4 Fun, Flirty New Romance Novels

It’s a great setup for a joke: A superhero walks into a gay bar and gets rescued from avid fans by a drag queen. It’s also where we begin Philip Ellis’s contemporary romance WE COULD BE HEROES (Putnam, 370 pp., paperback, $20). Patrick Lake, who plays the comic book hero Captain Kismet in the Hollywood franchise, is a closeted A-lister with a restrictive morality clause in his contract. The drag queen is Grace Anatomy, a.k.a. Will, who works nights at a bar called the Village Inn in Birmingham, England — where Patrick’s filming the latest Captain Kismet movie — and days at a used-book shop.

A superhero’s mask hides a face but reveals a deeper truth. This is also true for drag queens, of course — and drag artists have long been the staunch heart of the queer community. Patrick, whose face is globally famous but whose self stays carefully locked away, is desperate for anyone who sees him as a person. Will offers him a drag community, a scrappy found family and a yearning for love that more than matches Patrick’s own.

This is one of those everything books: You laugh, you cry. Also, to my great joy, there’s a secondary plotline about postwar comic creators that is a love letter to Michael Chabon’s “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.”

The neon gleam of pulp fiction also illuminates Rebecca Fraimow’s LADY EVE’S LAST CON (Solaris, 368 pp., paperback, $16.99), a vivacious heist romance set on a far-future satellite, New Monte. Ruth Johnson’s only loyalty is to her sister — but their usual game of “fleece the wealthy idiot” got upset when Jules fell in love with their latest mark, Esteban, and ended up heartbroken. Now Ruth is determined to make the man pay: She’ll play the well-bred ingénue, get the jerk to propose and skip town with his cash when he learns she’s really an unsuitable nobody.