Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 323 - On the Shelf for September 2025

Saturday, September 6, 2025 - 07:00

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Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 323 - On the Shelf for September 2025 - Transcript

(Originally aired 2025/09/06 - listen here)

Welcome to On the Shelf for September 2025.

It’s been quite a month! To start with, I worked pretty intensively to get my first self-published book out. It’s not a historic project, being a collection of connected fantasy stories under the title Skin-Singer: Tales of the Kaltaoven. Some fairly cozy shape-shifter adventures with a low-key sapphic romance threaded through it. The project had two purposes: to bring these stories—written over the last thirty years—back into availability, and to use as a “practice project” for the self-publishing process. If it sounds like your sort of thing, I hope you’ll check it out. I’m planning to do an audio version of it as well, doing my own narration.

The second big thing in the last month was going to the World Science Fiction Convention in Seattle. Worldcon was special for me this year as I was a finalist for a Hugo Award for a non-fiction piece I co-wrote on some really geeky statistical analysis of award nomination patterns. My co-author and I didn’t win the Hugo—I’m very happy for the book that won—but it was exciting to have the finalist experience and feel like a minor celebrity. I participated on several discussion panels, two related to history and one on constructed languages. And I had lots of chances to meet up with people, including my cover artist for Skin-Singer and five—count them, five!—of the authors published in this podcast’s fiction series.

Then I barely had time to touch base at home and record a couple more podcast episodes before heading off for two weeks in New Zealand, which is where I am when this airs. This is my official “celebrating retirement” trip with my best friend. We’re doing a bunch of Lord of the Rings tourism, as well as hiking, enjoying nature, and cultural experiences.

After I get back, it’ll be time to start the publicity push for next year’s podcast fiction series. As I mentioned last month, I’ve decided to continue the fiction series for another two years to make it an even ten and then shut down that part of the project. Let’s make these next two years count! The call for submissions is up on the website and is functionally identical to last time.

Publications on the Blog

I’m still on my temporary vacation from blogging books and articles for the Project, but in August, before that vacation started, I covered six items. First up was a retrospective essay by Emma Donoghue on her career in lesbian history—chosen as the 500th publication covered on the blog.

Next were a couple articles by Susan Lanser: “Befriending the Body” exploring the intersection of sexuality and class in 18th century England, and “Sapphic Picaresque” examining a brief literary fashion for positive or neutral depictions of lesbians in the early 18th century.

Next up were two items on the politicized medical fascination with the lesbian clitoris in the 16th through 18th centuries: Katharine Park’s “The Rediscovery of the Clitoris” and Corinna Wagner’s Pathological Bodies. We finished off with Martha Vicinus considering the public reception of male impersonation at a time of social change in “Turn of the Century Male Impersonation.”

When I regroup and start blogging things again, I need to look at my history book outline and identify topics I need to fill in. I’ve started working on some of the introductory text for the history book, so it’s feeling very real now. And I really need to come up with some better way of referring to it than “the history book.” I haven’t come up with a draft title yet because I’d like to clearly distinguish it from the Lesbian Historic Motif Project as a whole. So for now, it’s just “the history book.”

Book Shopping!

After a long drought in book-shopping for the blog, I picked up a new title, thanks to the recommendation of a fan of the Project. This is a translation of a text purportedly by the Abbé de Choisy, a 17th century French aristocrat who was assigned male, but raised by his mother as a girl, and after some experimentation as an adult, settled into wearing female clothing and having romantic relationships with women. Because history is complex and sex and gender categories are not stable over time, it's difficult to be certain how to classify Choisy. The translator uses the term “transvestite”—the English title of the translation is The Transvestite Memoirs—but the translation was originally published in the 1970s and I suspect a different approach might be taken today. There’s also the complication that—although presented as a non-fictional memoir (to which a fairy tale has been appended)—historians have been unable to find any corroboration for Choisy’s behavior in contemporary sources and consider the entire work to be fictional. In any event, I’ll look into this topic in greater detail when I cover the book for the blog, along with other publications on the topic. Regardless of the interpretation, Choisy appears to have been a fascinating figure who sits somewhere in a sapphic-adjacent space.

Recent Lesbian/Sapphic Historical Fiction

Leaving aside memoirs that might be fiction, let’s take a look at new and forthcoming books that are clearly fiction. The vast majority of them are set in the 19th or 20th century which always leaves me hungering for a bit more variety. On the other hand, I think we’ve found all the August books that seemed to be missing last month. Some of the cover copy this month is on the long-winded side, so in some cases I’ve condensed it.

I found one July book not previously identified: Of Velvet and Stone by Catherine Martini from Djuna Publishers.

