Books with category 💘 Romance
Displaying books 1489-1536 of 1650 in total

Archangel

1997

by Sharon Shinn

And so it came to pass... Through science, faith, and force of will, the Harmonics carved out for themselves a society they conceived as perfect. Diverse peoples were held together by respect for each other and the prospect of swift punishment if their laws were disobeyed. Fertile land embraced a variety of climates and seasons.

Angels were appointed to guard the mortals, and mystics to guard the forbidden knowledge. Jehovah watched over them all. Generations later, the armed starship Jehovah still looms over the planet of Samaria, programmed to unleash its arsenal if peace is not sustained.

But an age of corruption has come to the land, threatening that peace and placing the Samarians in grave danger. Their only hope lies in the crowning of a new Archangel. The oracles have chosen for this honor the angel named Gabriel, and further decreed that he must first wed a mortal woman named Rachel. It is his destiny and hers. Gabriel is certain that she will greet the news of her betrothal with enthusiasm and a devotion to duty equal to his own. Rachel, however, has other ideas...

Doctor Zhivago

1997

by Boris Pasternak

Doctor Zhivago is an epic tale that explores the effects of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath on a bourgeois family. The story is centered on Dr. Yury Zhivago, who is not only a physician but also a poet and philosopher. His life is deeply disrupted by the war and his love for Lara, the wife of a revolutionary.

Yury's artistic nature renders him particularly vulnerable to the brutality and harshness that follow in the wake of the Bolsheviks' rise to power. Within the novel, the poems written by Yury are a testament to some of the most beautiful writing the book has to offer. His experiences and the challenges he faces are a reflection of the turmoil that grips the society around him.

Ethan Frome

1997

by Edith Wharton

The classic novel of despair, forbidden emotions, and sexual undercurrents set against the austere New England countryside. Ethan Frome works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, suspicious, and hypochondriac wife, Zeena. But when Zeena's vivacious cousin enters their household as a hired girl, Ethan finds himself obsessed with her and with the possibilities for happiness she comes to represent.

In one of American fiction's finest and most intense narratives, Edith Wharton moves this ill-starred trio toward their tragic destinies. Different in both tone and theme from Wharton's other works, Ethan Frome has become perhaps her most enduring and most widely read book.

The Far Pavilions

1997

by M.M. Kaye

A magnificent romantic/historical/adventure novel set in India at the time of mutiny. The Far Pavilions is a story of 19th Century India, when the thin patina of English rule held down dangerously turbulent undercurrents. It is a story about an English man - Ashton Pelham-Martyn - brought up as a Hindu and his passionate, but dangerous love for an Indian princess. It's a story of divided loyalties, of tender camaraderie, of greedy imperialism and of the clash between east and west.

To the burning plains and snow-capped mountains of this great, humming continent, M.M. Kaye brings her quite exceptional gift of immediacy and meticulous historical accuracy, plus her insight into the human heart.

The Shadowy Horses

Archaeologist Verity Grey has been drawn to the dark legends of the Scottish Borderlands in search of the truth buried in a rocky field by the sea. In this darkly romantic novel of historical fiction by bestselling author Susanna Kearsley, Verity may find more than she bargained for.

The invincible ninth Roman Legion marches from York to fight the Northern tribes and then vanishes from the pages of history. When Verity goes looking for them in modern-day Scotland, her eccentric boss is convinced he's finally found the resting place of the lost Ninth Roman Legion—not because of any scientific evidence, but because a local boy has "seen" a Roman soldier walking in the fields, a ghostly sentinel who guards the bodies of his long-dead comrades.

Here on the windswept Scottish shores, Verity may find the answer to one of the great unsolved mysteries of the historical record. Or she may uncover secrets from the romantic past that were buried for a reason. Fans of historical romance will be completely transported by The Shadowy Horses, an exquisite novel of Scottish historical fiction.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of William Shakespeare's most enchanting comedies. The story revolves around the adventures of four young Athenian lovers and a group of amateur actors, who are manipulated by the fairies inhabiting the forest in which most of the play is set.

The play opens with Hermia, who is in love with Lysander, facing an arranged marriage to Demetrius, whom her friend Helena loves. Hermia and Lysander plan to escape Athens to avoid the marriage decree by Hermia's father. Meanwhile, in the forest, the King and Queen of the fairies, Oberon and Titania, are in the midst of a quarrel.

