Elizabeth Mazer

If you like your sagas spiced with peril, these books have some delicious surprises in store for you. Authors Karen Rose and April Hunt are continuing their respective Cincinnati and Steele Ops series with a pair of page-turners packed with thrills, chills and more than a bit of sizzle as love—romantic and familial—overcomes fatal obstacles to always find a way.

Into the Dark
Dr. Dani Novak has structured her life around being a safe haven, both through her free clinic and her duties as an emergency foster mom to children in the deaf community. So it’s not a surprise when ex-Army Ranger Diesel Kennedy comes to her for help. What is a surprise is who he brings with him. Fourteen-year-old Michael Rowland is the only witness to a murder—which puts him on a killer’s hit list. As a deaf child with a heart-rendingly brutal past (which author Karen Rose discloses through some frank discussions of sexual assault of children and human trafficking), Michael’s trust isn’t easily won. By building a relationship with Michael and his little brother, Joshua, Dani’s heart opens in ways she hadn’t expected, including bringing her closer to Diesel and forcing her to confront the fear that has closed her off to romance for far too long.

A puzzle-box of a story, Into the Dark is so intricately layered, with such a huge cast of characters, that it can be difficult to hold all the threads together, especially for a reader who is new to the Cincinnati series. (Those who have read the previous four books, on the other hand, will have plenty of chances to revisit favorite characters and couples.) But while you may struggle to remember who is married to / related to / shared military service with whom, you’ll never doubt the overriding love that this family—and friends who are also family—shares.

As the mysteries unravel one by one, this warm, big-hearted adventure highlights how brightly love can shine against any encroaching darkness.

Lethal Redemption
FBI profiler Grace Steele thought she’d put her past in the rearview mirror, but it keeps landing in front of her—such as Cade Wright, her former Army Ranger ex-from-next-door who’s now in the private security business with her cousins. But the most frightening part of Grace’s past is tied to her early childhood, when she was raised in a cult—right up until she escaped at age 13. When the daughter of the vice president ends up as the cult’s newest recruit, Grace is the only one who can infiltrate the group to try to get the girl out. And Cade’s not about to let her go in alone.

While April Hunt isn’t the first author to create characters with heavy pasts to overcome, Grace and Cade have some exceptionally large gorillas on their backs. The irony is that the cult they infiltrate, the Order of the New Dawn, is all about getting closure, overcoming obstacles and letting go of burdens. Grace and Cade provide beautiful contrast to each other as they learn to work through their pasts by drawing together, leaning on each other’s strengths, supporting each other’s weaknesses and guiding each other toward forgiveness—with plenty of help from their families along the way.

With high tension and brutal stakes, the suspense will have you on the edge of your seat, but the peace and happiness the characters find together in the end will leave you with a smile.

They say that behind every great man is a great woman. What they never say is what exactly she’s doing there, and why she felt she couldn’t step out front and be great, all on her own. These two books—set in different locales, in different eras, and focusing on entirely different issues—answer that question. Why is she there? Because she was put there, and told it was her place.

And the next question: Will she stay there? In these books, absolutely not.

An Heiress to Remember

It’s 1879 in Gilded Age New York when Beatrice Goodwin, the titular heiress of Maya Rodale’s beautifully empowering An Heiress to Remember, makes the safe, conventional choice to marry a fortune-hunting duke rather than her penniless Irish-immigrant sweetheart. Sixteen years later, scandalously divorced, she returns home and is horrified to discover that her wastrel brother has run the family’s landmark department store straight into the ground. If she doesn’t act quickly, it’ll be sold to Wes Dalton, owner of the hugely successful operation across the street . . . and Beatrice’s former sweetheart. He’s spent 16 years clawing his way up the ladder, eager to get his revenge on those who saw him as less. Buying and destroying Goodwin’s would be final feather in his cap—but it’s a victory Beatrice won’t allow. Rallying support from the Ladies of Liberty, a group of women dedicated to promoting the professional advancement of women, she seizes control of the store and turns its fortunes around. Faced with real, powerful competition, Wes is forced to grapple with whether it’s truly revenge that he wants, or Beatrice.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Maya Rodale on the appeal of the Gilded Age romance.

In a less ambitious book, that would be the whole journey: Wes would realize he actually wants Beatrice after all, and would declare his love. Beatrice would tearfully fall into his arms, happy to be with the only man she has ever loved. Cue wedding bells, and happily ever after. That would be a perfectly nice romance. But this is not that story. Wes has a much more complex and compelling obstacle ahead of him than simply removing his head from his nether regions, because after a decade and a half of turning himself into New York’s most eligible man—a prince of industry who matches and exceeds Beatrice’s duke husband on every score—he comes to discover that Beatrice is not looking for the right man to come along and make her happy. She’s looking to dictate her own happiness. To stand up for what she wants, and to create a space where other women can do the same. She chooses empowerment and independence, and those are rivals for her hand and her heart that make even Wes pale in comparison. Winning her doesn’t mean sweeping her off her feet and setting her up in a castle. She had one of those already, and she hated it. Winning her means accepting her as she is, and finding a way to let her choose love and choose to continue living her life on her own terms.

