Nancy Ohlin
Thorn Abbey
Simon Pulse / May 7, 2013 / $16.99 print, $9.99 digital

Becca was the perfect girlfriend: smart, gorgeous, and loved by everyone at New England’s premier boarding school, Thorn Abbey. But Becca’s dead. And her boyfriend, Max, can’t get over his loss.

Then Tess transfers to Thorn Abbey. She’s shy, insecure, and ordinary—everything that Becca wasn’t. And despite her roommate’s warnings, she falls for brooding Max.

Now Max finally has a reason to move on. Except it won’t be easy. Because Becca may be gone, but she’s not quite ready to let him go.

Nancy Ohlin’s Thorn Abbey revisits Daphne Du Maurier’s romantic classic, Rebecca. Mysterious Max, his dead girlfriend Becca, and the first-person narrator, Tess, reenact a teen version of the Gothic triangle, with Tess’s boarding school roommate serving in the housekeeper role.

[You had me at Rebecca...]

Grace Burrowes
Nicholas
Sourcebooks Casablanca / May 7, 2013 / $12.99 print, $4.79 digital

Heir to the Bellefonte earldom, Nick Haddonfield has made a promise to his dying father that he’ll marry before the Season’s over. When Nick meets Lady Leah Lindsey, he realizes he’s found not only a damsel lady in need of rescuing, but also a perfect countess of convenience. Then he spoils everything by falling in love with his wife…the one woman he can never, ever have.

Nicholas by Grace Burrowes is the second in her “Lonely Lords” series. Readers might already be somewhat familiar with Leah Lindsey’s difficult situation, as a few events in Leah’s romance with Nick Haddonfield appeared in volume one as a subplot. As a reminder, after having suffered a scandal when young, Leah’s father attempts to marry her off to the highest bidder. Nick, meanwhile, is being pressured to marry because his father, the current earl, is declining in health and wishes to secure the succession.

[Neither's in an enviable position, then...]

Deanna Raybourn
A Spear of Summer Grass
Harlequin MIRA / April 30, 2013 / $15.95 print, $8.69 digital

The daughter of a scandalous mother, Delilah Drummond is already notorious, even amongst Paris society. But her latest scandal is big enough to make even her oft-married mother blanch. Delilah is exiled to Kenya and her favorite stepfather's savannah manor house until gossip subsides.

Fairlight is the crumbling, sun-bleached skeleton of a faded African dream, a world where dissolute expats are bolstered by gin and jazz records, cigarettes and safaris. As mistress of this wasted estate, Delilah falls into the decadent pleasures of society.

Against the frivolity of her peers, Ryder White stands in sharp contrast. As foreign to Delilah as Africa, Ryder becomes her guide to the complex beauty of this unknown world. Giraffes, buffalo, lions and elephants roam the shores of Lake Wanyama amid swirls of red dust. Here, life is lush and teeming-yet fleeting and often cheap.

Amidst the wonders—and dangers—of Africa, Delilah awakes to a land out of all proportion: extremes of heat, darkness, beauty and joy that cut to her very heart. Only when this sacred place is profaned by bloodshed does Delilah discover what is truly worth fighting for—and what she can no longer live without.

Deanna Raybourn is best known for her Lady Julia Grey mystery series, set in Victorian England, but her new novel, A Spear of Summer Grass, is something different. There’s still a mystery, but the romance element is stronger and more self-contained. The setting, colonized Kenya in 1923, is almost a romance character in its own right, romanticized by the Europeans who live there. It’s difficult not to be reminded of the movie version of Out of Africa, set in a similar milieu.

[Mystery, romance, and more, mmm...]

Bee Ridgway
The River of No Return
Dutton / April 23, 2013 / $27.95 print, $14.99 digital

“You are now a member of the Guild. There is no return.”

Two hundred years after he was about to die on a Napoleonic battlefield, Lord Nicholas Falcott wakes up in a hospital bed in twenty-first century London. The Guild, a secretive organization that controls time travel, helps him make a new life in the modern world.

But Nick yearns for home and for one beautiful woman in particular, now lost to history.

Back in 1815, that very woman, Julia Percy, finds herself the guardian of a family secret inherited from her enigmatic grandfather... how to manipulate time. But there are those who seek to possess Julia’s power and she begins to realize she is in the gravest peril.

