Tessa Dare
Any Duchess Will Do
Avon / May 28, 2013 / $5.99 print, $4.99 digital

What's a duke to do, when the girl who's perfectly wrong becomes the woman he can't live without?

Griffin York, the Duke of Halford, has no desire to wed this season—or any season—but his diabolical mother abducts him to “Spinster Cove” and insists he select a bride from the ladies in residence. Griff decides to teach her a lesson that will end the marriage debate forever. He chooses the serving girl.

Overworked and struggling, Pauline Simms doesn't dream about dukes. All she wants is to hang up her barmaid apron and open a bookshop. That dream becomes a possibility when an arrogant, sinfully attractive duke offers her a small fortune for a week's employment. Her duties are simple: submit to his mother's “duchess training”... and fail miserably.

But in London, Pauline isn't a miserable failure. She's a brave, quick-witted, beguiling failure—a woman who ignites Griff's desire and soothes the darkness in his soul. Keeping Pauline by his side won't be easy. Even if Society could accept a serving girl duchess—can a roguish duke convince a serving girl to trust him with her heart?

Romances based on fairy tales have enjoyed a new surge of popularity recently, but in her fourth Spindle Cove novel, Tessa Dare gives readers an anti-fairy tale romance in which hard work and self-respect are the route to happiness, and love is the only magic anyone needs. Pauline Simms is no passive Cinderella sitting amid the cinders waiting for a prince to rescue her. She is a “mud-spattered, sugar-dusted, smart-mouthed serving girl” wearing not rags but “drab linsey-woolsey.” Instead of a wicked stepmother and an absent father, Pauline has an apathetic mother and a brute of a father who is willing to sell her for less than five pounds. Instead of shallow, selfish stepsisters, Paulina has Daniela, a loving sister with special needs.

[And what about her hero?...]

As long as there have been romance novels, there have been romance novel covers. Trends in covers have gone from long-locked men with rippling chests standing over fragilely beautiful females, to iconic covers, back to the rippling chests, onto more icons, and back again.

Do you prefer one type of cover over another? What's your favorite romance novel cover (share in comments!)

Are erotica authors born, or made? After a lifetime of reading sex-drenched novels, I finally took the plunge two years ago and published one of my own. Now, five steamy (and occasionally raunchy) “Logan Belle” novels later, I’m still thinking about the books that started it all: the juicy, passionate, explicit, heart-stopping novels of my youth that made me hide my books under my bed and set my imagination (and other parts of me) on fire.

As a pre-teen, I devoured any book with even a hint of sex. I think the first “erotic” scene I ever read was in Judy Blume’s Deenie, in which the heroine Deenie was hooking up with her crush Buddy Brader and he tried to feel her up but she was wearing a back brace. A shockingly short time later, I read D.H. Lawrence's  Lady Chatterley’s Lover—easy to sneak past the parental censors because of the classic-looking cover. Emboldened and hungry for more, I progressed to Jackie Collins’s Chances. I swapped the jacket cover featuring the photo of the vampy brunette for something innocuous. Well-worth the subterfuge: the sex scenes were scorching hot. Those first “erotic” novels are unforgettable—imprinted in my head like nothing that has followed. I recently asked fellow romance and erotica authors if they remember their first erotic read. The answer was, of course, emphatically “yes!”

Stephanie Draven (It Stings So Sweet): “My first erotic novel was the Story of O, which captivated me with its beautiful prose and strange, seductive, foreign sexuality. Alas, when I reached the end and learned that O was to be abandoned by her lover after having transformed herself into everything he desired, I threw the book across the room and wept. Maybe this is why all my erotic novels have happy endings.”

[What's the first erotic novel you read?...]

One of the great things about the internet is that it gives some pretty creative folks an outlet for their talent. We here at Team H&H devoured the first book in Leigh Bardugo's Grisha trilogy, Shadow and Bone, but none of us are nearly creative enough to do something like the above video.  It is a fan-made book trailer for Siege and Storm, the sequel to Shadow and Bone. Does this trailer capture what the Grisha trilogy is all about? Are you a fan of fan-made media?