If I Never Met You

Meanwhile, Mhairi McFarlane’s Laurie Watkinson thought she’d made all the right choices. She was living exactly the life she wanted as a successful lawyer in an important Manchester firm and in a dedicated, long-term relationship. Then her life falls apart when her boyfriend Dan walks out on her. Worse? He (suspiciously, immediately) has a new girlfriend. Even worse? That new girlfriend is (suspiciously, immediately) pregnant. Worst of all? Laurie and Dan work at the same firm, which means she has the fun of being the center of gossip and the object of pity while trying to hold her broken heart together. At her lowest point, the office playboy—gorgeous, ambitious Jamie Carter—offers her a deal. He needs a “respectable” girlfriend to impress the senior partners. She needs to give Dan a wakeup call, and get some confidence back. A fake relationship between the two of them would be a win/win…right?

McFarlane wrote one of my favorite books of 2019—Don’t You Forget About Me—so I was expecting another deeply funny, deeply emotional, deeply engaging story, and that’s exactly what I got. What I wasn’t expecting was how hard If I Never Met You would be to read. If you or someone you love has had their trust betrayed by a long-term partner and is now struggling to regain their self-worth, figure out what went wrong, fend off creepy men looking to exploit the emotionally shaken and plot out a path forward, then it’s going to be tough for you to get through the first hundred pages. McFarlane is astonishingly clear-eyed in all of her writing and even the most rom-com of plots (the characters make references to When Harry Met Sally, but I kept thinking of another Meg Ryan film—French Kiss) are deployed with an emotional honesty that cuts no one any slack. Every revelation and insight in the story feels earned, including heartbreaking moments where Laurie recalls a childhood sexual aggression or when Jamie struggles with self-blame over his brother’s death years before.

This book isn’t easy. But it’s so, so worth it. Laurie’s journey is devastating and honest, which is precisely what makes it so empowering when she moves past her heartbreak and opens her eyes to things she hadn’t allowed herself to see. Like the chauvinism in her workplace where some colleagues—including Dan—think they have the right to determine her romantic future. Like her group of “couple” friends who defined her by her connection to Dan. Like Dan himself, who used her in ways so subtle that it takes a lot of hindsight before she can even see it. The book is a romance, so it’s no surprise that Laurie falls in love with Jamie. But the more powerful transition is her removing her blinders, fully understanding her world and her relationships, and making some hard choices to decide for herself what comes next. That includes the choice to open her heart to Jamie, who would never push her into the background and who wants nothing more than to stand by her side.

What’s a woman’s place? For Beatrice and Laurie—and me, and every single one of you—it’s anywhere she damn well chooses to be.

Complex and delightful friend groups ground two new romances in warts-and-all reality.

Trying to find love can mean putting your best foot forward: being the hottest, smartest, coolest version of yourself whenever the object of your affection is around. But as guarded as we are with romantic prospects, we open ourselves wholeheartedly to the friends who love us exactly as we are. By showcasing strong friend groups, two romances offer a glimpse into their characters’ truest, facade-down, flaws-exposed selves.

In Kris Ripper’s The Hate Project, Oscar Nelson and his friends have been fixtures in each other’s lives since college, providing encouragement, nagging, advice, excessive emojis and unconditional love. These are all things that Oscar needs badly, given the powerful and pervasive anxiety that threatens to crush him when he loses his miserable customer service job and must put himself out there to find another gig. 

A temporary reprieve comes when Jack hires Oscar to clean out his grandmother’s house. Jack’s late grandfather was a hoarder, so this is no easy task. It’s potentially awkward as well, as Jack and Oscar have never really gotten along. And since Jack and Oscar slept together that one time, well . . .

This story, if you’ll pardon the pun, has a lot of unpacking to do. Ripper digs deep into Oscar’s issues, depicting them with such uncompromising starkness that readers may have trouble envisioning how he will come out on the other side and step into healthy choices and happy endings. Ripper also devotes time to Jack’s issues, since he’s got his own burdens to carry. 

By the end, Ripper methodically reveals that nearly every character has had to work hard to get where they are—even the sunniest character, Jack’s hilariously irrepressible grandmother, Evelyn. While The Hate Project depicts a lot of struggle, including a fair and realistic amount of backsliding, it also showcases lovely moments of hope, steadfastly suggesting that troubles can be overcome with loyal friends.

The friendship group in Just Last Night faces a challenge that’s far more abrupt—painfully so. Three 30-somethings who’ve been tightly wound into each other’s lives since they were teenagers are forced to grapple with a shocking and sudden death among their ranks. 