The Guild’s rules are made to be broken, and Nick discovers how to travel back to the nineteenth century and his ancestral home. Fate and the fraying fabric of time draw Nick and Julia together once again . . . soon enough, they are caught up in an adventure that puts the future of the world into their hands.

Bee Ridgway’s The River of No Return is an unusual book: part romance, part historical, and part science fiction. I enjoyed two things about it in particular: first, the ways in which Ridgway critically interrogated how we write about the past in genre fiction; and second, the story’s unpredictability—for much of the novel, I was genuinely unsure what direction it would go next, which meant I kept turning pages. These two things go together.

[Like peanut butter and jelly?!...]

I came to romance as an adult reader, and realized that what attracted me were things I had always sought out in my other genre reading, whether fantasy, science fiction, or mystery: interesting characters who had problems they could solve with the help of others. In romance, the main romantic couple are generally the interesting characters, and they help each other to solve the problem, whether it be a search for meaning in life, a need for safety, or escape from being rich and rakish. In fantasy, there may be a couple of main characters, or there may be a larger group with more complex interrelationships.

The books and authors described here should provide a starting place for romance readers who’ve wanted to try fantasy on for size; if we’re lucky, those who are fantasy readers already might find something new they’d like to read.

[Prepare to add to your TBR pile!]

Suzanne Brockmann
Headed for Trouble
Ballantine / April 30, 2013 / $7.99 print, digital

• Tough-as-nails Troubleshooters operative Sam Starrett learns the agony of loving someone in danger—and the hell of waiting on the home front—as his wife, Alyssa, hurtles into a foreign hotspot that’s about to boil over.
 
• Navy SEAL Frank O’Leary’s ill-fated holiday reunion with his older brother takes a turn for the better—when a chance encounter on a rainy New Orleans street gives Frank a reason to be thankful after all.
 
• In a maze of tunnels deep beneath a military base in Germany, Jules Cassidy, Alyssa Locke, and their comrades in arms match wits with terrorists on a mission with explosive consequences.
 
Plus more never-before-released adventures featuring Jenk, Izzy, Gillman, Lopez, Kenny, Savannah, and other members of SEAL Team 16—along with Suzanne Brockmann’s exclusive interviews with her beloved characters.
 
Looking for the best kind of trouble? You’ve found it!

Headed for Trouble by Suzanne Brockmann was an unusual treat: a selection of short stories and other related material, all of it tied to Brockmann’s Troubleshooters novels (the book is numbered 16.5 in the series). Because most of the stories fit into series continuity, or are more meaningful with prior knowledge of the characters, the book seems mostly intended for existing fans. There’s a handy timeline to help readers, old and new, figure out where everything falls during the series, plus each story has the date at the beginning.

[That's always very helpful!...]

Zoe Archer
Sinner’s Heart
Zebra / April 2, 2013 / $6.99 print, $4.99 digital

Abraham Stirling, Lord Rothwell, was a fighter once, a soldier in the Colonies. But Bram returned to London with more nightmares than tales of glory. Now he drowns his senses in the arms of countless women, while his friends, the Hellraisers, ensure he needn't sin alone. Until, that is, the Devil himself grants them each a wish, undoing their camaraderie as they explore their wicked powers. Bram finds himself magically bound to Valeria Livia Corva, the sensuous priestess who raised the Devil the first time—and died to send the demon back. She may be a ghost, but Livia is no angel. The raw passion she witnesses in Bram's memories isn't much different from her behavior when she had a body to enjoy. But it doesn't make it any easier to convince Bram to become a warrior again, lest all London burn. And the fierce desires reawakening within her might just start the blaze.

Third in the Georgian England-set Hellraisers series, Sinner’s Heart follows the tortured Bram Stirling, who’s become magically attached to a Roman ghost, Valeria Livia Corva, a situation which pleases neither of them.

[That could get complicated...]

Grace Burrowes
Darius
Sourcebooks Casablanca / April 2, 2013 / $7.99 print, $6.79 digital

Desperate, penniless, and shunned by his wealthy father, Darius Lindsey begins offering himself secretly to jaded society ladies. He hangs onto his last shreds of honor, but he's losing ground financially each month.

