We’re back with another Rec League. This time, we’re talking great novellas after receiving this email from Reader Aislinn K:
Amanda: I absolutely loved Will You Be My Wi-Fi by Caroline Linden. It has a chef heroine trying to work on a cookbook in a tiny cottage on an English estate. The estate is also hosting a wedding and one of the attendees is in desperate need of a wi-fi connection and the cottage is where he gets the best reception. It’s so cute and was nominated for a RITA a year or so back.I am specifically looking for shorter romance reads – short stories and novellas. I have this terrible habit of needing to finish a story in one sitting. This means I either don’t pick up a book I know I can’t finish (meaning I read a lot less than I want to! Uninterrupted 6 hour stretches are hard to come by!); or I stay up waaaay too late and my sleep suffers; or I end up horrible grumpy and distracted because I want to get back to my book (if I can make myself put the book down at all!).
So, I find novellas and short stories are the perfect solution to this, but I’m running out of things to read!
For short stories, I was hoping people might know of some good anthologies like the Mammoth ones Trisha Telep edited before shooting herself in the foot. I really enjoyed the quick little bites, even if I didn’t end up loving the story itself. It was also a great way to discover and test new authors. If I didn’t like their voice within the short story, I knew not to bother with their longer works!
As for novellas, I’m slightly more particular. I don’t mind buying either anthologies or individual novellas. Nothing too expensive, or course, since they will be quick reads.
I read all genres. Historical, contemporary, paranormal/fantasy/steampunk, erotica, suspense, etc.
I am particularly fond of beta heroes. I don’t really like the cocky alpha types. I also like awesome ladies and lady friendships. (I’m also open to f/f romance if that helps).
I also love tropes. You can sell me on almost any story by listing the tropes in it. I’m easy like that.
I’m hoping the Bitchery can help me with some great suggestions!
It originally appeared in the At the Billionaire’s Wedding ( A | BN | K | G | AB | Scribd ) anthology with four historical writers doing contemporary romances. It was easily my favorite of the four and can now be purchased as a standalone.
Elyse: I just bought Knitting Diaries ( A | BN | K | G | AB ) and so far it’s quite cozy and fallish.
Sarah: Novellas – Holiday Sparks ( A | BN | K | G | AB ) is one of my all-time favorites. Nearly perfect contemporary romance novella.
The Duke of Olympia Meets his Match by Juliana Gray – lovely.
Let it Shine by Alyssa Cole – I can go one for hours about this novella, and the romance, and the tension and the humor and IVAN THE HERO OH MY GOSH.
RHG loved The Sport of Baronets. ( A | BN | K | AB )
Redheadedgirl: Oh I did. And Be Not Afraid!
Sarah: Craving Flight by Tamsen Parker ( A | BN | K | G | AB ). I don’t remember titles, authors, what I was wearing yesterday, what day it is, or year for that matter, but I still think about the characters in this story, about the portrayal of modern Orthodox Judaism, and the sexual and emotional tension of this story.
Plus just about any novella by Tessa Dare or Courtney Milan!
What about you, Bitchery? Which novellas have you read and loved? Historicals? Contemporaries? The sky’s the limit!
Gambled Away – an anthology by Rose Lerner, Jeannie Lin and others – is very good. A lot of times when I read romance shorts or novellas I get annoyed because everything happens too fast and in this anthology the endings usually felt right and not rushed.
Falling Stars and The Mad Earl’s Bride by Loretta Chase and any novella by Courtney Milan (with the exception of Right Honorable Gent) are all master classes in the form and are excellent.
What about “The Lady most Likely” and “The Lady most Willing” by Quinn, James & Brokway? My perfect comfort read, both of them :))
I liked the ‘virtually yours’ anthology with short stories by Kait Nolan, Wendy Sparrow and others. The main idea that connects all the stories is that of an virtual boy-/girlfriend who sends you messages on various devices to e.g. get parents off your back about dating or an ex that doesn’t understand that it’s over.
