Recommendation
MM historical romance
Ask for gay historical romance and you get England. Ask for something else and you get England in a different decade.
This page starts where the Regency stops. 1820 to 1900, no magic, sorted by country.
Updated 1 September 2026
What counts here
Three rules, and the first one matters most:
- Romance, so the couple ends the book together. The best known gay historical novels are literary fiction and most of them end badly. The Song of Achilles has over two million ratings and is a tragedy. If you searched for romance and were handed that, this is the difference.
- The nineteenth century after the Regency ends. 1820 to 1900, and every book here sits inside it. The Regency has a whole genre of its own and doesn't need the help.
- No magic. A good deal of historical MM has spells or ghosts in it, including some of the biggest books on the shelf. Good books, different shelf.
What the heat ratings mean
The five point scale romance readers already use, lowest to highest. Every book below is marked on it.
- Glimpses and kisses a kiss at most, and no sex on or off the page
- Behind closed doors it happens, but the door shuts first
- Open door at least one scene you are in the room for, written without the explicit words
- Explicit open door two or more scenes, explicit, and a range of things happening
- Explicit and plentiful several explicit scenes spread through the book
Why is MM historical romance almost all English?
Partly because historical romance as a whole is. The Regency was established as a setting by Georgette Heyer and eighty years of writers following her, and the research is effectively free: the clothes, the money, the titles and the streets have all been described a thousand times. A writer starting an English historical inherits a world. A writer starting anywhere else builds one.
And partly because the legal history is right there. Same-sex acts were a capital offence in England until 1861 and a criminal one long after, so the danger a romance needs is already in the setting rather than invented for it.
The result is a shelf where three of the top four romances on the main Goodreads list are by one English author, and the countries below are a long way below.
England
This is where most of the genre lives, and most of the best books in it. Three here, and they could as easily have been ten.
An Unseen Attraction
K.J. Charles
AboutClem Talleyfer keeps a lodging house and Rowley Green stuffs animals in the shop next door. They take tea together most evenings and both of them want more than tea, and neither has said it. Then one of Clem's lodgers is found dead.
Read it ifYou want Victorian London written as Victorian sensation fiction, with a murder in it and two men who are both gentler than the genre usually allows.
DifferentClem is autistic, and reviewers rate him the best thing in the book. The mystery takes real room, so this is a Victorian sensation novel as much as a romance.
SettingLondon, 1873, in the worst fog of the century
HeatExplicit open door - 4 of 5 on romance.io
EndingHFN, with a mild cliffhanger. The trilogy finishes the story.
SeriesFirst of three Sins of the Cities books, and the trilogy finishes the story.
Rating3.90 on Goodreads, from 5,314 ratings
Fun factCharles has said she was channelling Wilkie Collins, and the 1873 fog it opens in was a real one.
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Any Old Diamonds
K.J. Charles
AboutLord Alec Pyne-ffoulkes hires a pair of jewel thieves to take the diamonds his father is giving his mother for their anniversary. One of them is Jerry Crozier, who turns up posing as a gentleman. He works out what Alec wants before Alec has admitted it, and has him in bed and under his thumb long before the job.
Read it ifYou want a heist, and you want the criminal to stay a criminal rather than turning out to have been decent underneath.
DifferentCrozier is genuinely cold and the book doesn't soften him into a hero, which is the appeal and also why some readers bounce. Book one of two and the second is about a different couple.
SettingLondon in the 1890s, and a house with diamonds in it
HeatExplicit open door - 4 of 5 on romance.io
EndingHFN, but a firm one.
Rating4.28 on Goodreads, from 5,259 ratings
Fun factLinked to An Unseen Attraction through the adopted daughter of a character in it.
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Mr Warren's Profession
Sebastian Nothwell
AboutAubrey Warren was born in a workhouse and has clawed his way to a clerkship. Lindsey Althorp is a baronet's son who has never worked and doesn't entirely understand why that matters. Lindsey is besotted and Aubrey has everything to lose.
