Here are 100 books that G. fans have personally recommended if you like
G..
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I was born in Ukraine and moved to the Midwest in the early 1990s. I am the author of two novels: At the End of the World, Turn Left, which was called “elegant and authentic” by NPR and named by Booklist as one of the “Top Ten Crime Debuts” of 2021, and the domestic thriller Breakfall (April 2023). Perhaps one of the oldest literary tropes, affairs up the ante in literary works while simultaneously exploring human nature. Throw an affair into a novel, and most likely, some characters will be blowing up their lives; add it into a mystery novel, and murders are likely to happen.
This is one of my all-time favorite books; while the focus is not an affair exactly, the 1968 Prague-set novel goes into much depth exploring the nature of commitment and monogamy in general. Also, you get wonderful insight into some timeless ideas of what it means to be human, such as this one: "Living, there is no happiness in that.
Living: carrying one’s painful self through the world. But being, being is happiness. Being: becoming a fountain, a fountain on which the universe falls like warm rain."
'A cult figure.' Guardian 'A dark and brilliant achievement.' Ian McEwan 'Shamelessly clever ... Exhilaratingly subversive and funny.' Independent 'A modern classic ... As relevant now as when it was first published. ' John Banville
A young woman is in love with a successful surgeon; a man torn between his love for her and his womanising. His mistress, a free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals; while her other lover stands to lose everything because of his noble qualities. In a world where lives are shaped by choices and events, and everything occurs but once, existence seems…
My first book was Quiver, a collection of erotic short stories. I wrote it to immortalize the hedonism of Sydney in the 1990s, wanting to show a nonjudgmental, joyful side. The fact that it touched a lot of people compelled me to write two more collections Tremble and Yearn – each exploring different themes: Tremble is an erotic re-imagining of various root myths, whilst Yearn has more historical and fantastical elements. I interweave all the characters in the stories throughout the whole collections. Humor is also important to me when it comes to the ironies and emotions around sex, the other aspect is gender power play and all the sublime reversals that can encapsulate.
As a teenager this collection of short stories blew my mind; it’s one of the first to really explore sexual pleasure from a female perspective and I loved the way it wove psychology, power, culture, and erotic play up seamlessly and provocatively. It was most likely an unconscious template for my own collections of erotic short stories, the perfect format for the pillow book (to be read out loud to one’s lover/husband/guilty pleasure). Nin, a friend of Henry Miller and a number of Paris-based groundbreaking artists and intellectuals in the 1920s, is the perfect conduit for the louche erotic experimentation of the era, and yet this book is still timeless and still delivers in terms of fantasy.
As influential and revelatory in its day as Fifty Shades of Grey is now, Anais Nin's Delta of Venus is a groundbreaking anthology of erotic short stories, published in Penguin Modern Classics
In Delta of Venus Anais Nin conjures up a glittering cascade of sexual encounters. Creating her own 'language of the senses', she explores an area that was previously the domain of male writers and brings to it her own unique perceptions. Her vibrant and impassioned prose evokes the essence of female sexuality in a world where only love has meaning.
This edition includes a preface adapted from Anais…
I’m Kai Storm, author of reality-based urban fiction and erotica, erotica blogger, YouTuber, and Podcaster. I love reading books that feel real, that make you feel, and that teach you something as they entertain you.
This book was given to me as a gift, and the lessons it taught me as I read those ancient pages.
It had me clutching my pearls, and it disgusted me at other parts, but at the same time, I wanted/needed to read that book in order to write a book in that style.
The classic French erotic bestseller that preceded Fifty Shades of Grey
A beautiful young French woman, known only as 'O', is taken by her lover Rene to a splendid mansion near Paris. Here, she is initiated into an elite secret society, where she must learn to serve the sexual fantasies of Rene and his fellow members. But she must also explore the nature of her own darkest desires - and confront just how far she is willing to go for love...
The Road from Belhaven is set in 1880s Scotland. Growing up in the care of her grandparents on Belhaven Farm, Lizzie Craig discovers as a small girl that she can see the future. But she soon realises that she must keep her gift a secret. While she can sometimes glimpse…
My first book was Quiver, a collection of erotic short stories. I wrote it to immortalize the hedonism of Sydney in the 1990s, wanting to show a nonjudgmental, joyful side. The fact that it touched a lot of people compelled me to write two more collections Tremble and Yearn – each exploring different themes: Tremble is an erotic re-imagining of various root myths, whilst Yearn has more historical and fantastical elements. I interweave all the characters in the stories throughout the whole collections. Humor is also important to me when it comes to the ironies and emotions around sex, the other aspect is gender power play and all the sublime reversals that can encapsulate.
