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Tag Archives: historical

The Duke: A Review

Today, we’re mixing things up a bit with a review a bit outside my usual wheelhouse here. I don’t usually talk up romance novels, but something about Anna Cowan’s The Duke struck me as being worthy of focus. Maybe it’s because it’s a queer romance, maybe it’s because it’s set in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Regardless, it’s fun.

Celine is a courtesan, desperate to escape the political turmoil of France in the late 1700s. When a client and protector, Bastien, is informed that his own head is on the line, he promises Celine that he’ll match her with the Duke of Howard, a British noble and childhood friend of his coming to visit. Celine knows that name and the reputation that follows. The Duke of Howard is a woman, Kate, known for her refusal to take a man into her bed. That very night, Celine finds herself cornered by a stranger in Bastien’s home. The two briefly exchange words before Celine realizes that this person rifling through Bastien’s desk in search of something is none other than the Duke herself, arrived nearly a week earlier than anticipated. Tensions rise quickly, and the two pass the remainder of the night in a heated flurry of kisses and climaxes. In the morning, the Duke departs, convinced that Bastien is no longer in possession of a letter she had once written him. With his impending demise, Kate thoroughly believes that no one in France now knows of the secrets it contained. Her business concluded and her appetites exhaustively sated, Kate returns to England, but not before leaving a gold ring on Celine’s finger. The remainder of the ongoing revolution should have erased any other traces of her trip.

Three years later, the Duke has established herself in her role in London and its politics. All is going her way until a guest calls at her estate, bearing her once-gifted ring. Celine, it seems, has survived the turmoil in Paris and made her way across the channel. She informs Kate that, not only did she find Bastien’s letter from long ago, she read it. Celine is now aware of the potential treason that Kate committed in youth, the act that removed the rest of her family from society and established herself as the Duke of Howard. Furious at being used and abandoned by Kate, Celine threatens her with blackmail. She demands that Kate find her a husband and a place in society so that she will never again know want or loneliness. Not entirely unreasonable, considering how the Duke treated her. With everything to lose, Kate begins her hurried plan to find the most eligible bachelors in London, trying to make Celine over from prostitute to proper lady.

Years, though, have done little to curb the deep desire that both women still feel for one another. For Kate, guiding Celine through the parts of British society that she had personally shunned for years only serves to increase her need for the other woman. Neither of them is fully willing to forget what they had that one night in Paris. Will Celine give up her pursuit of a husband if she can win over the Duke? Will Kate surrender to her long-hidden emotions and allow herself to publicly take a wife? They could be the most powerful couple that London has seen… if they don’t kill each other first.

The Duke is a spectacularly well-written sapphic romance. Anna Cowan weaves a tale of a version of London that might have been, seamlessly blending regency standards with compelling queer characters and ridiculously intense sex scenes. It’s out in the world as of yesterday, 4/28/26, and I would highly recommend that you check it out. My thanks as always to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

Black Flame: A Review

I love when Gretchen Felker-Martin releases a new book, and today is no exception. Black Flame is out in the world today, and that’s more than a little terrifying to think too much about.

It’s 1985, and Ellen Kramer is working as a film and negative restorer at a Staten Island archival firm. When a long lost German film, “Black Flame,” arrives at their building, Ellen and her coworkers are torn. It’s not a popular kind of movie, after all. It’s full of queer people in gender-bending roles, made on a low budget, and only recently recovered from the collection of a now-deceased Nazi officer. The film itself is in horrible shape, requiring lots of extra care and attention from the restoration team. The work, however, would pay enough to keep the firm afloat for most of the next year. Never mind the fact that it has the chance to fix the firm’s public image after their last big project’s connection to the KKK brought all the wrong kinds of attention to them. With that kind of money in the offering, Ellen’s boss leaps at the opportunity. He also decides that Ellen, being Jewish, should head up the effort to restore a lost work by a great Jewish director.

Ellen’s very uncomfortable with all of this. It makes her think of her ex, Freddie, and the time the two of them spent together. Time that she would much rather consider a phase after the two of them broke up. It doesn’t help that her parents are trying to set her up with a nice young man who might become mayor someday. They’re concerned that if she doesn’t get married and have children soon, it might be too late for her. The work strains her relationships with her coworkers too, to the point where all Ellen wants is to finish restoring the print so that she can be rid of the film forever.

That’s not how this is going to go. After accidentally cutting her hand on the film negative, things start to get progressively weirder. Ellen begins to question everything she knows about herself, her sexuality, her gender, her religion, her family history, and even reality itself. As the work stretches on, more and more of the past begins to bubble up to the surface. Some things, after all, will always refuse to remain hidden, and the costs of bringing “Black Flame” back into the present are far more severe than anyone could have anticipated.

Black Flame is a quick, almost frenetic short novel, clocking in at just over 200 pages. It’s far shorter than Felker-Martin’s earlier works, Manhunt and Cuckoo, but it’s no less gruesome and scary. Body horror remains one of her strongest suits, but the tension that she builds with Ellen in such a short period of time is absolutely incredible. I raced through this book out of sheer desire for the release of finishing and seeing how the end finally arrives.

My utmost thanks to Tor Nightfire and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review. Black Flame is on shelves today, August 5th. Go get yourself a nice, fast-reading spooky. It’s almost Hallowe’en, after all.