If you're curious about the series, you can read an excerpt of Shadow and Bone and Siege and Storm here on H&H!

My love affair with the novella began when as an undergrad I discovered I much preferred “Bartleby the Scrivener” to Moby Dick and “The Dead” to Ulysses. Part of the attraction of the literary novellas was the length, of course, but as I branched out into novellas in romance fiction, I found other advantages. Not only could I read a complete novella while waiting for soccer practice to end or while my students were doing their department-mandated in-class writing, but I could also try new writers with a minimum investment of time. I reserved a special shelf for keeper anthologies and expanded my auto-buy list with authors I first fell in love with through novellas.

The only problem was that novellas in historical romance tended to be seasonal because anthologies usually centered on a holiday theme, most often Christmas but sometimes Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day or June weddings. Imagine my delight when the digital revolution led to a renaissance of historical romance novellas. Old favorites were being reissued in digital format, and new ones were being offered as ereads only. I could choose from novellas that were prequels to established series or introductions to upcoming series, novellas that gave me the story complete with HEA of a secondary character, novellas that served as a snack to tide me over while waiting for a new novel from a favorite author. My Kindle was filling up with novellas from Miranda Neville, Meredith Duran, Kate Noble, Grace Burrowes, and others. Heaven!

Soon I had so many novellas that I was faced with a difficult decision. Which of my many cherished romance fiction novellas would I archive and which would remain on my ereader to be reread as I waited in the doctor’s office or in an endless supermarket checkout line? I am still in the process of making choices, but these are the six novellas that I’ll never delete, the ones I reread again and again. (I consider Christmas novellas a category of their own. That explains the absence of Mary Balogh, Mary Jo Putney, and Carla Kelly from this list.)

[If you're looking for a quick read...]

Game of Thrones Season 3 is here! Need to catch up? Don't miss Regina Thorne's Season 2 refresher or her recap of episode 3.01, episode 3.02, episode 3.03, episode 3.04, episode 3.05, episode 3.06, and episode 3.07.

And now, onto last night's episode 3.08, “Second Sons."

*****SPOILERS*****

If last week’s episode of Game of Thrones was a meditation on the many facets of love, this week’s “Second Sons” was a cautionary tale about sex and marriage. (Boys of Westeros, if you get a woody, watch out because someone is either going to cut it off or attach a blood-sucking worm to it. It’s enough to make you join the Night’s Watch!)

We open with Arya and Sandor “the Hound” Clegane; the Hound captured Arya after she ran away from the Brotherhood without Banners last episode. Sandor is sleeping, and Arya lifts the biggest rock she can find so she can crush his skull and escape again. Arya, you need to let sleeping dogs lie! Sandor, of course, isn't asleep and he tells Arya that if she kills him, she can go free, but if he survives, he’ll break both of her hands.

[Decisions, decisions...]

Nalini Singh has released two chapters of Heart of Obsidian, her newest book in the Psy-Changeling series, on her website. If you don't want to be spoiled, turn away now.

[Click for a SPOILER!]

Livescience recently did an article mentioning words that exist in other languages that we really need in English. This one pertains to book readers the most:

Tsundoku: A Japanese word that is “the act of letting books just pile up unread on the floor and nightstand, where they function more as decoration than literature.”

Do you practice tsundoku?

Men in uniform certainly have appeal. Is it the discipline of being in service? The crisp dress uniforms? The muscles that often come with the need to stay fit in the line of duty? Yesterday was Armed Forces Day in the United States so we want to know what your favorite type of man in uniform is! Do you have a soft spot for An Officer and a Gentleman or maybe the men of Pearl Harbor? Let us know in this week's poll and share a picture of your favorite man in uniform (book, TV or movie) in the comments!

Philosophically speaking, I’m anti-New Adult fiction. I’m quite fine with Young Adult fiction, and over the years as a PW reviewer have read many a coming-of-age novel, but I’m genuinely annoyed by the notion of a genre of fiction for 18-26 year olds. What’s next? Not-Quite-New-Adult fiction, for the 27-30 set? How about Fiction for 30-Somethings, Unmarried Fiction, Menopausal Fiction, or...better still, Men in Midlife Crisis Fiction? Isn’t it bad enough that just the other week Wikipedia started removing women novelists from its list of American Novelists onto a separate list for American Women Novelists?