Another anthology (in a totally different genre) that I liked is ‘must love hellhounds’ with Urban Fantasy stories by Charlaine Harris, Nalini Singh and Ilona Andrews.
Apart from that anthology, there are several short stories by Nalini Singh, that you can buy separately, e.g Angel’s Judgement or Secrets at Midnight.
These books mostly have more alpha than beta heroes, but maybe you like them anyway.
If you like Urban Fantasy, Patricia Briggs has an anthology with all of her short stories. I think you can enjoy all of them without having read her Mercedes Thompson series. ‘Shifting Shadows’ it is called.
I haven’t read many novellas but one of my favorites is “Desert Warrior” by Nalini Singh. I think it comes with the novel “Lord of the Abyss” (also good).
Blonde Date by Sarina Bowen. Andy is a lovely beta-hero.
If you like historical western romance and/or holiday reads, Harlequin does a Christmas anthology with three stories (I think) every year. This year’s anthology is titled Western Christmas Proposals. I always buy these as a holiday present for my mom, since she enjoys westerns so much.
Victoria Dahl has some good ones – her latest historicals “Angel” and “Harlot” are wonderful, as is the contemporary “Fanning the Flames.”
Her website also lists anthologies she’s published in: http://www.victoriadahl.com/books.php
A fan of novellas and short reads myself! Totally agree with some of the previous posters that Courtney Milan has some awesome ones: Unlocked is my fav (Lovely heroine & beta-ish hero, second chance/friends first/grovel story)
A few historical ones I’ve come across (and enjoyed) through late-night scouring (last three are <200 pages)
1. Second Son of the Duke (Gwen Hayes) – MOC with bad wedding night
2. A Waltz at Midnight (Crista McHugh) – Cyrano de Bergeac-esque set in NYC
3. I love the Earl (Caroline Linden) – A quick read, funny MCs
4. Masquerade (Victoria Vale) – Free on Kindle, Interesting heroine. She's waaay more interesting/thoughtful than the Amazon synopsis makes her seem. (Vale's other two historical eroticas also pack a pretty decent emotional punch for me)
5. The Lady who came in from the cold (Grace Callaway) – I'm a sucker for atypical female characters and I loved the MCs in this one 🙂
His Road Home by Anna Richland is soooo good – a scientist heroine and hero an injured in action, with an accidental engagement. And they’re both from rural CA.
And Worth the Fall by Caitie Quinnn is a sweet contemporary set in a coffee shop, and if you like it there are several more with the same setting and characters. These books are both from last year’s RITA competition and the first books I found from this site.
Apparently Elizabeth Hoyt is getting heavily into the novella game. She will be publishing 2 in the next few months in her Maiden Lane series.
Ruined By The Rake by Erin Knightley. I adored the hero!
The Mad Earl’s Bride by Loretta Chase features a cameo with Jessica and Dain! She has some other novellas, too – Falling Stars and Royally Ever After.
I like Ilona Andrews’ novellas. Carla Kelly’s Mrs. Drew Plays Her Hand and Miss Grimsby’s Oxford Education, are two of my favorite stories. Courtney Milan’s The Governess Affair is a great short, really lovely.
This is so not my area. The only novella I really love is Ripped by Sarah Morgan.
In the enjoyed category, the only authors I can think of not already listed are Victoria Dahl and Stacey-Shannon-Stacey (I just looked it up and have already forgotten her name; my brain is apparently incapable of retaining this information).
I like reading novellas when I finish a read and can’t decide what to dig into next. My favorite novellas are
Entwined by Kristen Callihan
The Peculiar Pets of Miss Pleasance by Delilah S. Dawson
Magic Stars by Ilona Andrews
A Kiss for Midwinter by Courtney Milan
Alpha & Omega by Patricia Briggs.
Meljean Brook has some good steampunky ones, particularly The Blushing Bounder.
Tamara Morgan’s “In the Clear” is pretty excellent and has a shy beta-hero. The very opposite of a beta hero is Flynn in Cara McKenna’s “Willing Victim,” which is likely my favourite novella of all time, and has the added bonus of a sequel coming out in November (finally!). For a change of pace, Alice Hoffman’s “Blackbird House” is a book of interconnected short stories with a dose of magical realism and her trademark gorgeous writing.