Read it ifYou want the class gap to be the whole book rather than an obstacle cleared in chapter four, and you want the industrial north instead of London drawing rooms.
DifferentLindsey is written as genuinely oblivious rather than charmingly so, and how much that grates decides whether the book works for you. Aubrey's past is the heavier half of the book and Nothwell doesn't skim it, so read the content notes first.
SettingManchester and London, 1892
HeatExplicit open door - 4 of 5 on romance.io
EndingHEA
SeriesFirst of two Aubrey and Lindsey books.
Rating3.88 on Goodreads, from 815 ratings
Fun factThe title plays on Mrs Warren's Profession, Shaw's 1893 play about a woman driven into the sex trade by poverty. Aubrey's history runs on the same argument.
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Australia
Three books, and one of them isn't out yet.
Still thin, because colonial Australia has everything the genre runs on. Transportation. Isolation. Months of men stuck together with nowhere else to be. A legal system that could hang you for it, and a frontier where nobody was watching anyway.
Marked by Fire
Lorraine H.
AboutA hired guide takes an English heir six weeks west through the mountains and out past Bathurst to a failing station. William Holt has known who George Ashford is since the first night at the inn and has said nothing. In 1835 what they end up doing carries the death penalty, and both of them know it.
Read it ifYou want the period to be the constraint rather than the costume, and a historical that hurts.
DifferentIf you read historicals for the ballrooms and the careful talk over dinner, none of that exists out here. It's dirt and weather and nobody watching. The convict past is treated as a wound rather than as backstory, and the book is slow on purpose. Reader notes are on the book page if you want them first.
SettingColonial New South Wales, 1835
HeatExplicit open door
EndingHEA
SeriesBook one of a forthcoming series.
OutEarly 2027
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The Station
Keira Andrews
AboutColin keeps Patrick off the gallows by admitting in open court that the two of them were lovers, and they're both transported to Australia for it. Out on a convict ship, and eventually onto a run in the outback with a chance to start again.
Read it ifYou want the convict period taken seriously, and you like an age gap with a long hurt and comfort arc behind it.
DifferentThe passage out is the part most historicals would skip and it's the part she does properly, so the first stretch is grim. Andrews is Canadian and writes a bit of everything. Australia is a one-off for her rather than a subject she returns to. Both leads are sent here rather than from here.
SettingA convict ship, then the outback, 1840s
HeatExplicit and plentiful - 5 of 5 on romance.io
EndingHEA.
SeriesStandalone.
Rating3.99 on Goodreads, from 1,848 ratings
Fun factAndrews is Canadian, which makes the best known convict-era MM romance a book written from Toronto.
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By the Currawong's Call
Welton B. Marsland
AboutMatthew Ottenshaw arrives in Dinbratten as its new Anglican priest, his first posting. Jonah Parks is the police sergeant and the two of them end up running the town between them. A bushfire and one reckless kiss turn it into the thing neither of them can afford.
Read it ifYou want a country town rather than a colony, and you want the two men holding the parish and the police station to be the ones with everything to lose.
DifferentSet in a settled town rather than out past the edge of one, so what threatens them is neighbours and gossip rather than distance. Marsland is Melbourne-based and the period detail is Victorian Victoria rather than generic frontier.
SettingDinbratten, a small town in Victoria, 1891
HeatNot rated - listed on romance.io with no steam rating, and no review states one
EndingHEA, and a slightly bitter one. Both of them give up something they wanted for it, and there's an epilogue.
SeriesStandalone.
Rating4.27 on Goodreads, from 531 ratings
Fun factHarlequin Australia published it in 2017, which makes it the rare Australian MM book with a mainstream house behind it.
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Scotland
One series, and it's a good one.
Provoked
Joanna Chambers
AboutDavid Lauriston is a lawyer from a farming family who has made himself respectable and mostly celibate. Lord Murdo Balfour is none of those things. They meet the year the King visits Edinburgh, while David is trying to find out who betrayed the weavers to the gallows.
