Historical Romance books

Don't miss these greatest hits of historical romance by Rowan McAllister, collected in this exclusive bundle!

In A Promise of Tomorrow, Lord James Warren's routine is shattered when his niece and nephew ask him to help a beautiful young man they've only just met: Kyle Allen, alone and running from his abusive lover. Assistance and a future for Kyle might be secured, but then they would face a choice: stay apart and continue leading half-lives... or risk everything for love. In A Devil’s Own Luck, William devotes his days to the pursuit of empty pleasure until the night he meets a young man who ignites a spark in him he’d thought long extinguished. Stephen is fiery and passionate, handsome and mysterious—exactly what a fallen devil needs to stir the ashes of his heart. In Never a Road Without a Turning, unapologetic rake Phillip “Pip” Stubbs takes a position at Greer cottage, hoping for another distraction from the growing restlessness inside him. But when the new master arrives, Pip ends up more unsettled than ever. Major Astley McNalty has everything a common servant like Pip could ever wish for, and yet he spends his nights in drunken brooding and his days in solitary melancholy. Can they learn to trust one another enough to find a safe path to a future together?

See excerpt for individual blurbs.

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Suite de La rançon
Série Royal Navy, tome 2

Un vent de Changement

1800. Les lieutenants William Marshall et David Archer, de la frégate HMS la Calypso, sont amants depuis plus d’un an. Conscients qu’ils seraient pendus si leur liaison était découverte, ils ne s’accordent que quelques rares nuits de passion lorsqu’ils sont en congé à terre.

Mais rien ne dure éternellement dans la Royal Navy et leur transfert à bord d’un nouveau navire crée un étrange retournement de situation : il y a un traître à bord et le capitaine leur donne l’ordre de simuler une relation illicite afin de le démasquer.

La mascarade devient vite dangereuse et Davy est en danger de mort.

Œil du Cyclone

1802. Un traité a été signé entre l’Angleterre et la France, aussi la guerre connaît-elle une fragile période de trêve. Pourtant, la vie du commandant Marshall et du lieutenant Archer est plus compliquée que jamais.

Après avoir failli perdre son amant, William Marshall affronte ses responsabilités de capitaine et se demande s’il supportera de voir celui qu’il aime courir sous ses ordres de nouveaux dangers.

Quant à David Archer, il est rongé par le doute. Une fois déjà, Will l’a quitté, mettant fin à leur relation pour le protéger. Physiquement guéri de ses blessures, Davy a du mal à retrouver sa confiance en son amant. Il décide de tenter le tout pour le tout : persuader Will que leur amour vaut tous les risques.

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William’s task is clear: catch the blackmailer. William Richmond is an earl, a father, a country gentleman… and a former spy. Catching the blackmailer should be simple, but when William finds a beautiful, injured young man on the beach, unfamiliar desires surge. He is determined to focus on the task and resist temptation—resist Daniel, or his carefully constructed illusions will crumble, exposing his lies to the world… and himself.

Daniel’s question is simple: Should he trust William? Daniel has secrets: his identity, his past, how and why he washed up on the shore… and more. With revelations of espionage, blackmail, and the arrival of William’s colleagues, the danger of exposure grows. Daniel’s instincts tell him that William is a decent man, a man of honor, but his instincts have been wrong before. As the attraction grows, so does Daniel’s desire to confess, but if he’s wrong, he risks everything—his secrets, his freedom, and his heart.

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When Feldwebel Horst Stussel is murdered in Jake Plenty’s Moroccan brothel, local police chief Nicolas Renard suspects Jake’s involvement in the crime. Renard has loved Jake since their service in the Legion Etrangère during the Great War, but in this era of concentration camps, gas chambers, and the infamous pink triangle, his love for the American dare not speak its name. 

When sadistic Nazi officer Major Danzig, a fanatic who excels at the arts of torture and interrogation, comes to Maarif, it isn’t because of the Feldwebel. He is in search of Christophe Picard, Resistance leader and Jake’s former lover. Danzig will stop at nothing to uncover Picard’s whereabouts, to find him and destroy him, and in so doing, strike a fatal blow against everything Picard stands for.

