robert's, comes to stay. Willie Somerset Maugham is one of the greatest writers of his day. But he is beleaguered by an unhappy marriage, ill-health and business interests that have gone badly awry. He is also struggling to write. The more Lesley's friendship with Willie grows, the more clearly she see him as he is—a man who has no choice but to mask his true self.

It's the early 1990s, and in the Irish village of Crossmore, Lucy feels out of place. Despite her fierce friendships, she's always felt this way, and the conventional path of marriage and motherhood doesn't appeal to her at all. Not even with handsome and doting Martin, her closest childhood friend. Lucy begins to make sense of herself during a long hot summer, when a spark with her school friend Susannah escalates to an all-consuming infatuation, and, very quickly, to a desperate and devastating love.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2026 WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION “A gentle and compassionate novel that explores the nuances of queer love and friendship.” The Guardian, Derek Owusu “a tenderly written meditation on art, love and life that’s as much about the search for self as for connection.”...

Newcastle, Australia, 1972. On a sticky summer night, a choice must be made: To give in to queer desire or suppress it? To venture into the unknown or stay the course? In alternating chapters, we trace the two versions of a life that follow. In one, a teenage girl is caught kissing her neighbor and is kicked out from her home. She lands at a queer communal home in Sydney called Uranian House, where she meets the people who will forever become her family. 

When Rachel falls in love with her married professor, Dr Byrne, her best friend James helps her devise a plan to seduce him. But what begins as a harmless crush soon pushes their friendship to its limits. Over the course of a year they will find their lives ever more entwined with the Byrnes' and be faced with impossible choices and a lie that can't be taken back...

Roos Beckman has a spirit companion only she can see. Ruth—strange, corpse-like, and dead for centuries—is the light of Roos' life. That is, until the wealthy young widow Agnes Knoop visits one of Roos' backroom seances, and the two strike up a connection.

Girlie, a thirty-something Filipinx-American, works a day job at a social-media moderation centre, flagging and removing the very worst that makes it on to the internet. She's good at it, too - dispassionate, unflinching, maybe because she learned by necessity to cauterise all her emotions when...

Multi-award-winning Hannah Gadsby broke comedy with their show Nanette. Now they take us through the defining moments in their life and their powerful decision to tell the truth—no matter the cost. Harrowing and hilarious, Ten Steps to Nanette traces Gadsby’s growth as a queer person, to their ever-evolving relationship with comedy, and their struggle with late-in-life diagnoses of autism and ADHD, finally arriving at the backbone of Nanette: the renouncement of self-deprecation, the rejection of misogyny, and the moral significance of truth-telling.

Celebrated authoress Lady Georgiana Cleeve has achieved fame and fortune. Unfortunately, she's also acquired an enemy: the enigmatic Lady Darling, whose spine-tingling plots appear to be pulled straight from Georgiana's own manuscripts. What's a stubborn, steely writer to do? Unmask her rival...

A 2023 Pick for Vulture Men's Health, IGN, Polygon, Goodreads, Nerd Daily, WeAreBookishBook, Riot, The Mary Sue & others Inspired by a classic of martial arts literature, S. L. Huang's The Water Outlaws are bandits of devastating ruthlessness, unseemly femininity, dangerous philosophies, and...

Misha is a jaded scriptwriter who has been working in Hollywood for decades, and has just been nominated for his first Oscar. But when he's pressured by his producers to kill off a gay character in the upcoming season finale—"for the algorithm"—Misha discovers that it's not that simple. As he is haunted by his past, and past mistakes, Misha must risk everything to find a way to do what's right—before it's too late.

The second book in the acclaimed new historical crime series, set in Victorian London and featuring a transgender protagonist, following on from the Richard & Judy Book Club 2019 pick The House on Half Moon Street. It's been a year since Leo Stanhope lost the woman he loved, and came closing to...

Brian, an aimless slacker, works doubles at his shift job, forgets to clean his room and lays about with his friends Nik and Darby. He's been struggling to manage his transition to adulthood almost as much as his monthly transitions to a werewolf. Really, he is not great at the whole werewolf thing, and his recent murderous slip-ups have caught the attention of Tyler, a Millennial were-mentor determined to take the mythological world by storm.

The Savages are the greatest weapon the Empire ever forged. They are the ones no one will miss: the poor, the criminal, the indigent. Snatched from the street by the city guard, they are thrown in their thousands at the Empire's enemies. If they live, they fight again. If they die, there are always more to take their place. Evie is a warrior, charged by a grieving wife to find a lost husband, a man who holds the key to exposing the pressgangs. A man Evie herself once loved.

London, England, 1887: At the abandoned apartment of a missing young woman, a dossier of evidence is collected and sent to the Chief Inspector of the London Police for review. It contains a curious correspondence between an inquisitive journalist, Miss Emily Gibson, and the woman Gibson thinks may be the infamous Mrs. Lovett—Sweeney Todd’s accomplice, who baked men into pies and sold them in her pie shop on Fleet Street.

From rising horror star and award-winning author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke comes a nightmarish, haunting, tech-Gothic thrill ride about sorrow, memory, and the unabashed complexity of love as a transgressive act. After his husband dies, Simeon Link finds himself overcome by...

January 1965. The orphaned O'Leary siblings—Tom, Jack, Anna and Peggy—arrive in the village of Ballycrea, tight-lipped about their troubled past and desperate for a fresh start. After being met with suspicion from most of the locals, the family are thrilled when they're taken under the wing of their well-respected neighbours, Bill and Betty Nevan, who offer them work, companionship and an opportunity to fit in.

Set across two weeks in 2018 and 2023, Orange is the story of a situationship between two young men, Daniel and Jago, who, at 16, become unlikely friends and then lovers in their tiny Cornish fishing village. Five years later, Daniel has moved away to London and Jago is coming to visit for a few days. Despite being in each other's lives all this time, they have never solidified their relationship, and this is only Jago's second visit to the city.

When 73-year-old matriarch Magnolia Chen sweeps into the family Chinese New Year celebration with a woman on her arm that she introduces as her girlfriend, shockwaves ripple through the room. But her 16-year-old granddaughter Izzy, black sheep of the clan, is far more intrigued than angry. Later that evening Magnolia begins to tell Izzy her story: sent from Indonesia to Los Angeles in her teens, she met Ellery O'Shea, her best friend, her safe space, the love of her life.