Eve, Ed and Justin are wrecked at the loss of their fourth, Suzie. But their bond is further undermined when Eve discovers that, 10 years ago, Suzie had a one-night stand with Ed. Ed, who is now engaged. Ed, whom Eve has been hopelessly, silently in love with for years. This revelation shakes Eve down to her foundations, causing her to reevaluate the relationships that define her and those she'd written off, including her relationship with Suzie’s gorgeous, estranged brother, Finlay. He and Eve grow closer as she sorts through the impact of the past on her present and the ways the people around her have influenced the person she chose to become.

With complex subjects and complicated characters, Mhairi McFarlane's unflinchingly honest romances often go where other authors fear to tread. The turmoil and heartache in Just Last Night feel visceral and real, as do the scars from the past. A scene that describes a character's experience of childhood abuse carries a lot of weight and is particularly difficult to read. 

But McFarlane’s romances are always worth the journey. With incredible warmth, humor and humanity, they stir such deep empathy and engagement that you won’t just watch the characters’ cathartic experiences; you’ll feel them. Likewise, you won't just admire this group friendship; you'll feel like you're a part of it, and that you’re all the better for it.

A Regency romance without a scandal is, of course, hardly any kind of romance at all. What’s the fun of having all those rules if no one breaks them? But while we’ve all relished our share of rakish heroes with scandalous pasts and sinister reputations, there’s something bold and delightful about this trio of romances featuring convention-defying women. These heroines seem, at least on paper, to be the very last sort that any Regency hero would marry.

Charlotte Hurst, the heroine of Not the Kind of Earl You Marry by Kate Pembrooke, is most definitely an unexpected match for William Atherton, Earl of Norwood—especially given that their engagement is announced in the newspaper before the two of them have even met. It’s part of a plot to embarrass William and damage his political ambitions, but Charlotte and William choose to combat it by keeping the ruse going and playing the happy couple. Or at least, that’s William’s hope. Because he initially accuses Charlotte of being the source of the story, she takes some convincing. That’s his first hint that she's not like the other women he’s known. Far from fawning over the rich, handsome and titled gentleman, she’s quick to tell William off, informing him that he’s not the last man she’d ever marry, because that doesn’t go far enough. She’d never marry him, even if there were literally no options left.

Pembrooke uses the pair's first meeting to set the stage for the relationship they’ll build, in which Charlotte continues to startle and engage William by defying his expectations and puncturing his ego in the process. Charlotte’s pragmatic, no-nonsense attitude is refreshing not just to William but also to readers, who will appreciate her honesty, her kindness and the warmth and sincerity of her growing love for the one man she was quite certain she’d never marry.

In contrast to Charlotte, Kathleen Calvert knows exactly how she consistently ends up the subject of gossip in Vanessa Kelly’s The Highlander’s Irish Bride. She keeps finding herself in absurdly inappropriate situations through (mostly) no fault of her own. When the latest scandal gets her banished from London and sent to visit a cousin who has married into a Scottish clan, she immediately clashes with Grant Kendrick, the most staid and serious member of the somewhat riotous family. He’s Scottish while she’s Irish. He’s quiet while she’s talkative. He’s proper and buttoned up while she’s . . . not. Kathleen’s immediate reaction is that they could never suit, which any romance reader knows means that they’ll eventually discover they’re perfect for each other. Which they are, of course. Kathleen’s exuberance brings much-needed color into Grant’s rather drab life, while his steadiness eases her restless energy and helps her find a place to belong at last.

There’s a lovely poignancy to the scenes where the couple bonds over the things they do share: love of family, devotion to siblings, deep-seated sadness over the loss of parents. Grant and Kathleen are surrounded by quite a bit of drama and chaos as their romance progresses (people are held at gunpoint multiple times, and there’s a love triangle that gets delightfully convoluted) but Kelly uses their growing love as an anchor, grounding all the excitement in something real and warm and lovely.

Hanna Zaydan, Diana Quincy’s heroine in The Viscount Made Me Do It, is the most scandalous of this trio, but she is also the most heroic. She’s a bone setter, a historical occupation that was a bit like a chiropractor, but without a formal education and without a fraction of respect from the established medical community. As such, Hanna is viewed as a charlatan at best and a prostitute at worst, and even her own Arab English family finds her choice of profession inappropriate. The only person who believed in her was her father, who trained her in the craft and whose practice she has taken over following his death. Thomas Ellis, Viscount Griffin, comes into her life as he searches for his parents’ killer, and Hanna earns his admiration and respect when she cures him of a long-standing injury that the medical establishment has been unable to treat. His admiration grows into a fascination that soon tips over into love. It would not only be shocking for a viscount to wed a working-class woman in a disreputable profession, but Hanna’s big, close-knit family would never view Thomas as an acceptable match, since he's not an Arab.

In a subgenre as WASPy as Regency romance, The Viscount Made Me Do It is a marvelous breath of fresh air, reminding readers that there were other cultures, other religions and other perspectives present in this era besides the ones most commonly focused on. Hanna is a fascinating creation for all the ways in which she defies convention—and her love story is all the more dazzling for the richness and vibrancy her perspective brings.