Recommendation
MM historical romance
Ask for gay historical romance and you will be handed England. Regency England, mostly, and then Victorian England, and then England again with a different hat on.
This page starts where the Regency stops. 1820 to 1900, no magic, sorted by country, because country turns out to be the honest way to describe what's actually out there.
Updated 21 August 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 the most read book in the genre. 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, and the two of them have been circling each other quietly for a while when one of Clem's lodgers turns up dead. London in the winter of 1873, in one of the worst fogs of the century.
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.
DifferentCharles has said she was channelling Wilkie Collins, and it shows in the plotting: the mystery is a real one and it takes room. Both leads are unusually soft for this shelf, which readers either love or find low on friction. Book one of three and the trilogy resolves across all of them.
SettingLondon, 1873, Sins of the Cities book one
HeatExplicit open door (4 of 5 on romance.io)
EndingHFN. Mild cliffhanger, 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
AboutAlec Pyne wants the diamonds his father commissioned for his mother's twentieth anniversary, and hires two professional jewel thieves to take them. One of the thieves is Jerry Crozier, who is very good at his job and not remotely a nice man.
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. Best rated thing on this page. Book one of two and the second is about a different couple.
SettingLondon, 1890s, Lilywhite Boys book one
HeatExplicit open door (4 of 5 on romance.io)
EndingHFN, but a firm one.
Rating4.28 on Goodreads, from 5,259 ratings
Fun factSame world as An Unseen Attraction above, twenty years on, linked 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
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
Two books. That's the whole shelf, and one of them isn't out yet.
Which is strange, 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.
The Station
Keira Andrews
AboutColin speaks up to save Patrick from hanging and admits what he is in the process, and the pair of them are transported 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 across every subgenre going, so this isn't a country she keeps coming back 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
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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Marked by Fire
Lorraine H.
Coming soon
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 is 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
OutEarly 2027
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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)
EndingHFN. The series resolves in book three
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 lives in South Pass City on the tolerance of the physician who took him in. Grady Mullins is a cowboy who is kind to him. Harlan Crane owns the saloon and is not.
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.
DifferentThe darkest thing on this page by some distance. Crane is abusive and the book is explicit about it, so the content warning is doing real work here rather than being a formality. Henry is Australian, which is a strange fact about the best gay western on the shelf.
SettingWyoming Territory, 1870
HeatNot yet rated on romance.io
EndingHEA, hard won
Rating3.74 on Goodreads, from 750 ratings
Fun factThe best gay western on the shelf was written by a Queenslander.
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The Only Gold
Tamara Allen
AboutJonah Woolner has run his life as carefully as he runs the bank's ledgers and expected the promotion that goes to Reid Hylliard instead. Then the worst blizzard in the city's history closes in while somebody is trying to rob the vault, and the two of them are shut in together.
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 this is faster than Allen usually writes, but she is still the quietest author on this page. If you want heat, look at the Charles books instead.
SettingNew York, 1888
HeatOpen door (3 of 5 on romance.io)
EndingHEA
Rating4.09 on Goodreads, from 1,521 ratings
Fun factThe blizzard the plot turns on is the real one, New York in March 1888.
Find The Only Gold
What's deliberately not here
Three things, all of them good, none of them what this page is for.
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.
A note on mine
One of those is mine, in the list with everyone else and with no rating, because rating your own book would be a bit much.
Marked by Fire is early 2027. The ARC list is the way to read it before that.
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 alone has three of the four best rated romances on the main Goodreads list and every one 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?
Two, and one of them isn't out yet. The Station by Keira Andrews is 1840s convict Australia, written by a Canadian. Marked by Fire is colonial New South Wales in 1835 and lands early 2027. That's the entire shelf, 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. Everything on this page is a romance, so the couple finishes the book together.
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