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Archive for the tag “Charlie Cochet”

Small Christmas Gems – Mending Noel by Charlie Cochet

We’re all like broken toys in the repair shop, waiting for that one person to come along and fix us. – Unknown

Tim has no idea why Noel hates him. It didn’t start out that way, but the kinder Tim was to Noel, the grinchier Noel was to Tim, until Tim was going out of his way to avoid Noel as much as he could. But when the man who apparently hates you is also your supervisor and is bigger than you, and you’re just an underling at the Abominable Administrative Department who’ll never be more because you’re only average, nothing special, and at two-hundred-forty-five years old, you have no calling, and the only reason you have your job is a little bit of nepotism… Well, there’s not much that elf can do to win Noel over, is there? Unless he uses the magic of kindness and compassion to piece together the broken parts and make them not hurt quite so much anymore.

But, oh, there’s danger afoot in North Pole City; someone’s trying to kill Tim and Noel, but Rudy, the squadron leader of Kringle’s flyboys, is there to save the day along with Jack Frost. And isn’t there a story there? Why yes, yes there is. And you’ll just have to read to find out.

Sugar and spice and everything nice, that’s what Mending Noel is made of, and it’s just as sweet as can be and purely fun, because Charlie Cochet has taken some favorite holiday images and themes and characters and woven them into a lovely and lively little tale about a couple of elves who mix like candy canes and coal lumps, but end up going together like hot cocoa and marshmallows and a cuddle in front of the fire.

You can buy Mending Noel here:

Small Gems – In His Corner by Charlie Cochet

“You cannot love a thing without wanting to fight for it. You cannot fight without something to fight for.” – Gilbert K. Chesterton

Five years ago, Eli Mayhew’s heart was broken by Jessie “The Demon” Dalton, former Heavyweight Boxing Champion, and the older man Eli loved…still loves, if the truth be told. But things were not meant to be at a time when Jessie was at the lowest point of his life and his career in the ring was going down for the count. Jessie made sure Eli left “for his own” good, but what’s good is entirely questionable when what’s worse is the misery of being apart.

Eli’s Uncle Jasper is looking for a new cornerman for Jessie, whose career is little more than a pale shadow of his former glory days. Jessie hasn’t had much worth fighting for since Eli left, but Eli’s back and has jumped at the chance to become the man Jessie needs, and still wants, in his corner. Jessie merely needs to found the courage and confidence to reach out and take what he wants.

In His Corner is Charlie Cochet’s contribution to Torquere Press’s Charity Sip Blitz. It is a supremely sweet short story of faith, hope, and a second chance at love, set in the 1920s. The setting and language reflect the decade perfectly, and the storytelling is dependably charming, as I’ve come to expect from this author, whose heroes are always men I want to spend more time with.

Charlie Cochet is a GayRomLit participant. If you’d like to get to know Charlie better, you can find out more about her HERE.

Buy In His Corner HERE.

The Amethyst Cat Caper (Birthstone, #1) and Two Small Gems – When Love Walked In and Lost in My Waking Dream by Charlie Cochet

“The riches that are in the heart cannot be stolen.” – Russian Proverb

The Amethyst Cat Caper could easily have been subtitled, “or the Case of the Stolen Hearts,” for as much as the Gentleman Thief scarpered with said cat from the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, it was Hawk and Remi who absconded with the true treasure in this quick-fire romance wrapped within the mystery of an Ancient Egyptian statue that is mistaken for a forgery when it unexpectedly lands in Tom Winchell’s Antiquities and Oddities shop.

Stanley Hawk is the hardboiled Pinkerton’s agent with the soft gooey center who is hired to solve the case of a break in at Tom’s shop, where he discovers that Remington Trueblood may very well be at the core of the mystery. And he is, just not in the way Hawk had originally expected. It was easy for Hawk to jump to some conclusions about Remi, based on the limited evidence that’d turned up before he met the younger man. Unfortunately, it was also easy for Hawk to underestimate Remi after they met, which led to a fair share of problems between them. Remi is essentially Hawk, turned inside out, as Remi’s beautiful surface conceals the heart of a lion who is much stronger than he appears. One thing these two men didn’t get wrong, however, was the spark of attraction that lit the moment they set eyes upon one another.

In a case of lust preceding trust, Hawk makes a promise he has no intention of keeping, although he does it under the best of intentions—to keep Remi safe from the elusive and thoroughly cunning man who is set on acquiring the statue in Remi’s possession but who also seems to have a keen personal interest in Remi himself. Hawk’s betrayal, however, is one that Remi is unfortunately all too familiar with, and one that might not be easily forgiven or forgotten. Until, that is, something far more priceless than the statue is stolen from Remi, right in plain sight.

