Jane Hadley

University of Minnesota, 1970 (🎵“Rumble” Link Wray) By the time imaginative Arthur Ohashi starts his junior year at the University of Minnesota in 1970, he’s made an art of forging conventionality into armor. That is, until Eve Clark turns his careful world upside down. Beautiful and enigmatic, Eve pours her considerable charisma into fronting a local rock band called The Tarts — and she wants Arthur to play keys for them. As he is absorbed into the band, their parties, and their giddy world of subversive rock ‘n’ roll, Arthur is increasingly drawn to the Tart’s guitarist, James Novak, whose appreciation for underground records and androgyny unlocks long-suppressed desires in him. As Eve and James strip Arthur’s armor away (and replace it with lush red lipstick), he embarks on a path of self-discovery entirely outside his expectation or experience, tapping into a well of bombshell energy he never knew he had. But when Arthur finds himself caught in the middle of Eve and James’ complicated relationship, he realizes that he can’t continue to contort himself to fit into other people’s expectations. Not if the cost is himself. Grounded in local LGBTQIA history, Oh! You Pretty Things is a story of self-actualization, love, and rock ‘n’ roll.

Charley Smith is up to something… Henry Schaefer is sick of standing in his brothers’ shadows. That’s why he tried to enlist just as soon as Lincoln put out the call. Now that he’s finally mustering in at Fort Snelling in the last company of the Second Minnesota Regiment, he’s eager to prove himself and catch up with his brothers on the front lines. He may be green, but at least he’s not as green as the snot-nosed Charles Smith, who seems hell-bent on making life in their squad as difficult as humanly possible. Charles Smith knows he’s being an unbearable ass. But it’s nothing personal — it’s a matter of survival. Because the last thing he can afford is for his squad to discover he is actually Cate Ellis, whose unhappy marriage finally drove her to throw everyone’s expectations to the wind and do all she can to open up the promise of freedom to every square mile of these United States. Which, in this case, means disguising herself as a man. It’s too bad she has to do everything she can to drive that lughead Schaefer away, because he is … well, he is objectively a very strapping man. Henry knows there’s something off about Charley. And he’s going to get to the bottom of it, even if the little weasel has these dark eyes he can’t quite look away from…