Everything We Thought Was true

Lisa Montanaro
Book Cover: Everything We Thought Was true
Editions:Audiobook, ePub, Kindle, Paperback

Los Angeles lawyer Lena Antinori has dedicated her career to fighting discrimination, including for the LGBTQ community, but her own family's secret haunts her. At thirteen years old, she made the startling discovery that her father, Frank, was gay and her mother, Teresa, knew. Fearing social stigma, Teresa instituted a code of silence meant to protect their Italian Catholic family—a code Lena adhered to for decades.

Now, Frank plans to marry his partner, and he wants Lena to help plan the wedding. Lena is torn between maintaining loyalty to her mother and supporting her father's newfound happiness. As her father’s wedding approaches, Lena learns her childhood wounds run deeper than she thought, and failing to heal them might sentence her to a life of hypocrisy and the inability to discover the true meaning of coming out.

Told by Lena in the present, and her parents, Frank and Teresa, in the past, Everything We Thought Was True examines how the truth doesn't set you free until you embrace it.

First place winner, LGBTQ Fiction, 2024 International Firebird Book Awards

Honorable Mention, General Fiction, 2025 Los Angeles Book Festival

For You, Sir

Emily Brandish
For You, Sir - Emily Brandish

Jun Kim thrives as butler to the stars of L.A. His demanding job offers the perfect excuse to ignore his messed up family, and nonexistent love life. But his tidy, organized world is turned up-side-down when he’s hired to serve L.A.’s most challenging client: a depressive screenplay writer who quit writing after a nervous breakdown.

Once a shining writer-director, Einar Eriksen has become a shut-in after a crippling professional failure. He’s sworn to never write another script, and resents the movie studio for hiring a butler to spy on him. But as Einar learns of Jun’s wounded past, he commits to helping Jun toward self-acceptance, and unlocking his butler’s hidden sensual side…

For You, Sir is a sweet & spicy contemporary hurt/comfort MM Romance between an overachiever butler and his pleasure-Dom employer, where D/s play builds trust and empathy, and loving support can heal the wounds of the past.

 

  • MM Boss/Butler Romance
  • Hurt/Comfort
  • Later-in-Life Romance
  • Service sub + Pleasure Dom
  • Opposites Attract
  • Forbidden Love
  • Sexual awakening
  • Praise k!nk
  • Interracial Couple
  • Loving, Respectful Power Play
  • HEA Guaranteed