That is until the aging Lord William Longstreet makes Darius an offer he can't refuse: get the Lord's pretty young wife-of-convenience, Lady Vivian, pregnant discreetly, and he will earn enough money to never want again. But problems lie ahead when the stunning Vivian captures his heart, and his clients refuse to let him go. Can Darius untangle himself without scandal and offer himself to Vivian heart and soul?

Grace Burrowes’s Darius begins a new series called “The Lonely Lords.” It’s the story of Darius and Vivian, both of whom are trapped in unsatisfactory lives because of their obligations to others. Darius supports an illegitimate young relation and a number of servants turned off from his father’s estate, while Vivian married the much older William solely as protection from a nefarious stepfather, and feels obligated to make the most of it. Vivian and her husband are friends, but no more, and it’s clear to her that he will only ever love his deceased first wife. Both Darius and Vivian are very isolated even in the midst of the social whirl.

[No man is an island unless they're part of London's ton...]

Alyssa Everett
Lord of Secrets
Carina / March 25, 2013 / $2.99 digital

Rosalie Whitwell has spent most of her life sailing the globe with her adventurous father, dreaming of the day she can settle in one place long enough to have a home and family of her own. When her father suffers a fatal heart attack in the middle of the North Atlantic, Rosalie turns in her panic to a fellow passenger—the cool, reclusive Lord Deal.

For years David Linney, Marquess of Deal, has avoided the society of others. Even so, he's drawn to his lovely shipmate, like him the victim of family tragedy.

As the voyage nears its end, Lord Deal is compelled to propose. But on their wedding night, Rosalie gets an unwelcome surprise: her handsome husband is strangely reluctant to consummate the marriage. Does she fall short of her groom's expectations? Or is he hiding a secret past that only she can unlock?

Alyssa Everett’s Lord of Secrets is a story for those who enjoy reading about a good old-fashioned convoluted Marriage of Convenience. The marriage’s success teeters upon the hero’s fear of true intimacy, and upon the heroine’s ability to ask for what she wants. In a way, the entire conflict rides upon the much-maligned “Big Misunderstanding,” about the hero’s past, but Everett makes the trope interesting by adding layers of complexity. It isn’t an accident that Rosalie and David don’t uncover the main problem immediately; both of them are afraid to speak, for different reasons, and their fear turns what might have been a simple issue into a tangled mess.

[See the trope in a new way...]

Saskia Walker
The Jezebel
Harlequin / March 26, 2013 / $10.17 print, $8.49 digital

On the run from her powerful benefactor whose unscrupulous interest in her magic has forced her to flee, Margaret Taskill has never needed a hero more. In order to gain passage from England to her homeland in Scotland, she plans to win over a rugged Scottish sea captain with the only currency she has: her virginity.

Maisie submits to Captain Roderick Cameron's raw sexuality in search of protection, but as their initial attraction grows into obsessive desire, devastating powers are unleashed within her. But the journey threatens to take a dangerous turn, forcing Maisie to keep close the secret truth about what she is, and keep the superstitious crew—unhappy at having a woman on board—at bay.

With Maisie's wealthy sponsor giving chase, Roderick must stay one step ahead of the British Navy before her seductive magic causes a full-scale mutiny. He may believe he has full command of his ship, but he's about to get much more than he bargained for.

The Jezebel by veteran erotica author Saskia Walker is the third in her Taskill Witches series, erotic romances set in 18th-century Scotland. Its heroine, Maisie Taskill, is the twin sister of Jessie, heroine of The Harlot; the middle book, The Libertine, featured their brother. All three siblings possess supernatural powers that they must conceal from society at large, on pain of death.

[Paranormal historical erotica, oooh...]

Ashlyn Macnamara
A Most Scandalous Proposal
Random House / February 26, 2013 / $7.99 print & digital

At the age of two and twenty, Julia St. Claire is headed firmly and happily for the shelf. For years, she has watched her older sister pine for a man who barely acknowledges her. Determined to guard her heart against that sort of pain, Julia seeks nothing more than a civilized, sensible union. Then just such an arrangement is offered—by the man of her sister's dreams—and Julia must choose: betray her sister or turn to her childhood friend, Benedict at the risk of opening her heart.

Benedict Revelstoke has resigned his commission and returned to the social whirl of the ton, expecting to pick up his life where he left it: attending his club, gambling, and secretly loving Julia St. Claire. When he learns a rake has made her betrothal and reputation the object of a wager, he seeks to warn her. But when he betrays his feelings before the reticent Julia, he fears he has lost their longtime friendship-until she turns up at his townhouse with a scandalous proposal.