Read it ifYou want the class gap to be the real problem, and a Scotland that's doing its own politics rather than standing in for England.
DifferentDavid spends a great deal of the book hating himself, and the book doesn't rush him out of it. That's the point for some readers and heavy going for others. Book one of three and the ending isn't in this volume.
SettingEdinburgh, 1822, Enlightenment book one
HeatOpen door - 3 of 5 on romance.io
EndingNo happy ending in book one at all.
SeriesFirst of six Enlightenment books. Book two reaches something like an HFN, and book three is where the two of them land.
Rating3.98 on Goodreads, from 4,895 ratings
Fun factSet in 1822, the year the King visited Edinburgh, which the book uses as its backdrop.
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America
Two books, a cattle town and a bank. Strip out the magic and the war novels and nineteenth century America thins out fast, which isn't what you'd expect from the country that invented the western.
Sweetwater
Lisa Henry
AboutElijah Carter has been almost deaf since the scarlet fever that killed his family, and most of South Pass City treats him as simple. Harlan Crane owns the saloon, has worked out exactly what Elijah wants, and will use it. Grady Mullins wants him too and won't push him, and Elijah is caught between the two of them.
Read it ifYou want the west written hard, and a book that treats both the deafness and the town's cruelty as real rather than as texture.
DifferentCrane is abusive and the book is explicit about it, so the content warning is doing real work here rather than being a formality.
SettingWyoming Territory, 1870
HeatNot rated - no rating found
EndingHFN. Together at the end, with very little of the book spent there.
SeriesStandalone.
Rating3.74 on Goodreads, from 750 ratings
Fun factHenry is a Queenslander, which isn't the first place you would look for a western this good.
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The Only Gold
Tamara Allen
AboutJonah Woolner has spent fourteen years working up to Cashier. The job goes to Reid Hylliard, who is younger, louder, and wants to change how the whole place is run. Then a blizzard shuts the city down, somebody tries to rob the vault, and the two of them are locked in together. Jonah finds out what he actually thinks of him.
Read it ifYou want a rival at work who becomes something else, and a period New York rendered down to the weather and the ledgers.
DifferentThe robbery gives it a plot, so it moves faster than Allen usually writes, but the book is still mostly two men in an office being careful with each other. If you want heat, look at the Charles books instead.
SettingNew York, 1888
HeatOpen door - 3 of 5 on romance.io
EndingHEA.
SeriesStandalone.
Rating4.09 on Goodreads, from 1,521 ratings
Fun factThe blizzard is a real one. New York, March 1888, and the city was shut for days.
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What this page leaves out
Three things, and where to start with each.
The Regency, which is its own industry. K.J. Charles writes the best of it and A Seditious Affair is the one to start with: a Home Office man and the radical pamphleteer he's supposed to be hunting, set against Peterloo. Cat Sebastian is the warmer alternative.
Magic. The Magpie Lord is Victorian England with practical spellcraft, and it's where to start if that's what you want.
And the twentieth century, where the war books live. Think of England is a 1904 house party that turns into blackmail and murder. Whistling in the Dark is New York in 1919, two men home from the war, and the gentlest thing I found anywhere.
Frequently asked questions
Is gay historical romance all Regency England?
Close enough that this page skips the Regency entirely and still has to work to fill four countries. K.J. Charles is at the top of the main Goodreads list several times over and every one of those books is English. Take away the Regency, the magic and the twentieth century and what's left is what you see here.
Is there any MM historical romance set in Australia?
Three, and one of them isn't out yet. The Station by Keira Andrews is 1840s convict Australia, written by a Canadian. By the Currawong's Call is a priest and a police sergeant in country Victoria in 1891, and its author is Melbourne-based. Marked by Fire is colonial New South Wales in 1835 and lands early 2027. Three books for a century of a continent, which is why this page exists.
Is The Song of Achilles a romance?
No, and this is the most common way people end up with a book they didn't want. It's literary fiction, it's the most read gay historical novel by a very long way, and it ends the way the myth ends. A romance has to leave the couple together, and that one doesn't.
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