J. Kenner
Claim Me
Bantam / April 23, 2013 / $10.99 print, $9.99 digital

For Damien, our obsession is a game. For me, it is fiercely, blindingly, real.

Damien Stark’s need is palpable—his need for pleasure, his need for control, his need for me. Beautiful and brilliant yet tortured at his core, he is in every way my match.

I have agreed to be his alone, and now I want him to be fully mine. I want us to possess each other beyond the sweetest edge of our ecstasy, into the deepest desires of our souls. To let the fire that burns between us consume us both.

But there are dark places within Damien that not even our wildest passion can touch. I yearn to know his secrets, yearn for him to surrender to me as I have surrendered to him. But our troubled pasts will either bind us close . . . or shatter us completely.

Claim Me, the second novel in J. Kenner’s bestselling Release Me trilogy, wastes no time bringing the reader back into the erotic dance between Nikki Fairchild and billionaire Damian Stark. It opens with Nikki standing naked and bound at Stark’s magnificent Malibu home, her raw sensuality being transformed into a nude portrait commissioned by Stark.

[This sounds interesting...]

What is it about romance and fashion that make such an irresistible combination? I’ve always had a soft spot for “sex and shopping novels” (or, as an editor I know once so eloquently put it, “shopping and f*cking novels.”)  We talk a lot about the sex…but what about the shopping part of the equation? In some novels, the passion for fashion is as potent as anything that happens between the sheets. As we get ready to open our closets for spring cleaning, here’s look at a few of the most satisfying sartorial reads this side of Sex and the City.

Scruples by Judith Krantz

A fashion-filled, sexy take on the classic duckling into a swan story, Scruples follows the rise of Wilhemina “Billy” Winthrop Ikehorn Orsini. Billy is an overweight and style-challenged girl who turns into  beauty after a life-changing trip to Paris. Her glamorous ascent continues with her marriage to mogul Ellis Ikehorn. When Ellis dies, he leaves her a very wealthy widow.

What does Billy do with her heartbreak and loads of money? She channels both into creating the most exclusive, successful clothing boutique in the history of Beverly Hills: Scruples.

Gets the red carpet award for: Scruples, published in 1978,  is the original. It’s the Godfather of fashion novels.

[What else made the guest list?...]

The lyrics of the 1976 hit song “Torn Between Two Lovers” by Mary McGregor captures the agony and the ecstasy of my favorite romantic dilemma: the love triangle. What is it about the love triangle that rouses such passion, both in the fictional characters embroiled in them, and in us, the readers?

While contemplating this post, I asked my friends about their favorite love triangles. Not surprisingly, everyone had an opinion, though it was often followed with the question, “Wait—is that technically a love triangle?” Geometry has never been my strength, so I consulted Wikepedia for some parameters. This is what I found: “Two main forms of love triangle have been distinguished: there is the rivalrous triangle, where the lover is competing with a rival for the love of the beloved, and the split-object triangle, where a lover has split their attention between two love objects." Either way, it makes for great story-telling, which is why the love triangle has been a staple in books going all the way back to the Old Testament (Remember Jacob gets tricked into marrying Leah although he is madly in love with her sister, Rachel?) and more recently, of course, in Twilight. Below, a look at a few of my favorites in between:

The Classic  Triangles

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton: Oh, poor Newland Archer. He’s a perfect New York gentleman in the height of New York’s Gilded Age, all set for a proper life with perfectly lovely May Welland; until he meets her intriguing, highly improper cousin, Countess Ellen Olsenska. His is an gut-wrenching choice, made all the more difficult by the strict mores of the time. (That’s what makes classic triangles so fantastic!)

[All that beautiful angst...]