This collection of short stories is really about how sexual desire and social ambition can lead to all sorts of compromising and bizarre situations. I originally was drawn to it because I’d loved the filmSecretarybased on one of the short stories in the collection. I related to it because it is nearly all from a young female P.O.V – a kind of potpourri of trying to make it in NY in the 1980s. It's the perfect illustration of how powerful short story as a form can be in terms encapsulate an event, mood, and era – It also showed me how fictionalized memoir can be a good source of material and that if the book is really well-observed it never dates.
Mary Gaitskill's tales of desire and dislocation in 1980s New York caused a sensation with their frank, caustic portrayals of men and women's inner lives. As her characters have sex, try and fail to connect, play power games and inflict myriad cruelties on each other, she skewers urban life with precision and candour.
'Stubbornly original, with a sort of rhythm and fine moments that flatten you out when you don't expect it, these stories are a pleasure to read' Alice Munro
'An air of Pinteresque menace hangs over these people's social exchanges like black funereal bunting ... Gaitskill writes with…
I'm a Spanish author, just an ordinary woman addicted to romance reading who one day felt like writing. I am mad about romance (especially those spiced with love/hate relationships) and I'm also a big fan of happy endings, that's why I love the good feelings that linger for a while after you finish reading a good romance. So one day, I dreamt of being able to provoke in others exactly the same feelings that all these lovely stories have awakened in me and thanks to a correct alignment of the planets now I have in Spain quite a lot of faithful readers who love my books. By the way, not to show off but... I'm the winner of the First Price HQÑ 2013 (Harlequin Ibérica digital contest).
As I'm sure you have already guessed this is one of my own few stories translated to English ;-D. I chose it to be part of this selection because one of the few things that Cat and Leo, the main characters, have in common is how absolutely different they are. And this, I think, is one of the strong points of the book; the fact that two people that are poles apart can fall madly in love with each other. The other is that More Than Neighbors is an easy feel-good read.
When Leopold Sinclair returned from a long overseas business trip, the last thing he expected to find was a sexy new tenant in the apartment next door. Catalina Stapleton, the beautiful, recently arrived neighbor, is the type of person who just can't help adopting every poor stray she comes across. After a brief exchange with her uptight and work-obsessed neighbor, she decides that Leopold is an unhappy man who needs to be saved from himself.
Yet soon, what started as her friendly project turns personal. After a red-hot kiss inflames their attraction, Leopold knows he must keep wild Cat at…
I read many different genres, but my favorite to write and read is romance. I love ones that have angst, adventure, danger, and a passionate push and pull between the love interests. Those seem to stick with me long after I turn the last page. In my own writing, I like to do the same, giving readers a love story they want to visit again and again. The books I’ve listed are just some of the wonderful, unforgettable novels I’ve read, and I hope you enjoy them too! Happy reading!
Rina Kent writes hot, dark, erotic novels that stick with you for a long time. Her writing is spectacular, and her male characters are the types that I love to hate. Red Thorns is an opposites attract, enemies to lovers novel, and is not for the faint of heart but it’s a wild ride on the dark side that will make your heart race and require you to keep an ice cold drink nearby.
Sebastian Weaver is the star quarterback and the college’s heartthrob. Rich. Handsome. Bastard. Everyone’s attention flocked toward him and all the girls dreamed to be with him. Not me. At least, not until he made a move on me. See, I thought I was stronger than Sebastian’s charms. I thought I could survive being his target. I thought wrong. Little did I know that he will make my most twisted fantasies come true. Fantasies I didn’t know existed...
Red Thorns is a dark new adult book that contains dubious situations some readers might find…
Who was the man who would become Caesar's lieutenant, Brutus' rival, Cleopatra's lover, and Octavian's enemy?
When his stepfather is executed for his involvement in the Catilinarian conspiracy, Mark Antony and his family are disgraced. His adolescence is marked by scandal and mischief, his love affairs are fleeting, and yet,…
I’ve been in love with HR novels ever since my parents took me to a bookstore when I was fifteen, where for the first time, I stepped into an aisle filled with romance. It was love at first sight, as I searched for that one book that called to me. After finishing that book, my world had changed. Now, seventeen years later, as a published author for both New Age and Historical Romance, I still feverishly read romance books to continue feeding that internal flame of love and passion I still have for Historical Romance. I hope you enjoy the books on this list as much as I have.
Almost A Lady is filled with love, passion, and adventure for the restless soul. It has a fiery heroine who isn’t afraid to fight for her life, and the most ideal roguish pirate scoundrel one longs for in a Historical Romance. The perfect enemies-to-lovers tale that will have you staying up late for more. I loved this book because it revealed far more than what a traditional HR setting could be. It gave me love and peril and a hot slow-burn of fervor and intensity one needs in a great Historical Romance.
