Elle Burns is a former slave who makes an unimaginable choice: she returns to slavery in the South to be a spy for the Union. When she meets Malcolm McCall, a white man who works for the Pinkerton Secret Service and is also undercover, she recognizes a potential alley and the two begin to work together to save the Union from a Confederate plot. It is always hard to reach that happily ever after, but Cole ratchets up the stakes to their highest point, with the characters’ lives and the fate of the Civil War in the balance. Be prepared to turn off your phone and miss dinner, because once you start this riveting story, you won’t be able to stop. 

The six Bedwyn siblings are a force to be reckoned with—passionate, outspoken, daring, and loyal—and Colonel Aidan Bedwyn is no different. When a dying soldier asks Aidan to look after his sister Eve, of course, Aiden agrees. Eve wants no part of this, why does she need a babysitter?—until her relatives threaten to throw her from her home, and suddenly, Aidan is proposing marriage to keep her safe. How will a coal miner’s daughter and a lord make their marriage of convenience work, especially when very inconvenient feelings can’t be ignored? Balogh is a category unto herself, an author whose books are both quiet and deeply felt, gently paced and intensely gripping. The entire Bedwyn Saga is a classic and a great introduction to this fabulous historical author. 

Minerva Dobbs and Calvin Morrisey do not have a meet-cute. Instead, they have a meet “I will destroy you,” when Minerva thinks she overhears Cal making a bet that he can sleep with her. By the end of their date, they part ways, happy to be rid of each other. Fate, however, has other plans. Bet Me is a true rom-com, with a cast of over-the-top best friends and devious exes who engage in what can only be called shenanigans. What makes this book great, and a defining text of its subgenre, is that the romance is buoyed rather than buried by the chaos around it. When you pick up Bet Me, get ready to let go and just enjoy the ride. 

Having a fated mate is serious business, so when shifter Lachlain MacRieve at long last smells his mate, he does what anyone would do: he chews off his own leg to escape captivity and get to her. Unfortunately for him, his mate is Emmaline Troy, a half-vampire and enemy of his people, and Lachlain is possessive and pissed. This book is the first in the Immortals After Dark series, which follows paranormal creatures of every sort, from Valkyries to witches, phantoms to succubae, as they prepare for war. While some of Hunger doesn’t hold up to contemporary mores, the read is compulsive and the series is one of the best out there, with unmissable titles like Lothaire. Who doesn’t need a new twenty-one-book series to start? 

Sascha Duncan is supposed to be a perfect Psy, a person with incredible psychic powers whose upbringing should have left her emotionless. But Sascha knows a secret; the training hasn’t worked and she is headed toward insanity, or worse. Lucas Duncan is a Changeling, a leopard shifter, and he’s hunting the person responsible for a series of brutal murders, a person he suspects is Psy. When he and Sascha work together, they uncover powerful secrets that will drive the entire Psy-Changeling series, an over twenty-book-long arc that is still going strong today. With incredible world-building and tension for days, Singh proves again and again that she is a master of paranormal romance. 

Temperance Dews helps run a foundling home in the slums of St. Giles and, though she doesn’t want to admit it, she’s dissatisfied and riddled with guilt from her first marriage. Enter Lazarus Huntington, a lord who needs Temperance’s help finding his mistress’s killer. Lazarus is a wonderful protagonist, dark and secretive and deeply vulnerable, a perfect match for shame-ridden, repressed Temperance, and together they search the slums for answers. A little gory, a lot sexy, this first entry in the Maiden Lane series stands out both for its Georgian setting and its exploration of working-class as well as aristocratic characters. 

Stella Lane is bad at sex, or so she believes. She’s also autistic, brilliant at math, and, most importantly, a woman with a plan. Enter Michael Phan, the escort she’s hired for a date in the hopes that he will have the knowledge, and the patience, to help her. Though it goes against his escorting code, Michael agrees to keep seeing Stella, and, as they get to know each other’s dreams and insecurities, “helping” becomes much, much more. Hoang burst onto the scene with this debut, impressing with her autistic representation and beautiful portrait of an immigrant Vietnamese family, not to mention the flaming hot chemistry between her leads. 

Minerva is a geologist who just wants to get to Scotland for the meeting of the Royal Geological Society. Oh, and she wants Colin, Spindle Cove’s resident rake, to not court her sister Diana. So Minerva proposes that Colin pretend to elope with her and Francine, her plaster model of a prehistoric lizard foot, and accompany them to Scotland, where she’ll give him the 500-pound prize for best presentation. The catch? Colin cannot sleep alone at night because of a tragic carriage accident in his past, so Minerva must agree to sleep beside him every night of the trip. Dare is a master of comic romance, and this wonderful road-trip novel delivers as many laughs as it does sighs. 

Nevada Baylor runs a private investigative agency with her family in Houston, where magical families have amassed power and wealth. When Nevada gets mixed up in a murder investigation to save the family business, she finds herself unwillingly partnered with one of the most powerful mages in the world, Connon “Mad” Rogan. Rogan may scare a lot of people, but he doesn’t scare Nevada (at least not too much), and as she works with him to track down a killer, she learns how powerful her magic is and their connection could become. This is the first in a three-book series, and as ever, Andrews delivers urban fantasy at its best, with strong world-building and a large, compelling cast of characters. 

Laurie Dalziel has been there, been dominated by that. He’s a world-weary sub, pushing forty, and definitely should not come to life again when he meets the much younger Toby Finch. Toby is new to the kink scene but not new to his own desires and once he meets Laurie, he’s hooked. Their relationship is as kinky as it is tender and Hall showcases the power of romance to explore the complexities of kink responsibly and sexily. I promise you will never look at a lemon meringue pie the same way again. Over his career, Hall has proven himself a true chameleon—as comfortable writing a rom-com as he is a tearjerker—and his canon of work exemplifies how romance can embrace the HEA and also provide an endless world of possibilities for its readers. 

It isn’t possible to name a single romance novel the GOAT, but if I had to, it might be Lord of Scoundrels. This historical masterpiece pits Jessica Trent against the notorious Marquess of Dain in a battle of wills and, spoiler, Jessica and true love are going to win. Are there erotic watches? Passionate rain-soaked kisses? Does the heroine actually shoot the hero and then cooly walk away, while “Run the World” by Beyoncé plays in the background? Yes. For all this excitement, there is also a gorgeously built love story that slowly reveals Jessica and Dain’s true selves to each other. It’s romantic, dramatic, hilarious, and a masterclass in what the romance novel can achieve. 

After a modest but life-changing windfall, Zoe Ferris quits her soul-sucking job as a corporate lawyer and decides to right her wrongs, one mistake at a time. First stop, Aiden O’Leary, the twin brother of a man whose wrongful death case Zoe worked on. Aiden is not happy to see her but he still offers her a way to atone: pretend to be his fiancé and help him buy a campground for addicts like his brother. Zoe and Aiden are both a little feral, hurt, and angry, and yet fundamentally good people who can’t help admiring and ultimately loving each other. This book has the reader wondering how on earth Clayborn will pull off their HEA until the very end and when she does, it’s all the sweeter for the wait.