Based on your last post, which I won’t quote in interest of saving the hamsters some work, I’d say then that you’d definitely enjoy the Outlander books, not only because they’re a great story, but also because the female protagonist, Claire, is a pretty tough cookie - no doormat, our Claire! And the male protagonist, Jamie, is a tough-but-romantic hero. Additionally, the secondary characters in the series have pretty well-fleshed out personalities, which for me is critical in a long story.
This may be completely out of your bounds, given that it’s neither within the last ten years nor a straightforward romance novel, but Joyce Carol Oates’s A Bloodsmoor Romance is superficially a Victorian romance, while still being brilliant, razor-sharp, and darkly hilarious. It’s probably my favorite book by one of my favorite authors, and well worth reading.
Daniel
A link to A Bloodsmoor Romance, although if you’re smart you’ll ignore the button “Add to wedding registry”. 
Daniel
I have a male friend who recommends Mary Balogh and Jo Beverly. (and possibly Beatrice Small, though I can’t remember for sure). He started reading historical romance when he realized that sometimes the only real difference between historical novels and historical romance is the way that they are marketed. (Note: this is not true of all “historical” romance. And one might well question the percentage of “nice young dukes”, nobles in general, and spunky but not traditionally beautiful women who find true love. Still, if you pick the best historical romance, it is in the romance section because romance sells, rather than because it is so “romantic” or “sexy”).
And the same holds true at times for whether a book is in the mystery or adventure section or whether it is romantic suspense. (In that category, I’d list some of Elizabeth Lowell’s work. * Die in Plain Sight* is probably my favorite, but I’d include any of her Donovan Family stories or Rarities books).
If you are concerned about finding romances to be repetitive- read them in moderation, read from a variety of categories, and don’t read too many by any one author at a time. Authors often have a tendency to have certain types of events occur in their books.
For example: the plot of most Amanda Quick novels (one of my favorite authors of historical romance, by the way. Bought her latest direct to paperback the first day I saw it in a store)
1.Spunky, but not particularly beautiful, well-connected, or wealthy heroine sets out to provide for herself and her family.
2. Handsome, wealthy, but arrogant and bossy hero, who is being urged to get married, meets heroine.
3. Hero and Heroine argue. Reader discovers both are stubborn, but are attracted to each other, even if they won’t admit it.
4. Hero and Heroine become passionately involved. At this point, Hero discovers that Heroine is not as worldly as he had previously supposed. (In other words, he generally figures out that she’s a virgin. Although, by the time he figures it out, she generally isn’t.)
5. Hero proposes marriage. Heroine refuses- because she doesn’t think he loves her.
6. Other events occur- generally including resolution of the mystery that the Hero and Heroine have been trying to solve.
7. Heroine figures out that Hero is in love with her and tells him she loves him. He then tells her he loves her.
8. Hero and Heroine get married and live happily ever after.
These events do not all occur in all of Quick’s books. And they may occur in various orders within Quick’s books. Still, reading too many books by Amanda Quick (or many other authors) in a short sequence of time can lead one to the conclusion that certain authors have only one plot- one which they hang different character’s names and different dialogue. (This complaint would not be a good one for Quick- only because that is a pseudonym for Jayne Anne Krentz, who writes other books under other names, that have a few more differences than just the time period in which they are set).
Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner is a lyrical, fantastic (in the old sense) swashbuckler of a romance. The two lovers are men and it doesn’t follow a traditional “romantic” plot, so purists might not consider it a romance novel. I do, though, and wholeheatedly recommend it.
Fantasy author Barbara Hambly (who, I believe, has gone on to write actual Romance novels as well as crossing into some well-received historical fiction), wrote the Fantasy adventure Stranger at the Wedding that is, basically a Victorian Romance with magic.
Miss Purl, thanks for the link. The paper is indeed very readable. But it is speculative and addresses mostly paranormal romance. It presents no scientific evidence that romance novels represent what women really want anymore than novels about confrontations with exploding space monsters represent what teenagers really want.
I would guess that many women would like to be rescued and maybe even dominated for a very short period of time. My own theory is that more women like to feel strong and competent themselves. I doubt that all readers of romance novels have the same needs and desires.
I found one strange contradiction in the paper. The author begins by talking about reading Gone With the Wind at a very early age and thus becoming hooked on the romance genre. Later, the author observes:
Two other statements have left me spinning:
I think its more than ten years old, but Possession, by A.S. Byatt will raise anyone’s opinion of the genre (if you can get through it – Byatt is not the most accessible read).
i’ll jump in to add nora robert/jd robb into the mix. linda howard, elizabeth lowell, and meagan mckinney, are rather good.
jayne ann krentz does contempory, amanda quick does historical, jayne castle does futuristic, they are all the same woman.
