Welcome to our fifth year of reading Anne Rice books for Halloween, with special guest Dr. Claire Mischker! He's David Talbot, nobody's favorite old man/young twink vampire! She's Merrick, too cool for these dusty losers, out here committing perfume crimes! In accordance with long-established tradition, this episode is rambling and yelly and has weird sound! Note: I promise we actually do know that Guatemala is in Central America, but once you make a mistake one time on a podcast it's really...

Aye lads and lassies and wee bairns (wait, this is no place for wee bairns!) This is our hundredth episode, to our vast surprise, so we're gonna make enemies and talk about Outlander! He's Jamie, the only feminist in eighteenth century Scotland! She's Claire, a time traveling nurse with a boring husband! Buckle up, sassenachs, because if you know this book you know you're about to trip over a giant content warning. The book, the TV show, and absolutely this podcast have a great big neon...

He's Stephan, a time travelling good Nazi! She's Laura, a woman he will not leave alone! It's Dean Koontz's Lightning, the first of our summer road trip books! To explain the amazing graphic my husband ran up for this - I am almost certain this is Koontz's own Terminator fanfic, predicting Badass T2 Sarah Connor years before that movie came out. If you didn't see this amazing profile of Dean Koontz in the Washington Post last year please enjoy this gift link! Why yes, it is weird! He...

He's a bear. Like an actual bear. She's having a midlife crisis. This seems like a pretty extreme response. This is Bear by Marian Engel, which won the Governor General's Award in 1976 and is evidently the most controversial Canadian novel of all time. Sounds like a skills issue to me. You know that joke about how you can build a bridge with your bare hands and they don't call you a bridge builder, and you can saw down a tree and cut it into boards and make these cabinets but they don't...

His job is Amish! She's an accountant with an ulcer and a bad case of second chance romance! Will they fall back in love? Can she get over that weird beard thing? Find out in Cheryl Reavis' A Crime of the Heart, another of our "five heart romances"! If you're new to this, we're doing episodes on the list of books that Romantic Times reviewer Melinda Helfer awarded five hearts to (there are sixteen, out of ten thousand!) This one is very sweet but their problems are real and grounded - if...

He's Alex, an Oregon gentleman farmer with a very bad brother! She's Annie, a Deaf woman who's treated like garbage by literally everyone! Welcome to Annie's Song by Catherine Anderson! There are some pretty strong content warnings for this one - it won't surprise you that it's full of ableism, both Original Recipe and Extra Paternalistic, of course. There's also a pretty harrowing sexual assault that starts the book off - it's not graphic on the page but it's very traumatic for the...

This is our first intentional entry in a little project we're doing - friend of the podcast Steve Ammidown posted this fascinating spread with a list of all the books Melinda Helfer, a Romantic Times editor, awarded five hearts in a review. Sixteen books out of ten thousand! Well, it turns out we'd already done two of them - Lightning that Lingers and The Windflower, both by Sharon and Todd Curtis (sometimes writing as Laura London.) Go check out those episodes, they're fantastic books! So...

He's Pierce, a hot guy with a secret (and it's not that he's part of the military industrial complex, he's proud of that part!) She's Alicia, a widowed mother of two who works in a romance novel boutique! Welcome to Send No Flowers by Sandra Brown - if you'd like to listen to our previous book by her way back in Episode 36, which believe you me is equally head shaking, try our episode on Fanta-C! This book is an absolute roller coaster, and I don't just mean the bobsleds at Disneyland...

He's Ben, a cinnamon roll who bakes cinnamon rolls! He's Adam, a hockey coach and a pain in the ass! It's our annual modern gay Hannukah book - chag sameach, y'all! This year we read Ben's Bakery and the Hannukah Miracle by Penelope Peters. This one does have some serious religious gatekeeping - we mention it because it is really upsetting because this dude is not the catch he thinks he is to be such a damn a*****e telling other people how to do their own damn religion right. Argh! (We...

He's Tagg, a Christmas-obsessed single dad! She's Leslie, a woman immobilized by a broken leg who cannot escape the holiday despite driving several states away and telling everybody she would prefer not to! He would probably be okay except that he's always "smirking" or "mocking" or whatevering his dialogue at her! For some reason his hair is very virile! Warning: this book has intense levels of moppet. "My daddy will teach you to believe in Santa Claus!" which in another book would be...

He's Scott, the dumbest fighter pilot to ever be trusted with a top secret time travel experiment! She's Rachel, a Civil War spy who has somehow never worn a corset! It's Till the End of Time, a 1994 time travel romance by Suzanne Elizabeth that has twenty whole reviews on Goodreads! This is a silly book, so there isn't much to warn you about except that this man is incredibly stupid and that your tax dollars are being lit on fire, and you would not believe the terrible packing on display...

Happy Halloween! He's Clare, a baron with a very expensive contractor's bill and a suspicious number of black armbands in his wardrobe. She's Lucy, a sheltered seventeen year old girl with a big inheritance and absolutely no friends anywhere. What a great combination! It's Greygallows by Barbara Michaels, who is also Elizabeth Peters and Barbara Mertz and probably a ton of other names - you may remember that we did an episode on her Devil May Care last year for Halloween, and that book has a...

