Elizabeth Mazer

Old-school romance novels can feel like the ultimate guilty pleasure. Where else can we have the fun of being ravaged by a sexy Scotsman or having a notorious pirate take us to bed (or in a carriage, or on horseback or up against a wall . . .)? But so many of the old classics mix erotic delights with the more unsettling elements of racism, sexism and a disturbing tendency to believe that if the scene is steamy enough, the reader won’t mind that the heroine said no and the hero treated it like a yes.

The remedy is found in delicious historical romances such as these three novels. They deliver on all the elements you’d expect: The historical settings are rich and engaging, the drama is fast-paced and exciting, the passion is turbulent and scorchingly hot and the men are strong and sexy (and Scottish, in two out of three—always a nice bonus). But above and beyond that, the heroines are fierce, forthright forces to be reckoned with as they defy conventions and choose their own paths to happiness.

A WOMAN BETRAYED
Athena Trappes, the lovely heroine of Between a Highlander and a Hard Place by Mary Wine, starts worlds away from rugged Scottish laird Symon Grant. We first meet her happily settled in Elizabethan England, on the verge of marriage to a handsome, charming royal courtier. She seems perfectly poised to live very properly ever after. But when her groom-to-be turns villainous and attempts to force Athena into becoming his mistress rather than his bride, her true strength is revealed. Far from swooning into the man’s arms or waiting to be rescued, she sets his house on fire and walks out with her head held high—right up until she’s forced to run for her life to avoid retribution. In a plot that might appeal to a certain bard of that period, Athena safeguards her passage by disguising herself as a boy. And this successfully protects her, until her true nature is discovered by Symon.

He’s the polar opposite of the man she’d once planned to marry—Scottish rather than British; rough-edged rather than manicured; plainspoken rather than full of empty compliments. But most of all, he’s honorable and generous rather than deceitful and cruel. He falls for Athena in an instant, but he challenges her to make her own decisions, to embrace her passion, and to choose a life with him. It’s not an easy journey for Athena, and more than once she finds herself held against her will and viewed as a commodity by ruthless men, yet through it all, she maintains her spirit and strength, and even finds the courage to love the gorgeous highlander who offers her his home and his heart.

A WOMAN ABANDONED
A loving home is exactly what the orphaned heroine lacks in Julia London’s Seduced by a Scot. Taken in—with reluctance—by a friend of her father’s in 18th-century Scotland, Maura Darby is treated with cold indifference when she’s a child. But that’s far better than the outright contempt she receives as she grows into a beautiful woman and attracts too much male attention away from Sorcha, the daughter of the house. When Sorcha’s betrothed forces a kiss on Maura—a kiss for which Maura is blamed, of course—both Sorcha and her mother insist Maura must leave, at once. But where exactly is a woman with no resources meant to go? And how can the family that raised her be rid of her without generating speculation? Clearly, the only solution is to call in Nichol Bain, the capable and clever “fixer” for the upper class. At the start, he’s so confident in his abilities that he’s actually disappointed to be given such an “easy” problem. Foolish, foolish man—he has no idea what he’s in for with Maura!

It doesn’t take long before he realizes that this is not a woman who will submit to having her life arranged without having her say—at full volume. Half of the fun of the story is seeing how thoroughly Maura ruffles Nichol, shaking him out of his comfort zone and pushing him to live his life to the upmost as she strives to do the same. This is a man who believes he has all the answers, but it isn’t until Maura enters his life that he starts asking the right questions—such as what a person might be willing to sacrifice for a true and lasting love.

