Affairs of a Curious and Sordid Nature

Herein you will discover, presented for your amusement and edification, a varied and unique assortment of tales to awaken the senses and tantalize the imagination. In your very hands, or perhaps within your pocket analytical engine, you hold twelve tales of desire and adventure, the contents of which include but are not limited to desire outside matrimonial bounds, the miracles of modern medicine, theatrical pursuits both on and off the stage, and forbidden love across lines of class and propriety!

Within the pages of this volume are heroes and villains, lovers both requited and not, all seeking their satisfaction amid the smoke and mysteries and miraculous automata of the age of Passion and Steam!

Stories Included

A Stimulating Cure
by Madeleine Swann

Helena is a Victorian housewife who has a problem with her nerves. When her doting husband brings her to the best doctor in London, the good doctor asserts that Helena’s hysteria is lodged between her legs. There is only one, truly exquisite cure. (M/F)

 

Beyond the Bedroom and Into the Night
by Madeleine Swann

Amelia is a Victorian girl lying ill in her bed, watched over by her father, uncle, and the doctor. Her brother is coming back from university to see her, but none of them are aware of the strange new attraction for each other, or that she has been bitten by a vampire; a vampire who is stalking the grounds of the house and waiting. (F/M)

Clockwork Dolls
by R.W. Whitefield

Anke can do anything with brass and steam, springs and gears. What she can’t do is cross the lines of class and propriety that keep her from declaring her love for her patron, the beautiful Lady Phoebe. Lady Phoebe has long been entertained – and stimulated—by the dancing dolls Anke has made for her, but now she must marry for the sake of duty and family. She has one last commission for Anke—to build a doll that can love her as much as Anke does. (F/F)

 

Devil’s Bargain, Devil’s Kiss
by Laylah Hunter

When handsome Doctor Nicholas Black brings his wagon full of patent medicines to Jonah’s small town, it seems like the answer to the whole town’s prayers. But the good doctor’s cures don’t come cheap, and for Jonah in particular there might be too high a price to pay. (M/M)

 

Heart of Brass
by KJ Kabza

Dr. Jameson H. Dashiell, inventor of over 20 unique sex Machines designed to “safely treat and tame lascivious desire,” must find a way to treat the beautiful and insatiable Lady Gallantine without losing his professional self-control–or losing his life at the hands of her father, the suspicious and overbearing Duke. (F/M)

 

Heat, Steam, and the Vital Machine
by Alex Douglas

James spends his days guarding the Machine at the heart of the complex, the device that supports all life in the underground complex. He spends his nights mostly alone in his cramped sleeping cubicle. When he catches one of the mysterious saboteurs who repeatedly attack the Machine, he succumbs to the man’s intimate offer, and forsakes duty for human touch. (M/M)

Infernal Machine
by Elizabeth A. Schechter

Student-Artificer Elijah Saloman discovers what he thinks could be a lost masterwork of the greatest Artificer ever born. He is determined to make it work, even though he has no idea what it is or what it is supposed to do. But when everything that can go wrong does, Elijah finds himself caught in an interesting predicament—trapped within the machine, and at the mercy of the whimsical plaything of a long-dead Artificer with a taste for the exotic. (M/M)

Lady Sally and the Automaton Horse
by Slave Nano

Edwardian gentlewoman and strict dominatrix, Lady Sally Rudston-Chichester, is angry when her horse is beaten by Lord Melchiot’s at York Races. Believing he’s cheated, and that he treats his horses cruelly, she plots an appropriate revenge on him centred on a brass automaton horse built to provide Lady Sally with unique opportunities for some exquisite punishment. (F/M)

Live Performance at the Grand Guignol
by Madeleine Swann

Coral is an actress in Victorian London who has just landed a plum role in the Grand Guignol. Determined to focus on her career, she decides not to get involved with any of her co-stars, but this proves more difficult than she imagines when she meets the strangely compelling Richard Morris, the actor who plays the man who murders her every night on stage. (F/M)

The Facts in the Case of Miss Casimir
by M.E. Litman

Edgar Dalman, a repressed researcher, stumbles upon an ancient artifact that leads him to the mysterious Miss Casimir. Tormented by lustful dreams of this woman, he seeks her out, coming at last to confront the object of his desires and the weird secrets hidden beneath her estate. (F/M)

The Fair, Laudanum and Passion
by Madeleine Swann

Ettie visits a funfair with her bullying husband in Victorian London. When a sword-swallowing sideshow performer grabs her attention, she finds herself drawn into a new world of strangeness, freedom and passion. (F/M)

 

The Most Perfect Sin
by Slave Nano

The English Civil War has ended, King Charles I has been beheaded, and radical ideas are spreading. Tobias Coppe, member of a notorious religious sect, The Ranters, is preaching in the Flask Tavern in London. In the midst of a lewd act, Tobias is interrupted by officers from the army. He escapes arrest by hiding in the bedroom of a chaste Puritan maiden, Chastity Clarkson. The Ranter sees her seduction as a challenge, but will he be successful? Never was religious discourse so sexy!