The First Bloom of Winter

The Garden Series

Holden Peters is a normal, middle-class English lad in all respects save for his preference for his own gender. Caught in a compromising position with his father’s clerk, Holden is forced from his childhood home and sent to The Garden, a mysterious tea and flower shop located in the heart of the notorious Seven Dials slum. To his dismay, Holden soon learns that the shop sells more than floral arrangements. Behind its genteel façade, The Garden is as an all-male brothel, and he is to be its newest acquisition in order to pay off the debts his father owes the enigmatic owner, Mr. Leslie. But Holden’s nightmare grows only more grim when he learns that, before he is allowed to see his first customer, his new employer will personally see to relieving him of his inconvenient virginity. Now Holden must steel himself and face his fears if he is to survive his new life as a courtesan in Victorian London’s depraved underbelly.