No. 6: Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (1847), Summary and Similar Books

Posted on by
Reply

A rain-beaten, soul-devouring novel set among the foggy moors of a Yorkshire manor, this is Emily Bronte’s only novel. It tells of the passionate, all-consuming love between the orphan Heathcliff and his wealthy childhood friend, Catherine Earnshaw. Housed under the same roof, they couldn’t help but for a bond.

Years later, though, Heathcliff’s orphan status precludes him from marrying Catherine. Healthcliff vows revenge on all those who stand in his way. The brutal novel came before Bronte’s early death at age 30, long before the book would gain it’s stature of one of England’s classics.

“I cannot express it,” Emily Bronte said before her death, “but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is, or should be, an existence of yours beyond you.” Her words and characters are alive more than a century after her death, and her depiction of a love turned mad is harrowing; as powerful now as it was in 1847.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte is No. 6 on our list of the Top 1,000 Best Romance Books of All Time.

Sequels to Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Return to Wuthering Heights, Anna L’Estrange

Similar Books to Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Sweet Savage Love, by Rosemary Rogers
Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen
Emma, by Jane Austen
Frederica, by Georgette Heyer
Magic Flutes, by Eva Ibbotson
Again the Magic, by Lisa Kleypas
Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen
Persuasion, by Jane Austen
Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen
Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte

Movie Versions of Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Wuthering Heights (2009), starring Tom Hardy and Charlotte Riley

Wuthering Heights (1992), starring Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes

Wuthering Heights (1985), starring Fabienne Babe and Lucas Belvaux

Wuthering Heights (1970), starring Anna Calder-Marshall and Timothy Dalton

Wuthering Heights (1939), starring Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier

Wuthering Heights (1998), starring Peter Davison and Tom Georgeson

Wuthering Heights (MTV, 2003), starring Erika Christensen and Mike Vogel

Wuthering Heights (2009), starring Angela Scoular and Ian McShane

No. 5: Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, Summary and Similar Books

Posted on by
Reply

A heartbreaking anti-war novel set in American South during the Civil War. The heroine is one of the most famous in all literature: the white-shouldered Scarlett O’Hara, a strong-willed, Southern belle who knows how to get what she wants. Her third husband, Rhett Butler, is the consummate man’s man. Publically scorned for his scandalous, un-Southernly behavior, he’s the one Scarlett turns to when even she has gotten in over her head.

Leaning as it does towards the ideology and traditions of the old, antebellum South, the book would nonetheless win Mitchell a Pulitzer Prize. One of the most popular books of all time, it’s sold some 28 million copies and counting – an amazing number considering the size of the book at 1,037 pages.

Publication of the book brought Margaret Mitchell instant fame. She was besieged by the press, forcing her, at one point, into a mountain hideaway, where she says she decided she would never to write another word … and she never did.

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell is No. 5 on our list of the Top 1,000 Best Romance Books of All Time.

Sequels to Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Rhett Butler’s People, Donald McCaig

Similar Books to Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

In Search of Rhett Butler, by Sharron Haynes
The Wind Done Gone: A Novel, by Alice Randall
The Bronze Horseman, by Paullina Simons
Ashes in the Wind, by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss
North and South (North and South Trilogy Part One), by John Jakes
Heaven and Hell (North and South Trilogy), by John Jakes
Love and War (North and South Trilogy), by John Jakes
The Thorn Birds: A Novel, by Colleen McCullough
The Bastard (Kent Family Chronicles), by John Jakes
On Leaving Charleston, by Alexandra Ripley
Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott

Movie Versions of Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Gone with the Wind (1939), starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh

Scarlett (1994), starring Joanne Whalley and Timothy Dalton

Meeting Her Match by Justine Elyot hits shelves today

Posted on by
Reply

A music school teacher named Cherry decides to try one of her most secret fantasy (BDSM) in a book that’s finally due out in paperback today: Meeting Her Match.

“What I wanted to do with this book – apart from turn people on – was think about the point of intersection between public and private life,” Elyot writes on her blog. “I don’t want to pontificate on the subject here – it’s covered in the story – but it’s an issue that has troubled me for most of my adult life and I thought it was worth discussing.”

It’s an interesting fact: what goes on in the bedroom tends to stay in the bedroom. And even talking about with a friend goes too far. Elyot fearlessly brings all of those secret fantasies into the light in Meeting Her Match.

No. 4: Emma, Jane Austen, 1816, Summary and Similar Books

Posted on by
Reply

Jane Austin’s fourth novel stars Emma Woodhouse, a wealthy, naive, dilettante. The young woman spends her days with her worrisome father, where she’s content avoiding marriage. And yet how she adores playing Cupid for her friends. Terribly inept at the task, she’s also immune to the advances of the men closest to her. Still, her naivete and lightheartedness are endearing, despite Austin’s wishes.

“I am going to take a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like,” Austin said, before starting the novel. She was 39 when she finished the book – the last in her lifetime. It earned her a mere 40 pounds, but Emma would eventually be recognized as one of Austen’s most flawed, infuriating and beloved characters. Think “Gwenth Paltrow” in the famous film adaption.

Emma is No. 4 on our list of the Top 1,000 Best Romance Books of All Time.

