Browse these categories for your next favorite romance!
 
Contemporary
 
Fantasy
 
 
 
 
Historical
 
Paranormal
 
 
 
 
Science-Fiction
 
Suspense
 

 
Contemporary
Sophie Cousens
Sophie Cousens is a New York Times bestselling author of romantic comedies full of whimsy, amusing, and sometimes steamy situations.
 
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Jasmine Guillory

Jasmine Guillory writes modern romantic comedies featuring smart, capable heroines who excel in their careers and lead full lives surrounded by supportive friends and families. When a romantic partner enters the picture, the protagonists view the relationship as a life enhancement rather than a requirement, and the resulting relationship stars a pair who are on equal footing intellectually and emotionally. Guillory doesn't shy away from examining the relatable issues her multicultural couples face but never sacrifices sexiness or humor.
 
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Helen Hoang
Helen Hoang is known for her romance novels featuring Asian characters, as well as characters on the autism spectrum. Equal parts amusing and thoughtful, sweet and sexually explicit, Hoang's books celebrate diversity, understanding, and love without boundaries. Her characters, sensitively drawn and clever, often deal with social challenges, burdensome family expectations, and culture clash. The smoldering relationships portrayed, while initially seeming ill-fated, always lead to the personal growth of her characters.
 
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Casey McQuiston
Casey McQuiston writes own voices, LGBTQIA romantic comedies with heart and wit. Their character-driven, engaging, contemporary stories feature funny and quick-witted dialogue. They utilize common romance tropes, i.e., royal romance or star-crossed lovers, to bring queer love stories to the forefront.
 
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Tia Williams
New York Times bestselling author Tia Williams is best known for her steamy, character-driven romances featuring Black characters.
 
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Fantasy
Sherrilyn Kenyon
Sherrilyn Kenyon is a leading writer in paranormal romance, offering readers an addictive blend of mythology, magic, and sexy love stories in her vampire-based Dark-Hunter series. Kenyon populates her world with complex characters. These characters are never clearly good or bad, and the villain of one book can become the hero of the next. Kenyon builds her world with vivid details of the setting, often New Orleans, and the characters' homes, weapons, and relationships.
 
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Kimberly Lemming
A USA Today bestselling author Kimberly Lemming is known for her funny and banter-filled fantasy romcoms.
 
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Freya Marske
Freya Marske is an Australian fantasy and romance author and podcaster. Marske's novels also spotlight queer romance. Her fantasy trilogy, The Last Binding, is set in a fantastic version of the Edwardian Era.
 
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Katee Robert
Katee Robert is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of contemporary and fantasy romance and romantic suspense. She writes in first person narratives with steamy and suspenseful plots.
 
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Rebecca Thorne
Rebecca Thorne is a Sunday Times, USA Today, and Indie bestselling author, specializing in fantasy, sci-fi, and romance. She is a proud member of the LGBTQIA+ community, hails from sunny Arizona, USA, and uses her ADHD as a superpower to write multiple books a year.
 
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Raquel Vasquez Gilliland
Raquel Vasquez Gilliland writes engaging novels for teens and adults that center around Mexican American female protagonists. Her writing style is lyrical, with her work often exploring themes of identity, family, love, and coming-of-age experiences. Readers will find a balance of romantic banter with more serious topics like immigration. Gilliland's books typically have a contemporary setting but may include fantastical elements, such as aliens or magic.
 
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Rebecca Yarros
Rebecca Yarros is an American author of suspenseful, steamy contemporary and fantasy romances. Her stories provide glimpses of her personal background and experiences. Her contemporary romance books are usually set in Colorado (where the author lives), while her fantasy books feature epic world-building. Yarros' storylines revolve around heartwarming and action-packed scenarios starring characters who are mostly in the military–she is an Army brat, and her husband is a former soldier. Some of her characters also live with physical disabilities, as does Yarros.
 
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Historical
J'nell Ciesielski
Bestselling author J’nell Ciesielski has a passion for heart-stopping adventure and sweeping love stories while weaving fresh takes into romances of times gone by.
 
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Alyssa Cole
Alyssa Cole writes smart, steamy historical and contemporary romances featuring an array of diverse characters. Her heroines are intelligent, independent women who have rich, full lives although are a bit reluctant to open their hearts to romance. The men who ultimately win them over are strong, thoughtful partners who respect the heroines and their choices. Her rich detail and intricate plots add depth and dimension as the characters find their way to happily ever after.
 
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Iona Grey
Iona Grey is a writer of sweeping, romantic stories that span decades and generations and incorporate family secrets, old houses, and loves lost and found.
 
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Beverly Jenkins
Prolific African American writer Beverly Jenkins made her name with vividly descriptive historical romances featuring tough-minded heroines and charismatic heroes. Jenkins' set her historical novels throughout 19th Century America, from Philadelphia to the Old West. She also writes contemporary Christian fiction defined by character-driven storylines and a heartwarming tone.
 
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Lisa Kleypas
Lisa Kleypas is known for richly textured historical romances set in Victorian England. Poignant moments are balanced with humor in both dialogue and situations. Common themes include growth, transformation, and redemption. Kleypas' slightly flawed heroes are common-born, self-made professional men as well as aristocrats. Heroines are clever and outspoken, and both sexes use wit and sarcasm. Strong secondary characters show up from book to book, and often get their own stories. Passions run high, and love scenes are beautifully written.
 
