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Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 347 - On the Shelf for June & July 2026

Saturday, July 18, 2026 - 07:00

Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 347 - On the Shelf for June & July 2026 - Transcript

(Originally aired 2026/07/18)

Welcome to On the Shelf for—well, this is a catch-up episode covering both June and July 2026, after my broken arm-related vacation. I’m back to typing with both hands now, though it’s a bit slower and more painful than usual and I may continue using my computer’s speech-to-text function sometimes to help out.

The schedule is going to continue to be a bit discombobulated in August—not due to the arm, but because I have a special interview lined up to celebrate the podcast’s 10th anniversary at the beginning of the month, so the On the Shelf for August will be shifted later. (Originally I was thinking of doing some special episodes to air something every week in August to celebrate, but as I type this, my wrist is suggesting the path of sanity and I’m backing off on that.)

I’ll also be traveling in August: the Golden Crown Literary Society conference at the beginning of the month and Worldcon at the end of the month. If you’ll be at either of those events, please track me down to say hi.

And while we’re talking about 10th anniversaries, remember that next year will be the 10th and final year of the fiction series. Submissions won’t be open until January (as usual) but check out the call for submissions on the website (see the show notes) and spread the word.

Publications on the Blog

With two months to catch up on, plus my usual blogging binge for Pride month, there are a lot of publications to mention. I started out with several articles on the 18th century: Lisa Moore’s study of Mary Delany’s intimate friendships, Sally O’Driscoll’s analysis of the parallel development of the idea of “the passionless woman” and the image of the lesbian, Julie Peakman’s chapter on lesbians in her book Lascivious Bodies: A Sexual History of the Eighteenth Century.

Then I tackled an assorted collection of biographical articles: an anonymous 17th century scandal sheet about Queen Christina of Sweden, Carmeta Abbott’s study of two 17th century paintings of a French noblewoman depicted in male clothing, Rudolph Bell’s commentary on the Benedetta Carlini archives, Nicole Reynolds’ study of the “cottage-core” image of the Ladies of Llangollen, and an article by Martha Vicinus on lesbian hints in the Victorian Codrington divorce trial.

After that I took a several-week tour through Anne Lister scholarship, starting with Dannielle Orr’s dissertation A Sojourn in Paris, followed up with the collection Decoding Anne Lister: From the Archives to ‘Gentleman Jack’ edited by Chris Rouston and Caroline Gonda.

Book Shopping!

Somewhere in there I had time to do some book shopping and have acquired Rictor Norton’s The Myth of the Modern Homosexual: Queer History and the Search for Cultural Unity. A skim through the contents confirms my suspicion that the book is primarily male-focused (which the author acknowledges), containing a single chapter about how maybe lesbian history looks different from what the rest of the book covers.

I also picked up a general history book for my own research: Paris Between Empires: Monarchy and Revolution 1814-1852 by Philip Mansel. Alas for my interests, it does seem to be focused entirely on “monarchy and revolution” with very little coverage of the lives of ordinary Parisians.

Recent Lesbian/Sapphic Historical Fiction

I’m organizing the new and recently released books a little differently this time, due to the longer time period I’m covering. Usually I group them by the month of release, but this time I’ll group them by setting. I’ll also be condensing the summaries significantly, due to the number of titles. I prefer doing a dramatic reading of the actual cover copy – I hope you enjoy that too! –but we have about 30 titles this episode and that would take too long.

Counter to the question of setting, there were some interesting themes emerging from looking at so many books at once (including ones with future publication dates). I’m seeing a lot of the “romance of the archives” type of plot, where a contemporary person comes across some documents related to a queer relationship in the past, and their exploration or tracking down of the details leads to a new understanding of their own sexuality and relationships. I’ve been a little more selective about which of these I consider to be “historical fiction” as opposed to being solidly contemporary stories. I found a good handful of books that are fictionalizations of the lives of actual historic individuals. And, of course, we have our usual assortment of pirate stories, wild west stories, and vaguely Regency/Victorian romances.

Since there aren’t any titles with classical settings this time, we’ll start with medieval and Renaissance-era stories.

Dreaming of Jerusalem by Susie Helme follows Ysabeau through a 14th century landscape of crusades, pirates, Mongols, and harems when an attack that kills her father sets her free of conventional expectations to seek vengeance and a different future.

Silk Road Runaways by Christine Inserra, set in 15th century Mongolia, traces the friendship and eventual love between two young women, one an eagle huntress, as they face raiding marauders, brutal warlords, and the well-meaning plans that relatives have for their lives. The girls must fight not only for survival, but for the freedom to choose their own future.

Chivalry in the Shadows by Meg Merriet Wahlberg from Parkwood Manor Press takes up the motif popular in actual medieval epics of the cross-dressing female knight, complete with convenient twin brother, as Rowen seeks to win the hand of Lady Amarys in a tournament.