England, 1852.

In a world ruled by class and restraint, Lady Violet Bridgeman commands Hawthorn Manor with poise and precision. A widowed aristocrat bound by duty and tradition, she governs the estate with quiet authority—but her world shifts when a fall from her horse leaves her in the care of Charlotte Thorne, a reclusive woman who lives alone at the edge of the forest.

Charlotte is everything Violet is not—earth-bound and fiercely independent. Cast out from her family for loving another woman, she has chosen solitude over compromise, survival over society. But when circumstance forces the two women into close proximity, an undeniable tension grows between them—one that defies decorum, disrupts the safety of silence, and burns with unspoken longing.

There are a lot of August books that weren’t up yet when I did last month’s episode.

In the Wings by Charlotte Monet combines turn-of-the-century France with romance on the stage.

Paris, 1895. Where ballerinas are as expendable as bouquets tossed at their feet, nineteen-year-old Élise has one sacred rule: her body belongs to only the stage.

For a future beyond frugality and scraps, she has clawed her way up the ranks, enduring blistered feet and the gazes of obsessive patrons. When Monsieur Delaunay, a powerful benefactor of her ballet company, promotes Élise to principal in Giselle, it should be a dream come true. But the cost of her elevation begins to mount—first in favors, then in expectations, and finally in demands that make Élise question who truly controls her body after all.

As rehearsals and relations grow unbearable, Élise seeks solace in the one place she shouldn’t: the arms of her friend, a fellow ballerina. What begins as comfort turns into furtive glances and feelings that, if discovered, would leave both girls cast out and penniless on the streets. With opening night drawing closer, the curtain lifts on all the deceptions, and Élise, who has always been a model ballerina, must make the impossible choice: sacrifice her career to reclaim her autonomy, or risk love and freedom for the lure of the spotlight.

The setting for Bound to the Sea by Chloe Clarke isn’t entirely clear. The content tags say “Gilded Age” which generally refers to around 1900, but the plot is a fairly standard pirate romance which wouldn’t make any sense for that date. So perhaps just call it “Pirate Age” since the genre rarely aligns closely with history.

When Cassandra inherits her father's pirate ship, she doesn’t just take on a new title—she inherits a storm.

She must earn the respect of her crew and navigate a world where loyalty is as scarce as mercy. But amidst treacherous waters and whispered betrayals, Cassandra’s fate shifts with the arrival of a mysterious new crew member who doesn’t challenge her authority, but her heart.

What begins as a fight for survival becomes a voyage of self-discovery, love, and a daring quest for treasure that could change everything. In a world ruled by gold and blood, Cassandra must choose what kind of legend she wants to leave behind.

The Girl from Berlin by Johanna Weiss is a fictionalized true biography that has been told numerous times before about an unlikely romance in WWII Berlin.

Berlin, 1943. The city is a world of blackouts and air raids, of silence and suspicion. Lilly Wust, a young wife and mother, lives behind the facade of a dutiful German housewife—until a chance encounter shatters the life she thought she knew.

Felice Schragenheim is witty, daring, and reckless, a woman living under a false name in the heart of a city that wants her erased. Against all odds, and in the shadow of the Reich, she and Lilly begin an affair that is as intoxicating as it is dangerous.

Their love grows in stolen glances and whispered words, in hurried letters and secret meetings while bombs rain down around them. But with every risk they take, the walls close in tighter, and Lilly must face the cost of loving someone the world has marked for destruction.

Diverging from the focus on the last couple of centuries, but veering into an alternate timeline in which women could lead the Roman army, we have Hibernia: An Antiquity Sapphic Romance by Kimia Kore.

Augusta Valeria, one of the first female Roman centurions allowed into the Roman army after Caesar reforms the roles of women in Rome, travels to Hibernia with her commander father to subdue the final piece missing from Caesar's Roman Empire.

When an assault on her life by fellow Roman soldiers is thwarted by Eithne, a Hibernian girl, Augusta follows her into her world and soon becomes enraptured by how a Hibernian sisterhood can live without men. But as the hours pass and other Romans start searching for her, Augusta must choose between Rome and Hibernia—and learns that Eithne is not at all the simple redheaded young woman she first appeared to be.

A Lady Called Trouble by Lauren Leigh has a bit of a gothic air to it and feels like it must be set sometime during the 19th century.

Edwina feels instant regret after her sensible marriage to Edgar, which only intensifies when they reach his country home. Between Lady Caroline, the tempestuous ward he neglected to mention, his stark change of demeanour, and her heart's stubborn refusal to yield to him, she doesn't know what to think. The only thing she's sure of is that the way Lady Caroline gives her butterflies all through her body feels downright dangerous.

