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We've Always Been Queer

The podcast is Books That Burn because the original idea was "books that burn you", discussing fictional depictions of trauma. It's also an intentional reminder of the pile of burning books, you know the photo I mean, the one from WWII. It's a pile of books about queerness, gender, and sexuality. Just in case you don't know, the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Science) was headed by Magnus Hirschfeld.  It was a resource for gay, intersex, and transgender people, both of knowledge and medical help. It also helped the community with addiction treatment and contraception. It wasn't perfect and some of the ideas they had seem out of date now, the ones we know about anyway. But they were trying to make queer people's lives better, and they were a community resource at a time when people really needed it. Which is all the time, we always need these accesses. And the Nazis burned the whole library. It took days, they had to drag the books ou
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An Unseen Attraction by K.J. Charles (Sins of the Cities, #1)

A slow-burning romance and a chilling mystery bind two singular men in the suspenseful first book of a new Victorian series from K. J. Charles.

Lodging-house keeper Clem Talleyfer prefers a quiet life. He’s happy with his hobbies, his work—and especially with his lodger Rowley Green, who becomes a friend over their long fireside evenings together. If only neat, precise, irresistible Mr. Green were interested in more than friendship...

Rowley just wants to be left alone—at least until he meets Clem, with his odd, charming ways and his glorious eyes. Two quiet men, lodging in the same house, coming to an understanding... it could be perfect. Then the brutally murdered corpse of another lodger is dumped on their doorstep and their peaceful life is shattered.

Now Clem and Rowley find themselves caught up in a mystery, threatened on all sides by violent men, with a deadly London fog closing in on them. If they’re to see their way through, the pair must learn to share their secrets—and their hearts.

TITLE: An Unseen Attraction
AUTHOR: K.J. Charles
PUBLISHER: Loveswept
YEAR: 2017
LENGTH: 247 pages
AGE: Adult
GENRE: Historical, Mystery, Romance
RECOMMENDED: Yes

Queer Rep Summary: Lesbian/Sapphic Minor Character(s), Gay/Achillean Main Character(s), Trans Minor Character(s).

AN UNSEEN ATTRACTION is a sexy historical murder mystery with great intimacy, communication, and explanations of taxidermy. 

Clem and Rowley's relationship is great to read. They don't have the best communication quite yet, but they're continually trying to understand each other better even before becoming a couple. The sex scenes fit the characters and shifted between developing their relationship and showing how it was deepening outside of those sensual moments. The murder mystery is very engaging and the resolution made sense without being too obvious. The stakes are very clear and the antagonists at interesting, I'm looking forward to seeing how the series moves on given how things turned out. The secondary characters don't get nearly as much time as Clem and Rowley (for obvious reasons) but their personalities come through really well and their various reactions to the very stressful circumstances made sense. 

CW for cursing, sexism, sexual content (explicit), domestic abuse (backstory), emotional abuse (graphic), fire/fire injury (graphic), alcoholism, torture (not depicted), gun violence, violence, suicide (not depicted), animal death (not depicted), death. One of the characters is a taxidermist and there are some explicit discussions of the details of that process.

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A handsome man with short black hair and Indian features stands wearing a grey suit with a white cravat, on a foggy street in front of a dark brick building.


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