With an Allied invasion of North Africa mere days away, Jake and Renard must combine their wits, cunning, and courage to help Picard escape to America and freedom. In the midst of war and struggle, the two men are drawn into the fight of the century—and each other’s arms. 

2nd Edition
First Edition published by ManLove Romance Press, 2009.

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La noble famille Randwick, d’origine anglaise, s’est exilée en Bretagne après sa ruine. Quand Loel Woodbine, duc de Marche et héritier d’une immense fortune, propose d’épouser Valeria Randwick, l’occasion paraît inespérée, sauf pour la jeune fille qui s’est déjà promise en secret à un roturier.

Aux abois, elle concocte une mascarade insensée : envoyer sous son nom son frère en Angleterre. Valentin, jeune et naïf, sort à peine du monastère où il a été élevé. Il accepte, sans réaliser ce qui l’attend.

Le duc de Marche découvre rapidement la supercherie, mais, à la grande surprise de Valentin, il garde le silence. Peu à peu attirés l’un vers l’autre, réussiront-ils à tromper la haute société ? La situation se complique, Valentin est accusé de meurtre et de détournement de fonds, et le passé du duc revient le hanter.

Loel et Valentin chercheront la vérité de la campagne anglaise au cœur de Londres, ou aux rivages de Bretagne, tout en explorant éperdument leur attraction mutuelle.

Un titre de Rêves intemporels : Bien que la réaction face aux relations de même sexe à travers le temps et les cultures n'a pas toujours été positive, ces histoires célèbrent l'amour M / M d'une manière qui peut répondre, minimiser ou ignorer la stigmatisation historique.

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Born and raised a gypsy in the late eleventh century, Teman values freedom over everything. He and his best friend, Jasim, are thieves for hire—until one night they're caught and their precious freedom is revoked. Given the choice between the dungeons or palace pleasure slavery, they become slaves, but Teman vows to escape someday.

Bathasar doesn’t want the throne. He supports his brother instead, which suits their sadistic father, Mukesh. When Teman, the handsome slave Bathasar has secretly been watching, saves his life, Bathasar requests a slave for the first time. Before long, Bathasar and Teman fall in love. But all is not well. One day Mukesh brutalizes Teman before the court, angering the empress of a neighboring nation. To appease her, he then offers her Jasim as a gift, and Teman decides to stay with Bathasar for now—despite the abuse he may suffer.

The peace doesn’t last. Mukesh plans to invade Jasim's new country, and Bathasar must find a way to stop the destruction. But if he succeeds, he'll ascend to the throne and have the power to grant Teman his liberty. Then Teman will surely leave him. What other choice could a gypsy make?

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Série Royal Navy, tome 1

Un officier, un gentleman… et un sodomite. Si les deux premiers titres inspirent honneur et respect, le troisième pourrait coûter la vie à David Archer. Il réalise sans espoir son attirance pour le nouvel aspirant, William Marshall, lorsque ce dernier défie en duel le prédateur sexuel du bord – et le tue.

Marshall considère la Royal Navy comme sa seule chance d’échapper à ses modestes origines. Pendant que d’autres passent leurs jours de congé à ripailler, il étudie avec acharnement. Enlevés par un renégat, les deux amis et leur capitaine deviennent les pions d’un jeu sadique. Pour protéger celui qu’il aime, David Archer choisit d’affronter ses démons et de se soumettre à de nouveaux abus. En apprenant ce sacrifice, Marshall réalise que ses sentiments dépassent la simple amitié. Amoureux pour la première fois de sa vie, il tient à exprimer sa passion pour Davy.

D’abord, ils doivent s’évader. Ensuite, il leur faudra trouver le moyen de préserver leur secret sans le payer de leur vie.

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Sequel to Dingo Run
Bushrangers: Book Four 
A novel from the Dragon-ghosts of Viscaya Universe

It’s the late 1870s in Australia, and while bushranger Jim Kelly hates the idea of shooting anyone, his boyfriend Mark Turner wants to pull a train heist, so Jim has to make a tough choice. Years ago, he fell unexpectedly in love with Mark, but now Mark wants to put innocent lives in danger so they can get enough money to run away together.