After leaving London in a swirl of vicious rumours - the truth of which she declines to comment on - Caroline has her own regrets. She seems to have a knack for falling for the wrong people and her cold-hearted guardian's country home feels like no place to nurse a bruised heart - but worst of all, she can't seem to stop thinking about her guardian's new wife.

As Caroline and Edwina grow closer and the ghosts of Edgar's past hang heavy over the house, will they all be able to find a path to happiness?

This next book has a somewhat odd background. The bio for the author, M.C. Collins, says she’s the niece and literary executor of New Zealand writer Susan M. Gaffney. Collins previously finished and published Eve of Kilcargin, an incomplete work from Gaffney exploring a lesbian romance. In the current book, The Mistress of Hannasbury, Collins has explored an imagined life for one of the side characters in Gaffney’s work. It isn’t clear if this story stands alone or should be read in combination with the first.

In 1926, five years on from the death of her husband, and her ignominious exit from a newly independent Ireland, Lady Pamela Collingwood of Kilcargin finds herself homeless when her wealthy lover abandons her for a younger woman. Estranged from her daughter and disowned by her sister, she turns to her old schoolfriend and ex-lover Grace: now the wife of an eccentric, social-climbing industrialist with dreams of becoming a champion racing driver. Pamela is offered sanctuary at their vast country estate on the edge of the Lincolnshire Fens, but the two old friends quickly discover that their schoolgirl attraction still simmers, shaking the foundations of Grace’s idyllic, yet unfulfilling marriage.

There are a couple of Jane Austen take-offs this month. The Scandal at Pemberley by Mara Brooks asks the question, what if Jane Bennet wasn’t quite what she seemed?

She was supposed to be the perfect bride. Instead, she became the greatest scandal of Pemberley.

Jane Bennet arrives at the grand estate expecting quiet refinement. What she finds is temptation in the form of Georgiana Darcy—shy, beautiful, and far too willing to risk everything behind locked doors and candlelit halls.

Whispers turn into secrets. Secrets turn into touches. And every touch risks exposure. Servants linger, shadows stir, and someone is always watching. Their passion is intoxicating, but discovery could mean ruin for them both.

September books start off with what looks like a very fun Regency: Ladies in Hating by Alexandra Vasti from St. Martin’s Griffin.

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, of course.

But unmasking doesn’t go according to plan—because Lady Darling is actually Cat Lacey, the butler’s daughter and object of Georgiana’s very secret, very embarrassing teenage infatuation.

Cat Lacey has spent a decade clawing her family out of poverty. The last thing she needs is to be distracted by the stunning(ly pretentious) Lady Georgiana Cleeve. But Cat can’t seem to escape her infuriatingly beautiful rival—including at the eerie manor where they both plan to set their next books. The plot unexpectedly thickens, however, when the novelists find themselves trapped in the manor together. In between ghostly moans and spectral staff, Cat and Georgiana come face-to-face with real danger: the scorching passion that’s been haunting their rivalry all along.

Time-travel stories hold an uncertain place in the historic genre, but this one looks intriguing: When the Light Pulls You Back by Carey Miller.

Buffalo, NY. 1986. Mina Melton has always been drawn to traces of the past — the fading lines of old buildings, the worn streets of her city, and the stories of women whose lives shaped the world in quiet, enduring ways. But when she and her best friend Lillian are pulled through time to the 1901 Pan-American Exposition, where the glittering surface hides a far less perfect reality, history becomes something more immediate. More fragile. More alive.

Caught between two centuries, the girls search for a way home and stumble instead upon a frightened child, a missing bag of coins, and the slow realization that the past cannot be separated from the present — or from the future. As they move through a world where women’s stories are so often lost or overlooked, Mina and Lillian begin to understand not only the weight of history, but the risks of the heart — and the truth of what they’ve meant to each other all along.

We have an interview later in this episode with Cathy Pegau, the author of A Murderous Business (A Harriman & Mancini Mystery) from Minotaur Books.

There can be a blurry line between what is ethical and what is legal.

Margot Baxter Harriman took the reins of B&H Foods after her father passed. It’s not easy being a business woman in 1912, but she is determined to continue what her grandparents started decades ago, no matter what it takes.

So when Margot finds Mrs. Gilroy, her father’s former assistant, dead in the office with a half-finished note confessing to nebulous misdeeds at B&H, she seeks out help from a very discreet, private investigator to figure out what's going on. Her company, and her good name, are at stake if scandal breaks...and she could lose everything, including her freedom.