The intrigue unfolds quickly in this first book of the Birthstone series, as does the romance between Hawk and Remi. It was love at first sight for the two men, and whether there were forces far more powerful at work than an irresistible attraction, it’s hard to say; nothing is impossible where the gods are concerned, I suppose. And it seems there are far more treasures yet to be discovered in Tom Winchell’s curiosity shop, which I look forward to discovering along with Hawk and Remi, hopefully sooner rather than later so I can see their relationship grow as well.

Buy The Amethyst Cat Caper HERE.




When love walks into your life, you don’t ask why; you just take it for the gift it is, and for Bruce Shannon and Jace Scarret, it’s the best Valentine’s Day gift ever in When Love Walked In.

When one door closes, another opens, and in Jace’s case, doors have been slamming shut in his life to the point that it’s left him broke, homeless, starving and without hope. But it’s a single door that’s left open by mistake, by chance, by whatever you want to call it, that’s nothing less than serendipity for Jace because it’s the door that leads to Bruce, and it was his compassion and generosity, along with maybe a little bit of feline intervention that paved the way to romance for these two men I’d love to know so much more about.

It was the door to Bruce that allowed Jace to finally close the door forever on the past in this sweet and romantic little story that, even though we don’t get to see it, sure does promise a happy ever after.

Buy When Love Walked In HERE.




“The future is a convenient place for dreams.” – Anatole France

If ever there was a book I’ve wanted a sequel to, it’s Lost in My Waking Dream, the historical/futuristic/sci-fi/time travelling story of a man, George Fitzpatrick, who fought in and survived World War I, though he didn’t manage to come away from it entirely unscathed. George suffers from post traumatic stress episodes that he has managed to survive only because of the voice he hears inside of him, the voice of a man, Noah Baxter, who lives more than a century away from George’s present.

In the time that George is, he has a fiancé he can’t love enough to marry, and an ongoing arrangement with a male prostitute who plays Noah’s stand-in because when you can’t have the real thing, you make do with what you’ve got. In the time that George belongs, the time when his heart exists and a place where he could live and love openly, Noah is working tirelessly to find his way to the man he loves. The question is can he cheat the seemingly insurmountable triad of time, space, and death to bridge the gap that has kept them apart for so long?

George is all too painfully aware he can’t pin his hopes on an impossible dream, a life he can’t possibly grasp in a future over a century away, so he wanders the life he has, lost and wanting so desperately what he can’t have, making choices he’d never considered before and fighting a losing battle simply because Noah said, “I love you,” and tore George’s world apart.

This is a story filled with melancholy and promise, one that I’d have loved to see expanded into a full length novel, but really, I’d just be happy with a sequel…okay, a full length sequel; that’s not asking too much, is it? I felt an immediate sense of connection to George and Noah and couldn’t wait to see how Charlie Cochet wrote them out of their terrible and tragic predicament. The only sense of disappointment I felt was in the fact that their story had to end.

Buy Lost in My Waking Dream HERE.
*Note: If you’re a regular Amazon customer, avoid buying this book from that site as there are terrible formatting issues with it. I had to return it for a refund and re-purchased the book directly from Torquere, which was fine. :)

The Auspicious Troubles of Chance (The Auspicious Troubles of Love, #1) by Charlie Cochet

“If you don’t create change, change will create you.” – Unknown

Even when Chauncey Irving isn’t looking for trouble, trouble seems determined to find Chauncey Irving, and there was indeed a time when the man went purposefully looking for it with a certain sense of obsessive need. Until, that is, a very wise boy taught Chauncey a little lesson about what it means to live and think and behave outside the confines of his own existence and to start considering the one who considers him above all others.

I knew the moment I started reading The Auspicious Troubles of Chance it was going to be unlike any book I’d ever read before, not only because Chauncey started out by talking directly to me from the pages of the book, but also because the man was bleeding from a gunshot wound when he decided it’d be a great idea to start telling the story of how he’d gotten from New York City to Buckinghamshire, England, by way of a short detour in Africa.

So how does an orphan who found himself on the streets of New York by the age of seven, working odd jobs—well, mostly losing odd jobs because Chauncey was and still is a bit of a pill—end up in England via Africa and the French Foreign Legion? That’s a long story and one Chauncey should tell because it’s his to share, but I will say it’s an awfully good one.