With My Own Hand: The secret life of Marie Maitland, Scotland’s sixteenth-century Sappho by Ashley Douglas from Headline Press imagines a life for the author of the homoerotic poem in the Maitland manuscript. (Check out podcast episode 128 for the poem in question.)

The next group of books have in common being about pirates, which also conveniently groups them in the 17-18th centuries.

Bound By Silk & Salt Water by Caren Cross from Stonecastle Publications follows fearsome pirate Katarina DeWitt on her path of vengeance against the British, from the North Sea to the coast of Arabia. But when she unexpectedly captures the Mughal princess Amara Devi, all her plans go overboard.

Tempest: A Novel of Anne Bonny, the Pirate Queen Who Disappeared by K. Knight is what it says on the tin: the story of Anne Bonny, recounted as an old woman.

The two books in the Ruby Reaper duology by Eline Evans (The Ruby Reaper and The Emerald Eclipse) spans the Atlantic from Denmark to the Carribbean as scandalous heiress Ria runs away with pirate captain Ana de Orellana and fights for her place as a buccaneer, as the ship fights those who hunt pirates.

We have the usual assortment of Regency romances, both adapting existing characters and original ones.

Mr. Moore by Giny Morales uses gender disguise as the motif for a different sort of marriage of convenience. But does Kate Sullivan know what she’s getting into when she offers an arrangement to the mysterious Mr. Moore?

The Miseducation of Caroline Bingley by Lindz McLeod from Carina Adores is the second of McLeod’s reworkings of Jane Austen, following characters after the last page of the existing books. Caroline Bingley wants to remake her personality and Georgiana Darcy seems like the perfect model for her to follow. Before long, their lessons in finding love and acceptance blossom into something completely unexpected.

Caroline's Courtesan (The Comerford Courtesans #4) by Jess Michaels from The Passionate Pen is, as often happens, the only title in this series with a female couple. The widowed Caroline Ashfield can do what she wants, read what she enjoys and support her scandalous nieces to her heart’s desire. Everything is perfect except for her constant thoughts about celebrated courtesan Simone Stanford.

I hesitated a bit over including Pretence & Pretentiousness by Lynn Kear because the cover art is pretty clearly AI-generated, but there were no other signals casting doubt on the book itself. In a break from stories of transgressive and scandalous Regency heroines, Jane Dudley’s quest for a life where she can simply be herself with the woman she loves is quiet and covert.

Moving on to the Victorian era, the following stories are centered on England.

A Season of Teeth and Silk by Henriette Twinne sees the arrival of American heiress Eleanor "Nell" Alcott in London, with a marriage to an impoverished aristocrat all arranged. But the woman hired to coach her on behavior and deportment entices her down a different and more dangerous path.

The Art of Longing by Michael David matches wealthy widow Eleanor Ashworth with the woman hired to paint an official portrait to display at her charitable foundation. After a lifetime of proper behavior, two women in their forties discover that it is never too late to break free of the social rules, the constraints, the loaded silences of women who must speak in code and learn to inhabit their own lives.

The Green Seal (Blackthorn Hall Romances # 3) by E. L. Vale features Lady Honoria Trenchard, who has spent a lifetime “fixing” reputations—but sometimes that has required sacrificing others. A sealed box containing old secrets forces her to revisit one of those trade-offs.

Skipping across the ocean, we have our usual assortment of stories set in the American West.

What the Willow Kept (The Women of Sapphire #1.5) by L. Creeke is identified as a prequel novella to When Embers Find Her (The Women of Sapphire #1). This suggests that it might be best to read Embers first, out of chronological sequence. Willows starts in Appalachia when childhood friends and lovers Grace and Lizzie flee home to escape Lizzie’s arranged marriage. But the American frontier isn’t any safer than what they left behind. It isn’t clear how the Grace of this story relates to the Charlotte Grace in Embers, though presumably there is some sort of connection. Charlotte, too, is trying to escape patriarchal oppression in the western desert, when Sawyer Hayes finds her (again?) with hope of rescue. But Sawyer has her own dark past and may not be a reliable savior.

The Wrong Widow (Cielo Seco #1) by D. S. Briar follows the familiar trope of a mail-order bride arriving in the West to find her unmet husband dead and his sister uncertain what to do with this newly-arrived stranger. As might be expected, they gradually fall in love, but the question of the husband’s death--and who might have profited from it--remains.

Gold Rush 1860 by Randa Hink is a found family story set in Oregon where two women need to protect the orphaned girl they have adopted from the powerful men who killed her family.