Loretta “Rett” Mancini has run her father’s investigation operation since he started becoming increasingly forgetful. When Margot offers her the chance to look into the potential scandal with B&H, she jumps at the chance.

But the more the two dig in, the more it becomes clear that Margot's company may be too far lost...and someone is willing to kill them both to keep things quiet.

I’ve condensed the cover copy for Claiming the Tower (Council Mysteries #1) by Celia Lake. The story is set in the author’s elaborate alternate history in which magical communities interact with the history we know.

Hereswith is frustrated with the world. There’s the utter mismanagement of the war in the Crimea. While she moves among the diplomatic set of London, she’s limited in what she can do there by her gender and their assumptions. She has more scope within Britain’s magical community, but expectations hem her in there as well. Hereswith loves the times she can retreat to her family home, her father, and their library.

Bess has moved from house to house as companion to a series of increasingly difficult older women. Her current position has narrowed her world to tangled embroidery thread, small household tribulations, and dealing with her mistress’s whims and changes of mood.

When Hereswith and Bess begin to talk, both of them begin to wonder what the world might look like if things were a little different. Are they brave enough to change the world?

We have another pirate romance: Tides of Reckoning (Daughters Under the Black Flag #2) by Eden Hopewell.

Izzy Montgomery thought she’d found freedom when she traded silk gowns and societal expectations for the rough life of a pirate. But on the Poseidon’s Daughter, even among her newfound family, shadows linger. Haunted by a past she can’t outrun and the threat of the notorious pirate hunter James Morley looming over the horizon, Izzy is determined to prove herself worthy of Captain Blackthorn’s trust and earn her place among the fierce women of the crew.

Sailing the treacherous Caribbean waters alongside her best friend Gracie and her lover, Anne Marie, Izzy faces a new challenge: Morley’s power is on the rise, his influence reaching even the shores of Tortuga. When a risky mission to infiltrate his inner circle goes disastrously wrong, Izzy and Gracie disappear, swallowed by the very world they sought to conquer.

If you enjoyed the book or movie Hidden Figures, then To the Moon and Back by Eve Noble is going to be right up your alley. I’ve condensed the cover copy a bit.

Two brilliant minds. One impossible equation.

Gloria Johnson can calculate lunar trajectories in her sleep, but as a Black woman at NASA in 1969, she's stuck typing other people's equations. Then she gets paired with Dr. Katrina Ivanova—the mysterious Russian defector who challenges every equation she thought she'd mastered.

Katrina Ivanova fled the Soviet Union for scientific freedom, only to find herself trapped by American bureaucracy. Her mother is still in Moscow, and the security chief holding her visa hostage wants one thing: intel on Gloria's family and their civil rights activities.

Professional competition turns personal fast. Gloria introduces Katrina to Star Trek. Katrina makes Gloria traditional Russian tea. Soon, their rivalry becomes something much more dangerous: attraction.

The social dynamics in Lady Like by Mackenzi Lee from Dial Press strike me as decidedly implausible, but if you’re in for a Regency romp that doesn’t worry about such things, check it out. Again, I’ve condensed a little.

Harriet Lockhart never planned to marry. The educated daughter of a high-class prostitute, Harry has spent her life defying expectations all while being subsidized by her late mother’s trust. When she is contacted out of the blue by her hitherto anonymous father, she finds herself at risk of losing the trust that he actually funds unless she acquiesces to his request that she lead a more respectable life, starting with finding a husband.

Emily Sergeant has only ever wanted to marry. If not for one mistake in her youth that rendered her a social pariah, she would be appropriately betrothed. Desperate for an alternative to the only man willing to marry her, Emily flees to London.

Worlds collide, dramatically and hilariously, when both women decide on the very same duke as their best possible chance at a tolerable husband and the security that he brings. In a tongue-in-cheek romp, Harry and Emily compete for the duke's favor, only to find their true hearts' desires may be more compatible than they ever could have predicted.

Our second Jane Austen novel is The Shocking Experiments of Miss Mary Bennet by Melinda Taub from Grand Central Publishing.

Mary Bennet is the middlest middle child of all time. Awkward, plain, and overlooked, she’s long been out of favor not only with her own family but with generations of readers of Pride and Prejudice.

But what was Mary really doing while her sisters were falling in love? Well, what does any bright, intrepid girl do in an age when brains and hard work are only valued if they come with a pretty face? Take to the attic and teach herself to reanimate the dead of course. The world refuses to make a place for peculiar Mary, but no Bennet sister ever gives up on happiness that easily. If it won’t give this fierce, lonely girl a place, she’ll carve one out herself. And if finding acceptance requires a husband, she’ll get one. Even if she has to make him herself, too.