Unable to resolve their differences, they decide to go their separate ways, but soon realize they can’t stay away from each other. In the end their hasty reunion gets them in trouble with the law. Luckily Mark’s brother, Ramone, uses his diplomatic privilege to free them from prison. They flee for Europe, but during the harrowing sea journey Jim is caught between his love for Mark and the terrible realization that Mark and his brother might be a greater danger to him and the captain and crew of the vessel they sail on than anything they left behind.

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Author Connie Bailey has written in a wide variety of genres under different pen names. Now check out this exclusive bundle of several of her different works all in one place! Enjoy these stories featuring an undercover policeman and a drug lord's boytoy, an unlikely vampire and his hipster/geek love, two men hiding a secret in an arranged marriage, a young prince and his bodyguard, and two imperial army recruits fighting for honor and love. Five stories in one volume!

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Caleb Hudson and Hal Zimmer became best friends the day they stood up against the schoolyard bully together. Life’s complicated enough with their friendship crossing racial lines in 1960s Charleston, South Carolina, but as time passes, they realize it’s more than their friendship that sets them apart from other kids. At first, Caleb denies his feelings for Hal could be more than companionship. He supports his friend when Hal admits he’s gay, but Caleb isn’t ready to face his own truth.

Hal becomes a staunch antiwar protester, and the divide between them widens after Caleb is drafted. But when Caleb returns from Vietnam, the time for denial is over. His homecoming sets off a series of events that force Caleb and Hal to confront their desires and what lines they’re willing to cross to get what they truly want out of life.

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Even the most lawless of creatures have laws, and for vampires, the sacrifice system is the most important. For every ten members of a coven, the sophisticated blood-drinkers have one “sacrificial lamb” to keep the worlds of the living and the Undead balanced.

August Prescott finds this fascinating—once he accepts the world is not what it seems. Kidnapped and kept in isolation, lack of memory troubles him but helps him fall into this society without resistance.

August befriends Theo, who may or may not be the only one August trusts, and when it’s Theo’s turn to drink from him in the “Sanctuary,” August could believe he’s in love. And so could fifty-year-young vampire Theo, because August doesn’t look at Theo like he’s a monster.

But Theo’s afraid of loving and must decide if he’ll waste eternity or welcome August into it. According to the Lamb, the chilling sovereign of blood-drinking Undead, that might be fate’s design. And if living forever means foregoing the comforts of humanity for Theo’s kisses, Theo’s arms, and Theo’s love, August is ready to turn.

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In the tradition of novel noir, nothing is ever quite as it seems.

Novelist and war hero Tony Leonard sees private investigator Edwin Malory being mugged outside a seaman’s mission in downtown Los Angeles, so he takes him home and gives him clean clothes and access to a hot shower. It doesn’t take him long to discover Malory was hired by wealthy industrialist Linton Vanderbilt Stirling, the father of Tony’s estranged wife, Janet. The reason for this is simple: Tony’s father-in-law suspects him of drinking away his daughter’s personal fortune.

On a whim, Tony drops in on Janet one night and finds her naked, dead, and tied up, her skull beaten in. Horrified, Tony flees the scene, knowing that as her husband, he is the number one suspect in the killing. He sees only one way out. He needs to fake his own death.

And who better to send his “suicide note” to than Edwin Malory.

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The Garden Series

Holden Peters is a normal, middle-class English lad in all respects save for his preference for his own gender. Caught in a compromising position with his father’s clerk, Holden is forced from his childhood home and sent to The Garden, a mysterious tea and flower shop located in the heart of the notorious Seven Dials slum. To his dismay, Holden soon learns that the shop sells more than floral arrangements. Behind its genteel façade, The Garden is as an all-male brothel, and he is to be its newest acquisition in order to pay off the debts his father owes the enigmatic owner, Mr. Leslie. But Holden’s nightmare grows only more grim when he learns that, before he is allowed to see his first customer, his new employer will personally see to relieving him of his inconvenient virginity. Now Holden must steel himself and face his fears if he is to survive his new life as a courtesan in Victorian London’s depraved underbelly.

