reviews_and_ramblings | Rainbow Awards: Current Submissions 61 to 70

61. Viki Lyn - Last Chance (Loose id)
Gay, Paranormal / Horror

Aric Christian is the wildly smart PhD candidate specializing in Molecular Biology. With a willowy body bordering on thin, slight hips, and even slighter waist, Aric's hard muscles and steel strength bends but doesn't break. Long blackish hair dips in his hazel eyes when he's not wearing his rimless glasses. At times, he turns into quite a different creature, and is working desperately to seek a cure. Stu Hamilton is the wildly popular college wide receiver, and big man on campus. He's tall, broad shouldered, finely tuned and has broad hands, perfect to jump and catch the ball. He's all muscle and grace and blue, blue eyes. Mussed blond hair layered and tapered down to his nape fuels his reputation as the guy who breezes through life. Hidden from his friends is his family's secret - he's from a long line of vampire-slayers. Turning away from that life, he wants nothing to do with blood feuds, men of the dark night and killing. Then Aric bumps into Stu, or rather his football, and their lives are forever intertwined. Will these born enemies find a way toward love?

62. Viki Lyn - Ryan's Harbor (Aspen Mountain Press)
Gay, Contemporary

The boys of Woodland Village are back. This time it's Drew's brother, Ryan Adams, that's going through a crisis of doubt. He's always been the guy who breezed through relationships, never getting serious with the women he dates. He doesn't know why, but one-night stands and pretty women don't seem to give him that buzz that it once did. Then one night, at his brother's barbecue, he encounters Drew's assistant, Martin Pierson. Martin is hired to design Ryan's new building for his gaming company - Fantasy Arts. As they spend time together in and out of the office, their working relationship grows into friendship. But can they cross the barrier into love?

63. Mark Alders - Shadows of the Mind (eXtasy Books)
Gay, Sci-Fic / Futuristic

Jacob Theison thinks he’s better than all the other folk who live in the picturesque town of Pembroke Eve. It’s no place for a modern guy and he wants to leave, try his luck on the greener pastures of anywhere else. That is until he realizes one thing. Deep down he’s just like everyone else, a country guy through and through. That realization comes just in time, because on a moonlit night a green glowing spaceship lands in Wilson’s field. Aliens, it seems, are real. But why are they in Pembroke Eve of all places? Pembroke is a nowhere place. And why is everyone acting weird all of a sudden, even more so that usual? Are the aliens’ friendly or do they have a more sinister reason for being here? It seems Jacob is the only one who can see what’s really going on. But why him? What’s so special about a gay young man living in a small town? Sure, he’s never had a boyfriend, never been kissed for that matter, so why? Curious, he goes to investigate the spaceship and gets far more than he bargained for as soon as he gets over his back fence. His life will never be the same again

64. Jameson Currier - The Wolf at the Door (Chelsea Station Editions)
Gay, Paranormal / Horror

Ghosts? Angels? Hallucinations? When a death occurs at Le Petite Paradis, a guesthouse in the French Quarter of New Orleans, the spirit world becomes unsettled, or so Avery Greene Dalyrymple III, the co-owner believes. The son and grandson of Southern evangelists, Avery is also an overworked and overwrought middle-aged gay man, a cynical “big-time drinker and sinner” fairly certain he can maintain a family of “other deviants and delinquents stumbling along Bourbon Street” to keep him company. But Avery is also the only person in contact with the spirit world on his property—ghosts from the house’s origins during the 1820s—and he must use the history left behind from another ghost—a gay man from the 1970s—to find a way to restore peace to his household and rejuvenate his faith.

65. Carol Lynne - Hell Hath No Fury (Resplendence Publishing)
Gay, Fantasy

Mortals call it Hell, Lucifer calls it The City. It’s a land of good and evil, and Lu is the mayor. He didn’t ask for the job, but someone with some sense needs to keep order, and after going against Archangel Law, Lu knows he must pay the price. Though his crime may have cost him his Heavenly home, when trouble shows up in The City, his brothers send Lu reinforcement in the guise of a good-looking bodyguard named Dominic Ramos. Used to having any man he wants, Lu isn’t happy when his charms don’t immediately have the desired effect on Dominic. He sets out to seduce the gorgeous man using every weapon in his arsenal. When a night of unbridled passion culminates in a public coupling, Lu’s feelings on random sex are forever changed. Who says there aren’t Angels in Hell?

