Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 339 - On the Shelf for April 2026 - Transcript
(Originally aired 2026/04/04)
Welcome to On the Shelf for April 2026.
In the usual California fashion, Spring has been quickly elbowed out of the way by summer. The gardening is proceeding apace with tomatoes in the ground, the artichoke harvest well underway, strawberries trickling in, and a bushelful of Seville oranges delivered to a friend to be turned into marmalade. One delightful thing I participated in last month was a week-long “yarn store crawl,” visiting two dozen local yarn shops and adding more to my stash than I can probably knit in two years’ work. I hope your hobbies and interests are proceeding similarly well!
News of the Field
After a couple queries, I have a very special guest lined up to mark the 10th anniversary of the podcast in August. I somehow overlooked doing anything special for the 10th anniversary of the blog last year, but ten years for a podcast is quite an accomplishment and I’m glad I’ll have something lined up. (The guest is even a fan of the podcast, which was delightful to learn.)
In equally happy news, especially for those who have been following the Netflix series Bridgerton, a trailer for season 5 has confirmed what we dared to hope when the character of Michaela Stirling was introduced as a gender-flipped version of the book’s love interest. Yes, we will have a sapphic romance in Bridgerton! I’ve linked to the trailer in the show notes, in case you haven’t seen it yet.
To tie in with that news, one of the upcoming podcasts will be a condensed version of the “How to be a Regency Lesbian” chapter from my book project. (Yes, I’m going to continue teasing the book for the next couple years as it comes together.)
Publications on the Blog
Due to the length of the blog series about Anne Bonny and Mary Read, I’ve only covered two additional publications in the past month, both relating to this month’s essay. Henry Fielding’s 18th century pamphlet The Female Husband: or, the Surprising History of Mrs Mary, Alias Mr George Hamilton, which first introduced the term “female husband.” I paired that with S. Baker’s “Henry Fielding’s The Female Husband: Fact and Fiction,” since the original work seriously needs interpretive context, being as much a work of fiction as the General History of the Pyrates was.
Book Shopping!
I also picked up two new books for the Project. M. Kehoe’s collection Historical, Literary and Erotic Aspects of Lesbianism is a group of articles originally appearing in the Journal of Homosexuality. From an initial skim of the table of contents, only a couple articles are likely to fall into the Project’s timeframe.
As something of a historic curiosity, I also picked up Oscar Paul Gilbert’s Women in Men's Guise, originally published in 1932. I doubt it will have any information I’m not already aware of, and it lacks the academic apparatus that I’d expect of a current book, but it falls in an intriguing timeframe: able to incorporate the research of Magnus Hirschfeld but before the date of his suppression by Nazi Germany.
It occurs to me to note that I don’t count it as “book shopping” when I download public domain books from the internet, such as the General History or the original edition of Fielding’s The Female Husband. I’d have more regular shopping notes if I included that category.
Recent Lesbian/Sapphic Historical Fiction
This month’s new fiction listings are extensive, even after I’ve curated them. So as is often the case, I’ll be condensing the cover copy somewhat to make the length manageable. (Some authors give us nearly an entire chapter of cover copy!)
There are a couple February books I hadn’t found previously.
Stand and Deliver by Ivy Warren diverges from the standard highwaywoman plot.
Betrothed to a cruel man she despises, Countess Victoria Edmunton is determined to escape her fate. When her carriage is ambushed by highwaymen, Victoria seizes her chance to bargain with their charismatic leader. If her family believes she has been stolen away, then she may have a chance to escape her cursed marriage and claim a life of her choosing. Victoria offers jewels—and a daring plan. If he fakes her ransom, he could walk away richer than he ever dreamed, and she could disappear for good. Whisked away on horseback by the masked outlaw, Victoria makes a startling discovery…the highwayman is no man at all. But as attraction sparks into desire, the ransom plan goes awry and deadly secrets come to light. If she hopes to survive, Victoria must trust her highwaywoman with not only her heart, but with her life.
I initially assumed that Romeo & Her Sister by Jillian Blevins from Ghost Light Publications was a fictionalized biography, but it turns out it’s an audio drama. I wouldn’t normally list that genre, but since I’d already looked up all the data, here it is.