Harlequin just released a collection of Jeannie Lin’s Tang Dynasty novellas: Silk, Swords and Surrender. You can still buy them separately but the collection includes a new story.
I loved Courtney Milan’s Kiss for Midwinter. She has quite a few novellas that fit before/during her series. Also Theresa Romain’s Sport of Baronets features period horse racing.
A bit more hit and miss, I know several groups of authors release annual anthologies, usually around a theme: Grace Burrowes/Shana Galen/Miranda Neville/Carolyn Jewel have released several. It’s a little harder to find those because sites seem to catalogue under one author not *all* of them.
Pardon me while I charge up the Kindle….
Most recently, The Heart of It by Molly O’Keefe. Gobsmacking what she accomplished in so few pages.
“How To Tell A Lie by Delphine Dryden
Cake by Lauren Dane
The Governess Affair by Courtney Milan. Enjoyed it so much on my flight out that I read it on my flight back.
Wrecked and Frozen (an honest to god Big Foot romance!!) by Meljean Brook. Really anything by Meljean Brook who also has a nice little story I can’t remember the title of in the Must Love Hellhounds anthology which has some great short reads by other authors.
A Christmas Gone Perfectly Wrong by Cecelia Grant which has become my Christmas night tradition. After all the hustle and bustle, the cooking, the cleaning, the wrapping and unwrapping, it’s me, a mug of hot chocolate and Andrew Blackshear.
Shelly Laurenston/G. A. Aiken has some novellas/short fiction set in her various worlds. Laurenston does shifters in her Pride series and has a couple of stories anthologized with Cynthia Eden. Writing as Aiken, she has a number of stories set in her Dragon Kin world that hold up pretty well by themselves. Both of her author personae are rude, crude, sexy, and absolutely hilarious.
I just read Theresa Romain’s Those Autumn Nights over the weekend and it was typical Romain catnip for me. Reunited lovers, falling plaster, interfering relatives….
Thea Harrison has a bunch of novellas/short stories set in her world, some of them are continuations of previous stories (Pia and Dragos, mostly), but some are stand alone and I really enjoy them!
A novella that was featured on here at one point- The Nekkid Truth by Nicole Camden was good enough that I recently reread it.
Ilona Andrews has the novellas set in the Kate Daniels world, I really enjoy the Dali/Jim ones and I think they work fairly well standalone? But they also released two sci-fi ish novellas pre-Kate Daniels (I think?) called Silver Shark and Silent Blade that are really good! Other unconnected novellas by them are Small Magics and Alpha: Origins.
Anne Stuart also has some novellas that are now cheap on Amazon (haven’t looked elsewhere): Blind Date From Hell, which is about a man who has been stuck in hell and is told by the devil to go devirginize a supermodel, it sounds dumb but it is very good and I have reread it multiple times. And Star Light Star Bright, which is a Christmas contemporary about a woman going back to her hometown.
I’ve enjoyed all of Eloisa James’ novellas except her most recent one (A Gentleman Never Tells, which was a DNF for me). But her novella in the anthology Talk of the Ton is one of my all-time favorite historicals. It’s since been republished alone as “To Wed a Rake”.
I’m sure I’ve read more but these are the ones that I can immediately think of! I’m a busy college student so I love novellas.
Thank you to everyone that has suggested novellas so far! I have read some of them, but I also just bought a whole load more, so I really appreciate it, even if my wallet doesn’t. 😉
Is it kosher to suggest my own stuff? I have a series of 11 (so far) novella-length contemporary “L.A. Stories.” Available at Amazon under author Alexandra Y. Caluen.
I love so many of the suggested novellas (especially Milan’s A Kiss for Midwinter and Grant’s A Christmas Gone Perfectly Wrong). I’d also add Jeannie Lin’s Capturing the Silken Thief, Mary Ann River’s Snowfall, and Penny Watson’s Apples Should be Red.