Oberon's mischievous servant, Puck, is sent to fetch a magical flower, the juice of which can cause one to fall in love with the first creature they see upon waking. Chaos ensues as Puck's love potion causes unintended love triangles and mistaken identities. Additionally, a group of laborers are rehearsing a play for the upcoming wedding of the Duke of Athens, and Puck's interference leads to further comedic outcomes, including one actor, Bottom, being transformed into a donkey and becoming the object of the enchanted Titania's affections.

The play masterfully blends elements of love, humor, and magic, culminating in a delightful tale that continues to be celebrated and performed around the world.

Fight Club

1996

by Chuck Palahniuk

Fight Club follows the experiences of an unnamed protagonist struggling with insomnia. Inspired by his doctor's exasperated remark that insomnia is not suffering, the protagonist finds relief by impersonating a seriously ill person in several support groups. Then he meets a mysterious man named Tyler Durden and establishes an underground fighting club as radical psychotherapy.

In this novel, Chuck Palahniuk offers a dark and provocative look into the depths of the human psyche, delivering a tale that is as unsettling as it is compelling. With biting satire and a unique voice, Fight Club has become a modern classic, exploring themes of identity, consumerism, and the search for meaning in a contemporary world.

Daughters of Darkness

1996

by L.J. Smith

Unearthly Beauty

There's something strange about the new girls in town. Briar Creek, Oregon, has never seen anything like the supernatural grace of Rowan, Kestrel, and Jade, three sisters who move into the dilapidated old house next to Mark and Mary-Lynnette Carter. Mark is obsessed with Jade, but she and her sisters have a secret.

When Mark and Mary-Lynnette follow them into the woods one night, they are plunged into a nightmare beyond their imagination. The sisters are fugitives from the Night World, and their brother Ash is hot on their trail. He's ruthless, gorgeous, and has orders to bring the girls back at all costs. When he sees Mary-Lynnette, he decides to take her too...

Winter Rose

Sorrow and trouble and bitterness will bound you and yours and the children of yours... Some said the dying words of Nial Lynn, murdered by his own son, were a wicked curse. To others, it was a winter's tale spun by firelight on cold, dark nights. But when Corbet Lynn came to rebuild his family estate, memories of his grandfather's curse were rekindled by young and old - and rumours filled the heavy air of summer.

In the woods that border Lynn Hall, free-spirited Rois Melior roams wild and barefooted in search of healing herbs. She is as hopelessly unbridled - and unsuited for marriage - as her betrothed sister Laurel is domestic. In Corbet's pale green eyes, Rois senses a desperate longing. In her restless dreams, mixed with the heady warmth of harvest wine, she hears him beckon. And as autumn gold fades, Rois is consumed with Corbet Lynn, obsessed with his secret past - until, across the frozen countryside and in flight from her own imagination, truth and dreams become inseparable...

Mansfield Park

Taken from the poverty of her parents' home in Portsmouth, Fanny Price is brought up with her rich cousins at Mansfield Park, acutely aware of her humble rank and with her cousin Edmund as her sole ally. During her uncle's absence in Antigua, the Crawford's arrive in the neighbourhood bringing with them the glamour of London life and a reckless taste for flirtation.

Mansfield Park is considered Jane Austen's first mature work and, with its quiet heroine and subtle examination of social position and moral integrity, one of her most profound.

Snow Country

Nobel Prize recipient Yasunari Kawabata's Snow Country is widely considered to be the writer's masterpiece, a powerful tale of wasted love set amid the desolate beauty of western Japan.

At an isolated mountain hot spring, with snow blanketing every surface, Shimamura, a wealthy dilettante meets Komako, a lowly geisha. She gives herself to him fully and without remorse, despite knowing that their passion cannot last and that the affair can have only one outcome. In chronicling the course of this doomed romance, Kawabata has created a story for the ages, a stunning novel dense in implication and exalting in its sadness.

Victory

1995

by Joseph Conrad

Axel Heyst, a dreamer and a restless drifter, believes he can avoid suffering by cutting himself off from others. Then he becomes involved in the operation of a coal company on a remote island in the Malay Archipelago, and when it fails he turns his back on humanity once more. But his life alters when he rescues a young English girl, Lena, from Zangiacomo's Ladies' Orchestra and the evil innkeeper Schomberg, taking her to his island retreat. The affair between Heyst and Lena begins with her release, but the relationship shifts as Lena struggles to save Heyst from the detachment and isolation that have inhibited and influenced his life.