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Tracie Peterson
Tracie Peterson is a bestselling Christian author known for her well researched historical novels, many of which attract young readers and adults. Peterson's fast-paced novels use real historical figures and intertwine them with fictional characters against a historical backdrop of wide open territories of westward and railroad expansion. Memorable and unconventional characters take you on a journey to the past filled with romance and adventure. Peterson also writes contemporary novels with intergenerational relationships and non-traditional families.
 
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Paranormal
Carissa Broadbent
Carissa Broadbent writes novels that blend epic fantasy plots with a heaping dose of romance. Her cinematic writing captures readers in a richly detailed adventure.
 
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Gail Carriger
The supernatural features strongly in Gail Carriger's work. Best known for her genre-busting Parasol Protectorate romantic fantasy series, set in a steampunk Victorian England, Carriger's witty and well-plotted stories revolve around a pair of strong-willed protagonists, following their adventures in love and within a world full of political and supernatural intrigue. The world in which her characters move is well-imagined and carefully described, historically familiar, but made new and fascinating where the particulars differ.
 
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Christine Feehan
If you like passionate love stories with a touch of danger and dark magic, Christine Feehan's steamy, suspenseful, and imaginative paranormal romances may be for you. Witches, genetically engineered psychics, and other fantastic creatures abound in her action-packed, unrestrained, and sometimes violent stories. She is best known for her intricately plotted, vividly detailed Dark series, in which Carpathians, superhuman vampire-like beings, lust after mortal women as soulmates and use their extraordinary powers both to defend the objects of affection and to seduce and ravish them in sizzling scenes of passion.
 
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Lana Ferguson
While she writes mostly contemporary romances, Lana Ferguson has branched out into the paranormal romance genre with her newest book, Under Loch and Key, in which a woman discovers that not all monsters are her enemy–quite the opposite in fact. If you like steamy, upbeat, and fast-paced romances, look for Ferguson's other novels.
 
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Nora Roberts
Among the most popular writers of today, Nora Roberts writes satisfying genre-crossing romantic stories, featuring passionate, resourceful heroines and strong, empathetic heroes. Each story emphasizes relationships with family and friends while providing details of careers or adventures. Her books may appeal to readers who do not usually read romance.
 
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Nalini Singh
Nalini Singh's intense paranormal romances pair strong-willed, passionate protagonists whose opposing goals and strong allegiances to their respective families or organizations initially cause them to clash–before they discover a shared purpose or common enemy that unites them–leading to steamy sexual encounters and, ultimately, to committed relationships.
 
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J.R. Ward
J.R. Ward is the author of over 30 novels and is a New York Times and USA Today best-selling author. Her steamy yet violent romances take readers on a fast-paced adventure.
 
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Science-Fiction
Ilona Andrews
As Ilona Andrews, Ilona and Andrew Gordon write in the paranormal romance and urban fantasy genres. Their novels are set in the American South and feature vibrant and inventive world-building, with magical forces interacting with and transforming the faces of locales like Atlanta and rural Louisiana. Andrews strikes a balance between fast-paced action and the development of characters.
 
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Aliette de Bodard
Aliette de Bodard is a French-American speculative fiction writer whose novels are inspired by her Vietnamese heritage and center around sapphic characters.
 
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Constance Fay
Constance Fay writes space romance novels and genre fiction short stories. Her short fiction can be found in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Catscast podcast, and other publications. She has a background in medical device R&D and lives in Colorado with a cat who edits all her work first.
 
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Jessie Mihalik
A software engineer by trade, Jessie now writes full time from her home in Texas, writing romance space operas with spirited characters and steamy plots. 
 
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Suspense
Patricia Bradley
Patricia Bradley is a USA Today bestselling author of eighteen Christian suspense romance novels including four series. Recommended for fans of Elizabeth Goddard and Nancy Mehl.
 
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Sandra Brown
Sandra Brown writes fast-paced romantic suspense stories with lots of action, adventure, sex, and violence. Brown creates a brooding atmosphere and a romantic world inhabited by strong female characters and tough heroes. Her layered stories have twisting plots as she slowly reveals small pieces of information to build suspense and keep readers quickly turning the pages to discover the outcome.
 
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Lena Diaz
Romantic suspense author, Lena Diaz, is a four time winner of the Daphne du Maurier Award of Excellence in Mystery and Suspense. With nearly 40 novels published, Diaz is bound to have a series or stand-alone story that will entertain and thrill you.
 
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Melinda Leigh
A writer of romantic suspense, Melinda Leigh balances complex and fast-paced thriller plotting with deftly-chosen language and the steady development of warmly appealing characters. Leigh's stories are full of visceral action, as her engaging characters struggle to free themselves from ugly situations.
 
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DiAnn Mills
The novels of DiAnn Mills feature an adventurous spirit and strong Christian themes. From the frontier folk of her historical romances to the globetrotting modern protagonists of her thrillers, Mills's appealing characters go forth boldly. 
 
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Katie Ruggle
A graduate of the Police Academy, Katie Ruggle writes police procedural romance novels with comedic relief thrown in.
 
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Ask a librarian for more reading suggestions!
Forsyth County Public Library
770-781-9840 | ForsythPL.org