Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 349 - On the Shelf for August 2026

Saturday, August 15, 2026 - 07:00

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Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 349 - On the Shelf for August 2026 - Transcript

(Originally aired 2026/08/15)

Welcome to On the Shelf for August 2026.

As you’re probably aware—because I’ve been mentioning it regularly—this month marks the completion of 10 years of the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast. Back in August 2016 I started out with a monthly series that was part of a group magazine-style show created by Sheena of The Lesbian Review. A year later in 2017, with Sheena’s encouragement, I expanded the show to weekly, adding these “on the shelf” episodes, interviews and book recommendations from authors, and the occasional 5th-Saturday special that became the fiction series in 2018. When Sheena closed down the Lesbian Review podcast and I went independent in 2021, I also backed off on the frequency, going to 2 episodes per month plus the fiction episodes.

In the mean time I’ve shared discussions of biographies, poetry, literature, and historic concepts and social phenomena related to lesbianism. In the process, I’ve accumulated a lot of material for my ultimate goal: a published sourcebook of material on writing lesbian and sapphic characters into history. Creating this podcast has given me the opportunity to interact personally with authors, publishers, reviewers, and academics in the field. It also gave me the chance to develop my skills as a sound editor and narrator—though I haven’t yet taken the final step down that road and set up a dedicated home recording studio!

When I took the show independent back in 2021, I made a silent pledge that I wouldn’t commercialize the show. No advertisements, no sponsors, only what people offer freely through our Patreon. (I believe there are some distribution sites that add their own advertisements, but that’s not within my control and I get no money from it.) If you like what this show offers, the second-best way to say it is by supporting our Patreon, but the best way to say it is by telling people about the show. Talk us up on social media; give us a review on your podcast app; send fan mail. (Seriously, one piece of fan mail will keep me glowing for months.)

This month’s show will be a little thin, due to the scheduling adjustments from the anniversary episode and catching up after my broken arm. (Which is doing much better now, thank you, though still not 100%.) The month will close out with a fiction episode and then things should be relatively back to normal.

Keep spreading the word about next year’s fiction series, which will be the last year—just for the fiction series, not the podcast! The link to the call for submissions is in the show notes, as usual.

Publications on the Blog

The blog has continued to cover the collection of articles from Decoding Anne Lister: From the Archives to ‘Gentleman Jack’, edited by Chris Roulston & Caroline Gonda. Not all of the articles are about Lister’s sexuality—her diaries are invaluable for many aspects of the life and experiences of an early 19th century female English landowner.

After that I returned to my current crop of journal articles and covered three that related to medieval literature. Kathleen M. Blumreich’s “Lesbian Desire in the Old French Roman de Silence” manages to take the story of a cross-dressing female knight with a lot of homoerotic appeal and analyze it from a rather homophobic angle. Lucy Allen Paton’s “The Story of Grisandole: A Study in the Legend of Merlin” is a detailed analysis of the sources and connections of a story that is closely connected to the Romance of Silence, but doesn’t have the same homoerotic elements. Finishing up was a much more satisfying detailed analysis of the homoerotic encounters of cross-dressing knights in the Amadis de Gaule cycle. I especially appreciated this one because I’d seen brief references to these characters in previous articles but this was the first time I’d seen the plot of the story laid out in detail.

Recent Lesbian/Sapphic Historical Fiction

I don’t think I’ve acquired any new books for the blog, so we’ll go straight to the new and recent fiction releases. Numbers are smaller than usual. It must be a summer slump because it’s been a full 4 weeks since the last On the Shelf round-up, due to the disrupted schedule.

First up in chronological order is a medievalish story—probably more “ish” than “medieval” to be honest: Bodhi and Gwen by Del Robertson from Affinity eBook Press.

When a hapless fair maiden and a battle-scarred swordswoman cross paths, survival should be simple. Instead, Gwen and Bodhi find themselves stumbling from one disaster to the next—ogres, murder accusations, dangerous killers, suspicious villagers, and enough near-death experiences to test even the strongest bond.

Gwen never expected her savior to be a cocky, infuriatingly attractive woman with a talent for trouble. Bodhi never intended to care so much about the maiden she rescued. But as danger closes in from every side, the two are forced to rely on each other in ways neither anticipated.

Hannah Briar has two releases, one in July that I only just found and one in August, both with Regency settings. The first is The Education of Miss Pryce.

London, 1814. Harriet Pryce arrives in Bloomsbury with seven years of Latin, one good dress, and an unprompted essay on archival organization that somehow got her hired. Her new employer — Aurelia St. Claire, widow, classicist, and founder of London's only private lending library for women scholars — has dismissed four research assistants in as many years. She does not need anyone. She has spent twenty years making certain of that. What neither of them expected was a forty-three-minute argument about rule seven.