Marked by a violent and tragic conclusion, Victory is both a tale of rescue and adventure and a perceptive study of a complex relationship and of the power of love.

Wicked

When Dorothy triumphed over the Wicked Witch of the West in L. Frank Baum's classic tale, we heard only her side of the story. But what about her arch-nemesis, the mysterious witch? Where did she come from? How did she become so wicked? And what is the true nature of evil?

Gregory Maguire creates a fantasy world so rich and vivid that we will never look at Oz the same way again. Wicked is about a land where animals talk and strive to be treated like first-class citizens, Munchkinlanders seek the comfort of middle-class stability, and the Tin Man becomes a victim of domestic violence. And then there is the little green-skinned girl named Elphaba, who will grow up to become the infamous Wicked Witch of the West, a smart, prickly, and misunderstood creature who challenges all our preconceived notions about the nature of good and evil.

Brilliantly inventive, Wicked offers a radical new portrait of one of the most feared and despised villains in all of literature: the universally maligned Wicked Witch of the West who, in Maguire’s imaginative retelling, isn’t nearly as black-hearted as we imagined.

Bloodsucking Fiends

Jody never asked to become a vampire. But when she wakes up under an alley Dumpster with a badly burned arm, an aching neck, superhuman strength, and a distinctly Nosferatuan thirst, she realizes the decision has been made for her.

Making the transition from the nine-to-five grind to an eternity of nocturnal prowlings is going to take some doing, however, and that's where C. Thomas Flood fits in. A would-be Kerouac from Incontinence, Indiana, Tommy (to his friends) is biding his time night-clerking and frozen-turkey bowling in a San Francisco Safeway. But all that changes when a beautiful undead redhead walks through the door... and proceeds to rock Tommy's life—and afterlife—in ways he never imagined possible.

So begins the zany and wildly different love story that is at the heart of Bloodsucking Fiends, a romance novel like none you've ever read before, and a bloodcurdlingly funny vampire story about passion, bloodlust, and blood loss.

The Horse Whisperer

1995

by Nicholas Evans

A forty-ton truck hurtles out of control on a snowy country road, a teenage girl on horseback in its path. In a few terrible seconds the life of a family is shattered. And a mother's quest begins - to save her maimed daughter and a horse driven mad by pain. It is an odyssey that will bring her to... THE HORSE WHISPERER

He is the stuff of legend. His voice can calm wild horses and his touch heal broken spirits. For secrets uttered softly into pricked and troubled ears, such men were once called Whisperers. Now Tom Booker, the inheritor of this ancient gift, is to meet his greatest challenge.

Annie Graves has traveled across a continent with her daughter, Grace, and their wounded horse, Pilgrim, to the Booker ranch in Montana. Annie has risked everything - her career, her marriage, her comfortable life - in her desperate belief that the Whisperer can help them. The accident has turned Pilgrim savage. He is now so demented and dangerous that everyone says he should be destroyed. But Annie won't give up on him. For she feels his fate is inextricably entwined with that of her daughter, who has retreated into a heartrending, hostile silence. Annie knows that if the horse dies, something in Grace will die too.

In the weeks to come, under the massive sky of the Rocky Mountain Front, all their lives - including Tom Booker's - will be transformed forever in a way none could have foretold. At once an epic love story and a gripping adventure, The Horse Whisperer weaves an extraordinary tale of healing and redemption - a magnificent emotional journey that explores our ancient bonds with earth and sky and hearts untamed. It is a stirring elegy to the power of belief and self-discovery, to hopes lost and found again.

The Garden of Eden

A sensational bestseller when it appeared in 1986, The Garden of Eden is the last uncompleted novel of Ernest Hemingway, which he worked on intermittently from 1946 until his death in 1961. Set on the Côte d'Azur in the 1920s, it is the story of a young American writer, David Bourne, his glamorous wife, Catherine, and the dangerous, erotic game they play when they fall in love with the same woman.

A lean, sensuous narrative...taut, chic, and strangely contemporary, The Garden of Eden represents vintage Hemingway, the master "doing what nobody did better" (R. Z. Sheppard, Time).

The Bridges of Madison County

The Bridges of Madison County tells the story of Robert Kincaid, the photographer and free spirit searching for the covered bridges of Madison County, and Francesca Johnson, the farm wife waiting for the fulfillment of a girlhood dream. This novel gives voice to the longings of men and women everywhere-and shows us what it is to love and be loved so intensely that life is never the same again.

