Habu Libri

Hardesty is an unusual Homicide Vice detective in Washington, D.C. Although he is a straight arrow in obtaining justice for rent-boys who have been done to death no matter how powerful the perpetrator in the hedonist and power-wielding capitol city is, he is himself addicted to the very rough sex vice he is charged with stopping. He both protects and uses the young male prostitutes of the city. This is a collection of three works, previously published separately, in chronological order, of Hardesty's world of solving male-on-male crime while satisfying his own lusts for young, blond, submissive men.In the initial Hardesty story, Gotta Keep Trying, Hardesty cruises the gay male clubs of Washington, D.C., to check out the ages of the young men dancing the poles. When he focuses on Todd, a lithe young-looking dancer with a blond Mohawk and a provocatively placed gecko tattoo marking the young man's erogenous zone, he is enticed to go beyond just checking out Todd's age. Lost to his desire and his developing determination to settle down with just one man, Hardesty pursues the young man, who, possessed by indecision and his own demons, runs hot and cold on him. When Todd turns up as a key offering on an interactive video sex site, Hardesty is forced to the edge of frustration in driving his vice squad colleagues to keep trying harder to bust the male prostitution ring and free Todd.

The subject of priests or ministers as sex partners with other men is one of the more taboo subjects in the writing of erotica. Habu has tackled this theme in gay male writing before, though, so naturally, as a publisher, we urged him to gather some of the stories in a subject-specific anthology, which has resulted in Priest Play. We gleaned nearly a dozen previously published stories that included priests at sex play from habu's various anthologies, and, in addition to these, he wrote five new, never-before-published stories to make up a fifteen-story anthology in which the clergy is given dispensation to indulge itself in man sex. The anthology is split in two sections-stories with historical settings and contemporary stories. Included are works in which a priest is only included among the men engaged in sex, like "24 Exeter Place" and the "Debatables"-and do so without the slightest remorse-and stories that focus on the perplexity of being a priest and still desiring and needing sex with other men, such as the concluding stories "Senegal Surrender," "Fitting In," and "Banishment." As with all of his anthologies, with Priest Play, habu takes an unusual theme and provides stories for his audience that are varied in setting, inventive in plot, human in characterization, and hot in male-on-male sex. If you are looking for a fix for your fetish to have a priest in your bed, this is the anthology for you.

The long, relentless road of young, former Olympian Ron's descent into fulfilled temptation in man-on-man action stems from something his wife, Sally, wants badly--a sexy glamour shot of him in cowboy costume. From the moment Ron's brother-in-law, Phil, leads Ron to the Web site of the novelty shop, gym, and photographer's studio, Temptation Castle, Ron is trapped by its very real nefarious activities hidden in the code puzzle of the Web site in an ever-deepening web of temptation. Day by day, action by action, we watch Ron give into the temptation of desire and just going that one more step in a direction he thought he had successfully outgrown when he got married. All the while his brother-in-law is standing by, watching and waiting.This is an expanded relaunch of the eXcessica novella "Temptation Castle."

The story of the casting couch as an avenue to stardom, whether on New York's Broadway or in Hollywood, is a classic one in literature and film. Danny's Choice plays and twists this theme. It is about predatory producers and the hard bargains they strike to further the careers of young men in exchange for the men's virginity. It is about how this effects the lives of those young men. Danny's Choice is a collection of four interlocking stories-sometimes connected directly and sometimes only in coincidence. As part of the twist, Danny's Choice, within the context of the stories, is also a fictitious book written by the fictitious Christopher Wilson in the late 1950s about his coming of age into the gay lifestyle in New York City in the post-World War II decade between 1947 and 1957.

Keith Evans and Tyler Sinclair are near twins in near identical situations. They both are young, handsome blond surfers finding themselves set down on the remote American-territory island of Guam and on their own. They both are fine with and good with sex with men and are keeping their lives together by being lower-price rent-boys in the Tumon area of the island for sailors coming off the naval ships on shore leave.They both are hired by a sex industry high roller for a fashion show modeling job, their services being auctioned off to attendees at the show, and the job includes a paid appearance in a porn movie. The opportunity presents the possibility of opening doors into higher-class male prostitution for both of them. Each, in turn, is offered a week¿s trip to Hawaii as a full-sexual-services escort companion to a randy and demanding Korean businessman engaged in landing a hush-hush business deal. From here the two take very different paths, Keith in ¿Free Spirit¿ and Tyler in ¿Aloha Week.¿Will their ¿different stroke¿ decisions have very different results?

Well-heeled and still movie-star handsome Cliff Strand is having one doozy of an early midlife crisis at thirty-seven. As his turn as a New York fashion photographer develops into an interest in photographing young male nudes for private collectors and despite being married to a high-end interior designer, he increasingly becomes aware that he wants to switch sides. He can't seem to take the necessary steps to actually do so. To combat the urge, he and his wife move to Cape May, New Jersey, and open a B&B. But having a gay-insistent B&B next door and a travel agent friend in a same-sex partnership and urging Cliff to get on with switching sides finds Cliff taking the radical step of divorcing and moving to the Turkish coast to open his own B&B, with the assistance of his travel agent. En route Cliff loses his male-male virginity in Rome and, once in Turkey, becomes embroiled in establishing his own gay-friendly B&B under the increasing tutelage and manipulation of his flamboyantly gay lawyer. Cliff's goal in his journey of switching sides is something more, however, than just in an active gay life, and he finds he has to go to extremes in the pursuit of that goal.

Gay male blind dating can be a real crap shoot, resulting in pleasure, humor, rejection, surprise, success, and/or defeat, whether initiated through an Internet dating service or referrals by friends. The motivation for engaging in blind dating can be curiosity, need, laziness, or a sense of adventure and for the bizarre. In this anthology of twelve gay male blind date stories, American author, habu, from the U.S. East Coast, and his Aussie coauthor, Sabb, now writing from southern Europe, have combined in their pen name Shabbu to explore and entertain with this form of hookup hunting. The two authors are compatible in writing style but are very different in their story styles, Sabb being more gentle, hopeful, and romantic with his characters and outcomes and habu being rougher and more cynical, graphic, visceral with his. But all of these stories, which provide highly varied settings, motivations, and unfolding, have one thing in common--they all culminate in a sexual hookup, something which, if participants are being honest, is the goal of blind dating but in far too many cases not the result. Three of the stories have previously been published in habu anthologies, but nine appear here for the first time.