With New Adult Fiction, though, my grouchiness goes deeper. Blame it on All That, a variety show on Nickelodeon when my daughter was young. It aired on Saturday evenings, featuring comedy sketches and musical guests, supposedly in the tradition of SNL. If by “in the tradition of” you mean it was on television and it was on Saturday nights, then yes. If you mean anything else...well, then...no.

By the time my daughter started to watch All That, my husband and I had already spent far too much time watching Rugrats, Spongebob, Catdog, The Angry Beavers, and [my personal favorite] Rocko’s Modern Life. Anyone who grew up watching cartoons knows there’s generally something for everybody in them, regardless of your age, which is why as a family of three we could all survive the many, many re-runs. It’s why The Simpsons continues after more than 25 years on television. Unfortunately, All That was written specifically for your (and my) little kid at their most obnoxious, with no redeeming anything for anyone older than, say, ten years of age.

[Does every age group really need its own entertainment?...]

Note: This post contains SPOILERS for Season 1 of Orphan Black.

If you’re not watching BBC America’s Orphan Black (and you should be!), you’re not only missing out on a great mystery/sci-fi drama series, but also one very twisted love story. When our grifter heroine Sarah Manning (Tatiana Maslany) happens to witness the suicide of a woman, Beth Childs, who looks identical to her, she slips into her doppleganger’s life as a police detective hoping to score some cash. She gets more than she bargained for in all kinds of ways, but the most intriguing is Paul Dierden (Dylan Bruce), Beth’s live-in lover.

Streetwise punk-rock Sarah (who was previously dating a drug dealer) isn’t too impressed as she scopes out pics of the chiseled clean-cut guy, declaring to her buddy Felix that “If that was my boyfriend, I’d jump in front of a train too.” But hey, desperate times call for desperate measures. When Paul comes home unexpectedly, Sarah tries some distraction, in the form of stripping him for some sexytimes on the kitchen countertop.  (And this is cable, so there is skin. And thrusting. And moaning. Mmhmm.)

[From twisted beginnings come ?...]

Entertainment—whether it's books, music, TV, movies, or art—is a way for people to connect to those around them, escape from those around them, find an emotional touchstone, or simply entertain themselves. And since it's all entertainment, it's natural that the subgenres would blend into each other (it's not an accident that we cover TV and movies at Heroes and Heartbreakers as well as books—romantic fiction is spread across genres!).

It makes sense, then, that authors would get inspired by music, and vice versa. Many authors create playlists for the books they're writing, using the songs as a sort of Pavlov's dog to get them into the creative process. For example, in a post she wrote about the tracklist she did for Chaos Burning, Lauren Dane (whose twitter feed is filled with what she's listening to at the time) said,

Music is one of the things I use to keep my head in the story despite constant interruptions from kids, other books to deal with (copy edits, final pass pages, promotion, all that jazz).

[We got the beat...]

Recently it came to light that a few members of Team H&H had a soft spot for men in glasses and especially if that man is David Gandy. We scoured the internet and found a few other celebrities who look good without glasses but slip on those frames and it adds a certain intellectual air (and maybe a bit of a Clark Kent effect) to them. With David Gandy, we also have Ryan Gosling and Matthew Bomer. Share your favorite bespectacled beefcake in the comments!

[+3 more guys with glasses!...]

Each month, we ask our bloggers to share the best thing they’ve read (or things, plural, if our bloggers declare a tie ’cause they just can’t choose). It doesn’t have to be a new book, as evidenced below; just something that made the month sparkle a bit more.

Without further ado, here’s the installment for April 2013 (and if you’ve missed any, be sure to check out past recs via the related posts section at the bottom of the post):

Jamie Brenner

The Island by Elin Hilderbrand — This seemingly simple story of a cancelled wedding and two sisters, their mother, and their aunt spending a month on a rustic island off the coast of Nantucket kept me surprised all the way through. Elin Hilderbrand has a way of taking your expectations about where a story is going and completely subverting it. The Island had me turning the pages so fast I almost gave myself a headache. On top of an incredible sense of place (I could feel the and in my shoes and see the ocean,  the characters are intensely real. And it was drama, drama, drama.  I loved it and felt that bittersweet sadness when it ended.