Tender Is the Night

Tender Is the Night is a modern classic, restored by Fitzgerald scholar James L.W. West III and featuring a personal foreword by Fitzgerald’s great-granddaughter Blake Hazard and a new introduction by bestselling Amor Towles. Set in the south of France in the late 1920s, it is the tragic tale of a young actress, Rosemary Hoyt, and her complicated relationship with the alluring American couple Dick and Nicole Diver. A brilliant psychiatrist at the time of his marriage, Dick is both husband and doctor to Nicole, whose wealth pushed him into a glamorous lifestyle, and whose growing strength highlights Dick’s decline. Lyrical, expansive, and hauntingly evocative, Tender Is the Night was one of the most talked-about books of the year when it was originally published in 1934, and is even more beloved by readers today.

Gaudy Night

The great Dorothy L. Sayers is considered by many to be the premier detective novelist of the Golden Age, and her dashing sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey, one of mystery fiction’s most enduring and endearing protagonists. Acclaimed author Ruth Rendell has expressed her admiration for Sayers’s work, praising her “great fertility of invention, ingenuity, and wonderful eye for detail.”

The third Dorothy L. Sayers classic to feature mystery writer Harriet Vane, Gaudy Night takes Harriet and her paramour, Lord Peter, to Oxford University, Harriet’s alma mater, for a reunion, only to find themselves the targets of a nightmare of harassment and mysterious, murderous threats.

Dream Man

1994

by Linda Howard

Detective Dane Hollister of the Orlando police department has never met anyone quite like Marlie Keen. While he has doubts about her supposed clairvoyant powers, she sees crimes as they're being committed. There is no doubt about how much he desires her.

To Marlie, Dane is all heat and hard muscle, and he makes her body come alive as it never has before. But not even she can foresee that their passion will lead them on a dangerous journey into the twisted mind of a madman who will threaten their happiness and their lives.

Mariana

From the winner of the Catherine Cookson Fiction Prize, this mesmerizing, suspenseful, and richly atmospheric tale of time travel draws us into the heart of a heroine we won't soon forget...


The first time Julia Beckett saw Greywethers she was only five, but she knew that it was her house. And now that she's at last become its owner, she suspects that she was drawn there for a reason.


As if Greywethers were a portal between worlds, she finds herself transported into seventeenth-century England, becoming Mariana, a young woman struggling against danger and treachery, and battling a forbidden love.


Each time Julia travels back, she becomes more enthralled with the past...until she realizes Mariana's life is threatening to eclipse her own, and she must find a way to lay the past to rest or lose the chance for happiness in her own time.

Born in Fire

1994

by Nora Roberts

Margaret Mary, the eldest Concannon sister, is a glass artist with an independent streak as fierce as her volatile temper. Hand-blowing glass is a difficult and exacting art, and while she may produce the delicate and the fragile, Maggie is a strong and opinionated woman, a Clare woman, with all the turbulence of that fascinating west country.

One man, Dublin gallery owner Rogan Sweeney, has seen the soul in Maggie's art, and vows to help her build a career. When he comes to Maggie's studio, her heart is inflamed by their fierce attraction—and her scarred past is slowly healed by love.

Rurouni Kenshin, Volume 01

Rurouni Kenshin is one of the most beloved and popular manga series worldwide. Set against the backdrop of the Meiji Restoration, it tells the saga of Himura Kenshin, once an assassin of ferocious power, now a humble rurouni, a wandering swordsman fighting to protect the honor of those in need.

A hundred and fifty years ago in Kyoto, amid the flames of revolution, there arose a warrior, an assassin of such ferocious power he was given the title Hitokiri: Manslayer. With his bloodstained blade, Hitokiri Battosai helped close the turbulent Bakumatsu period and end the reign of the shoguns, slashing open the way toward the progressive Meiji Era. Then he vanished, and with the flow of years became legend.

In the 11th year of Meiji, in the middle of Tokyo, the tale begins. Himura Kenshin, a humble rurouni, or wandering swordsman, comes to the aid of Kamiya Kaoru, a young woman struggling to defend her father's school of swordsmanship against attacks by the infamous Hitokiri Battosai. But neither Kenshin nor Battosai are quite what they seem...