A WOMAN ABUSED
Compared to these other adventures, the setting of Barbarous might seem almost staid by contrast. Our Regency-era heroine—Daphne Redvers, widow to the Earl of Davenport—is a bookish, bespectacled matron living quietly with her children on her late husband’s country estate. But she shows her grit right from the start when she breaks a man’s nose on the first page! The man in question—her evil cousin, Malcolm—spends most of the book stubbornly insisting he can overpower and intimidate her while she spends the book proving him wrong, with the assistance, of course, of the exceptionally dashing hero. Hugh Redvers is, technically, Daphne’s nephew-in-law—officially titled Baron Ramsay and standing next in line to become earl before Daphne’s sons were born. He’s also a pirate, both feared and revered on the high seas as One-Eyed Standish. (Yes, he has an eye patch. And a parrot. And a monkey.) He left his aristocratic family behind decades earlier, content to let them think he was dead while he pursued his own adventures, but when he receives word that Daphne might be in danger, he comes home to help—and is stunned to find himself in danger of losing his heart for the first time.

As with Dangerous, the first title in Minerva Spencer’s Outcasts series, the story brims with all the swashbuckling excitement anyone could ask for, mixed with high-society hijinks all wrapped around a blazingly hot love story. But this book also has the most poignant departure from the old romance model. Daphne is a mother to twin boys who are the result of sexual assault—something she grapples with over the course of the story. Healing comes with time, and with the shock of finding true understanding from Hugh who, following a capture at sea, spent time as a sultan’s slave. When he comforts her, he does it as someone with intimate knowledge of how it feels to be stripped of bodily autonomy; to be used with no concern for consent. It makes their conscious choice to be together—to share themselves and enjoy each other freely—all the sweeter.

There’s something so delectable about a really juicy secret. The right kind of mystery or surprise hits a story like an earthquake, rattling things off the shelves and leaving everyone scrambling for stable footing. A secret can bring a story to life, lighting a fire under the characters and forcing them to decide what they truly value and how far they’ll go to protect themselves and their loved ones.

A HOUSE OF SCANDAL
Thomas Powell, heir to the Duke of Northfield and hero of Eva Leigh’s Dare to Love a Duke, is rich, handsome, capable, privileged, spoiled, dissolute and so bored with it all that the reader half expects him to run off to join the circus just to do something new. He believes he’s seen it all, until a friend takes him to a masked, equal opportunity sex club straight out of Eyes Wide Shut. Yet even when he’s surrounded by carnality in every imaginable combination, the only person to catch his eye is the beautiful and mysterious manager of the Orchid Club, Lucia Marini. Thomas’ pursuit of her is halted when his father unexpectedly dies, leaving him the title, the estate, a heavy load of responsibilities on his shoulders—and the absolutely stunning discovery that his staid, conservative father was the owner of the Orchid Club.

The club scenes are so sensually described by Leigh that they might have overshadowed the main plot if the characters were any less engaging and dynamic than Lucia and Tom. As it is, the wanton adventurousness of the club can’t hold a candle to the heat and tension that sparks between our hero and heroine, whether they’re dressed or not. The same passion they bring to the bedroom is reflected in all the aspects of their lives, as Tom grapples with how to balance his conscience and his sense of duty, and Lucia struggles to build a legacy she can be proud of in spite of a troubled past. Their road to happily ever after isn’t smooth or easy (where would be the fun in that?), but it leads to a fun and quite satisfying ride.

A HIDDEN PAST
By contrast, the heroine in Elizabeth Hoyt’s Not the Duke’s Darling seems like a perfectly respectable lady’s companion—as long as you aren’t aware of the spy work Freya de Moray secretly performs for the order of Wise Women, or the dark scandal in her past. But all her secrets risk exposure during at a house party where she’s targeted by witch hunters and in turn forced to interact with the man she blames for destroying her family. When Freya recognizes Christopher Renshaw, the Duke of Harlowe, she vows that she won’t waste this opportunity for revenge. The chemistry flaring between them is just the fiery passion of her hatred, right? Surely, it couldn’t be anything else . . .