In 1845, Charlotte Cushman is the most famous American actress in the world, well-known for playing men's roles in the plays of Shakespeare. Despite her international fame, she harbors a secret, hidden in plain sight: she loves women. Celebrated in her own country, she has brought her sister Susan to London to play Juliet to her Romeo. Old resentments between the sisters surface as Charlotte struggles to balance her exploding career, her tumultuous relationship with writer Matilda Hays, and her affair with another young woman, all while keeping her personal life hidden from her fans, her sister, and her bitter rival, Edwin Forrest.
Lots of new March books!
There’s an intriguing cross-time story in To Love a Boleyn by Joey Evangelista.
Evangeline Hartwell is pulled from modern London into Henry VIII's court and is drawn into Anne Boleyn's inner circle, where survival is never certain. As Anne's position grows perilous, love becomes both refuge and liability. In a world where silence is protection and loyalty can be fatal, loving a Boleyn is never without consequence.
Arguments Against the Cultivation of Female Curiosity (Curiosity #2) by Suzanne Moss is the second book in a series.
England, 1764. Thea Morrell has everything society deems success: wealth, status, a husband and a title. But her marriage is far from what it seems.
Her only solace is found in the hushed halls of anatomy lectures, where questions of life and knowledge sustain her dangerous curiosity. Five years have passed since Martha, her lover and confidante, sailed away. Letters once filled with longing have fallen silent, leaving Thea to wonder if distance or disappointment has severed their bond. She is, after all, failing at cultivating any plant of note, and her arch rival Neville Knatchbull looks set to beat her to every goal.
When Frankie, an unruly gardener with secrets of her own, enters her orbit, Thea must decide: will she remain a prisoner of convention, or dare to cultivate a life of her own?
I confess it’s a bit of an irritation to me when historical novels ignore the realities of how noble titles worked, in order to set up an unmarried woman as a countess or the like. The second title that does that this month is The Countess and the Cartographer by Lyra Ashwood.
Imogen Ashford, the twenty-four-year-old Countess of Morthaven, has six months to satisfy the terms of her father's will: marry, or lose the estate to her guardian. She is not, by temperament, inclined to cooperate. What she needs is time. What she gets, when she commissions a survey of her crumbling Dorset estate, is Wren Calloway.
Wren is a Guild cartographer — precise, watchful, and in possession of a purpose she hasn't disclosed. Her father's survey records are somewhere on the Morthaven estate. Finding them would restore his professional reputation; failing to find them means his name stays buried alongside him. She has told the Countess she is here to document the estate. This is not entirely a lie.
What begins as a professional arrangement — uncomfortable, necessary, bounded by propriety — gradually becomes something else: a partnership built on careful honesty. The mystery deepens. And the distance between them closes.
The Egyptologist's Curse by Georgina Kenyon from SQP Nature Books is a dual timeline story, though not quite a “romance of the archives.”
It is the year 1873 and the Suez Canal is the gateway to the Pyramids. Egyptomania is the latest craze and Egypt is full of gravediggers, chancers and spies. Amelia Edwards, once a popular mystery writer, has reinvented herself as the Godmother of Egyptology. But after confessing her love to Marianne North, Amelia vanishes.
Jump to the present day and BBC podcaster, Margaret is making a series on Great Women in History, following in the footsteps of her ancestor, Amelia Edwards. Margaret travels to Egypt where Amelia had travelled over a century before, but in searching for the past, has the answer to Amelia's disappearance been hiding in one of Amelia's mystery books all along?
This next book is a bit of an oddity. It’s “historical fiction” only by virtue of being written in 1895, but only newly resurrected in print. Love's Joy and Sorrow Between Women by Emilie Knopf is translated from the German and published by Ovid Publishing Group.
A banned novel. A lost author. A love story that refused to stay buried.
When Love's Joy and Sorrow Between Women was published in Berlin in 1895, it was immediately banned under Germany’s strict obscenity laws. Its author, Emilie Knopf, was tried twice and fined for distributing it. Then the book vanished — until a single surviving copy was found in a Berlin archive.