Two Whoops and a Holler by Carmilla Deane from Lewis and Young Publishing follows Harriet Jane Grant, a Black woman bounty hunter in Wyoming Territory. All Harriet dreams of is a quiet ranch life with her lover Grace, but she needs one last bounty to finance that dream.

 Backtracking only a little to pick up the non-western America stories, we start with a graphic novel.

Charity and Sylvia by Tillie Walden from Drawn and Quarterly uses a pictorial format to tell the story of a turn of the 19th century female couple in New England who were accepted by their community as the equivalent of married. My blog covered the academic publication by Rachel Hope Cleves who did the actual archival work of uncovering, analyzing, and presenting this fascinating couple. There’s been a bit of online buzz about how Cleves feels her work was not adequately credited in this graphic novel, given that—unlike many historic figures—she is basically the only published source about them. I suggest enjoying both publications.

Disfigured (New York's Gilded Age #4) by Joseph P. Garland from Dermody House follows Nora Ferguson from a tragedy in Ireland that leaves her scarred to a new life as a governess in Pennsylvania, then finding a new career as a writer. The cover copy notes “two romances, one straight, one sapphic.”

Becoming Legends Elsie-Bessie: A Love Story (book #1) by Barbara Barna Abel & Shannon McMahon Lichte from Abelintermedia is another fictionalized real-person story, this time of a romantic partnership spanning Gilded Age New York and Belle Epoque Paris between two accomplished women who transcended the limitations imposed on them. Evidently this is the first of a three-part series.

Stories set in the 20th century fall generally into those roughly around World War I and those roughly around World War II, though not necessarily about the wars specifically. (I confess I’ve cut back on including books set in the 1960s and later, in part for space reasons.)

The earlier group gives us Lena and Miss Cawkwell by Julie Bozza from LIBRAtiger. Two women whose horizons have been expanded by the need to fill previously-male occupations during the war find their romantic horizons similarly shifted.

Murder by Degrees by Rachel Ford is another mystery staring gender-crossing Alec Thatch and wife Merry. Depending on how you interpret Alec’s identity, this might or might not be considered sapphic, but I find the depiction true to its era.

A Blue Note by Katrina Jackson is a “romance of the archives” featuring a contemporary researcher’s self-discovery in the context of studying figures of the Harlem Renaissance.

The World War II-adjacent books start with Little Wild by Laura Evans from Henry Holt and Co. A country house party sees Joanie and Margaret’s covert romance outed as their imminent elopement turns to catastrophe and growing terror.

The Malign Ghosts of Summer by Ann McMan from Bywater Books traces the lives of four female friends through decades of tragedy, friendship, and intimacy.

Cold Water by C. R. Ellery plunges us into murder and intrigue in the wake of WWII, with the lives and secrecy of a female couple threatened by the fall-out.

The Rude Bird (New Orleans Noir #1) by M. R. Dimond from Rock Rose Press takes on the standard hard-boiled detective story with a female protagonist.

What Am I Reading?

So what have I been reading? You might think that with the enforced inactivity due to my broken arm, I would have gotten a lot of reading in. Alas, you would be wrong. Being broken is simply exhausting and while reading doesn’t take that much energy, I was using all I had to spare to read for the blog and write that up. I wasn’t bicycling, so I didn’t have my usual context for listening to audiobooks, and reading physical books is tricky one-handed. But I did listen to a few things before all that happened.

I got caught up on the Murderbot series with Platform Decay by Martha Wells. This one had a slightly different sort of plot than previously, with some consequences of previous events coming back to complicate things. It’s still more action-adventure than my taste, but that’s ok.

A sale at the Libro.fm site led me to finally try some Terry Pratchett. Although a lot of my friends rave about his work, my previous exposure had been entirely through tv and movie adaptations and they simply hadn’t grabbed me enough to follow up. But I read Monstrous Regiment, which takes the trope of the cross-dressing woman joining the army and runs with it to ridiculous extremes, and found it quite enjoyable—though not so much that I’m going to binge Pratchett’s entire body of work.

I also had two “didn’t finish” titles. Nnedi Okorofor’s Death of the Author is an ambitious literary work that slides into being science fiction by an interesting angle. But in the end it wasn’t grabbing me. I’m being unreasonably hard to please these days. The other title that didn’t work for me was J.A. Stevens’ A Change of Pace, set in an alternate queer-normative Regency, with a rakish protagonist and a great many side characters making bad decisions. Unfortunately for me, the alternative aspect of the worldbuilding included removing most of the aspects of queer history that I enjoy reading about, so it might as well have been pure fantasy or contemporary.

One of these days I need to make a list of the queer historicals I do love, and what I love about them, so people can suggest titles with a better chance of hitting the spot for me.

Show Notes

Your monthly roundup of history, news, and the field of sapphic historical fiction.

In this episode we talk about:

Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online

Links to Heather Online

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