Are You There, Moriarty?

Book one in the Parlor Games series Welcome to Maverick Molly’s—for the Victorian sex rebel in all of us. Toby Dunn has a fun job. As a server-slash-performer at a newish establishment called Maverick Molly’s—a gaming parlor and kink club in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada—he dons bloomers and a corset to serve drinks and perform burlesque skits for the men who frequent the place. Maverick Molly’s hearkens back to a darker time, when sodomy was illegal and men who loved other men could be thrown in jail, or worse, for daring to be true to themselves and each other. Maverick Molly’s brings all the positives from that period—the daring dress and ribald performances, the joy in safe spaces and the resilience of people who didn’t let anything stop them—and leaves the negatives in the past, where they belong. Toby’s life isn’t all fun, and he’s determined to move out of the home he shares with his alcoholic mother and keep up his average in his BA program at the University of Ottawa. Oh, and he’s going to quit smoking…eventually. But everything changes when charming Alastair Kenney walks up the stairs to the club and invites Toby for a casual hookup at the most prestigious hotel in Ottawa, surprising them both with the intensity of their chemistry. What happens after that is up to them. TW: Discussions of physical abuse, some verbal/emotional abuse by a secondary character, smoking (character is trying to quit)