A Gentleman's Gentleman

The notoriously eccentric Lord Christopher Eden prefers the quiet of the country and the company of his childhood cook and aged butler to the scrutiny of the ton. That life is upended when his late father's will hands him an ultimatum: find a wife before the Season ends, or lose the family fortune and the Eden estate. Christopher, who is not attracted to women and is a man of rather unusual make, can imagine few worse fates — but the terms are the terms, so he moves to London and sets about acquiring a household befitting his station.

Enter James Harding: distractingly handsome, and a valet of unbending traditional principle. After a thoroughly rocky start, master and man find their way to a fragile friendship amid balls, carriage rides and the relentless machinery of the London marriage market — a friendship that grows into something neither can name, and that cannot survive Christopher's impending nuptials or the secrets each of them is keeping.

TJ Alexander, author of Chef's Kiss, turns from contemporary romance to the Regency for the first time here, using the period's rigid codes of dress, address and self-presentation as a lens on trans experience. The result is a slow burn built on acts of service rather than declarations, with a comic double act at its centre and a serious argument underneath it: that trans people have always been able to make full lives, in any century. A New York Times Notable Book, a USA Today bestseller, and winner of the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ+ Romance.