Heading for the Finish Line with the LGBT+ Storybundle

You have just five more days to take advantage of this incredible Storybundle offer featuring speculative stories that feature and embrace LGBT+ characters by authors committed to good representation and solid storytelling. If you’ve already enjoyed even one of the featured books, it’s a good sign that you’ll like others. If you look at the list and spot even two that you’ve been meaning to read, then the bundle as a whole is already a bargain. And as a bonus, half the books in the bundle belong to multi-volume series, so you have a chance of discovering a whole vein of enjoyable books to mine.

Vintage: A Ghost Story by Steve Berman

A literally haunting love story that begins on a lonely highway when a boy meets the boy of his dreams...who happens to be dead.

Point of Hopes by Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett

I’ve been following the Astreiant series since Point of Hopes first appeared in the mid 90s. I sometimes wonder what queer SFF would look like today if major publishers had remained committed to richly imagined worlds like this with strong writing and characters who just happen to fall outside the heterosexual default, rather than turning away from them for nearly twenty years. Despite the romantic arc that develops over several books (did I mention there are several books?) between the two male leads, this is primarily a secondary-world police procedural series with a roughly 16-17th century feel. If you enjoy this book, there are three more waiting for you!

Death by Silver by Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold

Metaphysical detective work features in this series set in a Victorian London woven through with magic. Mathey and Lynes are one of those ad hoc investigative pairs who come together to solve a problem and find their skills--and personal lives--unexpectedly meshing. As with Point of Hopes we get the beginning stirrings of romantic interest, but this isn’t a genre romance plot, nor does it get sidetracked into erotic scenes. And if you like this one, you have A Death at the Dionysus Club waiting to follow it.

The Kissing Booth Girl and Other Stories by A.C. Wise

I haven’t had a chance to check out this collection yet, but It looks to have the same diverse array of genres and representations that I found so enjoyable in Lundoff’s collection in this Storybundle (see below). Look at it as a box of mixed chocolates with unknown centers, some of them involving gears and steam power.

The Secret Casebook of Simon Feximal by KJ Charles

KJ Charles writes some of the most popular m/m historical/fantasy being published today, including several extensive series such as the one beginning with The Magpie Lord. This is a standalone collection of stories about a Victorian ghost-hunter and his chronicler/lover, tied together with a framing narrative. This work features a stonger romance/erotic presence than some of the other books in the Storybundle.

Wonder City Stories by Jude McLaughlin

A superhero ensemble adventure, with a wildly diverse cast and a touch of romance in the background. For readers who like a lot of complex moving pieces in their plots.

The Marshal's Lover by Jo Graham

Real Napoleonic history intertwines with the reincarnation of a band of companions across time, always appearing to support and follow their destined leader. Ideal for those who like their military history spiced up with bit of erotic romance. A different book in this series appeared in last year’s Historic Fantasy Storybundle, but the books can be read independently.

The Mystic Marriage by Heather Rose Jones

What can I say? Alchemy, palace intrigue, foreign spies, familial conflicts, and the slow transmutation of two women’s hearts into a greater whole. I can’t exactly be dispassionate about my own books. I am assured by those who have done so, that The Mystic Marriage can stand as your introduction to Alpennia.

Trafalgar and Boone in the Drowned Necropolis by Geonn Cannon

What if you mixed Indiana Jones with magic and made the central characters women? Trafalgar and Boone are now an established partnership in this second book of the series but the episodic nature of the adventures makes is stand independently. If you like kick-ass female protagonists with a touch of casual eroticism, this may be for you.

Riley Parra Season One by Geonn Cannon

Paranormal police procedural with a war between heaven and hell. As the “season one” label implies, this is structured as something of an episodic continuing series. (Soon to be an actual web video series from Tello Films!)

Silver Moon by Catherine Lundoff

When Becca Thornton thought about “the change of life” she never quite imagined this sort of change. Now she runs with Wolf Point’s pack of menopausal werewolves and is trying to juggle adapting to that experience, figuring out an unexpected crush on the woman next door, and facing the threat of werewolf hunters. For everyone who secretly suspected that older women have all the fun!

Out of This World by Catherine Lundoff

Since the Storybundle page uses my review for the blurb, I’ll just leave it here. "If I had to sum up Lundoff's collection Out of This World: Queer Speculative Fiction Stories in a single word (which would be a totally unfair thing to require me to do) it would be ‘versatile.’ This volume touches base on a broad variety of genres and subgenres yet succeeds in being a unified stylistic whole. There is everything from steampunk horror to hard-boiled alien invasion to magical police procedural, each story both drawing lovingly from its literary inspirations and turning them upside down."

Storybundle is a "pay what you choose" e-book offer, with a fixed minimum for two different offer levels. A percentage of the income from this bundle (determined by the purchaser) is directed to the Rainbow Railroad charity, which intervenes internationally to help LGBT people escape persecution.