Until You

1994

by Judith McNaught

Sheridan Bromleigh had spent most of her early life as a happy vagabond with her unruly American father and his vagrant friends. Then, given over to the care of a strict maiden aunt, she was taught to be a lady—poor but genteel—and finally a teacher. When she was hired to act as chaperone to a pretty but spoilt heiress travelling to England to join an aristocratic fiancé, Sheridan was delighted. Now, at last, she could visit her family's country. But somehow everything went wrong.

For Miss Charise Lancaster, not over-gifted with intelligence, eloped with a stranger before she could meet her suitor. And Sheridan was left with the horrid task of telling Lord Burleton she had somehow misplaced his bride. As she gazed at the tall, confident man before her, her courage failed. She was doubly shocked when she heard his news. Lord Burleton, a drunkard and a wastrel, had been killed the night before. At which point fate took over. Sheridan was knocked unconscious on the quayside, and recovered to find herself in the handsome stranger's care, not knowing who she was.

It was to be the beginning of a dazzling, witty, dramatic, and romantic sequence of events in which every possible confusion was to take place.

Jude the Obscure

1994

by Thomas Hardy

Hardy's last work of fiction, Jude the Obscure is also one of his most gloomily fatalistic, depicting the lives of individuals who are trapped by forces beyond their control. Jude Fawley, a poor villager, wants to enter the divinity school at Christminster. Sidetracked by Arabella Donn, an earthy country girl who pretends to be pregnant by him, Jude marries her and is then deserted. He earns a living as a stonemason at Christminster; there he falls in love with his independent-minded cousin, Sue Bridehead. Out of a sense of obligation, Sue marries the schoolmaster Phillotson, who has helped her. Unable to bear living with Phillotson, she returns to live with Jude and eventually bears his children out of wedlock. Their poverty and the weight of society's disapproval begin to take a toll on Sue and Jude; the climax occurs when Jude's son by Arabella hangs Sue and Jude's children and himself. In penance, Sue returns to Phillotson and the church. Jude returns to Arabella and eventually dies miserably.

The novel's sexual frankness shocked the public, as did Hardy's criticisms of marriage, the university system, and the church. Hardy was so distressed by its reception that he wrote no more fiction, concentrating solely on his poetry.

Raintree County

Throughout a single day in 1892, John Shawnessy recalls the great moments of his life—from the love affairs of his youth in Indiana, to the battles of the Civil War, to the politics of the Gilded Age, to his homecoming as schoolteacher, husband, and father. Shawnessy is the epitome of the place and period in which he lives, a rural land of springlike women, shady gamblers, wandering vagabonds, and soapbox orators.

Yet here on the banks of the Shawmucky River, which weaves its primitive course through Raintree County, Indiana, he also feels and obeys ancient rhythms. A powerful novel, Raintree County is a compelling vision of 19th-century America with timeless resonance.

The Forest House

The Forest House—prequel to The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s beloved and enduring classic—is a mesmerizing epic of one woman’s mythic role at a turning point in history.

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.

The Complete Novels

1994

by Jane Austen

This volume contains the six major novels by Jane Austen, which are:

  • Emma
  • Mansfield Park
  • Northanger Abbey
  • Persuasion
  • Sense and Sensibility
  • Pride and Prejudice

Train to Pakistan

1994

by Khushwant Singh

In the summer of 1947, when the creation of the state of Pakistan was formally announced, ten million people—Muslims and Hindus and Sikhs—were in flight. By the time the monsoon broke, almost a million of them were dead, and all of northern India was in arms, in terror, or in hiding. The only remaining oases of peace were a scatter of little villages lost in the remote reaches of the frontier. One of these villages was Mano Majra.

It is a place, Khushwant Singh goes on to tell us at the beginning of this classic novel, where Sikhs and Muslims have lived together in peace for hundreds of years. Then one day, at the end of the summer, the “ghost train” arrives, a silent, incredible funeral train loaded with the bodies of thousands of refugees, bringing the village its first taste of the horrors of the civil war.

Train to Pakistan is the story of this isolated village that is plunged into the abyss of religious hate. It is also the story of a Sikh boy and a Muslim girl whose love endured and transcends the ravages of war.

Sexus

1994

by Henry Miller

Sexus is the first novel of Henry Miller's frank, autobiographical trilogy known collectively as The Rosy Crucifixion. This captivating narrative uses dream, fantasy, and burlesque to portray the life of a struggling writer in pre-World War I New York.