66. Colette Moody - The Seduction of Moxie (Bold Strokes Books)
Lesbian, Historical

When Hollywood-bound actress Violet London meets speakeasy singer Moxie Valette, her trip takes an unexpected turn toward love. New York City, 1931: When wry Broadway actress Violet London and her hard-drinking cohorts venture into a speakeasy the night before she is to board a train for Hollywood, she is floored by sassy blond singer Moxie Valette. As Violet introduces Moxie to an assortment of bootleg liquor, cross-dressers, and sex shows, she vows to find a way to see her again. Moxie is fascinated by Violet in a thrilling and unfamiliar way, and the ensuing evening of bon mots, shameless flirtation, and illicit revelry is unlike anything she has ever experienced. From Manhattan to Los Angeles, both women’s lives are turned upside-down by separation, unscrupulous motion picture studio executives, self-serving agents, eccentric celebrities, and the collection of hedonistic reprobates that are their closest friends.

67. Justine Saracen - Mephisto Aria (Bold Strokes Books)
Lesbian, Historical

Is the history of a dangerous love affair destined to be repeated? At the height of her career, opera singer Katherina Marow is brought crashing down by her father's suicide. Among his effects, she finds his wartime journal and reads the heart-wrenching entries of a soldier in Russia and in war-torn Berlin. She learns the crimes and secrets her father harbored, but cannot condemn him, for while she discovers his demons, she is facing her own. The stage-world she lives in draws her into a lawless ecstatic realm, and she is tempted, as he was, by forces which could destroy her. Has she too made a devil's pact? And if so, will she pay for it, as her father did, with her life?

68. Rebecca S. Buck - Truths (Bold Strokes Books)
Lesbian, Historical

In 1808 Elizabeth Cooper, found guilty as a thief, is sentenced to hang and thrown into prison, the convicted women with whom she shares her gloomy cell the only solace she will have until the day of her execution. In gentle Gilly Stevens she finds the strength and comfort of a growing intimacy. As the horrors of the prison threaten to overwhelm her, Elizabeth and Gilly must soon fight to ensure Elizabeth’s innocence, her truth, can survive into the future. In 2008 Jen is a costumed tour guide, the prison where Elizabeth Cooper was imprisoned now an atmospheric museum. Jen’s work relating its horrors distracts her from the confusion of her personal life. Then she encounters Aly, an intriguing, confident photographer, who seems to change everything. Jen is determined not to deny her truth any longer and to finally reach for happiness, but, as the shadows within the high prison walls lengthen and seem to warn her of the threat, she is in more danger than she realizes.

69. J.M. Redmann - Death of a Dying Man (Bold Strokes Books)
Lesbian, Mystery / Thriller

New Orleans PI Micky Knight just had to get into a butch pissing contest with the journalist partner of a famous doctor working with her lover, Cordelia James. Micky’s insistence that the skills of a reporter are of no use to a PI backfires, and now she’s stuck with a drop-dead gorgeous assistant and the case of a dying gay man looking for a child he might have fathered. These chains of events—and an act of nature—will tear Micky’s life apart in ways that may never be put back together. Fifth in the Lambda Award-winning Micky Knight mystery series.

70. Anne Laughlin - Veritas (Bold Strokes Books)
Lesbian, Mystery / Thriller

When the hallowed halls of academia become the stage for murder, newly appointed Dean Beth Ellis's search for the truth leads her to unexpected discoveries about her own heart. For Beth Ellis, Grafton College and its faculty and students are her home and family. But the president of the college rubs everyone the wrong way, the new English professor on campus isn't much more popular, and Beth has her hands full trying to keep the peace as various campus factions quarrel. Still, she didn't expect a tenure battle to end in murder. Sally Sullivan left the Chicago police homicide division and returned to her hometown where, as chief of police, she expected her greatest challenges to be dealing with car accidents and drunk drivers. But faced with a murder investigation with more motives than evidence and an inexperienced staff, Sally finds small-town policing isn't as simple as she thought. Neither are her growing feelings for Beth Ellis. As Sally and Beth's different worlds collide, their desire to solve the murder is complicated by their unexpected attraction. A second murder on campus places the survival of the college itself, their tenuous relationship, and even their lives in jeopardy.