Meet Felicita: artist, romantic, and unapologetic lover of women. Her great love is Edita, a musician from a Rhine castle, and their relationship is the beating heart of this novel. But Felicita's eye has a tendency to wander — toward a scheming French comtesse, an alluring blonde in a green velvet dress, and the quickly evolving culture of late 19th-century European society.
I’ve seen book descriptions that used a very similar set-up as framing story for a historic novel, but a little research indicated that this is the real thing.
Set in a similar era, but written today is Counterpoint by Barbara Bergmann from Backsett Books.
Counterpoint is the story of a woman at war with herself. Challenged by poverty, class, and sexism, Lucia is the main melody that plays in counterpoint to the events and characters of 19th century Britain. Resting on a scaffold of historic themes, with the impact of the Industrial Revolution over-arching, events are driven by characters that echo through history. The attitudes and mores of the British upper class are juxtaposed against the equally strong values and traditions of a rising working class. But even as the story rides through 19th century Britain and across the edicts and values of caste and rank, this is more than a rags to riches tale.
Counterpoint’s central character is viewed through her relationships with three families: the Whitfields, scions of a theatrical dynasty; the St Alyns, a cultured aristocratic family, who display a propensity to push against class; and the Rileys, dedicated socialists with weighty influence in London’s East End. But the ribbon tying these disparate characters together is Lucia and Rebecca’s love.
Forever Yours, Nell by Andrea Ead tells a story of forbidden love during World War II.
In 1940, sixteen-year-old Nell leaves home to begin her nurse training at Truro Hospital, determined to build a life she can be proud of. She knows what is expected of her. Work hard. Keep her head down. Do everything right. Then Kitty arrives.
Injured in a bombing, Kitty is bright, bold, and impossible to ignore. What begins as a quiet connection soon grows into something far more dangerous—something Nell cannot allow herself to feel.
As their bond deepens in the shadows, Nell must choose between the safety of the life she’s always known—and a love that could cost her everything… or finally show her where she truly belongs.
April brings us another wealth of titles.
The Witch and the Huntress by Luna McNamara from William Morrow follows the trend of situating ancient Greece in a mythic world.
Medea possesses both witchcraft and cunning, yet she endures a lonely and constrained life under the rule of her wicked father, Aeetes. When the hero Jason arrives, they strike a deal: If Medea helps him win her father’s Golden Fleece, Jason will marry her and take her with him back to Greece. But as the journey unfolds, Medea is forced to choose between the life she expected and the love she secretly desires—and the cost may be greater than she ever imagined.
Atalanta, raised by bears, is a capable warrior caught between the wilderness and the human world but never fully part of either. After the sudden disappearance of the woman she loves, Atalanta joins Jason’s Argonauts in an attempt to find her. But when Medea becomes part of the crew, the sorceress awakens something in Atalanta that she cannot ignore.
Jason, a skilled diplomat but a reluctant warrior, depends on his heroic companions to help him claim the Golden Fleece and retake the stolen throne of his father. Medea and Atalanta are among his most useful allies, but Jason soon finds that success may demand more than he can give.
A Whisper of Bells and Prayers by C.C. González retells The Hunchback of Notre Dame as a sapphic story.
Hidden high within the towers of Notre Dame, Mirela tolls the bells. Scarred by fire and kept under the control of her so called savior, Master Ferron, she has learned that devotion can feel like chains.
Then she hears Claire, a young nun who awakens something in Mirela she had never felt before: hope, desire and the aching need to be seen. Their secret meetings begin in whispers and candlelight, until forbidden touches turn faith into temptation.
But Ferron's eyes are always watching, and his generosity hides away a sickening obsession. When passion and devotion collide, the walls of the cathedral will tremble and the two women must decide if love is worth the fire that will follow.
If you haven’t yet gotten enough pirate stories, we have Scallywag! by K.L. Mitchell from Desert Palm Press.
