Posts tagged with romance
Lisa Kleypas
We here at Wordcandy firmly believe that Lisa Kleypas is the Western World's finest living historical romance novelist. Her books are thoroughly researched without being obnoxious about it, her c...
Jayne Ann Krentz
Ms. Krentz has the distinction of having seven different pen names. Some of them write better than others. Note: Most of her books under the Krentz name are reasonably entertaining contemporary ...
Teen Idol, by Meg Cabot
It’s not that Meg Cabot’s most recent young adult novel Teen Idol is a bad book. On the contrary, it is a clever, entertaining, and occasionally thought-provoking read. If Teen Idol had been written by an unknown author, I would have been thrilled to discover it and immediately passed it around to all of my friends...
Mary Stewart
Mary Stewart is best known for her Merlin trilogy. They are beautifully written, and anyone who likes Arthurian legend should enjoy them. (Although I can't say that I do. But then, the only ver...
Gene Stratton-Porter
Books like Gene Stratton-Porter's A Girl of the Limberlost and Jean Webster's Daddy-Long-Legs are America's answer to the books of Lucy Maud Montgomery. If Stratton-Porter's heroine is a little ...
Josephine Tey
Josephine Tey is not an easy writer to pigeonhole. All of her books are mysteries, but they vary so much in tone and style that it’s difficult to classify them. Brat Farrar, for example, has lit...
Wendelin Van Draanen
Once, during a long-ago NPR interview, I listened to an Amazon.com employee blithely recommending Wendelin Van Draanen's Sammy Keyes mysteries to the parent of a five-year-old. Um… no. (Unless y...
Elizabeth Von Armin
Elizabeth Von Armin’s 1922 novel The Enchanted April is one of the most soothing books I have ever read. The story is simple: four very different Englishwomen respond to an advertisement for a mo...
Jennifer Weiner
I thought that Jennifer Weiner’s first book, the bestselling Good in Bed, was pretty good. I was bored by the angsty absentee-father plotline and rolled my eyes at the melodramatic ending, but st...
Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton was an extraordinary writer, but I think that most people would agree that reading one of her full-length novels is plenty. While I do have a certain masochistic affection for the P...
Patricia C. Wrede
While most of Patricia Wrede’s early fantasy books read like sub-par Robin McKinley, her Dealing With Dragons series and her fairytale adaptation Snow White and Rose Red are both very entertaining...
Philip Pullman
I think lumping Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy in with the Harry Potter books is criminal. If you must compare Pullman's work to something, try Susan Cooper, and please don't press a...
Ann Radcliffe
The most famous of the 18th century Gothic novelists, Ann Radcliffe is not everybody's Wordcandy. As I do not feel that I can improve upon this truly masterful description of Mrs. Radcliffe's fav...
Gail Carson Levine
Gail Carson Levine is like the diet version of Robin McKinley. Her books never get quite as freaky as some of Ms. McKinley's weirder stuff, but then she never gets quite as good, either. But if ...
Robin McKinley
If you judge by the reader comments in the review sections of Amazon.com, fans of Robin McKinley are a varied bunch. While all of her books can be filed under “fantasy”, the scope and tone of her...
L.M. Montgomery
In my more clear-eyed moments, I can tell that L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables series is her best work--unlike the majority of her other books, the Anne series balances her sentimental ten...
Catherine Clark
I know very little about this woman. She lives in Minneapolis, and she has a very pretty website. Her books Truth or Dairy and Wurst Case Scenario are fun stuff--the rambling journals of a self-...
Jennifer Crusie
Jennifer Crusie ties with Lisa Kleypas for the number one spot on my “Best Romance Novelists Currently Writing” list. While the two authors may seem to have little in common (Crusie writes sharp,...
Suzanne Enoch
The books of Suzanne Enoch, who is an otherwise only slightly above-average historical romance novelist, have been elevated to Wordcandy status for two reasons. First, she can write a non-annoyin...
Janet Evanovich
When I was poking around Ms. Evanovich's website I came across the following quote, and since I can't imagine a better description of her heroine than the following line, I'm just going to steal i...
Helen Fielding
Bridget Jones's Diary is one of those mega-successful books, like the Harry Potter series or Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum mysteries, that it's just plain stupid not to at least try. Besides b...
E.M. Forster
E. M. Forster, author, critic, and member of the Bloomsbury Group, wrote two great books, Howard’s End and A Room with a View, and several reasonably good ones, many of which seem to have been mad...
Julie Garwood
Julie Garwood is a perfectly respectable romance novelist. She has a very limited output and is similar in sensibility to Judith McNaught, although without, happily, the weird sex stuff. While a...
Elizabeth Gaskell
The only one of Mrs. Gaskell's books that I have read is Wives and Daughters. I thoroughly enjoyed it--it has the sprawling plot and occasional heavy-handed moralizing of a Dickens novel, enliven...
Charlotte Bronte
Although Jane Eyre is commonly described as a Gothic love story, only about half of the book is devoted to Jane's romance with Mr. Rochester. The first quarter of the novel focuses on Jane's mise...
Fanny Burney
Fanny Burney's first and best-known novel, 1778's Evelina, is usually described as the first novel of manners. Burney had originally intended the book to serve as an instruction manual for young ...
A.S. Byatt
A. S. Byatt is smarter than you are. She knows it, and when you read one of her novels, you'll know it, too. When she's in a rub-this-in-your-face mood, this can make wading through one of her n...
Diana Wynne Jones
I read The Lives of Christopher Chant and Charmed Life as a child, loved them, and then lost track of the author. Re-discovering Diana Wynne Jones as an adult has been a delight. While I find th...