Note: The sensuality rating of these stories ranges from Kisses to Burning If you liked the movie Love Actually but wished more of the characters had gotten happy endings, Amor Actually, which re-imagines every plot thread from the movie, might be the anthology for you. Like the original, the characters are interconnected, in this case…
In this lovely, Sweden-set short story, Jolie Flynn returns to the island of Öland for her aunt’s funeral and to take care of her estate. In the airport, she encounters her first love, Mattias, now a father of five, who remembers her aunt and comes to Öland to stay next door to Jolie. Their second-chance…
I’m a fan of Bell’s Wilder series and had thought there’d be six books, one for each Wilder sibling. It appears, however, that the story of the lone female Wilder, the already married Amanda, is told in a short story included in the anthology Tinsel and Tatas. This collection, a charitable endeavor in support of…
When I wrote a blog post for AAR called “Male fatphobia in romance novels,” I didn’t dare hope or ask for the bigger guys I find attractive to be heroes; I just begged authors to avoid stereotyping them as pathetic losers. Clearly, I had to try Jessa Kane’s short story Husky, which stars an overweight…
When I asked to review this short story I hadn’t heard of the author and knew nothing about this work, except that it was a m/m Historical Romance. I was quite pleased when I learned it was set in an alternate universe, as that’s one of my favourite sub-genres and can be quite wonderful when…
Lisa Gardner’s D. D. Warren is one of my favorite detectives and this short story contains all the elements that have lofted her to that elevated position. Humorous, clever and intriguing, The Guy Who Died Twice presents D.D. with her ‘strangest case’ ever. This is number 9.5 in the series and while it can certainly…
Set in 1802, Lady Ann’s Excellent Adventure is a perfect gem of a short story, full of verve and joy and I simply fell in love with it. The Earl of Evesham is merrily tooling his new curricle through the streets of London when he spots a young woman perched in a tree. He approaches…
Set in 1810, Desperate Measures is a romance that takes place during one evening at a ball. Young Lydia Bettridge is suffering from the pangs of unrequited love. She’s desperate to have her brother’s friend, the Golden God, Geoffrey Danforth, notice her, so she and another of her brother’s friends, Phillip, hatch a plot to…
I’ll be blunt here. I don’t approve of the short story prequel trend as I find one of two things tends to happen with this particular gimmick. The first is that I wind up paying an extra few dollars for information that is absolutely vital to the story and should have been included in the…