Molly McCormick never set out to be a pirate. But when her family tried to marry her off to a wealthy old man to settle their debts, she resolved to strike out on her own. Taking a job aboard a handy ship disguised as a boy, she soon found herself on the other side of the world: the Caribbean. Desperate to keep her identity secret, she fell in with a lot of pirates, a decision that would change her life. From then on, she lived a life of intrigue and adventure. Forbidden islands holding magical relics. Ghost ships with undead crews. Long-forgotten colonies trapped in time. And beneath it all, a secret buried beneath the waves for centuries is about to return.
We’ve been having quite a wealth of Jane Austen-inspired take-offs, including titles from mainstream presses. Added to the Austen library is The Unruly Heart of Miss Darcy by Erin Edwards from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.
Georgiana Darcy has only ever kissed one girl before, and the resulting blackmail almost ruined her reputation. Since then, she’s carefully calibrated her life to be as quiet as possible, focusing on books and music. She certainly isn’t planning on falling in love with another girl. But then she meets Kitty Bennet, and everything is thrown off kilter.
After a moonlit kiss shifts their newfound friendship into something more, Georgiana follows Kitty to the Bennets’ home. The visit proves ill-timed when she encounters the one man who knows her secret and threatened her with it before. Terrified of testing the limits of her family’s love and of putting Kitty in danger, Georgiana doesn’t know if there’s any chance of a happy ending.
Every etiquette guide she’s ever read makes it clear that if she wants to protect her family name, Georgiana must pretend her heart follows society’s accepted rhythm. Unless, with a little help from those who understand how it feels, she can compose the future she and Kitty both deserve.
She Tamed the Lady by Judith Lynne from Smart Cookie Books is another Regency romance (I think—the date of the setting isn’t given explicitly.)
Lady Charlotte can find fault with every man in London. But never with Delina. Charlotte knows she does everything wrong. The right husband will fix everything: a life of horses, freedom, and a home for Delina. The alternative is unthinkable. She's so close to success...if Delina isn't swept off her feet first.
Delina can't survive another Season in this half-life between friend and companion, cleaning up Charlotte's chaos. Charlotte's marriage will change everything. Why shouldn't Delina find a future for herself?
One more Season. Two clashing plans. Until Delina catches the wrong eyes—or exactly the right ones—and both women face a choice neither expected: the predictable life they've been chasing, or something far more dangerous.
Flirting with Disaster by Kerrigan Byrne from Oliver Heber Books is part of a loosely connected series but is the only title in the series with a sapphic romance.
She was told to be less. Instead, she found everything she’d been denied. Emmaline Goode has spent her life swallowing her words, dulling her edges, trying to be the woman her family needs. Then she meets the Duchesse de la Coeur.
Amélie is everything Emma has never allowed herself to want—brilliant, untouchable, and dangerously free. One look shatters Emma’s carefully controlled world. One touch ignites something she cannot bury again.
Amélie is not free to choose her own future. Bound to a ruthless past and threatened with a marriage that will destroy her, she stands on the edge of losing everything. But some love is worth setting the world on fire.
As a Lover by Hilary McCollum from Bella Books uses the classic novel The Well of Loneliness as the catalyst for a young woman’s self-discovery.
London. 1928. For centuries, the establishment has suppressed public knowledge of lesbian love. Now, a celebrated writer is set to fight back.
Award-winning author, Radclyffe Hall, hopes her new novel, The Well of Loneliness, will transform attitudes to same-sex relationships. It soon comes under attack from the right-wing press, concerned about its potential impact on readers. One such reader is Maggie Dillon, a young trainee firefighter, who has been struggling with fears that she is an abomination after kissing another woman at a party. Can The Well transform Maggie’s views about herself and help her to find love? And will Radclyffe Hall keep her book in print long enough to radically change the views of society?
At Last It's You by Marianne Marston pushes up against my arbitrary limits for considering a story historic fiction, set in 1962 on the cusp of the gay liberation movement.
One year ago, Alice Brown had everything she had ever wanted – except Lee Grant, her high school love who she let slip away a decade ago. Then her lavender marriage ends in divorce, and Alice’s world falls apart. Shunned by her neighbors, worried about her bullied son, and suffering from panic attacks, Alice feels as if she's drowning. When Lee comes back to town, Alice steels herself for more heartbreak. Instead, their relationship slowly reawakens as Lee unearths Alice’s delicate strength and Alice rediscovers Lee’s quiet defiance.