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Heartache Café: Books One and Two

The Second World War touches Newfoundland in unprecedented ways, throwing spies and patriots together inside Jack Stolyes’s Heartache Café.

Heartache Café

American expatriate Jack Stoyles embarks on a self-imposed exile to St. John’s, Newfoundland. With good reason, Jack calls his place “Heartache Café.” He's content—until Samual Halim walks into his life.

When a constable goes missing, Jack finds himself caught between a manipulative woman, a corrupt cop, and a sabotaged work site.

Valley of the Dead

When Egyptian diplomat Samuel Halim enters Jack’s Heartache Café, Jack’s life changes forever. Then Sam disappears along with the code key to decipher a Nazi radio command that will set Rommel’s troops in motion, leaving Jack with nothing but a fragmented phone call.

In the teeming heat of Cairo—a city rife with romance, secrets, sex, and danger, where no one is who he seems and violent death waits around every shadowed corner—it’s up to Jack to find the new love of his life and deliver the code that will change the course of history. But as Sam’s secrets come to light, there’s more at stake than the tenuous relationship forming between the two men.

2nd Edition
First Edition of Valley of the Dead published by Dreamspinner Press, 2013. First Edition of Heartache Café published by MLR Press, 2009.

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Tom, museum curator and expert in Renaissance jewelry, doesn’t think his boyfriend Peter is “The One.” Peter is perfectly happy with Tom, but Tom is obsessed with the artist Benedetto Emilio Nesci—exciting, passionate, extraordinarily talented… and dead for over 400 years.

Tasked with researching a bejeweled codpiece, Tom abandons his professional ethics—and his sanity—to try on the codpiece and is transported halfway around the world and back in time, right into Florence, Italy and Nesci’s workroom.

After his initial panic subsides, Tom seizes the opportunity to allow Nesci to seduce him, but Tom discovers not everything about the sixteenth century is as romantic as he’d imagined. Getting back to the modern world and Peter becomes Tom’s only wish, but desire and reality are two completely different things, and Tom might not get what he wants this time around.

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Romance is lost and found in the dusty emptiness of the Australian outback, where love and friendship prove stronger than the harsh environment.

During a violent storm at sea on an immigrant ship bound for Australia, young British student, Paul Canfield, meets and falls in love with Mike Armstrong, an adventurous American on his way to Port Hedland in the far north to work at his father's mining concerns.

Due to a disastrous event, Mike is injured and lost in the vast and hostile desert. He is found by a roving tribe of aborigines and nurtured back to almost complete health.

Paul is determined to trace the tracks of his lost lover and undergoes many varied and perilous adventures on his quest to bring Mike back.

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William Arthur Ainsworth, second son of the Earl of Cannahan, has just purchased a Lieutenant’s Commission in the Coldstream Regiment, British Foot Guards. A new officer, Will shows promise and is taken in hand by experienced Scottish Sargent Duncan Blair. Friendship grows into affection and desire as the men fight the French from Egypt to Sweden and back to the Spanish Peninsula through the six coalitions of the Napoleonic Wars. A bloody defeat in Spain and tragedy at home pull William away from service in the British Army and turn him from an officer to an earl, but status, time, and distance combined can’t change Will’s feelings for Duncan. When a hard-won peace is finally achieved, Will realizes the most important mission he may ever undertake will be convincing Duncan that the end of the fighting can mean the beginning of their lives together.

A story from the Dreamspinner Press 2015 Daily Dose package "Never Too Late."

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South Carolina lawyer Calvin Amos is confident he can gain Thomas Basinger his freedom on appeal. Thom was convicted of a murder during an armed robbery gone bad. But Basinger’s case proves more difficult than Cal anticipated, and the battle he assumed he’d win turns into a devastating failure. Remorseful over the personal defeat, after Basinger is executed, Cal throws himself out of his office window.

Bizarrely, the fall doesn’t kill him. Even stranger, Thom Basinger rings Cal’s doorbell looking for a job. Both men are drawn to each other. Before long, the two forge a unique, heartfelt connection that transcends the boundaries of life and death.

Calvin Amos always imagined himself in possession of some great love or other. He didn’t know he had to die to find it.

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