Anthology

A-
A Texas Christmas: An Anthology

I’m not much for holiday romances, mainly because the limitations of the season and especially the sentiments surrounding the holiday often stifle authors’ creativity and the result turns out to be hackneyed or cookie cutter-ish. Since all the stories in this anthology are related by time and pl ...

A-
The Rake's Retreat

I generally think of a comfort read as something I’ve already read, but because I try to choose my TBR Challenge reads from books I haven’t read, I decided to go for one by an author whose work I’ve enjoyed and want to read more of.  Nancy Butler’s The Rake’s Retreat got my 2021 TBR C ...

A-
Regency Christmas Gifts

The first thing I do to kick off the Christmas season (besides, of course, cranking up the season debut of Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You) is get out my old anthologies and read a Carla Kelly Christmas short story. The last thing I do on Christmas Eve before I turn out the lights i ...

C+
With This Ring

Westerns, romance and humor seem to go hand in hand. From 1938’s The Cowboy and the Lady to 2014’s A Million Ways to Die in the West, movies and books love to blend a look at the Wild West with a pretty lady, a clueless cowboy and a lot of laughs. With This Ring? is an anthology of Inspirational ...

D
Dark Heat: The Dark Kings Stories

There was nothing that I liked about Dark Heat, a collection of four short stories about dragon shifting men who live in the Scottish Highlands. Not the characters nor the world building nor the plot nor the romances. Nothing. Oh, wait. I did like that the stories were short. It’s normal proce ...

B
The Lady Most Wiling

Two years after collaborating on The Lady Most Likely, Julia Quinn, Eloisa James, and Connie Brockway reunite again in The Lady Most Willing. Like the first book, this isn’t an anthology, but with each author putting her own unique spin on a certain couple falling in love during a contrived stay a ...

B
Holidays Are Hell: An Anthology

I started reading this anthology right after reading Laurie's fantastic ATBF column on urban fantasy. It even got me out of lurkerdom on the AAR boards to comment. I spent a good deal of time contemplating why I like urban fantasy so much, because it’s one of the few genres in which I have auto-bu ...

B
The Shadows of Christmas Past by Susan Sizemore and Christine Feehan

The Shadows of Christmas Past offers two stories, one a wonderful read and the other only just good enough to pass the time. Both stories, though, have enough plot to keep the reader interested and spread a little holiday cheer. A Rocky Mountain Miracle by Christine Feehan Although the tit ...

B+
Behind The Red Doors

Behind the Red Doors is the latest themed anthology from Harlequin. It contains three interlinked novellas by Vicki Lewis Thompson, Stephanie Bond, and Leslie Kelly. The Red Doors of the title is a store opened by two best friends; Jamie Ruskin and Faith Sherman. Jamie and Faith have come up with th ...

C
Strangers in the Night

Strangers in the Night is an anthology containing 3 previously released Linda Howard short stories. Two of them were previously reviewed when they were first released, and while I'm on-board with one of the earlier grades, AAR colleague Marianne Stillings enjoyed the other earlier release a whole lo ...