I generally don’t like novellas. If they’re good, they’re too short and I want more. It’s also hard to build a believable romance and have it end happily in just a few pages. However, my all-time favorite is “On the Prowl” by Patricia Briggs. It’s the beginning of her series, so it solves the problem of a too-short novel, but it’s very satisfying. The heroine has been turned against her will into a werewolf and has no status within her pack and therefore, has been abused by most of the pack. This abuse is not very detailed, but you get the idea, mainly because you see its effects. An “enforcer” comes to investigate this pack’s leader and is very dismayed to find that the heroine has undergone such trauma and discovers her unique ability. I loved this book. Unfortunately, the other novellas are not very good. The good news though, is that the Briggs’ novella is well worth the money.
I’ve enjoyed Anna Campbell’s Dashing Widows series. It starts with The Seduction of Lord Stone. There are three currently out with a fourth due out on the 30th of this month. They’re only $.99 each which is a great price for novellas.
Although Harlequin Romance titles aren’t considered novellas, they are short (about 2 hours) and easy to read. I think of them as popcorn books.
My absolute favorite novella ever is Her Best Laid Plans by Cara McKenna. It’s definitely erotica but it was just the perfect little story about a heartbroken American woman housesitting in Ireland and hooking up with a bartender as she tries to figure out her best way forward in life. And it felt complete too. Novellas tend to feel rushed to me: everything happens too fast and characters lack depth. Not so with Cara McKenna. Both Jamie and Connor are fully formed characters and they’re flawed but fairly self-aware. It’s one that I come back to again and again because it’s just hot and sweet and gives me all the good feels. I think Connor can be categorized as a beta hero too. Definitely not an alphahole or anything approaching that.
Cara McKenna writes a lot of novellas/short stories so if you end up liking her, there will be lots to devour!
One I haven’t seen mentioned yet is Noelle Adams. The majority of her books are novella length and there’s been a few that I didn’t think work, but overall they’re fun, fast reads. Other novellas not mentioned yet that I liked include The Hot & Nerdy novellas by Shannyn Schroeder, How to Misbehave and Making It Last by Ruthie Knox (they feature the same couple at different stages in the relationship), Big Boy by Ruthie Knox, Rock Courtship by Nalini Singh, Brave in Heart by Emma Barry, Something About a Cowboy by Sarah M. Anderson, and the Miller Sisters novellas by Sarah Morgan. I would also echo the recommendations for Courtney Milan, Shannon Stacey, Tessa Dare, and Let it Shine by Alyssa Day.
I second these recommendations:
Let it Shine by Alyssa Cole
A Christmas Gone Perfectly Wrong by Cecilia Grant (although this is more “category length” than novella)
Blonde Date by Sarina Bowen
Tessa Dare – especially her Spindle Cove novella Beauty and the Blacksmith, it’s a favorite comfort read
Courtney Milan, all of them basically
And I’d like to add:
The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo by Zen Cho (epistolary and amazing)
Charlotte Stein has some great erotic novellas, I like Restraint and Curve Ball
YA romance anthology My True Love Gave to Me actually got five stars from me, which is rare for an anthology
Many wonderful recommendations in this thread. @Frida mentioned Charlotte Stein, and I wanted to plug her novella Deep Desires, which was an incredible erotic romance that was kinky without being all BDSM, all the time. It packs one hell of an emotional wallop, which in my experience can be hard to find in shorter works of fiction.
Speaking of emotional, Laura Florand’s Turning Up the Heat really struck a nerve when I read it. It’s about a husband and wife who’ve been married eleven years–the impact of stress and exhaustion and familiarity, and how or if they can find their way back to each other.
@LML
Oooh, yes Harlequin Romances often do the trick, if I can find an author I like. I think I own every title by Susan Napier, who wrote New Zealand located contemporaries for Harlequin during the early 2000s. They are absolutely book crack for me and are only a little longer than novella length (around 130-200 pages usually, I think).