Delve into Miller's tempestuous marriage and his relentless sexual exploits in the vibrant city of New York. The trilogy continues with the novels Plexus and Nexus, exploring further the depths of human desire and artistic ambition.

It Had to Be You

What if a woman who knows nothing about sports inherits a professional football team? The Windy City definitely isn't ready for Phoebe Somerville, the outrageous, curvaceous New York knockout who's taking over their hometown team. And Phoebe is definitely not prepared for the Stars' head coach Dan Calebow, a sexist jock taskmaster with a one-track mind.

Calebow is everything Phoebe abhors. And the sexy boss is everything Dan despises - a meddling bimbo who doesn't know a pigskin from a pitcher's mound. So why is he drawn to the shameless sexpot like a heat-seeking missile? And why does the coach's good ol' boy charm leave cosmopolitan Phoebe feeling awkward, tongue-tied...and ready to fight?

The mismatched pair spark fireworks of all sorts in this sexy, heartwarming, and hilarious story of two stubborn people who believe in playing for keeps.

Pleasure of a Dark Prince

1993

by Kresley Cole

Pleasure of a Dark Prince by Kresley Cole is a seductive tale that will enrapture readers with its intense romance and thrilling adventure. This novel follows the story of a fierce werewolf prince, Garreth MacRieve, who will stop at nothing to protect the lovely archer he covets from afar.

A Dangerous Beauty...
Lucia the Huntress: as mysterious as she is exquisite, she harbors secrets that threaten to destroy her—and those she loves.

An Uncontrollable Need...
Garreth MacRieve, Prince of the Lykae: the brutal Highland warrior who burns to finally claim this maddeningly sensual creature as his own.

That Lead to a Pleasure So Wicked...
From the shadows, Garreth has long watched over Lucia. Now, the only way to keep the proud huntress safe from harm is to convince her to accept him as her guardian. To do this, Garreth will ruthlessly exploit Lucia's greatest weakness—her wanton desire for him.

Parable of the Sower

In 2025, with the world descending into madness and anarchy, one woman begins a fateful journey toward a better future.

Lauren Olamina and her family live in one of the only safe neighborhoods remaining on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Behind the walls of their defended enclave, Lauren’s father, a preacher, and a handful of other citizens try to salvage what remains of a culture that has been destroyed by drugs, disease, war, and chronic water shortages. While her father tries to lead people on the righteous path, Lauren struggles with hyperempathy, a condition that makes her extraordinarily sensitive to the pain of others.

When fire destroys their compound, Lauren’s family is killed and she is forced out into a world that is fraught with danger. With a handful of other refugees, Lauren must make her way north to safety, along the way conceiving a revolutionary idea that may mean salvation for all mankind.

Written on the Body

Written on the Body is a secret code only visible in certain lights: the accumulation of a lifetime gather there. In places the palimpsest is so heavily worked that the letters feel like braille. I like to keep my body rolled away from prying eyes, never unfold too much, tell the whole story. I didn't know that Louise would have reading hands. She has translated me into her own book.

The most beguilingly seductive novel to date from the author of The Passion and Sexing the Cherry. Winterson chronicles the consuming affair between the narrator, who is given neither name nor gender, and the beloved, a complex and confused married woman. At once a love story and a philosophical meditation.

The English Patient

With ravishing beauty and unsettling intelligence, Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an Italian villa at the end of World War II. Hana, the exhausted nurse; the maimed thief, Caravaggio; the wary sapper, Kip: each is haunted by the riddle of the English patient, the nameless, burned man who lies in an upstairs room and whose memories of passion, betrayal, and rescue illuminate this book like flashes of heat lightning.

A Suitable Boy

1993

by Vikram Seth

Vikram Seth's novel is, at its core, a love story: Lata and her mother, Mrs. Rupa Mehra, are both trying to find—through love or through exacting maternal appraisal—a suitable boy for Lata to marry. Set in the early 1950s, in an India newly independent and struggling through a time of crisis, A Suitable Boy takes us into the richly imagined world of four large extended families and spins a compulsively readable tale of their lives and loves. A sweeping panoramic portrait of a complex, multiethnic society in flux, A Suitable Boy remains the story of ordinary people caught up in a web of love and ambition, humor and sadness, prejudice and reconciliation, the most delicate social etiquette and the most appalling violence.

