We’re doing the cliche thing and featuring romances for the month of February. Within that broad genre, however, you’ll find thrillers, literary fiction, bodice-busters, and tear-jerkers. And February is also Black History Month, so you’ll see a couple of asterisks (**) next to the books featuring Black protagonists.
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**The Hand I Fan with by Tina McElroy Ansa
Lena, now forty-five and tired of being "the hand everyone fans with," has grown weary of shouldering the town's problems and wants to find a little love and companionship for herself. So she and a friend perform a supernatural ritual to conjure up a man for Lena. She gets one all right: a ghost named Herman who, though dead for one hundred years, is full of life and all man. His love changes Lena's life forever, satisfying as never before both her physical and spiritual needs. (Publisher’s summary)
The Forest House by Marion Zimmer Bradley
In a Britain struggling to survive Roman invasion, Eilan is the daughter of a Druidic warleader, gifted with visions and marked by fate to become a priestess of the Forest House.
But fate also led Eilan to Gaius, a soldier of mixed blood, son of the Romans sent to subdue the native British. For Gaius, Eilan felt forbidden love, and her terrible secret will haunt her even as she is anointed as the new High Priestess. With mighty enemies poised to destroy the magic the Forest House shelters, Eilan must trust in the power of the great Goddess to lead her through the treacherous labyrinth of her destiny. (Publisher’s summary)
Possession by A.S. Byatt
"Possession" is an exhilarating novel of wit and romance, at once an intellectual mystery and a triumphant love story. It is the tale of a pair of young scholars researching the lives of two Victorian poets. As they uncover their letters, journals, and poems, and track their movements from London to Yorkshire -- from spiritualist seances to the fairy-haunted far west of Brittany -- what emerges is an extraordinary counterpoint of passions and ideas. (Publisher’s summary)
Crazy for You by Jennifer Crusie
Quinn McKenzie has always lived what she calls a "beige" life... It's a perfectly happy and secure life, [but] she's bored to the point of insanity.
But when Quinn decides to change her life by adopting a stray dog over everyone's objections, everything begins to spiral out of control. Soon a man from her past comes back into her life and the old attraction is ignited again. Now she's coping with dog-napping, breaking and entering, seduction, sabotage, stalking, more secrets than she really wants to know, and two men who are suddenly crazy...for her. (Publisher’s summary)
Keeper of the Bride by Tess Gerritsen
Nina Cormier would have been a beautiful bride, had the groom bothered to show up. But when the empty church exploded, Nina got the message. Someone was after the bride-to-be. Portland cop Sam Navarro was no white knight. He'd protect Nina, but there was no way he would put them both at risk by falling in love with her. (Publisher’s summary)
Liberty’s Lady by Karen Harper
On the eve of the Revolutionary War, one woman is about to betray her own heart by falling in love with her sworn enemy. Journalist Libby Morgan uses her newspaper to fan the flames of revolt against England. Cameron Gant, New York aristocrat, tory and secret spy, is the prime target of her rhetoric. Sworn enemies by their divided loyalties, they are drawn into a passion that does not recognize sides. Soon they are risking their lives and their love in a daring masquerade that could end in liberty--or death. (Publisher’s summary)
Julie by Catherine Marshall
Julie Wallace is just eighteen in 1934 when her father risks their life savings on a struggling newspaper and moves the family to a flood-prone Pennsylvania town.
It is here a young woman's convictions take firm root, as Julie finds herself taking sides when battle lines are drawn between desperate steelworkers and the mill owners who control their lives. And it is here where her heart and her loyalties are torn, divided between two special men. But when a devastating natural catastrophe becomes the ultimate test of courage and commitment, Julie's remarkable inner strength will come to the fore -- a strength born of faith and love. (Goodreads reviewer Loraine)
**Seduction by Felicia Mason
Award-winning journalist C.J. Mayview leaves behind her career and commitments to seek peace of mind in Serentiy Falls. U.S. Marshal Wes Donovan is in the business of uncovering secrets. His curiosity is piqued by the lovely city sophisticate who doesn't seem to possess a past. And when C.J. becomes caught up in a shocking conspiracy that soon ensnares Donovan as well, she and Donovan must trust each other to save themselves--and their love. (Publisher’s summary)
**How Stella Got Her Groove Back by Terry McMillan
A holiday in Jamaica turns into sizzling romance for 42-year-old Stella Payne, a black divorcee and financial security analyst, when she meets Winston Shakespeare, a local assistant cook. Stella invites him to San Francisco to show him off to friends and to her 11-year-old son, and Shakespeare is a hit. Only problem, Shakespeare is 20 years old. (Publisher’s summary)
My Phillipe by Barbara Miller
Returning to England after years abroad with Wellington's army -- first as an officer's daughter, then trapped in a loveless marriage with a military man -- recently widowed Bella MacFarlane longs only to raise her son, Jamie, on the farm she inherited from her father. That soon proves to be a battle she cannot win, for Jamie is the new duke of Dorney, and his guardian is a man she dreads facing -- her late husband's cousin, Phillipe Armitage. Four years before, Bella and Phillipe had shared a single night of passion. But when Phillipe was captured by the French, Bella surrendered to his cousin's marriage proposal...only to discover that the man she had loved and thought dead survives... Now, though Bella is free once more, memories of her supposed treachery forestall any thought of reconciliation. But when danger threatens both Bella and the child under their protection, he charges to their defense, determined to win a lifetime of happiness for them all. (Publisher’s summary)
**Jazz by Toni Morrison
In Harlem, 1926, Joe Trace, a door-to-door salemsan in his fifties, kills his teenage lover. At the funeral, his wife Violet slashes the dead girl's face and then desperately searches to find why Joe was unfaithful. The profound love story is immersed in the sights and sounds of Black urban life during the Jazz Age. (Publisher’s summary)
An Officer and a Gentleman by Steven Phillip Smith
A timeless tale of romance, friendship, and growth. Loner Zack Mayo enters Officer Candidate School to become a Navy pilot and in thirteen weeks he learns the importance of discipline, love and friendship. (Publisher’s summary)
A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks
A romance featuring a troublesome teenager in North Carolina who is changed for the better by the love of a girl. She is the angelic daughter of a local minister and the boy joins her in doing good deeds. But she has a secret which will break his heart. (Publisher’s summary)
Five Days in Paris by Danielle Steel
The president of a major pharmaceutical company and the unhappy wife of a famous senator meet under dire circumstances in Paris, and everything in which they believe is put on the line. (Publisher’s summary)
The Bridges of Madison County by Robert J. Waller
When Robert Kincaid drives through the heat and dust of an Iowa summer and turns into Francesca Johnson's farm lane looking for directions, the world-class photographer and the Iowa farm wife are joined in an experience of uncommon truth and stunning beauty that will haunt them forever. (Publisher’s summary)
**Two Cities: A Love Story by John Edgar Wideman
A redemptive, healing novel, Two Cities brings to brilliant culmination the themes John Edgar Wideman has developed in fourteen previous acclaimed books. It is a story of bridges -- bridges spanning the rivers of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, bridges arching over the rifts that have divided our communities, our country, our hearts. Narrated in the bluesy voices of its three main characters, Two Cities is a simple love story, but it is also about the survival of an endangered black urban community and the ways that people discover for redeeming themselves in a society that is failing them. With its indelible images of confrontation and outrage, matched in equal measure by lasting impressions of hope, Two Cities is a compassionate, lacerating, and nourishing novel. (Publisher’s summary)