L. Marie Adeline
S.E.C.R.E.T
Broadway / February 5, 2013 / $15.00 print, $9.99 digital 

Cassie Robichaud’s life has been filled with regret and loneliness since the death of her husband. She waits tables at the rundown Café Rose in New Orleans, and every night she heads home to her solitary one-bedroom apartment. But when she discovers a notebook left behind by a mysterious woman at the café, Cassie’s world is forever changed. The notebook’s stunningly explicit confessions shock and fascinate Cassie, and eventually lead her to S∙E∙C∙R∙E∙T, an underground society dedicated to helping women realize their wildest, most intimate sexual fantasies. Cassie soon immerses herself in an electrifying journey through a series of ten rapturous fantasies with gorgeous men who awaken and satisfy her like never before. As she is set free from her inhibitions, she discovers a new confidence that transforms her, giving her the courage to live passionately. Equal parts enticing, liberating and emotionally powerful, S∙E∙C∙R∙E∙T is a world where fantasy becomes reality.

When L. Marie Adeline's S.E.C.R.E.T. opens, thirty-five-year-old Cassie Robichaud’s life is at a stand-still: She is widowed, hasn’t had a date—never mind sex—in years, and her days are spent waiting tables in a New Orleans café. At night, she goes home alone to her one-bedroom apartment in a building nicknamed the “spinster hotel.”

[Not the most complimentary of names...]

T.J. Brown
Summerset Abbey
Gallery / January 15, 2013 / $15 print, ~$10.93+ digital

Reminiscent of Downton Abbey, this first novel in a new series follows two sisters and their maid as they are suddenly separated by the rigid class divisions within a sprawling aristocratic estate and thrust into an uncertain world on the brink of WWI...

Rowena and Victoria, daughters to the second son of the Earl of Summerset, have always treated their governess’s daughter, Prudence, like a sister. But when their father dies and they move in with their uncle’s family in a much more traditional household, Prudence is relegated to the maids’ quarters, much to the girls’ shock and dismay. The impending war offers each girl hope for a more modern future, but the ever-present specter of class expectations makes it difficult for Prudence to maintain a foot in both worlds.

Vividly evoking both time and place and filled with authentic dialogue and richly detailed atmosphere, Summerset Abbey is a charming and timeless historical debut.

Turning the opening pages of this Edwardian drama, T.J. Brown's Summerset Abbey, I could not help but hear the Downton Abbey theme song. And that’s not a bad thing.

It’s 1913, and the lives of the Buxton sisters, Rowena (age twenty-two) and Victoria (age eighteen), are upended by the death of their beloved father. Despite their aristocratic lineage, their father raised them in an unusually progressive household. Everything changes when they are sent to live under their uncle’s guardianship at Summerset Abbey, the family estate outside of London.

[Juicy drama coming right up?...]

J. Kenner
Release Me
Bantam /January 1, 2013 / $8.99 print / $7.99 digital

He was the one man I couldn’t avoid. And the one man I couldn’t resist.  

Damien Stark could have his way with any woman. He was sexy, confident, and commanding: Anything he wanted, he got. And what he wanted was me.
 
Our attraction was unmistakable, almost beyond control, but as much as I ached to be his, I feared the pressures of his demands. Submitting to Damien meant I had to bare the darkest truth about my past—and risk breaking us apart.
 
But Damien was haunted, too. And as our passion came to obsess us both, his secrets threatened to destroy him—and us—forever.

On the surface, recent Los Angeles transplant Nikki Fairchild has it all: beauty, ambition, brains, and a Texas oil money pedigree. But Nikki is a woman with secrets, and her move to the City of Angels is not purely for professional reasons—it’s her chance to leave her demons behind and start over.

[And what does her fresh start bring?...]

May old friends be forgot? We don't think so! We're celebrating our favorite reads with five days of the Best of 2012. We asked our bloggers for their favorite recommendations of 2012, with one stipulation, they had to be new to them and not necessarily new to 2012. We know we got a few recommendations to add to our to be read piles and it's a great way to feed those readers!

Don't miss out on the shopping list for these great recommendations once you finish reading, and check out the recommendations from Day One, Day Two, Day Three, and Day Four, too! Click here to view the Day Five shopping list.

Sage Spelling:

The Renegade Angels series by Sylvia Day.
A dark and dangerous world where vampires are fallen angels, and lycans and vampires rebel against the elite Special Ops unit of the seraphim as each race struggles for power over one another.

[Struggles for power, you say? That sounds fun!]

Have you been naughty, or nice?

