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Men in their Passions - Now published

John Roman Baker’s latest novel, Men in their Passions, is now available in paperback and Kindle editions.

Spare, elegiac, and quietly provocative, the novel traces the emotional aftermath of desire through a series of male relationships—each brief, each flawed, each formative.

Jean-Paul moves from the anonymous rooms of Paris to England, and then to Italy. The men he encounters are passionate, self-destructive, and haunted—like himself—by pasts that cannot be undone.

Written with understated lyricism and psychological precision, Men in their Passions is a mosaic of intimate dislocations: a quiet study of longing, resilience, and the lives we almost lived.

This is the newest addition to The Drift of Time, a literary series of standalone novels exploring masculinity, memory, and emotional drift across place and era.

Men in their Passions by John Roman Baker
Part of The Drift in Time literary series.

Published by Wilkinson House, August 2025.
ISBN 978-1-899713-74-5 (Trade Paperback)

Announcing The Drift of Time — A Literary Series by John Roman Baker

Wilkinson House is pleased to announce the formulation of a new book series:

The Drift of Time — A Literary Series by John Roman Baker

This thematic collection brings together John Roman Baker's standalone novels—each distinct in style and setting, yet united by emotional resonance, tone, and thematic preoccupations

Desire, obsession, madness, memory, and time drift through these works, creating echoes across lives, landscapes, and time.

These are not sequels, but echoes. Each story stands alone, yet drifts toward the others in tone, spirit, and silence.

The series currently includes the following titles: No Fixed Ground, The Paris Syndrome, The Vicious Age, and 2020.

A new title—Men in their Passions—is scheduled for release on 25 August and is now available for pre-order on Amazon. Further details will be shared here on launch day.

Greg has arrived at the Station!

The long-awaited seventh book in the Nick & Greg series is now available to order and will be released for Kindle and in Paperback on November 21st, 2024.

The Nick & Greg series of books stands out in gay fiction. It chronicles the lives of two lovers, Nick and Greg, and their close friends, from their teenage encounters in the 1950s through decades of social and sexual revolutions, up to the present day.

Greg at the Station brings the series (almost) up to the present day. Greg has returned to Paris. It's 2019, and an unexpected incident at the Gare du Nord sends him on a rollercoaster journey through dreams and memory. As he navigates the streets and Metro stations of the city, Greg must relive and decipher past events and relationships with all their love, danger, and vibrancy, while trying to make sense of his complex present reality.

Greg at the Station can be read independently or in sequence with the rest of the series.

Author John Roman Baker's work on the novel was interrupted by several significant events, resulting in a longer-than-expected delay for fans eager to read this new release.

He explains, "The book was largely complete before I had even started the preceding parts: Love & Cowardice and Nick's Fugue. The fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in 2019 acted as a catalyst for its structure, but then other events had an impact. Brexit and the Covid lockdowns radically altered my perspectives and led to me writing 2020 and several other works before I was finally able to return to Greg at the Station. So, it has taken longer than expected, but I hope readers will find it has been worth the wait."

Greg at the Station features arguably some of the finest writing in the series and brings the sequence almost up to date. A further installment, provisionally titled Karel & the Chelsea Lighthouse Café, has been announced for future publication.

Publication Data

Greg at the Station by John Roman Baker

Publication date: 21 November 2024

ISBN: 978-1-899713-67-7 (Paperback)

Publisher: Wilkinson House Ltd, London

Under Construction

Wilkinson House is a publisher of gay fiction founded in 2010 and based in England.

We have published works by Robin Newbold, A.D. Pritchard, Itamar SN and our resident author John Roman Baker.

Information about our current and past publications will appear here shortly.

Brighton Darkness is a collection of 17 stories that mostly relate to the city of Brighton & Hove: a place of dreams for young and old that must somehow always be returned to.

The stories span the decades from the 1950s to the present day and explore the many quirks and contradictions that define the city’s unique character.

Two boys in the 1950s experience a desire that begins in St Ann’s Well Gardens and continues in the back row of the Astoria cinema. An ex-hustler meets a famous male movie star, long since thought to be dead. A birthday party doesn’t quite turn out as planned, but has its own unexpected present of truth. A woman looks back upon her past in Regency Square, which is now almost beyond recognition to her. There is an encounter in the city between two Russians who try to come to terms with the tragic death of a young man they both loved. And snow falls in the city, hiding the unseen darkness beneath.

Gay life in the city runs as a theme through many of the stories, while the author’s experiences of other cities, Amsterdam, Paris and New York add a global context to the book. Another recurrent theme is that of return. The author himself recently returned to the city after 17 years living and working in the Netherlands.

About the author
John Roman Baker is a British poet, playwright and novelist who has lived and written mainly in Paris, Amsterdam and Brighton.

About this edition
This is the printed Paperback edition of BRIGHTON DARKNESS.

The following digital editions of this book will be available from August 2015
Kindle edition for Kindle devices.
EPUB edition for other ebook reading devices (iPhone, iPad, Kobo, Android etc).

NEW BOOK: The Vicious Age – Sexuality, Transgression and Redemption in Amsterdam

 

The Vicious Age

Sexuality, Transgression & Redemption

John Roman Baker’s new novel explores life, age and risk in Amsterdam.

Age remains a taboo subject in gay male culture. Youth and idealised images of beauty rule supreme in gay media while, in defiance of reality, the experiences of older gay men are side-lined and largely ignored. Now however, a new novel The Vicious Age dares to explore this paradox. The book’s author, John Roman Baker, whose work, whether in the theatre or in print, has never followed the gay mainstream, casts a perceptive, at times brutal, light on this contradiction.

Synopsis
In the alien environment of a foreign city, Amsterdam, Tim is adrift to the point of giving up. The city, which in recent years has adopted an obsessive path of rebuilding and renewal, presents a stark contrast to Tim’s own physical and mental stagnation and deterioration.

In the midst of his despair, Tim finds himself pursued by two very different men. Both come from the criminal and hard-edged margins of Amsterdam that he has for so many years frequented. Radek is Polish, 19 years old, selling his innocence but holding out for love. Klaus is a German who sells death to those willing to pay for it.

Can either of these men have anything genuine to offer Tim? Drugs and an ever-deepening cycle of sexual dependency provide him with temporary relief, but as his encounters leave him increasingly exposed to danger and violence, he knows he must break free and face the future without illusions, possibly but not necessarily alone.

About the Author
John Roman Baker is a British poet, playwright and novelist who has lived and worked mainly in Brighton, Paris and Amsterdam. His work is characterized by transgressive themes presented from a homosexual point of view. In 1975, his first play ‘Limitations’ launched Gay Sweatshop theatre company. Later, in response to Section 28 and the AIDS crisis, Roman Baker founded his own theatre company ‘Aids Positive Underground’ and in 1990 won the award for best theatre at the Brighton Festival for his play ‘The Ice Pick’. He continued working as a dramatist after moving to Amsterdam in 1997, but has recently returned to writing poetry and novels, four of which have now been published by gay publisher Wilkinson House.

Book data
The Vicious Age
by John Roman Baker
ISBN: 978-1-899713-34-9

UK £11.99 (paperback) £4.99 (ebook)
US $13.99 (paperback) $5.99 (ebook)

In stock at:
Gay’s the Word, UK
Les Mots à la Bouche, FR
Borkhandel Vrolijk, NL
Prinz Eisenherz, DE
Bookshop Darlinghurst, AU
BGSQD, USA
Amazon.com

Or order direct from Wilkinson House