However, Mary’s genius and determination aren’t enough to control what she unwittingly unleashes. Her desperate attempts to rein in the destruction wreaked by her creations leads her to forge a perhaps unlikely friendship with another brilliant young woman unlike any she’s ever known. As that friendship blossoms into something passionate and all-consuming, Mary begins to realize that she may have to choose between the acceptance she’s always fought for and true happiness.

The Crooked Medium's Guide to Murder by Stephen Cox takes the Victorian obsession with spiritualism in an unexpected direction.

London 1881. Can two crooked women stop a murder?

Extravagant medium Mrs Ashton and her lover, blunt working-class Mrs Bradshaw, run a spiritualist scam. Mrs Ashton secretly reads minds.

Grieving Lady Violet craves the truth behind her mother’s untimely death. But Lady Violet’s powerful husband Sir Charles hates spiritualists. Has he killed before?

Uncovering this MP’s wicked crimes puts all three women in terrible danger…

To solve a shocking murder, look both sides of the grave.

A joyous romp with a serious core. Taking a wry look at Victorian hypocrisy, this twisty and gripping thriller goes from dockland slums to a country estate and the Old Bailey. Aided by Maisie - the sharpest and smartest dock-lass detective ever - they struggle to bring a powerful man to justice. Whatever laws they have broken, these rogues cannot stomach murder. This extraordinary case threatens all their certainties - it could divide them forever. And if Mrs Ashton were to run into Mr Sherlock Holmes, she could teach him a thing or two.

Sixteenth-century Holland is the setting for I Am You by Victoria Redel from SJP Lit. The author indicates it’s a reimagining of the biography of a real-life painter.

At eight years old, Gerta Pieters is forced to disguise herself as a boy and sent to work for a genteel Dutch family. When their brilliant and beautiful daughter Maria sees through Gerta’s ruse, she insists that Gerta accompany her to Amsterdam and help her enter the elite, male-dominated art world.

While Maria rises in the ranks of society as a painting prodigy, Gerta makes herself invaluable in every way: confidante, muse, lover. But as Gerta steps into her own talents, their relationship fractures into a complex web of obsession and rivalry—and the secrets they keep threaten to unravel everything.

Other Books of Interest

This month, the “other books of interest” section contains several titles that just felt a little “off” without raising full alarm bells. I’m including them with a brief description, but with caveats.

Dora Copperfield: A Quiet Bloom by Kit Indigo from Rose Angel Publishing is a re-imagining of the story of Dora from Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield. It’s always interesting to imagine an interior life for characters who weren’t given one by their original authors, but the cover copy feels oddly generic to me. Dora is given a personal awakening and a sapphic romance.

When I came across the listing for The Book of Susan by Roxanna di Bella and looked into the author’s other titles, it became clear that she has a standard modus operandi that makes her biography and the entire body of work look like a work of fiction itself. Di Bella has published 10 books in the last 3 years, all historical stories that she claims are based on actual documentation—letters, diaries, etc.—that have come into her hands, either due to a family connection or due to relatives of the book’s subject entrusting the materials to her. There’s a common theme that the story has been suppressed due to the lesbian aspects, but is now being made public with the names changed. (Which, of course, makes it impossible to research the truth of the claims.) If the books had simply been presented as invented fictions, they wouldn’t have raised my suspicions, but the repeated pattern of claiming secret documentary sources just feels…off. The Book of Susan concerns suppressed information from the Dead Sea Scrolls giving hints of same-sex relations among early Christians. A Flower in Auschwitz involves a WWII concentration camp romance between a nurse and a prisoner. If you’re curious about her earlier titles, they’re linked to these in the Amazon records.

What Am I Reading?

And what have I been reading? Checking my notes, it appears to have been just two audiobooks. After enjoying the tv series of Murderbot by Martha Wells, I’ve decided to try the books again, starting with All Systems Red. I’d read one of the later books a couple years ago and rather bounced off it due to the percentage of blow-by-blow battle scenes. All Systems Red worked better for me, so maybe I just needed to start at the beginning and get more invested in the characters.

I also listened to the audiobook of Ann Leckie’s short story collection Lake of Souls. This is a combination of stories set in two of the worlds of her longer works, plus a number of stand-alones. The title story is one of the best depictions of an alien culture I’ve seen in a long time. Leckie’s handling of aliens reminds me a lot of C.J. Cherryh.

I plan to have some reading time during my New Zealand trip, so maybe I’ll have a better account next month.

Author Guest

We have an interview this month with author Cathy Pegau about her new book.

[Interview transcript will be added when available.]