There are so many secrets and scandals in this story that what I’ve written so far barely scratches the surface. (Are you looking for a neighbor who might be hiding matrimonial murder? This book has it. How about a secret affair with compromising letters leading to blackmail? Yep, they’re here, too.) There’s never a dull moment in Not the Duke’s Darling, and many of the truths revealed are genuinely shocking. But the biggest surprise may be how naturally the relationship between the characters grows from animosity, to attraction, to compassion, to respect. Falling in love with the “enemy” can be a hard sell, but Hoyt masters it beautifully. Most interestingly, the biggest obstacle between the two ends up being the future, rather than the past. In a period when wives were treated as not-very-bright pets rather than partners, Freya has trouble imagining giving up her independence. It takes a leap of faith to realize that Christopher truly sees her the way she wants to be seen, and intends to build a life with her as equals. Talk about shocking!

Boss and secretary. Doctor and nurse. Parent and nanny. Romance is filled with stories where the emotionally charged proximity of employer and employee cause hearts to ignite. But falling in love on the job can mean more than flirty innuendo over takeout while pulling an all-nighter, or steamy sex on the conference room table. These terrific new stories are playful and naughty and fun, but they’ve also got surprises up their sleeves.

Working for Logan Prescott is just about the last thing in the world Claire McKenna, heroine of Jamie Beck’s The Promise of Us, wants. Not only is he the boy-next-door, childhood crush she never quite got over, he’s also the brother of Peyton Prescott, her former bestie who betrayed Claire by stealing her boyfriend, Todd. It doesn’t matter that Todd fled after Peyton was diagnosed with breast cancer. All that matters is making sure her life remains Prescott-free forever and ever, amen. But Logan’s not willing to leave matters like that and tilts the situation in his favor by making Claire an irresistible offer—hiring her to redecorate his apartment, throwing her a financial lifeline to keep her beloved business going. And in the meantime, he throws in a seduction that turns her quiet life upside down.

Claire’s life needs a little rattling. After a traumatic injury during her teens, she’s spent her adulthood playing it stiflingly safe. Logan challenges her in a multitude of ways, though the author is wise enough to show that not all of those challenges pay off. She also plays with the usual expectations by showing that gorgeous, charming Logan is not always nice. He can be manipulative. Calculating. Downright cunning in the right mood and fiercely cutting in the wrong one. When Claire lists her reasons for why they won’t work, they aren’t strawman arguments—they’re real and rational, true challenges for them to overcome in a story where nothing ever seems like a foregone conclusion. Everything feels profoundly realistic, not only in the depth of the conflicts but also in the thorough grounding in the present, with references to current bestsellers, recent natural disasters, even topical man-made tragedies. The injury Claire suffered was from a mass shooting. A refugee crisis is referenced. This might be off-putting for readers seeking an escape from reality, but I think others will find it refreshing to turn the pages and meet people having serious discussions about real issues—as well as serious struggles against real obstacles as they find their way to each other.

“Struggling” is a familiar state to the hero and heroine of Under the Table. Zoey Sullivan is trying to rebuild a new life after the collapse of her marriage, turning a long-time passion for cooking into a semi-steady career as a private caterer. And Tristan Malloy, the very rich, very handsome, very, very shy hero who hires her to cater a small dinner party, is struggling to get out of his beautiful museum of an apartment and figure out a life to lead.

Tristan was raised in a quiet, sheltered Caribbean community by his grandparents who brought him up to have extremely polite, strongly principled and totally ignorant of modern media. The end result is a guy who appears to be “stuck in a time warp of manners, courtesy, and pleated pants.” Not one to avoid hard work, Tristan has come to New York to figure out what comes next. And not one to back away from a challenge, Zoey is determined to help. She takes him shopping for skinny jeans. She brings him to a nightclub. She introduces him to delivery pizza and Guitar Hero. But while she’s playing Pygmalion with Tristan, Zoey is also dealing with her own doubts and insecurities over her separation from her emotionally abusive husband, her mingled love and resentment of her carefree and careless sister/roommate, and her uncertainty about where she belongs.