Definitely The Governess Affair. One of my favorite love scenes ever. Plus, at free, you can’t go wrong 😉
Some great recommendations here. I second the recs for Ilona Andrews, Briggs and Meljean Brooks. Will also mention Georgette Heyer has a collection of short stories in Pistols for Two. In a bit of a different genre, but still with romance in it, I highly, highly recommend Bone Swans by C.S.E. Cooney. This is a collection of beautiful fairy tales, although I found “The Big HaHa” a bit on the dark side for me. As a plus the cover is gorgeous. She also is finishing up the third book in a beautiful fairy tale trilogy, The Dark Breakers.
Seconding so many of those already mentioned – most anything by Dare or Milan, the two “Lady Most” anthologies, “At the Duke’s/Billionaire’s Wedding” duology, His Road Home, all of Anna Campbell’s shorts , both of Nalini Singh’s Psy-Changeling anthologies and the stories she’s included in other anthologies.
Cindy Spencer Pape has a steampunk series that are all fairly short – look for the Gaslight Chronicles. I think a couple are free on Amazon? She also has a historical American short set in a small Michigan town in the 20’s, which I really enjoyed.
For paranormal novellas, Vivian Arend has a series of shorts – the series title is Granite Lake Wolves – and Jennifer Ashley has several novellas in her Shifters Unbound series.
Zoe Archer has a pair of short novellas in her 8th Wing sci-fi duology.
Moira Rogers has the Bloodhounds series of short novels – steampunk Westerns. And also a series of erotic paranormal shorts, the Last Call series, all easily read in an hour or so!
I have the same propensity to like to finish books in one sitting– it has made me a much faster reader! But like Aislinn, it has also made me a lover of novellas.
You can’t really miss with novellas (which I think of as less than 150 pages) from Ilona Andrews, Nalini Singh, Shannon Stacy, or Courtney Milan. Even their “bad” ones are still well above average in terms of quality IMO.
I also really like Noelle Adams, whose stories are frequently on sale or free, and I especially like her “One Night With” series.
Other single title standouts for me include: “A Pirate for Christmas” by Anna Campbell, “His Road Home” by Anna Richland, “Wrecked” by Meljean Brook, “Ivan” by Roxie Rivera, and “The Kent Brothers Trilogy” by Jaci Burton.
I think the key to a good novella is either a premise where the h/h have a history that have them primed to get together so that the short page count doesn’t feel rushed or where the author knows to skillfully handle moving quickly through time. “His Road Home” and “The Scandalous, Dissolute, No-Good Mr. Wright” by Tessa Dare are good examples of authors moving us quickly through the conflict in a really satisfying way. Anyways, I’ll shut up now– very happy to see this thread though!
Okay, I LOVE novellas.
My #1 is The Governess Affair by Courtney Milan (plucky spinster protests maltreatment at hands of repulsive duke, is aided by his ‘wolf’, an honorable man who cleans up all the dirty laundry for him)
My #2 is The Princess Royal by Molly Jameson (glam party girl princess does the fake relationship of convenience with her brother’s Beta-tastic best friend to help him get elected to Parliament)
My #3 is Her Every Wish by Courtney Milan (impoverished shopgirl dares to be ambitious, but the guy in this one’s kinda cocky)
Two historical m/m: Skybound by Aleksandr Voinov — German air force members at the end of WWII (very untypical Voinov in that it’s subtle, emotionally rich (rather heartbreaking) but not a lot of sex). If It Ain’t Love by Tamara Allen (m/m set in the 1920s). Allen is more miss than hit for me, but this particular one is just right.
Also, The Story Guy by Mary Ann Rivers was quite good– a contemporary, with ordinary middleclass characters, all about the (simple, but not simple) uncertainties of their developing realtionship.
I used to not like novellas because I generally only enjoyed 1 or 2 in the anthology and that impacted how I felt about the whole book and my time spent. And I always felt like I had to read them all because I paid for them. However, since the Kindle, standalone novellas are so common now and I can just buy them for the authors I like or the one new author I want to try so I read a lot more of these now.