Will your book be our Valentine?
Who doesn’t love a good book? It’s full of angst, misunderstandings, sultry moments, and intriguing characters who break our hearts and sweep us off our feet. Like chocolate, romance is one of those extraordinary genres that can go with almost anything—Historical Romance, Mystery Romance, YA Romance, SciFi Romance, Fantasy Romance, the list goes on!
Nothing is better than sharing a book you love with someone you know will love it just as much as you.
The Science Behind Love
Science tells us that two people falling in love is a mix of biological, chemical, and psychological factors. Wouldn’t these same factors play into a reader falling in love with a book? Picture this, you’re in a bookstore scanning the shelves, suddenly, you see a cover that is beautiful, intriguing, mysterious. You pick it up and read the blurb. It teases you with just enough information to make you want to learn more. You read the first page and find out that what it is telling you is exactly what you were hoping for. Your excitement increases as you envision the night ahead, snuggling under the covers, turning the pages as you fall in love with the characters and join them in their journey to find love. As you read, your heart starts to race with anticipation, you cry, you laugh, and you swear your devotion to the love you’ve found between the covers of a book.
Is there anything better than a great love story?
The Love You Find Between the Covers
Romance is one of the bestselling genres out there, and it’s clear we’re all looking for love stories that move us. But falling in love isn’t a one step process. First, your curiosity is peaked when you first look at a cover, you judge it by look, page count, and other factors to see if it’s a book that fits you, then you find yourself fascinated when something unexpected happens in the first few pages. You’re hooked!
As you continue reading you find yourself captivated by the characters. Perhaps they are way more complex than you had anticipated, and you can’t bear the thought of leaving the story half-read, so you march on, feeling nervous, stressed, afraid, and hopeful as the characters go through the trials and tribulations they face in the plot. Now you are infatuated! You can’t put it down! What’s going to happen? Will they, or won’t they?
As you draw closer to the climax, you find yourself on the same rollercoaster as the characters. You empathize with the characters and want to see the love match made. You fight the despair of coming to the last page, knowing you’ll have to put these wonderful characters away when you are finished. Ohh! The agony!
As you place the book on your own bookshelf you find yourself thirsting for more. More love, more conflict, more moments where you think all is lost, but then…
You realize you’ve fallen in love!
The Chatelaine Awards finds the best romantic novels of the year!
At Chanticleer we love Romance Books, and we love to show it off with our Chatelaine Awards! Check out our current Finalists here! First Place Winners will be announced at the Chanticleer Authors Conference!
Are you looking for your next great romance novel? Find your perfect literary match with these Chanticleer romance authors!
A Sea of Glass
By Gail Avery Halverson
CIBA Grand Prize winner Chatelaine division
A Sea of Glass by Gail Avery Halverson is a sweeping historical novel that captivates readers as it takes us from the bustling world of Colonial Boston to the shores of Barbados. But the island’s burgeoning sugar industry harbors dark secrets for those trapped there, either by circumstance or by slavery.
The colonial backdrop is brimming with conflict. Businesses struggle under British taxation enforced by the hated Red Coats. With the dangers of traveling through pirate—and privateer—infested waters, there are more than enough shifting winds to keep readers engaged until the very end.
Lady Catherine Abbott-McKensie, her physician husband Simon McKensie, and their daughter Charlotte, enjoy the pace of life in Colonial Boston, but their peace does not last long.
Loving Beth
By Bonnie Rose Ward
In Loving Beth, a Christian historical romance by Bonnie Rose Ward, a young woman finds herself in dire straits when her widowed mother dies unexpectedly.
Beth’s father had taken out loans to improve their property, but he was killed in the Civil War, leaving his wife and daughter to struggle to keep up with the payments. Now, Beth is alone without any means to keep her home—finding and taking in two young, abandoned children certainly doesn’t help. But even amidst her troubles, Beth’s thoughts keep going back to the mysterious and handsome stranger who found and brought home the body of her mother.