Welcome to our fourth (!) annual AnneRiceoween extravaganza featuring The Vampire Armand! We skipped Memnoch the Devil because we just did not want to read it, but don't worry, this book makes us find out what happened in it anyway! As usual, this episode features Friend of the Podcast Dr. Claire Mischker, weird audio (we had to change our remote recording platform so we all sound like we're living in separate wells) and an absurdly long runtime! This book has some heavier content warnings...

He's Vanyel, the whiniest teenager ever chosen for a top government position by a horse! He's Tylendel, doomed twin and bad decision maker! Forget it, Jake, it's Valdemar! This is the first in Mercedes Lackey's Last Herald Mage trilogy, Magic's Pawn - it is not a romance novel, there is no happy ending, there are only tears. The tears are, in fact, the point. It's the first book a young Sara ever read about love between two impossibly beautiful young men, plus it has omg horsies - so yes, I...

She's Merry, a naïve teenager who mostly sits around waiting for something to happen. He's Devon, the evil pirate who kidnaps her mostly by accident. It's the War of 1812! Laura London is actually Tom and Sharon Curtis; we previously did a Loveswept by them that was a lot of fun, Lightning That Lingers. Check it out! We've been sleeping on this book for forever - it actually got recommended to Sara by a coworker years ago, when we first started, and we should have read it then because...

Welcome to the second episode of our Jackie July extravaganza! This one is on Hollywood Wives, which was reissued this month. Many things happen in this book to many people! Some of them seem medically improbable! Watch Elaine, Ross, Neil, Montana, Gina, Buddy, Angel, Randy, Karen, and more as they call each other on the telephone and have exhausting sex with each other!  It's bananas and complicated but it is a ton of fun. Content warnings in this book: everything. Literally everything. We...

Welcome to Jackie July!  We're dedicating this month to listener favorite Jackie Collins because we're in the middle of a Jackaissance - a fancy new 40th anniversary edition of Hollywood Wives is coming out (introduction by Colleen Hoover!) and two of her daughters, Rory and Tiffany, are doing press for it.  We had a blast sitting down for an interview with them and we think you'll enjoy it, too.  Later this month we'll dedicate an episode to Hollywood Wives and then we'll have an episode on...

She's Luna, in witness protection!  He's Elar, a horny eel monster!  It's Courtney's birthday so we're going off script and reading Electrified by the Eel, a modern paranormal romance short!  (Come for the eel sex, stay for the heartfelt tangential argument about the number and location of centaur dicks.) So the book itself notes trigger warnings for drowning - look, it should have also mentioned a guy gets raped to death by lady eels (I mean, he had it coming, it's fine, nobody's gonna...

Buckle up Jane, it's the Regency!  Harriet is a fossil hunter!  Gideon is a viscount, which is evidently a job!  He's grim and broody and has an Evil Past full of Scandals and also a cool scar!  She's Tracy Flick in a pelisse!  There are smugglers!  And parties!  It's Amanda Quick's Ravished! Surprise - nobody actually gets ravished in this book.  I know, right?  There's an attempted rape that's foiled by Wile E. Coyoteing a boulder onto the guy, which is the way I'd like to see all rapists...

Gwynne is theoretically a powerful druid! Neil is clearly a date rapist and also a bard! Anyway, here's Wonderwall! This is Talisman of Valdegarde, which - I swear I am not making this up - is an official Dungeons and Dragons Choose Your Own Adventure-style romance novel! Unsurprisingly there are no content warnings here except for the anxiety that Choose Your Own Adventure books evidently elicit in people besides just me!   Thanks to Meghan Ball, whose Tor.com article Roll for Romance:...

It's time for our fourth annual check-in with Martha Waters!  That does not seem possible!  And yet! Her latest book in the Regency Vows series is To Swoon and to Spar. Viscount Penvale has been working for years to buy back his ancestral home, Trethwick Abbey, from his estranged uncle. And so he’s thrilled when his uncle announces that he is ready to sell but with one major caveat—Penvale must marry his uncle’s ward, Jane Spencer. When the two meet in London, neither is terribly impressed....

Welcome to the second episode of our Valentine's Day 90's Bad Boys-a-thon!  This time we read Lisa Kleypas' Dreaming of You, knowing full well that we dare the wrath of the Derek Craven fan club.  He's a moody emo Cockney kid from the mean streets, made his money and unsure of what to do with it now that he's got it!  She's a spectacled young authoress, fresh outta Green Acres - she wants to get a good look at the big city but what she mostly gets a good look at is him! She starts the book...

He's a rake, a dastardly dastard, a blackened heart in a big nosed body! She's Spunky and extremely wee! There's a really hot scene with a glove! It's Loretta Chase's Lord of Scoundrels! This February for Valentine's Day we're reading all your favorite 90's bad boys.  The spiritual heirs of Edward Rochester. The rakes, the scoundrels, the emo ones. Broody like hens! Inventing Hot Topic! Thinking they're ugly! Running around being rich, because their behavior is much more tolerable if it comes...

Billy Ikehorn-Orsini is IT.  Extraordinary wealthy, profoundly chic, and her diamonds have names.  Valentine is the next big couture designer.  Spider is a photographer who somehow now is the guy who makes a store cool.  Whatever, just go with it - together they are the minds behind Scruples, the  boutique that sounds suspiciously like a Cracker Barrel that put Rodeo Drive on the map for women like your mom and your aunties and your grandma who read this book in 1978!  It's Scruples by...