Heat – Short Stories

by Jane Futcher

Photo of “The Kiss,” by Tanya S. Chalkin

Ever been seduced by your boyfriend’s sister? Made love with your mother’s best friend? Gone home with a stranger when someone you love is dying? You’ll find it all, and much more, in Jane Futcher’s Heat, a collection of short stories from Bushfire, Hot Ticket, Bedroom Eyes, Heat Wave, Uniform Sex and other anthologies. You’ll laugh and cry with the characters, who’ll leave you wanting more, in Heat.

“Jane Futcher’s ‘Past Lives’ powerfully illustrates how a loving relationship can enable a woman to confront the past and heal.”
Karen Barber, editor, Bushfire

“In Jane Futcher’s ‘Caribbean Wave’ the marriage of childhood fantasy and the erotic is made specific.”
Linnea Due, editor

Bagels and Mink

It is a Saturday afternoon in mid-November, and the air is cold but not bitter. I am standing on a tree-lined street in suburban Rye, New York, in front of a neo-Tudor house, about to meet Rick’s sister and brother-in-law for the first time. It is 1972—Nixon has just beaten George McGovern; the Vietnam War is raging, and Rick has told his sister Victoria that our relationship is serious. On the drive from Philadelphia, Rick entertains me with tales of gay life—the bars where queens hang out in Philadelphia, the downtown park where Main Line stockbrokers cruise for teenaged boys. I am excited by the talk—it is my only contact with the gay world. I tell him about the straight woman at work who turns me on when she leans over my desk, her cleavage close to my shoulder, showing me the correct way to glass-mount a slide for the educational shows our company produces.We are both nervous about spending the night with Victoria and Hal. We are trying to be a couple, but we have never slept together, and we are both gay—he actively, me in tortured silence. Under those circumstances, it’s hard for me to feel comfortable with anyone, certainly not Rick’s family. Click to Read More

Fever in Their Bones

by Jane Futcher

Canadian War Museum, George Metcalf Archival Collection.

It is July 1917. As war rages in Europe, physician Thomas Barnes crosses the Atlantic to take charge of a Canadian war hospital in England. He soon discovers that war ignites passions as well as betrayals, medical breakthroughs as well as unspeakable traumas. As each new conflict cracks his cool facade, Thomas loses trust in his wife, his beloved mentor, and himself. Will love destroy him . . . or  restore his sanity?

Chapter One

Going OverSeptember 17, 1917

“How dashing you look, my darling,” Marjorie said when Thomas entered the sitting room dressed in the Canadian lieutenant colonel’s uniform the tailor had sent.
“Oh, Daddy!” The boys had shivered with delight at the sight their father in uniform, racing upstairs to don their own little soldier suits, sewn for them by their aunts in Ontario. 
Baby Gwendolen, cherubic and unflappable, broke into a wail.
“What on earth?” Marjorie placed the infant over her shoulder, tapping gently on her back. “Nurse! Where are you?”
Nurse rushed in from somewhere. “Right here, Mrs. B,” she cried, scooping Baby into her arms. “Goodness, me!” she exclaimed, seeing Thomas. “How handsome you look, doctor!”
“Feel quite foolish,” Thomas reddened, pulling the wool away from his neck, so very hot and scratchy on this humid Baltimore day.
“Nonsense,” Nurse laughed. “Every nurse will swoon at the sight of you.” Click to Read More.