Lee has no intention of staying in the suburbs. She adores her home in Berkeley, the revolutionary bookshop she runs there, and the found family she has formed. She won’t live a life in the shadows again, not even if leaving means losing the love of her life. Yet before Lee leaves, she surprises herself by begging Alice to accompany her, and Alice surprises her by tentatively agreeing to visit.
Plunged from the staid suburbs of Connecticut to the free-wheeling Bay Area, Alice finds herself torn between her stale old life and a budding new life. But if she’s to stay in Berkeley with Lee, she must decide what she values more, societal approval — or love.
I’m holding back one other April book, The Mystery of the Bitten Peach by Cecilia Tan, to go with an interview I’m airing next month.
Other Books of Interest
I’ve put two titles in the “other books of interest” section because the possible hints about sapphic content are too vague for complete confidence.
The Keyholder by S. Kallistos has the unusual setting of the Byzantine empire, and looks like it may be something of a murder mystery.
Constantinople, 843 AD. The Iconoclasm is over. The icons have been restored, the Empress Theodora rules as regent, and the empire breathes again. But beneath the surface of triumph, the palace keeps its secrets — and its dead.
When a minor secretary is found dead in the Sacred Palace — his hands bound, his death announced as suicide — Theophano Doukena, a young widow serving as Lady of Honour, begins to ask questions no one wants answered. What she uncovers is not a single murder but a chain of silence stretching back years: a secret brotherhood guarding the empire's darkest truths, a husband whose death on the frontier was no accident, and a conspiracy that reaches higher than she ever imagined — to the throne itself.
As Theophano follows the trail from coded ledgers to hidden archives, from moonlit gardens to the corridors of power, she finds herself drawn into a dangerous alliance with the one person she should not trust: the Empress herself. What begins as investigation becomes something far more complex — a bond between two women that defies the rules of the palace and the limits of forgiveness.
But in Constantinople, knowledge is the most dangerous weapon. And when those who hold power decide that silence must be enforced at any cost, Theophano must choose: protect what she loves, or expose the truth that could bring down an empire.
When I first ran into the listing for A Lady for All Seasons by T J Alexander from Vintage it looked like it might be one of those books tagged “lesbian” only because some people tag queer books with every possible queer-related keyword, regardless of representation. But when it recently came to my attention a second time, the cover copy had been revised. There’s clearly a bunch of gender-bending going on, but I’m still not certain that there’s a sapphic storyline. I do wish book publicity would stop being so coy!
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a woman who has lost her fortune must be in need (not want) of a husband. Beautiful, cunning Verbena Montrose must marry to save herself and her odious family from abject poverty. Fortunately, what she lacks in a dowry, she makes up for in the currency of gossip.
When she hears an alarming rumor about her very dear, very queer friend Étienne that could ruin him, she comes to his aid with a proposal—for a marriage of convenience, that is. But when Verbena discovers that a mysterious and celebrated poet by the name of Flora Witcombe has been publishing verses that hint she is onto their scheme, Verbena has no choice but to pretend to be a poet herself to confront her in a local salon. And—unexpectedly—be charmed by her.
Flora, in turn, is terrified by and smitten with Verbena in equal measure. But she holds a secret of her own: he is also William Forsyth, a struggling novelist and fifth son of a minor noble family. And if circumstances don’t allow Flora to woo Verbena, perhaps William can. Faced with two suitors and a fiancé, Verbena, who has always had to be clever to survive in society, starts to realize she may need to think outside of society’s constraints to find true happiness.
What Am I Reading?
And what have I been reading in the last month? It’s been rather eclectic—though that isn’t unusual.
I tried out the fantasy Queen Demon by Martha Wells, which is the sequel to The Witch King, which I thoroughly enjoyed. But somehow this sequel didn’t grab me as solidly and I hadn’t finished it by the time the library snatched it back from me. I think part of my problem was that the book has at least two very different timelines alternating and while the timeline was indicated in the chapter titles, the audiobook didn’t always include the chapter titles in the narration. So I spent a fair amount of time being confused about when I was.