In this exhilarating new novel of romance and intrigue, New York Times bestselling author Jane Feather tells the tale of an adventurous young woman and the hardened spy who is unexpectedly–and most inconveniently–captivated by her....
Independent and inquisitive, Meg Barratt wants nothing to do with any stifling society marriage. Meg yearns for the kind of passion that exists only in books–until a violent storm lands her on the high seas with the most dangerous and seductive man she’s ever encountered…or imagined.
For Cosimo, women are objects, to be manipulated for business or pleasure…sometimes both. But when the seafaring assassin accidentally…
I’ve been reading romance novels since I was a teenager. Love is a universal feeling, and there is no better emotion in the world than falling in love. While I read a variety of novels in different genres, I always come back to read romance. I write romance as I believe we all deal with different things in our daily lives, but an emotional connection and love bring us all together and make the world a better place to live in.
A great beach-read story about a father who keeps trying to marry off his daughter.
Ella is spunky, with a mind of her own, and determined to find her own husband. She posts an ad of her own looking for a perfect lover, not a husband. What she gets is a bad boy who has lots of experience but is running from his past. The man is hot and utterly perfect. When these two get together, the sparks ignite!
I have cerebral palsy, but the list of things that I absolutely can’t do is surprisingly short: I can climb a flight of steps or walk the length of a football field, for example, but those tasks are going to take a lot more time and energy for me than they would an able-bodied person. We all choose where to invest in life, but cerebral palsy makes that process much more deliberate, and I’ve been fascinated by it for a long time. I’m always on the hunt for stories that demonstrate that our choices shape our life, not our limitations, and I’m determined to choose joy.
This book is the most fun I’ve ever had reading a romantic comedy—and I’ve read a lot of them! As the title suggests, a lot of this story is told through correspondence between our main couple, and while many authors strive for banter that is funny and flirty, these letters actually were—which is not easy to do!
I had an absolute blast watching Teddy and Everett get to know each other in the midst of a well-formed plot about building a life around what is truly important to you.
A charming and heartwarming new romantic comedy by the acclaimed author of Waiting for Tom Hanks, Kerry Winfrey.
Teddy Phillips never thought she would still be spending every day surrounded by toys at almost thirty years old. But working at a vintage toy store is pretty much all she has going on in her life after being unceremoniously dumped by her longtime boyfriend. The one joy that she has kept is her not-so-guilty pleasure: Everett’s Place, a local children’s show hosted by Everett St. James, a man whom Teddy finds very soothing . . . and, okay, cute.
The 19th century women's rights movement and the rise of public education intertwine with one woman's story of struggle, perseverance, and love.
Alice Harris is pressed to marry a Civil War veteran twice her age when her family’s inn fails in 1882 in western North Carolina. She remakes herself by…
I am the author of twenty romance books, but I started as a reader. I have read thousands of romance novels in my life, which I humbly submit makes me something of an authority. In fact, I started writing romance novels because I wanted to offer readers the elements that I loved about my favorite books: sympathetic, fully-realized characters, sharp dialogue, deep emotion, and good writing. I have focused on modern-day royals because I am writing a series featuring a royal family. I have been reading extensively to see what other authors are doing in that subgenre…and because it’s fun to don an imaginary tiara!
Don’t we all dream of being a queen? In this fun modern fairy tale, a forty-something single mom from Philadelphia suddenly discovers she is the heir to the throne of the Grand Duchy of Saint Gilbert. It would be a fish-out-of-water story, except that Annie takes on the job with a can-do attitude that I adored. Her whole family, including her kids, gets involved. She fends off antagonistic councilors—and a kidnapper—to drag Saint Gilbert into the modern era and prosperity. You gotta love that Philly attitude.
This story skews more towards women’s fiction, but do not fear: there is a very handsome, suave captain of the guards, Max Belleme, who provides a delicious frisson of romance for the Grand Duchess. He can be my bodyguard anytime!
A fortysomething woman’s ordinary life takes a royal detour in an engaging novel about embracing a family legacy and stepping up when it matters most by New York Times bestselling author Mariah Stewart.
Annaliese―Annie―Gilberti is a divorced South Philadelphia mother of two with a nine-to-five job when a shocking discovery turns another average day upside down: her late grandmother was the exiled ruler of a small European country, and Annie is next in line to wear the crown and restore the monarchy. The would-be grand duchess of the Grand Duchy of Saint Gilbert has vacation time coming, enough to take…