First of all - “Harlequin”? I don’t know whether to :o or :rolleyes: or just shudder. Harlequin has consistenly had the worst written stories I have ever read. I refuse to ever get another one, even if I do think the plot sounds perfect. I think they pay their authors to write horridly.
At least in the sub-genre I read, I find that quality is best indicated by publisher. Harlequin, with Jove right behind it, publish just awful writing. Signet is the best, and Zebra is rather sporadic with some real gems, quite a few pretty pebbles, and the occasional lump of coal.
But, despite the fact that Signet publishes her, avoid Catherine Coulter like the plague - she has at least one rather detailed rape scene in every book.
For sub-genres:
Medieval can be pretty good. However, that was really a horrific time period for many women; writers have to walk the line between being too realistic in the treatment of their female characters, and veering so far away from that as to be laughable. Most medieval is your basic knights and castles, with some renaissance/Elizabethan period novels out there.
Scottish novels are often interesting - they tend to be just after the time of Bonnie Prince Charlie. They can be really fun or really tragic - that was a grim time in Scottish history. Two of this period I really recommend are Border Lord and Highland Chieftain both by Arnette Lamb. This may not be available in a store, but can be gotten used from Amazon.com
Regency period is my favorite - there was a lot going on in that period, including a lot of events that shaped the modern world. The Napoleonic war with its spies and soldiers, the beginnings of the industrial revolution, luddites, the beginnings of the modern novels, the rise of social activism, women starting to gain be involved in more than just keeping house, along with the fading of the aristocratic society all contribute to fascinating reading. This is a good genre to get stories about strong, intelligent women - after all, it’s conflict that make a story interesting and this was a key time when intelligent women were starting to really get into conflict with society. More about this soon.
There are a few romances set in the Georgian era, that tend to be somewhere between a regency novel and a medieval novel. Notably, Jo Beverly has a good Georgian series and she is an excellent writer.
American revolutionary war period novels are rather rare, unfortunately. I’ve enjoyed the few well-written ones I’ve found.
U.S. civil war era novels annoy the %# out of me. They are invariably set in the south, so they tend to highly romanticize slavery.
Western expansion period novels don’t do anything for me - I’m sure that there are some very good writers but the standard male characters are never my type - they tend to the laconic or unwashed rather than the witty, sophisticated type I prefer.
I have the same problem with moderns that you do. I find that the female character is already strong, then tends to forget that she has a life when she falls for the hero. And the guys tend to be alpha male in alpha male jobs.
Now for my feelings on authors/books.
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon was stellar. I read the second book and thought it was ok, but by the third book I was starting to roll my eyes. Time travel became really popular right after she put out the first book, to the point that half of the hack books were time travel.
I don’t know about The Corset Diaries, but I read another book of her’s called Improper English that I found to be so bad that I quit reading just a third of the way through the book.
Jude Deveraux is a lightweight author, but writes some really fun books. She has written at least one book in nearly every historical period. My favorite is The Raider which is a hilarious dual identity (think Zorro) novel set during the revolutionary war. She also wrote a novel called A Knight in Shining Armor which is the best time travel novel I’ve read (very well researched) and Mountain Laurel which has the funniest sex scene I’ve ever read.
A note on Regency era romances. There are some “historicals” that are regency era, and there is a sub-genre called “Regencies”. The main difference is the length of the book - historicals are normal novel length, whereas regencies are in the novelette size, shorter than your regular novel, but a bit longer than a novella. I think this is actually an advantage in a romance - I don’t think that a simple romance storyline can carry a novel all by itself. The shorter form lets the romance be the main storyline without having to be overwrought to get the right word count.
For Regencies I recommend:
Barbara Metzger - if you like wordplay at all, you should read at least one of her books. Unfortunately, her style works betting in the shorter form but the latest books by her have been full length. That doesn’t make her a bad author, but you can tell she is stretching to make a full length novel, or at least I can. Her tour de force is A Loyal Companion. The use of a dog, half-shephard and half hunting hound, with his wry comments and dog-centric reactions to the events around him give Ms. Metzger’s quirky wordplay more ability to shine than in any other books I’ve read of hers.
Carla Kelly is also a wonderful author, in a more serious (and well-researched) vein. If A Wedding Journey is available, you should read it. It is an outstanding story about an army doctor and a soldier’s daughter in the Napoleonic war and their journey through enemy territory. Detailed, realistic, and grim, and Ms. Kelly does not pull her punches.
Jo Beverly also does regencies in the suspense/action adventure vein. Another Jo, Mary Jo Putney writes in a similar style. They both tend to series, but write well enough for every book to work as a stand-alone. If you get a chance, Putney’s The Rake (originally published as The Rake and the Reformer) shows a vivid and realistic treatment of alcoholism - neither romanticized nor villified. And it has my all time favorite romantic scene - one I go back and re-read every time I re-read the book. They all have strong, complex female leads and fascinating historical details.