It’s lovely to read a romance where the characters spend so much time being good to each other and good for each other. They don’t get everything right—there wouldn’t be much of a story if they did—but there’s no fighting just for the sake of building drama. Their intentions nearly always stem from a genuine desire to do what’s decent and honorable, which takes a kind of courage that’s rare and special. And while the ending didn’t have me totally convinced (the revelation of a secondary character’s motives didn’t quite ring true), I still admired the way the heroine made the final decision to confront her problems head-on, having the conversations she needed to have, even if they hurt. Both of the characters struggle throughout the book, but even more than the challenges that arise, you’ll remember the strength they showed in the face of them.

Long gone—and little missed—are the days when historical romance meant timid, angelic female leads swooning in the arms of dastardly, irresistible rogues we were told were heroes. These days, we have clever, witty authors crafting bold, charismatic heroines who are far more likely to seize a good brandy than clutch at their smelling salts.

Lily Hartley, of Anna Bennett’s The Duke Is But a Dream, knows quite a bit about style. At least, she knows enough to have all of the ton breathless with eagerness for her guidance. As the anonymous author of the wildly popular column The Debutante’s Revenge, she has created a scandal with her frank, liberal-minded advice, but her life away from the page is remarkably quiet—too quiet, tempting her to seek an adventure when she goes to deliver her column while disguised as a messenger boy. She couldn’t have known that her spontaneous jaunt would leave her knocked unconscious, or that she’d wake in the home of her rescuer, Eric Nash, Duke of Stonebridge, with her memory entirely gone. As she struggles to piece herself back together, Lily finds unexpected comfort in the friendship of the duke and his sister, Delilah—and unexpected passion in Nash’s arms. Meanwhile, although Nash and Delilah start out as rescuers, it’s lovely to see how Lily rescues them in turn, lifting them out of their sadness and breathing new life into their home. In this story of finding yourself, it’s the family the central characters create together that’s the most satisfying discovery of all.

Satisfaction is exactly what Brazen and the Beast’s Lady Henrietta Sedley is after on the eve of her 29th birthday—the commencement of what she’s christened the “Year of Hattie,” when she’ll finally go after what she wants: a career, a home of her own, financial security and a bright future. And to kick it off, she plans to discard her troublesome virginity so that she can close the book on ever becoming a bride. Always a wallflower and never a rose, Hattie’s resigned herself to the idea that she’s too tall, too big, too forthright and too indecorous to ever be the demure beauty men in her circle seem to want. She never thought to look outside her circle until she found a fierce, gorgeous beast of a man—Covent Garden crime lord Whit—tied up and unconscious in her carriage. And thus begins a merry chase as they battle and bargain and banter over what has been done to them, what they wish to do to each other and whether it’s more fun to fight with each other or fight for each other and for their rapidly growing love. Funny, playful and vivid, Sarah MacLean’s latest romance samples the best of both worlds with the earthy vigor of the slum’s crafty, loyal lower classes and the juicy intrigue of high society scandal.

Scandal and intrigue are the bread and butter of Miss Wilhelmina Penny’s world of spy craft and reconnaissance in Lenora Bell’s One Fine Duke. Or they would be, if her overprotective uncle—spymaster Sir Malcolm—would give her a chance. Secluded “safely” in the countryside, she’s spent years longing for the chance to take a bite out of life and swallow it whole; to become sophisticated and elegant like her lovely late mother, who died in service to the crown. Mina’s taught herself to pick locks, create weaponry and crack codes, but in order to escape her uncle’s well-meaning dictates, she’ll need to use the one tool he’s helpless against: an eligible duke. Determined to see her well married, Sir Malcolm has put together a “Duke Dossier” of the matches he thinks would take proper care of her. Topping the list is Andrew Bentley, Duke of Thorndon. Her uncle’s approval is enough to convince Mina that Drew could never be the man for her, and yet when they meet, sparks fly. They join forces to investigate a mystery surrounding his scapegrace brother, and yet the solution to her own personal puzzle surprises even Mina when she comes to learn that the duke she never thought she wanted was the secret key to her happiness all along.