Brennan, Joseph: Loose Lips

Finalist - 2023 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ+ Romance and Erotica This debut gay erotic novel about a stowaway on World War II troopships is an "immersive and period-specific picaresque, which manages to capture its milieu in a way that feels simultaneously timeless and contemporary" (Kirkus Reviews). Dockyard mansex adventurer Olli Turner has stowed away on the biggest ship the world has ever known, forced to sail incomplete. Built up rivet by rivet through his formative years, RMS Queen Elizabeth watched over Olli's sexual awakening. Staying with her seems to promise passage to a new world of landed men. Yet in March 1940 war is churning. That short coastal voyage to Southampton he was expecting turns into a daring dash across the Atlantic and plants instead seeds of a years-long life at sea. Conspiring undercurrents sabotage his troopship to troopship bounce as need for a place, however perilous, in arms of to-war men proves a powerful piece in this war's chess match of primal evils.