It’s always exciting to try a new author, so I was eager to check out Ashlyn Macnamara’s A Most Scandalous Proposal.  Though seemingly a traditional Regency historical romance, Macnamara has chosen to play with structure and plot elements in a way that I found both amusing and rewarding.  There are a number of hints throughout that Macnamara had an homage to Sense and Sensibility in mind, most notably in the basic personality types of the two sisters, but in other, smaller ways as well (including a cameo appearance by the actual Austen novel). Macnamara gives it all her own twists and turns, and sets her version in the affluent environs of Regency London.

[London calling...]

I’ve been gradually collecting Kathleen Gilles Seidel’s category romances.  The most recent one I’ve found is 1994's Again, which I enjoyed hugely and read in a single evening.  Others seem to have enjoyed it, too, as it won a RITA award in 1995. 

I like books with heroes and/or heroines who are artists, actors, or writers, and this one featured an actor hero with a television writer heroine.  The setting was also particularly cool: a daytime soap opera. In fact, one of my favorite things about the novel was all the details about how the soap was conceived, written, and produced.  My other favorite thing about the novel was how the romance and action plots intertwined in that setting; some of the romance happens, at one remove, in the plot of the soap.

Soap operas seem to be constantly being canceled these days, or relocating to the internet, but in the world of Again, in the mid-1990s, they’re still vibrant.  Heroine Jenny Cotton, fan of Georgette Heyer, is the creator and chief writer of a half-hour soap set in the Regency period and titled “My Lady’s Chamber.”  There was one detail that really made me laugh:

Jenny did the longterm story outlines; she also wrote the “breakdowns,” detailed scene-by-scene summaries of each show. From those breakdowns her staff of five script writers—former Regency romance novelists, all of whom worked out of their homes—wrote the actual scripts.

[Regency romance authors ftw!...]

Karen Lord
The Best of All Possible Worlds
Del Rey / February 12, 2013 / $25.00 print, $12.99 digital

A proud and aloof alien society finds their homeland destroyed, and now must reach out to the rest of the galaxy for aid and understanding. The survivors strive to preserve their cherished way of life, but learn they may only be able to protect it by changing it forever. And an alien man and a very human woman work together to create the destiny of this vanishing race...and find their own destinies in each other.

The Best of All Possible Worlds is the second novel by award-winning author Karen Lord. It’s science fiction, with the feel of one of Ursula K. LeGuin’s Hainish novels about a society of humans spread across a number of different planets, each with their own unique cultures and levels of paranormal ability. The core of the story is the relationship between Grace Delarua, a government liaison to refugees from the destroyed planet Sadira, and Dllenahkh, the chief representative for that group. Dllenahkh has very strong psychic abilities, and Grace is beginning to discover her own talents in this area.

[And what do they discover together?...]

Marissa Meyer
Scarlet (Lunar Chronicles #2)
Feiwel & Friends/ February 5, 2013 / $17.99 print, $9.99 digital

Cinder returns in the second thrilling installment of the Lunar Chronicles. She’s trying to break out of prison—even though if she succeeds, she’ll be the Commonwealth’s most wanted fugitive.

Halfway around the world, Scarlet Benoit’s grandmother is missing. It turns out there are many things Scarlet doesn’t know about her grandmother and the grave danger she has lived in her whole life. When Scarlet encounters Wolf, a street fighter who may have information as to her grandmother’s whereabouts, she has no choice but to trust him, though he clearly has a few dark secrets of his own.

As Scarlet and Wolf work to unravel one mystery, they find another when they cross paths with Cinder. Together, they must stay one step ahead of the vicious Lunar Queen who will do anything to make Prince Kai her husband, her king, her prisoner.

Scarlet by Marissa Meyer shifts the setting for the well-known fairytale “Little Red Riding Hood” to a far-future Earth. The heroine’s red hood is changed to a beat-up red hoodie, the grandmother was in the military, and the wolf does not run on four legs. It’s a Young Adult science fiction novel with ongoing romances; you can read an excerpt or a get a First Look at Book 1 in the series, Cinder, here on H&H.

[The story continues...]