Pride and Prejudice and Pittsburgh by Rachael Lippincott was a time-travel romp with our heroine being sent back in time to seek true love. It was amusing and satisfactory, though not particularly deep. If I were critiquing plot points, I might note that while a 21st century time-traveler might be expected to recognize what’s going on with some alacrity, the early 19th century characters were implausibly willing to accept the idea of time-travel with few questions. But the time-travel is the mechanism, not the point of the story.
So I have this thing I do when I have significant dental work scheduled and I’m hopped up on nitrous gas and waiting for the dentist to be ready. I go on social media and challenge people to recommend me a book to buy when my defenses are compromised. (This is actually a performative fiction, because I don’t take just any recommendation. But it’s a way to distract from dental anxiety.) This time the recommendation was a YA science fiction story, Peasprout Chen, Future Legend of Skate and Sword by Henry Lien, which I immediately checked out from the library on my phone. It has some amusing worldbuilding involving a skating based martial arts school. I realized that I’d previously read a short story in the same universe quite some time ago. It wasn’t really my thing, and I returned it after a brief taste, but I have fun getting recommendations this way.
My second sapphic listen was Lady Eve's Last Con by Rebecca Fraimow—who has been published on this podcast. The book is a space opera caper type story, with a nice slow-build antagonists-to-lovers romance. In flavor, it's basically a jazz age thriller transferred to a future extraterrestrial setting. It made for an interesting intersection because the setting offered a queer-normative futuristic society that somehow was still mired in patriarchal social dynamics and stereotypes about silly young debutantes.
I picked up the next volume in Claudia Gray’s Jane Austen-based murder mystery series: The Rushworth Family Plot. The basic premise is that all of Austen’s characters exist in the same continuity and that the scions of the Darcy and Tillney families solve murders and have a sweet, slow-burn developing romance. On the positive side, the depiction of Jonathan Darcy as solidly neuroatypical and Juliet Tilney as the one person who truly gets him and supports him is kind and relatable. But I find the writing style to be extremely repetitive, with the author hammering away at aspects of the history and social setting that one might expect a reader of historicals to be familiar with.
And finally, based on a recommendation—though I no longer remember from whom—I read Katrine Marcal’s Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner, which is both a history of the field of economics and a critique of the way economic theories are distorted by ignoring unpaid female-coded labor. Quite interesting, though the author is solidly invested in the idea that you have to repeat an idea five times to make the reader remember it.
Show Notes
Your monthly roundup of history, news, and the field of sapphic historical fiction.
In this episode we talk about:
- Exciting news about the next season of Bridgerton.
- The upcoming 10th anniversary
- Recent and upcoming publications covered on the blog
- Fielding, Henry. 1746. The Female Husband: or, the Surprising History of Mrs Mary, Alias Mr George Hamilton. Liverpool, M. Cooper.
- Baker, S. 1959. “Henry Fielding’s The Female Husband: Fact and Fiction” in PMLA, 74 pp.213-24.
- Book Shopping
- Kehoe, M. (ed). 1986. Historical, Literary and Erotic Aspects of Lesbianism. New York. ISBN 0-918393-21-3
- Gilbert, Oscar Paul (trans. by J. Lewis May). 1932. Women in Men's Guise. The Bodley Head, London.
- Recent Lesbian/Sapphic Historical Fiction
- Other Titles of Interest
- What I’ve been consuming
- Queen Demon by Martha Wells
- Pride and Prejudice and Pittsburgh/em> by Rachael Lippincott
- Peasprout Chen, Future Legend of Skate and Sword by Henry Lien
- Lady Eve's Last Con/em> by Rebecca Fraimow
- The Rushworth Family Plot/em> by Claudia Gray
- Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner by Katrine Marcal
Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online
Links to Heather Online
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Which dish is more suited for Easter than a carrot cake? None, I say! And lucky for y’all, I have the best recipe for you to try. This recipe is tried and true and absolutely delicious. Many people have said “this is the best carrot cake I’ve ever had!”
Audiobook narrated by Katy Sobey.