The St. Claire Collection gives women scholars access to texts unavailable to them anywhere else — but Aurelia's brother-in-law controls the trust and is quietly, methodically building a case to dissolve it. He doesn't need to raise his voice. He never does. The collection's members have nowhere else to go, and somewhere in the catalogue is the answer that could save everything, if Harriet can find it before time runs out.

But the legal threat is only half the story. Because Harriet has begun cataloguing the wrong things entirely — the specific silence that means something has gone well, the route through the stacks, the way Aurelia holds a volume to the light. And Aurelia, who built her entire life around not wanting things that could be taken from her, was not prepared for someone who would argue about marginalia for forty-three minutes and then stay.

Hannah Briar’s second book is The Language of Flowers (Lavender Society #1).

She fled her marriage with nothing but a coded letter and a single trunk. She never expected to find a woman who could actually see her.

Widowed at four-and-twenty with nowhere left to turn, Eliza Moreton arrives at Wyndermere Estate carrying a secret she doesn't yet understand — and finds Beatrice Ashford, Countess of Wyndermere, guarding a far bigger one. Beatrice runs a hidden network of women who help each other disappear, survive, and start over, speaking in coded letters and the secret language of flowers. She hasn't let anyone close in ten years. She isn't planning to start with a penniless widow half her age.

But Eliza sees her — really sees her — in a way no one ever has, and as coded letters give way to quiet mornings in the greenhouse, careful walls start coming down on both sides. When a ruthless solicitor threatens to expose the society and everyone in it, Beatrice and Eliza will have to risk more than secrets to save what they've built. They'll have to risk each other.

The Lost Brontë by Catherine Friend from Bywater Books takes up literary intrigue.

Yorkshire, 1898. When twenty-one-year-old Lilianne Loxley is sent to Lord Bexton’s isolated estate to work off her uncle's debts, she expects drudgery—not danger. With her gift for mimicry, she becomes Bexton’s secretary—and his reluctant forger. Soon she’s trapped in a scheme to create a “lost” novel by Emily Brontë, a deception that could make—or destroy—fortunes.

The house is full of secrets: footsteps echo in empty corridors, lemon-scented ghosts haunt her sleepless nights, and a portrait seems to watch her every move. Yet it’s the living who unsettle her most—especially Wren McAllister, the sharp-tongued maid whose defiance hides a tender heart. Drawn together by loss and longing, Lily and Wren risk everything for a freedom neither has ever known.

As the line between truth and invention blurs, Lily uncovers a shocking connection to the Brontë family—and to Bexton himself—that will force her to choose between love, loyalty, and the dangerous power of her own pen.

We enter the currently popular realm of Prohibition-era danger in Going Down at the Point by Kimberlee Jarrett Wilson.

Pittsburgh, 1926. The city runs on steel, secrets, and gin that isn't supposed to exist. Eleanor Hart has never once chosen anything for herself — not her friends, not her future, not the man she's engaged to marry in June. She's spent her whole life being handled: by her mother, by society, by a fiancé who's already decided how the rest of her life is going to go. Then a friend hands her an address on the back of a dance card, and one reckless night leads her through a hidden door in the Strip District, into a room lit violet and gold — and into the path of a woman who asks her exactly one dangerous question: what do you actually want?

Lila Bianchi built Violet's out of nothing after her father's death, and built a rule to go with it: never fall for the customers. She breaks it the moment Eleanor Hart walks in wearing gloves too fine to ruin. What starts as one stolen evening becomes something neither of them can afford to want as badly as they do — not with a wedding bearing down, a family built entirely on appearances, and a city that has never once forgiven women like them for choosing each other.

This next book was something of a borderline case and I had to track down some early reviews to decide whether to include it. The Harrow Home for Wayward Girls by Jessica Spotswood from Henry Holt and Co. features a bi protagonist who has had relationships with girls but her central romance in this book is with a boy.

The Harrow Home for Wayward Girls has long stood as a place of secrets. The estate has housed hundreds of young women hidden away during their pregnancies, their homesick cries echoing through the halls, providing a haunting score to Grace Harrow’s childhood.

Now, in the summer of 1947, the Home has been sold to a wealthy hotelier. Grace expects the new owner's daughters to be spoiled. Yet Rose, the eldest daughter―unaware of Mr. Harrow's abusive tendencies―is jealous of Grace's seemingly easy confidence. But as they’re drawn into each other's lives, an unlikely friendship begins to form. Fortunately so, because not all of the wayward girls made it out. One still lingers. Lurking in the shadows. Looking for vengeance.

