15 Romance Books to Get You Ready for Valentine’s Day

One of the charms of older category romances is that they now read like they’re historicals. Mary Burchell’s heroine in Paris is a midcentury couture model — a mannequin, as they were known — heartbroken over a faithless former fiancé and in thrall to a stern couturier whose gruff manner hides a gratifying amount of passion. This is a taffeta world of photographers, fabrics and cocktail parties, where a wine spill could ruin a girl’s career.

One of the most riotous of bodice-rippers, with an immortally weird opening line: “Merry Patricia Wilding was sitting on a cobblestone wall, sketching three rutabagas and daydreaming about the unicorn.” An innocent American is kidnapped by British pirates during the War of 1812, and then — well, then things just keep happening. This is less a story than an experience, garlanded in some of the most dazzlingly purple prose ever spun.

If you only pick one author from this list, let it be Laura Kinsale — and if you only pick one Kinsale, this is the one I’d suggest. We meet Ruck in all his medieval splendor: a self-denying itinerant knight compelled to serve the coldhearted Princess Melanthe, who once saved his life and now needs his protection journeying from France to her English estate. Their epic road trip bristles with bandits, birds of prey, plagues and assassins — and a growing passion hot enough to burn down the entire world.

They say the big draw of historical romance is escape, but some escapes are more literal than others. This early Beverly Jenkins banger stars Hester Wyatt, a formerly enslaved woman whose hands are permanently stained by indigo dye. Now she works to help others reach freedom, hiding fugitives in the cellar until they can move onward to freedom. One of those fugitives is Galen Vachon, a famed Underground Railroad conductor nearly beaten to death by slave catchers. The slow build of tension while Galen heals from his injuries is classic hurt-comfort stuff, and the meticulous historical research in the background lets their chemistry shine like a jewel in a custom setting.

Cross-dressing heroines are something historical romance pilfered from Shakespeare and absolutely ran with, for better and for worse. Kit Brantley is disguised as a man and sent by her father to spy on the Earl of Everton, but the earl immediately discovers the ruse — and then buys her a bespoke masculine wardrobe so she can swan about London with his rakish friends, charming the debutantes and breaking everyone’s hearts. That includes, of course, the heart of the earl, who is not nearly as sinister as Kit’s father has made him out to be. Queer-adjacent, sparkling with banter and perfectly overdramatic.

A possibly controversial choice, but the gorgeousness and strangeness of Judith Ivory’s prose is irresistible. This is a gender-swapped “My Fair Lady,” where the linguist Lady Edwina Bollash (prim, traumatized) accepts an aristocrat’s bet to pass off the Cornish-Cockney rat-catcher Mick Tremore (earthy, adorable) as a viscount at her cousin’s upcoming ball. There’s nothing more quintessentially romance than the section where Winnie offers to show Mick her legs if he’ll shave his mustache: Negotiations take three full chapters and you’re on the edge of your seat every minute.

Scotland as Julie Garwood presents it is a strange otherworld of warrior men and the beautiful women who terrify them with their fire and endurance. While “The Bride” is my favorite book of hers, this one is more intricately plotted. Between the Scottish clans and English barons, our main couple are caught in a constant back and forth of raids, kidnappings, escapes and betrayals. Our captivating heroine, Gillian, is resourceful, resentful and in one scene handles pain so fearlessly that she leaves a half-dozen burly Scots trembling in existential horror.

Before romantasy, there was paranormal romance, and goodness did we have fun with it. Amanda Quick’s series about psychics and magic-users in Victorian London begins with Venetia Jones, a photographer who sees auras, and who is passing herself off as the widow of a man she shared one spectacular night with before his demise. But her “husband,” Gabriel Jones, is alive and well and stunned to find he has a wife — and now the same psychically powered enemies who tried to kill him are coming for Venetia and her family.

For contemporary romantic comedy, Jennifer Crusie is unparalleled — and this book’s significant body count means it has aged spectacularly well for a time when murder books are hot again. Agnes is a cookbook author and new homeowner suddenly harassed by criminals who think she’s in possession of a secret, so her beloved Uncle Joey (a former member of the mob, which turns out to be relevant) sends Shane, the best hit man he knows, to protect her. Agnes’s secret violent side (the frying pans!) and Shane’s hidden vulnerable heart turn out to be a perfect pairing, and keep the story sweet even as the bodies pile up.

This book may be slim, but so is a razor blade. Our heroine is a botanical illustrator during the Regency, and our hero is a celebrated adventurer, lauded for surviving after a shipwreck. But while society swoons over such thrilling exploits, our hero is haunted by them. Why? Because he survived by eating his shipmates. That’s right, this romance hero is a cannibal, and he’s not OK about it. Bold and bright and unforgettable.

Ever since Baroness Orczy disguised an English lord as the Scarlet Pimpernel, spies have been showing up as heroines and heroes. “The Spymaster’s Lady” is a particularly adept example of the archetype. A gritty view into the dark side of the Napoleonic Wars, it pits two agents of enormous intelligence and power against a backdrop of more than the usual amount of peril. Rich and dark, with the kind of lush psychological characterization that makes everyone feel larger than life.

Loretta Chase’s “Lord of Scoundrels” deserves all the hype it gets — but it’s also better appreciated if it’s not the first romance a reader picks up. For a starter I’d offer this Venice-set story of Francesca Bonnard, a jaded courtesan, and James Cordier, a spy who seduces women on behalf of the British Empire. There are stolen rubies and shady ladies and two people who have come to see sex as merely a mode of business — and who are more surprised than anyone when earnest affection takes root in their neglected hearts.

Look, if you don’t perk up at the phrase “vampire sorority,” then what are we even doing here? There is a direct bloodline — ha — from the lesbian pulps of the postwar era to the sexy e-book boom of the early 21st century, when once-niche authors could find mass readership like never before. This juicy, messy, thirsty little romance about a new college student and the blood-drinking immortal she falls for during vampire orgies was published by Bold Strokes Books, whose founder took the name Radclyffe as a nod to the trailblazing lesbian author Radclyffe Hall.

Some romance writers have backlists in the hundreds; others blaze briefly across the readership like a comet before vanishing. Grant’s four books dazzled when they first appeared, and people still wistfully whisper her name and yearn for her to return. Will Blackshear is a Waterloo veteran grappling with trauma and shame; Lydia Slaughter — one of the top-tier romance heroine names — is another man’s mistress, who enjoys sex partly for pleasure, partly for profit and partly out of a self-destructive compulsion that matches Will’s own.

The most recent romance on the list is an absolute stunner. Mingyu is the most celebrated courtesan in Tang-dynasty China, her favors sought after by warlords and scholars alike. Constable Wu Kaifeng is stubborn, unmannerly and poor: He pursues justice single-mindedly because he can’t afford to do anything else — even if it means having to torture beautiful, intelligent courtesans in the course of his job. The only reason this isn’t my favorite romance of all time is that Garwood’s “The Bride” has a 20-year head start.