It’s where Chauncey’s life ended, really, there in the African desert, as part of a unit of ragtag soldiers who didn’t fit in anywhere but under the command of Jacky Valentine, quite possibly one of the most charming men I’ve ever encountered in the pages of a book, but that’s beside the point. The point is why Chauncey’s life ended, and that’s because Africa is the place he became Chance. Africa is the place where Chance was born to the reality that in order to change his life he was going to have to change his heart, and it was with the help of three teenage boys, clever beyond their years, boys who taught Chance that as bad as his life has been, if he’s vigilant enough, he’s bound to meet someone whose life has been worse, boys who eventually become part of a make-shift family with Jacky and Chance, that Chance finally came to the realization he could open his heart to the man who loved him in spite of the fact Chance had done everything to sabotage that gift.

Loving the first person narrative is easy to do when you love the narrator, and oh my, did I love Chance, even when he didn’t love himself and couldn’t move fast enough to get out of his own way. He tested Jacky’s patience and resolve nearly every step of the way, but he did so with wit and charm and no small amount of exasperating determination to do exactly the opposite of what he’d been ordered to do. It wasn’t easy for Chance to accept that Jacky loved him, given his past, and it wasn’t until Chance nearly lost Jacky forever that he was finally able to accept what change had created in him.

I had a sneaking suspicion after reading Roses in the Devil’s Garden that I could truly, madly, deeply become hooked on Charlie Cochet’s work. The Auspicious Troubles of Chance is all the proof I needed to quit suspecting and just let it be.

This is the first book in The Auspicious Troubles of Love series and I’m every bit as excited to see what’s yet to come for Johnnie, Henry, Alexander, and Bobby as I am glad to know that Chance and Jacky will be back along with them. I adore them all; their humor and their heart and their fears and all the promise of wonderful things yet to come.

Buy The Auspicious Troubles of Chance HERE.

Small Gems – Roses in the Devil’s Garden (Fallen Roses, #1) – A Free Story by Charlie Cochet

“There is a rose in the Devil’s garden/In shadow it grows alone/Many things are dangerous now/In this garden we call home.” – Tiger Army, “Rose of the Devil’s Garden”

Roses in the Devil’s Garden is a short and sublime little story set in New York City during the height of prohibition in the United States, when the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution made it illegal to manufacture, transport, sell, and consume liquor in America, but the Amendment did more than further the agenda of the American Temperance movement; it was also the catalyst for the swell of organized crime in the US, as well as fostering rampant corruption within law enforcement, which is often a side-effect that comes along when enterprising men exercise the ability to exploit power and human want for financial gain. There was no gray area in those days: there were good guys and there were bad guys, and sometimes it was difficult to tell the difference between the two until you found yourself on the wrong end of a gun.

Agents Harlan Mackay and Nathan Reilly care about doing the job they were hired to do, even though they don’t care very much at all for the temperance movement itself or for the corruption it has bred. Their jobs involve nabbing the small fish that swim in the much larger pond of criminal activity, attempting to bait and hook the much bigger fish that remain in the shadows and who are the untouchables. Harlan and Nathan are two men who understand very well what it has meant to remain in the shadows in order to live their lives as they wish. In 1925, the very nature of their relationship was against the law, but six years after they met and shared their first kiss, in World War I France, their claim upon each other’s hearts is as strong as ever.

Or that was the case until a man from Nathan’s past, a man Nathan thought had died during the war, suddenly turns up in their precinct’s interrogation room, attempting to work a little information out of one of those proverbial small fish Harlan and Nathan had just nabbed in a speakeasy sting, and while Danny’s at it, he also tries to work his way back into Nathan’s life. Danny Brogan is Nathan’s childhood friend and his first love and he is a temptation the likes of which Nathan has not faced since he fell in love with and committed himself to Harlan. Danny is the Devil’s garden where temptation is the poisonous thorn on every rose, a poison that could very well kill what Harlan and Nathan have worked so hard to grow.

Roses in the Devil’s Garden was a first for me—the first time I’d read a historical romance constructed around the Prohibition, and the first time I’d read anything written by Charlie Cochet. It won’t be the last, guaranteed.

Every single thing about this book drew me in: the title, the cover, the setting, the time period, the writing style, and most of all, the men who populated the piece. Though it’s a short story and I didn’t get to spend much time getting to know Harlan and Nathan, I was immediately attracted to them, individually and as a couple.

This is the first book in a new series and it sets things up perfectly for a budding romance between Danny and Detective John Flynn, a man Harlan and Nathan literally talked down from the ledge of despair and a man I can’t wait to get to know better. There is also a secondary character, Julius, who plays a small but significant role in the story. I’m keeping my fingers crossed he’ll get his own book in the series as well.

My single biggest wish, though, is for the upcoming books in the series to be longer. Much, much longer.

Download Roses in the Devil’s Garden HERE.

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