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All Those New-to-Me Books

lordofthenight This has been a very good reading year so far. Not only are there a lot of good new books out there, but there are more good reissues than I’ve seen in ages. For the past year or so, I’ve been enjoying the gorgeous reissues that Sourcebooks has been doing of Georgette Heyer’s novels. I haven’t gotten to read them all yet, but I’ve been collecting them and replacing some of my more tattered books. They’ve also reissued some of Laura Kinsale’s novels with absolutely beautiful covers. One of the difficulties of keeping up with romance for me used to be that books had such limited shelf lives compared to other genres. I would find a series I wanted to follow only to discover the first few books were out of print. Very frustrating!

However, now I’m starting to see lots of good reissues out there. Avon has reprinted some of Christina Dodd’s older books from the now-defunct HarperMonogram line as well as Susan Wiggs’ Lord of the Night, which is one of my very favorite historicals. I can’t wait to reread it, and revisit Renaissance Venice. Harlequin has been getting into the reissue game, too. They’ve reissued Susan Wiggs’ Tudor Rose trilogy with beautiful covers, though I was disappointed to see that they took away the imaginative, romantic original titles and gave everything more generic titles. Though I’ve seen worse titles than the ones employed with this trilogy, these more unimaginative titles take some of the fun out of discovering a books’ contents after all. I’m still very glad to see them getting back on shelves, though, and I understand Mira will be reissuing more of Wiggs’ backlist.

Harlequin also has reissues of some very early titles coming out in celebration of their 60th anniversary, and their Famous Firsts reissues gave readers a chance to read some debuts of authors who are now very well known. I’m hoping publishers continue reissuing some of the much-loved but out of print books along with each month’s new releases. This has been making me feel more energized about reading for the first time in years!

I’ve been picking up quite a few of these “new to me” books, and it’s gotten me thinking about books I would LOVE to see reissued. How about Roberta Gellis’ Roselynde Chronicles? Or Carla Kelly’s traditional Regencies from her Signet days (A little birdie on our message boards indicates that the rights have reverted to her…..)? I wouldn’t be averse to seeing the rest of Judy Cuevas/Judith Ivory’s backlist available again either. I understand she has been incommunicado for some time, but I can still hope!

If the reissue fairy came you way, what would you wish for?

-Lynn Spencer

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