Molly O’Keefe
Crazy Thing Called Love
Bantam / January 29, 2013 / $7.99 print & digital

Dallas TV morning show host Madelyn Cornish is poised, perfect, and unflappable, from her glossy smile to her sleek professionalism. No one knows that her iron will guards a shattered heart and memories of a man she’s determined to lock out. Until that man shows up at a morning meeting like a bad dream: Billy Wilkins, sexy hockey superstar in a tailspin—still skating, still fighting, and still her ex-husband.

Now the producers want this poster child for bad behavior to undergo an on-air makeover, and Billy, who has nothing to lose, agrees to the project. It’s his only chance to get near Maddy again, and to fight for the right things this time around. He believes in the fire in Maddy’s whiskey eyes and the passion that ignites the air between them. This bad-boy heartbreaker wants a last shot to be redeemed by the only thing that matters: Maddy’s love.

When I am in the mood for contemporary romance, Molly O’Keefe is one of my go-to authors.  I like that her characters often are dealing with family issues, which adds intriguing conflict to the romantic relationship.

[Love me, love my family...]

I love romances with characters who are artists. For me, it’s a way of seeing through the eyes of someone who is special in a way that I’ve never experienced, so I can imagine what it might be like to be able to create a painting or sculpture. (It helps that the heroes and heroines of romance novels who happen to be artists never seem to produce terrible art.) Historical artist characters have the added advantage of having a sort of resonance with my college art history texts; I can imagine what their work might be like.

The most memorable artist character in romance is, I believe, Nardi de Saint Vallier in Bliss by Judy Cuevas (AKA Judith Ivory). He’s wealthy and an acclaimed sculptor, but also an addict who spends almost the entire novel high on ether. The heroine, Hannah Van Evan, is instrumental in helping him out of his drugged haze.  It’s a complicated, difficult relationship in a story that doesn’t shy away from the potential dark side of being an artist.

Jonas Whitaker in Megan Chance’s The Portrait suffers from manic depression, for which he self-medicates with alcohol and opium. Heroine Imogene Carter goes to him as a student, and later serves as his model. This novel shows that being artistically talented can be a torment as well as a gift when it’s coupled with other issues. Jonas and Imogene face a long and difficult road together.

[But they’re together...]

Mary Jo Putney’s “Fallen Angels” trilogy (that happens to be seven books long) was among the very first romance novels I ever read. It’s also one of the historical series I’ve reread the most times, so it's naturally the one I'd try my hand at fantasy casting.

Thunder and Roses

The “gypsy earl” hero Nicholas Davies is half-Romany, and if it were me making a movie, I’d want to stick to someone with Romany heritage. Also, since this is fantasy, I felt perfectly justified in choosing an actor who is probably a tad too old for the part. However, behold Nikolai Slichenko!

Meanwhile, heroine Clare Morgan is a Welsh schoolmistress.  I couldn’t resist casting Welsh actress Eve Myles.

[Who would you cast?...]

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 reads 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!

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

Megan Frampton:

A Lady Awakened by Cecilia Grant
This appeared to be a totally artificial set-up—woman has one month to conceive a child following her husband’s death so the child, not the evil nephew, will inherit the estate. And it is, but it’s also got two rich, deeply flawed, difficult-to-love characters in the hero and heroine. I was blown away by Grant’s textured language and the resonance of historical details.

[Plus more great recommendations!]

Science fiction author Anne McCaffrey also wrote romances early in her publishing career. Her recent death inspired me to revisit those works, which I had originally encountered in the mid-1980s. One of those is The Mark of Merlin by Anne McCaffrey:

Carla Murdoch had learned what it was to be alone, growing up on different army posts. But now her loneliness is terrible—for her officer father met a mysterious death on a foreign battlefield, and Carla has been sent to live in her new guardian's New England mansion . . . a remote, snowbound place where she finds she isn't really wanted. Together with her dog, Merlin, Carla must make a new start and face demons within and without—for her father's killer is now on her trail, too.

The Mark of Merlin, published in 1971, is set during World War II. The heroine, James Carlyle “Carla” Murdoch, has grown up as an army brat, traveling with her father until the outbreak of the war. When he’s sent overseas, she and her German Shepherd, Merlin, are sent back to the United States, where she begins to attend college. Then her father is killed, and when the novel opens, she’s traveling to meet her new guardian Regan Laird, a man whom she’s never met…and because of her name, he thinks she’s a boy.

[I think we know how this goes...]