Offbeat romance: misshapes &mistakes

The best new books you’ll love

HEART THE LOVER BY LILY KING This year marks 250 years since Jane Austen was born so it’s fitting that love stories are having an epic moment. The current fiction boom (sales are up 18% on last year)

Life has a bad habit of mirroring art. Sometimes, this can be in a deeply sad way. A while after I wrote about the assumption of guilt in a traumatised young woman with poor social skills, I watched a

Do you like your romances to be a mixture of sweet treat and spicy sauce? Comforting and cosy, like a frothy latte, but with an added espresso shot of unfiltered sensuality? If that’s your idea of rea

L If they’re ever looking to recruit spies, forget handsome, fit, blue-eyed Bonds. Forget gym-buffed Daniel, impossibly good-looking Tom and danger magnet Matt. Look instead for a middle-aged woman in

Thanks for coming in today, Bea,” said Jason, the commissioning editor at Bluestone Press, where Bea was interviewing for yet another assistant job. “We’ll be in touch.” “Okay, great,” replied Bea, fo