The Stars Shine Down

1992

by Sidney Sheldon

Lara Cameron is a famous, powerful, and wealthy New York building developer. She struggled from brutal poverty in Glace Bay, where a banker took her body as part of her first deal, to Chicago, where she took banker Keller's love lightly for granted. As her skyscrapers and boutique hotels tower on earth, she is at the top of a male-dominated field.

She lies and cheats to close a deal, making cruel enemies. At forty, she is beautiful, glamorous, insecure, ruthless, vulnerable, secretly generous, and rich—and still wants more. She marries an international concert pianist, the Lochinvar of her childhood dreams, but someone puts him in the hospital and threatens to take down her empire.

In a dazzling global setting from London to New York, Reno to Rome, Lara will find everything she has won—her fortune, her fame, and the man she loves—shockingly endangered by a secret with the devastating power to destroy her.

Romeo and Juliet

In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare creates a violent world, in which two young people fall in love. It is not simply that their families disapprove; the Montagues and the Capulets are engaged in a blood feud. In this death-filled setting, the movement from love at first sight to the lovers' final union in death seems almost inevitable.

And yet, this play set in an extraordinary world has become the quintessential story of young love. In part because of its exquisite language, it is easy to respond as if it were about all young lovers.

The End of the Affair

1991

by Graham Greene

"A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses a moment of experience from which to look ahead..." This is a record of hate far more than of love, writes Maurice Bendrix in the opening passages of The End of the Affair, and it is a strange hate indeed that compels him to set down the retrospective account of his adulterous affair with Sarah Miles. Now, a year after Sarah's death, Bendrix seeks to exorcise the persistence of his passion by retracing its course from obsessive love to love-hate. At first, he believes he hates Sarah and her husband, Henry. Yet as he delves deeper into his emotional outlook, Bendrix's hatred shifts to the God he feels has broken his life, but whose existence at last comes to recognize.

Griffin and Sabine

1991

by Nick Bantock

It all started with a mysterious and seemingly innocent postcard, but from that point nothing was to remain the same in the life of Griffin Moss, a quiet, solitary artist living in London. His logical, methodical world was suddenly turned upside down by a strangely exotic woman living on a tropical island thousands of miles away.

Who is Sabine? How can she "see" what Griffin is painting when they have never met? Is she a long-lost twin? A clairvoyant? Or a malevolent angel? Are we witnessing the flowering of a magical relationship or a descent into madness?

This stunning visual novel unfolds in a series of postcards and letters, all brilliantly illustrated with whimsical designs, bizarre creatures, and darkly imagined landscapes. Inside the book, Griffin and Sabine's letters are to be found nestling in their envelopes, permitting the reader to examine the intimate correspondence of these inexplicably linked strangers.

This truly innovative novel combines a strangely fascinating story with lush artwork in an altogether original format.

Memories of Midnight

1991

by Sidney Sheldon

In The Other Side of Midnight, they played the ultimate game of love, lust, and death.
Now, in Memories of Midnight, the survivors meet to play one last time...

Shadowed by tragedy and burdened by amnesia, a beautiful woman desperately tries to return to reality. She is Catherine Douglas, destined to once again challenge the cruel, charismatic power of Constantin Demiris, the Greek shipping tycoon who murdered Catherine's husband.

Now, in the glittering capitals and carefree playgrounds of post-war Europe, Demiris sets his deadly sights on Catherine—and the single, treacherous secret whose shattering truth is known to her alone...

The Rowan

1991

by Anne McCaffrey

The Rowan is the first installment in a wonderful trilogy told in the timeless style of Anne McCaffrey. This book represents sci-fi at its best: a contemporary love story intertwined with an engrossing view of our world in the future.

The kinetically gifted, trained in mind/machine gestalt, are the most valued citizens of the Nine Star League. Using mental powers alone, these few Prime Talents transport ships, cargo, and people between Earth's Moon, Mars' Demos, and Jupiter's Callisto.

An orphaned young girl, known simply as The Rowan, is discovered to have superior telepathic potential and is trained to become Prime Talent on Callisto. After years of self-sacrificing dedication to her position, The Rowan intercepts an urgent mental call from Jeff Raven, a young Prime Talent on distant Deneb.

She convinces the other Primes to merge their powers with hers to help fight off an attack by invading aliens. Her growing relationship with Jeff gives her the courage to break her status-imposed isolation and choose the more rewarding world of love and family.