Other good regency writers are June Calvin, Elizabeth Jackson, and Joan Overfield.
I don’t like Mary Balogh (although she’s quite popular), but every aspiring writer should read at least one of her’s, and then figure out why her characters seem so remote.
You mean they’re not soft-core porn? :dubious: I keep hearing that, and yet they keep being nothing but soft-core porn. Now, I’m all for sex scenes, but the florid language of most romance novel sex scenes is just…ridiculous. It’s really hard to find something erotic when you’re snorting and cackling about phrases like “moist love grotto.”
You might get a kick out of Pride and Promiscuity, a collection of the alleged lost sex scenes of Jane Austen. I got it for an Austen-freak friend for Christmas and flipped through it, and it was pretty interesting.
My favorite Romance novelist is Michele Jaffe, but only her first one, The Stragazer is particularly good, to be frank. It is a very fun read with lots of witty banter and no rapes. The wittiness tends to subvert your expectations for the ganre. The rest of the novels in that series/world read like her publishers thought she could be a cash cow and asked her to start cranking them out. Formulaic (the formula being The Stargazer) and no thought behind them. The author has a PhD in Comparative Literature of the Renaissance, and the novel is set in Renaissance Venice.
I love Pamela Morsi, very atypical for the genre (older heroines, not incredibly beautiful), good sense of humor.
The classics - Kathleen Woodiwiss (yes, rape fantasy galore, adored these books when I was in high school)
Amanda Quick’s adorable regencies with fun heroines with amusing names -
Also - very different, but a fabulous love story -
Definitely try Jennifer Crusie then. She’s written some academic articles about feminism and romance (as have Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Laura Kinsale, and several other authors mentioned in this thread)
My research found that the genre has definitely evolved from the “I love you, I hate you, rape, rape, rape, I love you, I hate you, rape, rape, rape, I love you, happily ever after” of older romance novels. If you want explicitly feminist romances, I’d strongly steer you towards Jennifer Crusie and the following novels in particular:
Welcome to Temptation
The Cinderella Deal
Bet Me
What the Lady Wants
Jennifer Crusie is great.
I know you stipulated published within the last 10 years but nobody did Regency better than Georgette Heyer. She’s absolutely wonderful and a superb stylist.
Elizabeth Chadwick:
The Conquest, The Champion, The Love Knot, The Winter Mantle
Stephanie Laurens
Shannon Drake/Heather Graham: Same writer Drake did the Vampire stories but also some middle ages stuff. Heather Graham writes historical American and modern romance.
I’m rather found of Kate Elliott’s Jaran books. Since you are looking for romance, you’ll be looking for the first book (just named Jaran) but you might get hooked in for the rest.
Kind of hard to explain - a woman from a technologically advanced world goes on sabbatical to a world protected by interdictions that is still stuck in the backwoods of evolution in terms of civilization. She ends up being stranded with a tribe of Eastern European-esque nomads, and…I’m making no sense at all by now, but still, nice read.
I rather enjoy Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark Hunter books. Actually all her hunter books are entwined and set in the same modern world with a different take on Vampires and Werewolves that draws a lot on Greek myths (you often see the Greek Gods popping in and out, Aphrodite, Dionysus and Athena are the ones I remember off the top of my head). One of the characters who is in pretty much all of the books (he’s the leader of the Dark Hunters) even has a livejournal of his own.
I would have to disagree about Bertrice Small though, unless the one the others suggested is better than The Dragon Lord’s Daughters. I couldn’t finish it because I kept snickering at the descriptions of lovemaking. “His lance entered her love tunnel” and the like. Anything like that kills it for me.
After the number of enthusiastic recommendations on this thread, I read Outlander. I greatly enjoyed it, as a historical novel (and can understand why the author objects to it being shelved with the romances) right until:
The scene AuntiePam alluded to, wherein the “hero” beats his disobedient wife, and subsequent sex scenes involve language to the effect of “I was learning his passion would not be denied.” The hell? I was hoping the heretofor strong heroine was going to whip out her dirk and shove it in his throat at the next available opportunity. All the subsequent bits meant to soften his actions - from said hero swearing never to do it again, to his sharing his humiliations at the hands of his father to make the woman he just beat feel better about what he’s just done to her - just added to the absolutely sour taste in my mouth.
I do appreciate the recommendation, but if Jennifer Crusie doesn’t pan out, my forays into that section of the library will cease. I’ll still have gained respect for the genre compared to my previous bad opinion, but it’s looking like there’s not going to be much for me.
I’m half-tempted to open a thread on a more suitable form to ask whether that many women really do have fantasies about being dominated by alpha males…
lizardling, have you braved that section of the library/book store yet? It sounds like you’re in a similar position, and I’d be especially interested to hear what you (and any other romance phobics) may encounter in your experimentation.