Some other books set in the thirties are by Dorothy Garolock. With Hope, With Song, and With Heart are a few of them.

I’d love to find more books set in this time period.

Susan Elizabeth Phillips is pretty fun too. I can see why her Chicago Stars books gotta lot of attention–she covers a number of different of different types of wish fulfillment romances, but manages to hit a LOT of demographics while doing so.

I’ve just picked up the Shana Abe Regency dragons books. I’m divided on them—they are a cut above so many regular romances, but I feel like she missed a lot of fun chances to subvert things. (Also occasionally they fall prey to more conventional tropes too.) Still one can try them out to mix things up.

Kristan Higgins writes some cute girl-and-her-dog-and-her dysfunctional-family-and-a-guy stories. The romance is light and fluffy, but the fun is seeing all the complications her friends and family get the protags into.

On the romantic thriller side of things, there is always Barbara Michaels aka Elizabeth Peters, the mystery writer. (I prefer her books as EP since the EP side always gets the snarky heroines. Because she was trained as an Egyptologist, a lot of her stories feature archaeological elements, with the Amelia Peabody series being the most popular. But she does dose each book with a liberal helping of snark and romance.)

I think I just read and enjoyed a Loretta Chase book. Have to go back and check the shelves later.

re your difficulty in finding romance set in the 30s, maybe it’s because of that was the time of the Great Depression. people may not automatically see a time of such economic hardship as being a setting for a romance novel. just a thought.

1. 1930s = Depression = depressing (not to mention = fewer millionaires) = publishers think readers won’t buy books set during this time period

2. 1930s = the presumably young (and fit) men who’d be starring in these books would fight in World War II = what if readers think they’ll die in the war? = publishers think readers won’t buy books set during this time period

The only romance I can think of that even includes the ’30s as an important element is Michele Albert’s Her Bodyguard. (Okay, there’s also Morag McKendrick Pippin’s Blood Moon over Bengal, which is set in 1930s India, but this is one of those I’ll-mention-it-because-it’s-set-during-the-period-not-because-I-really-recommend-it books).

My favorite romance novel is Karen Ranney’s My Beloved. It gets off to a slow start, but once it gets going, wow. As far as secrets in romances go, Sebastian’s is a doozy, and even though you know there has to be a HEA because this *is* a romance, you have no idea how Ranney will get her characters there. But she does, and in a way that totally works.

Some other favorites are Candice Proctor’s Whispers of Heaven, a historical set in Tasmania, and Joan Wolf’s A London Season, a Regency which I love in spite of its rather cliched plot resolution.

All these books are out of print except for the Her Bodyguard which you can buy as an ebook on Albert’s website.

Flowers from the Storm has been sitting on my nightstand since I finished it last year. Should I keep it, even though I rarely reread romances (this might be one of the few, however), or should I send it on to someone else and get them hooked? Dilemmas!

Paranormals: I like Eileen Wilks, Kresley Cole (funny!), Marjorie Liu, and Nalini Singh, who’s a New Zealander so you have to give her a try.

She is most excellent.

Kelly recced Eva Ibbotson to me a while back–she’s more old-fashioned, sweet romances.

Now on to what you might not have read. She’s hard to find, but you must read Judith Ivory/Judy Cuevas. I also love Carla Kelly (Regency romances with “nice guy” heroes)–her older ones are some of my all-time faves. Autobuys for me are Jo Beverley, Connie Brockway, Liz Carlyle, Suzanne Enoch, Madeline Hunter, and Elizabeth Hoyt, all historical romance. Mary Balogh is an important historical romance writer whom I like; I also love Mary Jo Putney’s historical “Fallen Angels” series. Meredith Duran is a new historical author who’s interesting–part of her first novel is set in colonialized India.

For contemporary, my recent favorite is Victoria Dahl’s TALK ME DOWN. Suzanne Brockmann is reliaby excellent–hers are contemporary romantic suspense. Susan Elizabeth Phillips is an excellent contemporary author–my favorite of hers is DREAM A LITTLE DREAM.

Perhaps the biggest current romance writer is Nora Roberts. I’ve liked some of her books and disliked others. BORN IN FIRE (contemporary) is a good one–the heroine is a glass artist, and there’s all kinds of cool stuff about glassblowing. I also like her “Chesapeake” series about a family of brothers who were adopted by the same parents.

Drop me an email if you need more info/titles, or direct message me on twitter: http://twitter.com/victoriajanssen

I had a really fun book party last night at Butter (totally where Blair Waldorf eats) with Gamer Girl author Mari Mancusi, who rules. Here she is signing her book. Isn’t she pretty in purple? Also there (with me) were……

About multi-genre-ness… I was in my school’s book club this year and I was astonished by the way it was evenly split into fantasy lovers who hated realistic and realistic lovers who hated fantasy. As a lover of both (AND science fiction), this just perplexes me. They’re not exclusive concepts!

I always wondered why no one wrote like Heyer anymore. Then I read the amazon reviews for Gypsy at Almack’s. Nothing happens in this book, they say. The people just TALK.

That explained everything to me.

Which is why FLOWERS FROM THE STORM is now on my to-read list.