Stay safe, everyone; stay home, if you can, and read more romance.
With its central theme of love and the promise of a guaranteed-hopeful ending, very few works of fiction can rival romance in providing respite from concerns during troubled times. No matter the subgenre or trope, there’s always something to entertain everyone. This month’s selections prove that variety.
Paranormal Co
medy
License to Bite offers much-needed comic relief with Jane Anderson, the daughter of the Texas governor, gaining immortality when she was “turned” by a sexy New Orleans vampire in a hilarious case of mistaken identity. Thinking she was his late fiancée reincarnated, Ethan Deveraux claims Jane for his own, only to find out that the Mardi Gras party-girl is loud, obnoxious, and terrified at the sight of blood. Now, they have three weeks for Jane to overcome that fear and gain her vampire license, otherwise she will be staked, and Ethan’s undead existence could end for good.
Book one of the New Orleans Nocturnes, License to Bite is now available. Author Carrie Pulkinen is from a small town just south of Houston, and she's always been fascinated by things that go bump in the night. Of course, when you grow up next door to a cemetery, the dead—and the undead—are hard to ignore.
Road-Trip Romance
Oh, to be able to travel right now. In the sweet contemporary romance Road Trip With the Billionaire, Samantha Perkins and Garrison Haverford env
iably do exactly that. Both unwilling to be matched to each other, they end up sharing the last available rental car each needs to get from Denver to San Antonio. What should have been a fifteen-hour drive takes multiple days of dealing with snow, lies, fire, and a deer. Getting to Texas isn’t as easy as they thought it would be, especially when the traveling companions can’t get along—or can they?
Road Trip With the Billionaire is book eight of Remi Carrington’s Bluebonnets and Billionaires series, sweet romance books set in San Antonio and the surrounding Hill Country. They’re available from all your favorite retailers.
The author lives in San Antonio with her husband, sons, black cats, and leopard gecko.
Marriage 
of Convenience
Naturally, a Texas cowboy completes this month’s roundup of romantic Texas reads. In Murmur of Love, cattle rancher and single father Aidan Lawson is faced with a struggling ranch, a custody suit, and an uncertain future. Enter supermodel and entrepreneur Cecelia Carlsen, arriving in a private jet and offering him a solution to all his problems. Is a marriage of convenience, between a man who abhors lies and secrets and a woman who is shrouded in them, a recipe for disaster? Or is it a fairy tale?
Book one of the Texas Solace series, Murmur of Love is set in a ranch near a fictitious town in the Texas Panhandle modeled on Mott Creek Ranch near the town of Matador in Motley County, which Nicole Ann Nielsen visited for research in 2019. Nicole lives in scenic Cape Town, South Africa, and shares her space with her husband, two dogs, and a lone cat, her son and daughter having long flown the coop. Her debut series is available now.
Stay safe, everyone; stay home, if you can, and read more romance.
Maida Malby is comfortably ensconced with her working-from-home husband and virtual-learning son in their home in West Texas. She is currently writing Global City Tryst, the latest installment of the Carpe Diem Chronicles, a series of multicultural, international, contemporary romance books that take readers away to fabulous locations in the United States and Southeast Asia. Find out more about them at maidamalby.com.