Edged in Purple
By John W. Feist
Edged in Purple by John W. Feist welcomes readers to a place outside of time and space, a liminal space where characters of myth wait to return to their fated stories.
The Fold is a beautiful land, a near-utopia shepherded– literally– by Thetis and Peleus of Greek mythology. They raise the heroine of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, Perdita, after her father had accused her mother of betraying him with another, the whole sad story a product of his own paranoia.
Perdita’s story is proceeding as it was written. She has already met Florizel, the man who should be the hero of her romance– when her story is intersected by another. Just as The Winter’s Tale features royal courts, doomed relationships, mistaken identities, and family murder, so too does an ancient Greek drama: the Oresteia of Aeschylus, the story of Agamemnon after the Trojan War.
Splintered Dreams
By Diana Lynn
After decades spent in a loveless, broken marriage, Crisa wants another chance at love. In Splintered Dreams, a romance novella by Diana Lynn, she must first stumble through her own insecurities to find it.
When Crisa’s husband, Alan, dies unexpectedly she is left with a stark emptiness inside her heart. Her marriage had been a sham. Her husband’s infidelity and lies crushed her idea of love and left her with questions about who she is, what she wants, and will she ever trust someone with her heart again. Casual sexual relationships can’t fill the void. She needs true love.
Physical intimacy is only part of what Crisa desires. She yearns for the kind of love that lasts a lifetime.
Air Boat: Love is an Adventure
By Jacek Waliszewski
For readers interested in a unique romance, Air Boat: Love is an Adventure by Jacek Waliszewski offers a distinctive cast of characters and tense excitement in the sky.
Air Boat brings together a former Special Forces soldier, Luke, who prefers to keep to himself, an independent and sarcastic female pilot, Stella, and a three-legged Husky named Saint who marches to the beat of his own drum. These captivating characters embark on a fast-paced, page-turning tale.
Author Jacek Waliszewski starts this romantic adventure with a suspenseful scene of a vintage plane barreling towards the Twin Cities, accompanied by two F-16 fighter jets, before setting the stage for the two main characters to meet. The mystery of this scene will stick in the reader’s mind, drawing them forward with stark curiosity that only grows in excitement.
Happy Valentine’s Day to all lovers of the Romance genre from
Chanticleer Book Reviews & Media!
Looking for more quality time with us?
Join us at
The Chanticleer Authors Conference
Featuring authors like J.D Barker, book doctor Christine Fairchild, and publisher Brooke Warner, our annual conference is shaping up to be excellent! You won’t want to miss out on the best tips around the business of being an author!
Seating is Limited. The esteemed WRITER Magazine (founded in 1887) has repeatedly recognized the Chanticleer Authors Conference as one of the best conferences to attend and participate in for North America.
We’d love to see you there!
An intricate mystery set in a small fictional town in northern Michigan, End of the Race is contemporary fiction at its finest. Annika Wolfson is a young mother and accomplished swimmer that has faced adversity in many areas of her life. Growing up in the Berglund household was rarely quiet for Annika because her father struggled with mental health and his unwavering feud against the affluent Wolfson family. Despite the long feud between the two families, Brian Wolfson and Annika bond as kids over swimming and their dream of the Olympics. Fast-forward a handful of years, Brian and Annika are now married and have a daughter. Their dreams of Olympic gold have been close to reality but always just out of reach.
The old adage “You can’t go home again” is often very real, but for Vera Eastman, it is a massive understatement. Vera left home eleven years ago after losing her mother to breast cancer, changed her name, and began a very successful career as a porn star. Her seven-figure salary and multimillion-dollar, female-owned porn business might be acceptable in SoCal, but in her hometown of Grenadine, Michigan, she is a pariah. After a breast cancer scare, Vera goes back home to fulfill her mother’s bucket list. With an estranged father, a grandmother she believes is dead, and a sexy ex-boyfriend who haunts her dreams, Vera wants to get in, keep a low profile, and run back to her best friends and fellow porn stars, Jasmine and Payton. But when she discovers her grandmother is still alive and her ex is now an even sexier fireman, Vera knows leaving may be easier said than done.