If the answer is nice, then it’s time to remedy that with something dirtier than a lump of coal in your stocking this Christmas: my essential erotic novel gift list. These books all have two things in common: they will make St. Nick blush redder than his suit, and they are as timeless as tinsel on your tree.

Mistral’s Daughter by Judith Krantz

An epic novel of art, fashion, super-hot sex, that begins with an erotic romp through sumptuous 1920s Paris and follows three generations of super-fab redheads.

Why it makes the list: The anti-hero, Julian Mistral, who seduces and betrays the heroine, Maggie, only to fall in love with her daughter twenty years later.

[That sounds...complicated...]

Halfway through the second season of Homeland, It doesn’t take a CIA agent to detect the love triangle brewing.

While Carrie’s recent vindication brought her back into the scorching orbit of Brody, it also brought a new Agent into the fold: CIA agent Peter Quinn, played by Rupert Friend, the show’s first official hottie. I know, I know—Carrie and Brody’s chemistry could power a small country. But as mentioned in Tara Gelsomino’s post Shipping When You Shouldn’t: Homeland’s Carrie and Brody, this came as somewhat of surprise to the show’s producers—who then, wisely,  decided to run with it. With Quinn, they clearly weren’t sitting around waiting for lightning to strike twice: This guy is love-interest casting if I ever saw it. (Rupert Friend might be known to some viewers from the films Pride & Predjudice and The Young Victoria, or his former real-life role as Keira Knightly’s boyfriend.)

We first meet Quinn in episode four, when Carrie walks into new surveillance center for tracking Brody. A dark-haired guy with chiseled good-looks and a cocky demeanor asks, “Who are these guys?”  

Carrie’s back is immediately up. “Um, the same guys who already watched Brody for 300 hours. Who are you?” 

“I’m the guy running things.”

[Say whaaaaaat?...]

I’m counting the days until Skyfall hits movie theaters and I’m reunited with my first hero, Bond—James Bond.

Growing up, while other girls my age were hanging posters of Rob Lowe and Matt Dillon, my romantic ideal was Roger Moore, a British guy who was five times my age. I blame my parents, who brought me to every Bond film from the time I was in elementary school. I don’t know if my parents thought that “love 'em and leave 'em” Bond was an appropriate male example for me at age, oh, I don’t know—seven. Maybe they just didn’t feel like paying for a babysitter.

Either way, when a Bond film came out, I was there.

It took many films for me to realize that I was supposed to care about Bond catching the criminals and saving the world. For years (okay, still) all I cared about was Bond’s relationship with the woman du jour. The spark of that romance, no matter how brief the encounter, no matter how cheesy (this was the '80s, after all), is how I rate Bond films.

[Seems perfectly reasonable to us...]

Today Heroes and Heartbreakers is pleased to welcome author Jamie Brenner to the site. Jamie's Gin Lovers, set during Prohibition and the Jazz Age (unusual historical, anyone?) is also a serial, and it appears Jamie is already a big fan of the serial format, since she loves soap operas so much. Plus, she explains below, you can learn a lot about life by watching soaps. Thanks for joining us, Jamie!

It’s a sad fact that the words “soap opera” garner as much respect in our culture as the words “processed cheese.” So up until now, I have been reluctant to admit that the trashy travails of daytime dramas, primetime soaps, and some spectacular, sudsy novels—have in fact taught me some of life’s most valuable lessons.

It took me hours of viewing and decades of reading to glean the following nuggets of wisdom, but they have served me well. Below, the ten tartiest and true things I have learned from soap operas and their literary counterpart, trashy novels.

1. The more miserable the childhood, the more spectacular the adult success

Case in point: In Jackie Collins's Chances, young Lucky Santangelo discovers her murdered mother’s body floating in the family swimming pool. She is later shipped off to boarding schools and ignored by her gangster father before being married off at age sixteen. She grows up to be gorgeous, fabulously wealthy, and the head of her father’s empire. In Judith Krantz's Scruples, Billy Ikehorn Orsini suffered a childhood of obesity and isolation, only to become rich, beautiful, and the wildly successful owner of Beverly Hills’ hottest boutique. The list goes on and on. The point is, misery is life’s great motivator. I try to remember this when my children complain.

[+ 9 more valuable lessons...]