To expose the truth buried in the walls of the Harrow Home, Grace and Rose must unravel a legacy of silence and cruelty. But Grace’s father will stop at nothing to keep the past hidden, and if the truth comes to light, it could destroy both their families.

The Keeper's Light (Edge of the World #1) by Margaret Fridley from Augusta Flint Publishing is set in the mid-20th century.

A lighthouse at the edge of the Atlantic. A woman who chose isolation over being destroyed. A storm that sent a stranger to her door. Gabriella Maydon has kept her lighthouse for ten years. Dr. Isobel Brennan has spent five years running toward storms to outrun grief. When a hurricane locks them together on a granite rock off the coast of Maine, they discover that the most dangerous thing either of them has faced isn't the Category 3 bearing down on the coast. It's the possibility of being known.

The Haunting of Avis Lovelock by M.K. Hardy from Solaris is a real opposites-attract story.

Avis Lovelock is a professional sceptic. Using her sharp insights and powers of observation, she sets out to debunk every nefarious spirit medium and psychic she can find. When American businessman Carlton Brooksbank invites her aboard the ocean liner Excambion to take her skills to America, Avis discovers she has been hired to prove to potential buyers that the vessel is not haunted.

As she begins her investigations, she runs afoul of the famous twin spiritualists onboard, Gideon and Rachel Duquesne. They are her polar opposites, and Rachel especially has a knack for getting under her skin. The more Avis works to discredit her adversaries and absolve the ship of its haunted reputation, the more she starts to have visions of water filling her cabin, drowned bodies on decks, and flickering lights on the sea. Then someone is found dead.

To discover the truth, Avis must join forces with her opponents, and confront some haunting secrets of her own.

The Tailor's Treasure by Alison McKenzie from Alison McKenzie Books doesn’t give any solid clues to the setting, either in time or space, but the set-up does feel historical, so I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt.

Isabel d'Eresby knows better than to want things. Fifteen years of striving has left her with nothing - no money, no home of her own, and no control over her life. Now she's a widow dependent on the charity of her husband's loathsome family, with no hope of climbing out of the hole she's dug for herself. The only thing she has is her son - and for his sake, she'll swallow any indignity to make sure that her in-laws don't make good on their threats to take him from her. She can't afford to take risks - until the day a beautiful woman walks into her life with an offer that could finally turn her luck around. Just so long as she doesn't fall in love with her .

Constance Rykener has never given up on anything or anyone - not the husband she married for convenience's sake, not the business that's rapidly sinking under her feet, not the rebellious niece who's begging Constance to save her from an arranged marriage. She has plenty on her plate already - but when a chance meeting brings Isabel into her life, she can't resist the urge to try and help her. Of course, it doesn't hurt that she's beautiful and prickly in a way that makes Constance want to bring her out of her shell. But the more she learns about Isabel, the more it becomes clear that her scars go far deeper than Constance realized - and that Constance's attempts to save her run the risk of making everything worse for both of them.

A business partnership prolongs their connection past a chance meeting, and makes it increasingly clear that something undeniable is growing between them. Before long, the thought of separating feels as impossible as being together once did. But with their families and society all arrayed against them, they will have to decide whether to take refuge in caution or to risk following their hearts - and losing everything.

What Am I Reading?

And what have I read lately? (Other than all the articles for the blog, of course.) My own reading continues to languish. I did read a number of short fiction works in preparation for voting for the Hugo Awards, but even when I have forced inactivity due to my current rigorous physical therapy schedule, the discomfort makes it hard for me to concentrate on books. On the other hand, I’ve been binging a lot of cozy British mystery tv series. Now if only a few of them were sapphic…

Show Notes

Your monthly roundup of history, news, and the field of sapphic historical fiction.

In this episode we talk about:

A brief recap of the podcast’s history.
Recent and upcoming publications covered on the blog
- Roulston, Chris & Caroline Gonda, eds. 2023. Decoding Anne Lister: From the Archives to ‘Gentleman Jack’ . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN 9781009280723
- Blumreich, Kathleen M. “Lesbian Desire in the Old French Roman de Silence,” in Arthuriana 7:2 (1997): 47-62.
- Paton, Lucy Allen. 1907. “The Story of Grisandole: A Study in the Legend of Merlin” in PMLA vol. 22, no. 2. pp.234-276.
- Schleiner, Winfried. 1992. “Le feu caché: Homosocial Bonds Between Women in a Renaissance Romance” in Renaissance Quarterly 45: 293-311.
Recent Lesbian/Sapphic Historical Fiction
Call for submissions for the 2026 LHMP audio short story series. See here for details.