[The rest of the recs...]

It's been a carefully guarded secret as to just who the hero is for Nalini Singh's Heart of Obsidian, coming out June 4th.

But today there's been a reveal from an early Goodreads reader—click through to her review, and then click again to reveal the spoiler at the bottom of her review.

Don't say we didn't warn you that you will get SPOILED (if you click...).

Today we've got not one but TWO new covers to show you, the next two books in Jami Davenport's Seattle Lumberjacks series. The first is Backfield in Motion, out in August. Here's the blurb:

All you'll ever be is a pretty face...

Star running back Bruce “Bruiser” Mackey has heard those words his entire life, especially after his twin brother’s tragic accident. He might use his surfer-boy good looks to land lucrative endorsements for his secret charity, but he hates books being judged by their covers. Which is why it’s wrong that his friend MacKenzie Hernandez is intent on giving herself a makeover.

Sure, Mac and her father have been reeling financially since her brother disappeared three years ago, and Lumberjacks management gives an annual scholarship that might get her life back on track, but he can’t imagine anyone smarter, sexier, or more beautiful than Mac already is. He can’t keep his hands off her—and the more they spend time together, the less he wants to. She’s perfect as is. One way or another, he’ll make sure the team’s tomboy greenskeeper gets a full ride. And between the two of them, they can learn to accept what’s behind them and look downfield to a future full of win.

And the second in the series, out in December 2013, is Time of Possession:

[+ another hot cover...]

The folks behind The Lizzie Bennet Diaries are at it again. Remember the summer miniseries they promised during their Kickstarter campaign? It’s here!

This adaptation of Jane Austen’s unfinished work Sanditon has Gigi Darcy taking the Pemberley Digital app on the road to the town of Sanditon. Remember that Domino app that Gigi and Darcy used to track down George Wickham? It’s back and the townspeople—with Gigi’s ever-adorable help—are using this “life revealing” app to tell the stories of their town. She’s only posted the first episode “Home Away from Home,” and already it’s clear this is going to be a different kind of show.

Right from the introduction of the first Sanditon residents there is a conflict. Mayor Tom Parker has plans for big changes in little Sanditon. Using the town as the site for Domino’s beta testing is only part of his plan; Sanditon Scoops owner Clara Breton wants people to remember all the good things about Sanditon. Clara has no plans to turn her ice cream shop—which has free sprinkles night!—into a juice bar or whatever to get on board with Tom’s plan to turn Sanditon into a health mecca. Clara is sweet and devoted to her town. Tom is hilariously internet-savvy deficient and self-righteous. His sci-fi reference making assistant is the charmingly awkward Edward Denham. Do I see a ship on the horizon? With this fandom, I doubt it will be a question for long.

[Can Sanditon fill the LBD-shaped hole in our hearts?...]

Jill Shalvis
It Had to Be You
Grand Central / May 28, 2013 / $8.00 print, $5.99 digital

Ali Winters is not having a good day. Her boyfriend left her, everyone in town thinks she's a thief, and now she's about to be kicked out of her home. Her only shot at keeping a roof over her head and clearing her name is to beg for help from a police detective who's as sexy as he is stern....

After a high-profile case goes wrong, Luke Hanover returns to his hometown for some peace and quiet. Instead he finds a bombshell brunette in a heap of trouble. As he helps Ali put her world back together, the pieces of Luke's own life finally seem to fall into place. Is this the start of a sizzling fling? Or are Luke and Ali on the brink of something big in a little town called Lucky Harbor?

It Had to Be You is the seventh book in Jill Shalvis's Lucky Harbor series, and it's is just as strong as the first six. One of the tricks to keeping an ongoing series fresh is creating characters whom people like and with whom they can identify. Ms. Shalvis has a gift for writing down-to-earth yet quirky heroines and swoonworthy, honorable heroes.

[Perfect combination!...]