Sequels to Emma, by Jane Austen

Emma, Vol. 1, Kaoru Mori

Similar Books to Emma, by Jane Austen

Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen
Emma, by Jane Austen
Frederica, by Georgette Heyer
Magic Flutes, by Eva Ibbotson
Again the Magic, by Lisa Kleypas
Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen
Persuasion, by Jane Austen
Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen
Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte

Movie Versions of Emma, by Jane Austen

Emma (1996), starring Gwyneth Paltrow and James Cosmo

Emma (2009 BBC), starring Romola Garai and Jonny Lee Miller

Emma (1997), starring Kate Beckinsale and Bernard Hepton

Emma (1972 BBC), starring Doran Godwin and Mollie Sugden

April’s top four weirdest erotic romance books

Posted on by
Reply

Every month, we do a post that highlights the hottest erotica book covers. In the process, we see quite a few unusual titles. Her are four of the weirdest erotic romance books to hit Kindles and bookshelves in April:

1) Escaping the Milking Machines: An Impregnation and Lactation Story, by Arthur Mitchell

Set in a future where women are prized as “breeding cows” and used almost exclusively for their production of milk, two unlikely “breeders” find that their attraction is much stronger than society deems acceptable. More.

2) Serving My Man: Lactating Fetish, Mary Chi

There isn’t just one lactating fetish book this month! There’s two. In “Serving My Man”, Crystal has two breasts full of milk, and she needs to find the right man to help her with her problem. More.

3) Taken By The Wendigo, A.J. Hamilton

A young woman ventures into the Canadian wilderness in search of cave paintings (and, hopefully, a sexual encounter with a mythical beast known as the Wendigo). More.

4) Daddy Daughter Body Switch, Whiskey McNaughton

Henry’s life can’t get much worse. His step daughter hates him, and he’s tied up in a loveless marriage that has him resorting to sex with prostitutes. When a car wreck ends his life, he finds his consciousness has sneaked inside the rather ravishing body of his step daughter. More.

Check out our post on the hottest new erotica book covers.

E-Book club for romance readers to launch today and give members a new book every month

Posted on by
Reply

A start-up ebook club called Discover A New Love has been getting lots of press thanks to their business model. The Web-based company is taking the traditional print book club model online by giving readers a free ebook every month for a low fee: just $9.99 every six months.

The ebook club is owned by Sourcebooks, Inc., which is an independent publishing company that recently started publishing romance books. All told, they’ve published titles from 150 romance writers including Catherine Mann and Grace Burrowes.

Discoveranewlove.com is expected to start accepting new members on April 10, according to the Wall Street Journal. For their $9.99 fee, members will get:

  • One free eBook download per month “chosen from one of our four featured selections” for an average price of $1.67 per book.
  • Savings of 40% off regular list price on all eBooks on the site.
  • Presales that will give members early access to some romance titles a month before they’re published to the public.
  • Access to monthly online members-only parties celebrating each month’s featured authors, hosted by Barbara Vey.
  • Membership in the site’s online community for the romance genre, complete with readers, authors, and editors.

Interestingly, the books purchased or downloaded from Discover A New Love won’t have digital rights management. That means readers can easily load them on Kindles, Nooks and other ereaders.

“Discover a New Love is a new model built directly in response to what we’ve heard from authors, agents and readers,” Dominique Raccah, chief executive officer, publisher and founder of Sourcebooks told the Chicago Sun-Times. “If we locked the book club into one particular online platform or one retailer or one e-reader device, that wouldn’t make our customers very happy.”

Tiger by Laurann Dohner hits shelves today, author shares story on how she met her hubby

Posted on by
Reply

Book 7 in the New Species series comes out in paperback today. In it, Zandy finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time after drinking too much. When she comes to, she’s in the arms of a miraculously hunky man named Tiger. Despite their mutual attraction, the special ops soldier Tiger has made it clear that he will never take a mate.

Laurann Dohner’s books have recently enjoyed a big spike in popularity with Wrath (Book 6 in the New Species series) hitting the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists recently.

“I’m…stunned,” Dohner wrote on her blog. “Honestly. Humbled. I was a housewife with a love for writing, a dream that I refused to give up, and I never expected my books to do this well or be read by so many. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Every day I feel extremely blessed because I get to do what I love so very much.”

In the same post, Dohner goes on to tell the story of how she met her husband.

“I knew he was the one when he took me and another friend of mine shopping at the mall. She had been invited to this formal event and we were sitting inside this dress store while she tried on gowns. A song came on over the speakers and he held out his hand to ask me to dance. Glass windows to the interior of the mall be damned. So there we were, slow dancing around racks of dresses to Wind Beneath My Wings and Under the Boardwalk (Bette Midler sung them). People stopped to gawk at us but we didn’t care because it was one of those moments when only the two of you exist.”

Read more on Dohner’s blog.

Nora Roberts to publish 200th novel with debut of The Witness

Posted on by
Reply

It’s hard to believe, but Nora Roberts is on the verge of publishing her 200th novel when The Witness comes out on April 17, 2012. Nora Roberts’ first book, Irish Thoroughbred, hit shelves in May 1981. Since then, she’s been publishing books at a rate of 6.5 a year. That means it takes her on average less than two months to complete each novel.

Roberts claims she’s able to write so fast due to her rather strict schooling. “I … have a great deal of discipline – a gift from the nuns who educated me for the first nine years of my schooling,” Roberts told BookBrowse.com in an interview. “Nobody instills the habit of discipline and the shadow of guilt (two essential writer’s tools) like a nun.”

All told, Roberts has more than 400 million copies of her books in print. That means sales of more than 2 million copies per book. Expect The Witness to wind up on a lot of shelves!