Paradise

1991

by Judith McNaught

Paradise, the first book in the Second Opportunities series, is a tale of love, betrayal, and redemption. It follows the story of corporate raider Matthew Farrell, who has transformed from a poor, scruffy kid from Indiana's steel mills into a powerful figure courted by world leaders and closely watched by the media. Matthew is prepared to move in on the Bancroft empire, a legendary department store chain.

Meredith Bancroft, a cool and composed executive in her family's business, once defied her father to marry the intensely magnetic Matt Farrell, leading to a short-lived and disastrous marriage. Now, with the Bancroft firm facing a hostile takeover, Meredith must face Matt once again. As the tension between them escalates, they are haunted by memories that are both sweet and painful. Suspicion and restlessness grow, and they are left wondering if they can trust each other and seize the chance at a tender miracle that lies before them.

Animal Dreams

Animals dream about the things they do in the day time just like people do. If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life. So says Loyd Peregrina, a handsome Apache trainman and latter-day philosopher. But when Codi Noline returns to her hometown, Loyd's advice is painfully out of her reach. Dreamless and at the end of her rope, Codi comes back to Grace, Arizona to confront her past and face her ailing, distant father. What she finds is a town threatened by a silent environmental catastrophe, some startling clues to her own identity, and a man whose view of the world could change the course of her life. Blending flashbacks, dreams, and Native American legends, Animal Dreams is a suspenseful love story and a moving exploration of life's largest commitments. With this work, the acclaimed author of The Bean Trees and Homeland and Other Stories sustains her familiar voice while giving readers her most remarkable book yet.

Double Standards

1991

by Judith McNaught

In the exclusive, glittering world of business superstars, Nick Sinclair was a legend...


The ruggedly handsome president of Global Industries handled his business the way he handled his women — with charm, daring, and ruthless self-control. A man used to the very best, Nick hired Lauren Danner and assumed the proud beauty would soon be another easy conquest. But Lauren's flashing wit and rare spirit dazzled him — and slowly, against his will, he was intrigued, challenged — and in love.


Yet Lauren was living a lie, a charade that became more dangerous with every passing moment. Trapped in a web of deceit, she fought her growing love for Nick. Her secret could destroy his fragile trust — and the promise of life with the most compelling man she had ever met!

Outlander

1991

by Diana Gabaldon

Outlander, a novel by Diana Gabaldon, offers an unrivaled blend of storytelling and unforgettable characters, set against a richly detailed historical backdrop. The story begins in the Scottish Highlands in 1945, where Claire Randall, a former British combat nurse, is reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon. However, her life takes an unexpected turn when she walks through a standing stone in one of the ancient circles that dot the British Isles and is transported back in time to 1743.

Suddenly, Claire becomes an outlander in a Scotland embroiled in war and clan raids. Amidst the dangers, her only chance of safety lies in the hands of Jamie Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior. As Claire navigates this new world, she faces a torn existence between her fidelity to her husband and the compelling attraction to Jamie. This spellbinding novel weaves together adventure, passion, and history, resulting in a love story that transcends time itself.

Mirror Image

1990

by Sandra Brown

When a TV reporter is injured in a Dallas-bound jet crash, she enters a world of mistaken identity and political intrigue in this action-packed romantic suspense novel.


The crash of a Dallas-bound jet isn't just a tragedy for TV reporter Avery Daniels; it's an act of fate that hands her a golden opportunity to further her career. But it also makes her the crucial player in a drama of violent passions and deadly desires. After plastic surgery transforms her face, Avery is mistaken for the glamorous, selfish wife of Tate Rutledge, the famous senatorial candidate and member of a powerful Texas dynasty.


As she lays helpless in the hospital, Avery makes a shattering discovery: someone close to Tate planned to assassinate him. Now, to save him, she must live another woman's life — and risk her own.

Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle

Published two weeks after his seventieth birthday, Ada, or Ardor is one of Nabokov's greatest masterpieces, the glorious culmination of his career as a novelist. It tells a love story troubled by incest. It is also at once a fairy tale, epic, philosophical treatise on the nature of time, parody of the history of the novel, and erotic catalogue. Ada, or Ardor is no less than the supreme work of an imagination at white heat.

This is the first American edition to include the extensive and ingeniously sardonic appendix by the author, written under the anagrammatic pseudonym Vivian Darkbloom.

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