Harlequin, perhaps the world’s best-known publisher of romance novels, is lending its name to a line of wines. Try not to drink yourself under the table at the next book club, ladies.

Online dating, at least in my experience, seems to involve a lot of talking to strangers about their CrossFit routines. So it’s understandable that people would want something—anything!—that promises to make sifting through the endless stream of single humans a little easier.

Earlier this month, after I’d published a story about Sandra Bullock’s “super hot” new boyfriend, a loyal reader emailed me. “Can give name and photo of Sandy B’s new bf,” their message said. My eyes widened. I felt like Bob Woodward getting a call from Deep Throat in 1972, only if Bob Woodward wrote for the Arts…

Romance Writers of America—the trade organization of the romance genre—just wrapped up its 35th annual conference. 2,400 attendees, most of them women, descended upon the Marriott Marquis in Times Square for panels, networking, networking, drinking, and more networking.

The annual conference of the Romance Writers of America, held a few weeks ago, was a great time. But it’s tough to get past a truly horrifying discovery: Not only did somebody write a Christian romance novel with a Jewish heroine and a Nazi “hero,” it was nominated for two RITA awards, the genre’s equivalent of the…

Nestled inside the top sellers list on Amazon, between the James Patterson pot-boilers, the ubiquitous de-cluttering manifesto, and various forgettable beach reads, is the answer to what women really want: in short, to fuck their stepbrothers. For months now, self-published stepsibling romance novels have become a…

According to Life & Style, Rachel McAdams is stuck in a LOVE TRIANGLE with her True Detective co-stars Taylor Kitsch and Colin Farrell. WHO SHOULD SHE CHOOSE?

In the pantheon of sexual fantasies blissful to imagine but volatile to undertake, threesomes are near the top of the list. It might seem like a ménage à trois should be an easy sell: more hands! More mouths! More genitals! More fun! Yet such logic evades the emotional brains driving our hot-sex-machine bodies. As…

It was inspiring to watch the authors picking up trophies at the RT Book Reviews awards ceremony in Dallas. Many were successful middle-aged women who’d started writing romances as a second career, supportive husbands cheering them on. But—as reflects the publishing business overall—it was a fairly white group, and…

Chris Harrison wrote a romance novel. It took him a couple years and lots of late nights, but given that he’s spent his adult life advising sort of adults how to find love, and given that he’s divorced and has shown no real readiness to settle down again, it seems like that developing this side hustle was time…

Throughout history, only a few romances have really captured our imagination. Antony and Cleopatra. Victoria and Albert. Liz and Dick. B.J. Novak and Mindy Kaling.

One of the primary elements that’s kept me away from indulging in the wet and wistful pleasures of a good romance novel is that the sex was never rough enough and men were always drippy. They were either counts, billionaires, cowboys, or some other sort of amorphous type of “stud” that I’ve never encountered in Real…

If you’re a Jezebel reader looking for romance recommendations, sooner or later somebody is going to mention Victoria Dahl, who in recent years has built up a reputation for books that are forthrightly feminist in their outlook.

It’s a common trope in romance novels for the hero to be an alpha male: confident, bold, a natural leader of other men. They are often firefighters, military men, cops, tycoons, or 19th-century dukes in saucy cravats. And in romance’s taxonomy of alpha males, there appears the sub species of the alpha-hole. These men…

One thing struck me immediately upon my arrival at the RT Booklovers’ Convention, and that was the proliferation of abs. So many abs! Abs on the elevators, abs on the walls, abs in the welcome bag, abs plastered all over the promo materials. Abs, abs, abs, abs. I don’t even care about abs and I’m in female-gaze hog…

One of this year’s buzziest romance releases has been A Bollywood Affair by Sonali Dev. Turns out Bollywood movies and romance novels go together like peanut butter and jelly.

There can never be another Fabio. He belongs to a unique and gauzy time in the late ‘80s when the paperback romance trade had about 50 titles a month by in-house authors. Now there are 500 titles pumped out monthly— not just from major publishing houses but also indie digital publishers, hyper entrepreneurial…

Greetings from Dallas and the RT Booklovers Convention, where I am currently wandering dazed through a thicket of bare male abs. Expect interviews and other dispatches. And, to kick off our coverage, the folks at Avon sent us the never-before-seen cover of historical romance star Lisa Kleypas’s (much anticipated)…

Two brave and sensual members of Jezebel staff (Kelly Faircloth and I, hello!) have come to Dallas to rub elbows with blockbuster romance writers, steely cover models, and wolf-whistling fans at the Romantic Times’ annual convention. Now in it’s 32nd year, the RT Booklovers convention takes all the typical tropes of…