Our November Romance Top Pick, Cold-Hearted Rake, marks a celebrated return to historical romance for best-selling author Lisa Kleypas. In a 7 Questions interview, we talked to Kleypas about crowns, the allure of the Victorian era, what's next for her and more. 

Describe your book in one sentence.
A handsome, carefree London rake inherits a failing estate and reluctantly fights to save it while battling his attraction to a feisty young widow.

What inspired you to return to historicals after your hiatus from the genre?
Historical romance will always be my favorite genre to write in, but with a career as long as mine, it's important to find ways to stay excited and motivated. For me, that means challenging myself with new kinds of stories and characters and always trying to stretch my skills. After writing contemporaries for a few years, I started thinking about historical plots again, and I became enthusiastic about creating a family series set in Victorian England.

How does it feel to delve back into historicals? Did anything surprise you upon your return to the genre?
Fantastic! There's so much I've missed . . . the elegance and romance of the historical time period and the expansive vocabulary I can use. Contemporary dialogue tends to be choppier and more efficient—I think a lot of us speak in shorthand nowadays. But conversation in historical society used to be a form of entertainment, with a lot of emphasis on wit, intellect and style. There was a sense that after a discussion with your friends, everyone should be a little improved by it afterward. So writing historical dialogue is by far the most fun part of my job.

If there was a surprise for me in delving back into historicals, it was probably the realization of how much easier it is to write an unapologetically alpha hero. With contemporaries, there are far more boundaries for a strong male character—we just don't let guys get away with as much as we used to. However, if you put a hero in a historical time period, he has an excuse to be arrogant and high-handed: It's the 1800s—he can't help it! (Incidentally, I think that’s why my Texas contemporary heroes can get away with being so alpha—they're Texan, they can't help it!)

What draws you specifically to the Victorian era?
So much excitement and conflict is already built into the time period! Technology and industry were changing the world so fast that no one could keep up with it. Aristocrats were losing their wealth while commoners were gaining it, and social reform was making headway. It was an incredibly tumultuous time. I tend to put a big mix of social classes in my stories—I love characters who are outsiders trying to find a place for themselves, and the Victorian setting is ideal for that.

Also . . . I can't help being fascinated by the idea of starched and buttoned-up Victorians trying to conceal all their natural inclinations and desires. There's something sexy about all those layers of clothes and fasteners and laces and stays: It gives a love scene a sense of the forbidden.

What’s your favorite thing about your latest couple, the devilish Devon Ravenel and the sharp-as-nails Kathleen?
I loved this pairing because on the surface they seem so different—he's a pleasure-loving scoundrel, and she's an uptight widow—but deep down, they're very much alike. They're both incredibly guarded and unwilling to trust anyone with their true thoughts and feelings, and they both secretly yearn for a deep connection with someone. And when they're together, they push each other into becoming their best selves. It was so satisfying to see their characters develop together on the same emotional arc.

What do you do for fun while you’re taking a break from writing?
My husband and two children and I live in the Pacific Northwest, so there's always a ton of things to do. We hike around local lakes, go on some pretty steep trails and take in the spectacular scenery. We also love go to the local farmer's market or drive down to Seattle to attend a concert or play. We're foodies, so we're always trying out new recipes with exotic ingredients. This past year, after I had a hysterectomy and a couple of months of enforced bed rest, I discovered the pleasures of binge-watching, and I watched entire seasons of shows I've heard about for a long time. Mad Men! The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt! Game of Thrones! It was glorious.

What can we look forward to from you next?
I'm currently working on the next in my historical series The Ravenels . . . the title is Marrying Mr. Winterborne. It's about an incredibly wealthy common-born Welshman, Rhys Winterborne, who is determined to marry shy, aristocratic Lady Helen Ravenel. He knows the only way he can marry someone like Helen is to ruin her first, so he talks her into coming to his bed and letting him seduce her. And that's just the first chapter!

Bonus Question: We’ve got to ask. As Miss Massachusetts 1985, do you ever take down your crown from the bookshelf and wear it around the house?
Well, it's just a big crown  . . . I have to save that for more formal occasions, so I have a smaller crown (I won it at the local county pageant before the state finals) that's more appropriate for things like vacuuming or light household tasks. If anyone asks, I just tell them it's a little something to hold my hair back.

Our Romance Top Pick for January is The Lady's Command, the first in a thrilling new Regency series by bestselling author Stephanie Laurens. In a 7 Questions interview, we asked Laurens about her career as a cancer researcher, why Regency romance is such an evergreen genre and more.

Describe your novel in one sentence.
The Lady’s Command is a crash course for two headstrong, willful and dominant characters in what it’s going to take to make their recently celebrated marriage work.

Readers may be surprised to learn that you hold a Ph.D. in biochemistry and used to work in cancer research. What prompted you to leave the world of science behind? Do you ever feel any sadness that the degree you spent years working toward now goes unused professionally?
I left the world of science behind when it became not so much about the science itself—which I loved!—but more about bureaucracy and science-politics. So no, I have not one single regret over leaving science, because staying was no longer an option; the field no longer delivered what I wanted from it. And although the degree itself, meaning the piece of paper and the letters after my name, may no longer be relevant in my work as a novelist, a Ph.D. in any research subject is more about imagination and creativity applied to researching facts and asking that evergreen question: what if? That is exactly the same skillset needed to write a novel. The skills honed in my previous life as a research scientist stand me in excellent stead in my career as a novelist.

You’ve penned over 60 books, almost all of them Regency-set historical romances. What is it about this particular genre that you enjoy so much?
Quite aside from the glamour of bygone days, of the British aristocracy arguably at its height, of the balls and soirees, the clothes and extravagant lifestyles enjoyed by the Upper Ten Thousand, to me there are several advantages in writing in the historical sphere, one of which is that there were no phones, no cars, no planes, no Internet—so people had to deal with each other face to face. For a novelist, that means a greater degree of intensity and immediacy in all interactions. In addition, in the Regency era, there was a very powerful and—for a romance novelist—useful shift in social attitudes taking place. Prior to the early 1800s, the aristocracy and nobility rarely, if ever, married for love. In pre-Regency days, for a young lady of birth and fortune, marriage was all about cementing dynastic alliances and the passing on of property; the only question a young lady was asked about marrying was whether she would receive an offer for her hand.

But after 1810, courtesy of gradually changing social mores, the romantic question facing a young lady of the aristocracy became three-fold: Should she marry for love, should she marry for wealth and position, or should she not marry at all? Of course, gentlemen of the same social strata were also facing the same novel set of questions, so would-be sweethearts had to explore what love meant to them individually and jointly, and whether love was, in fact, the mast to which they wished to pin their future.

Essentially, for the first time in history, aristocrats faced the same questions that women and men face today. Having characters dealing with the same fundamental questions about love and marriage is an important, possibly essential, factor in crafting romances that resonate with the audience of today. To my mind, that is one big reason why Regency-set historical romances work so well with modern audiences.

Devoted readers of your books will remember the main characters of The Lady’s Command from a previous novel, The Lady Risks All. Given how many novels and series you’ve written, as well as your tendency to have familiar faces pop up in later novels, how do you keep track of all your characters and make sure you keep their detailed worlds straight?
It helps that I view the world my characters populate as essentially one world—I just move to this social group or that. And because the world the majority of my characters inhabit—the aristocracy—is, socially speaking, a small one, then it is to be expected that they are acquainted with each other and that there’s always a connection somewhere.

As for keeping each character’s story straight, I can always check back on anything I’m unsure about just by reaching out and picking up the relevant book. I rarely lose track of my principal characters, but I have resorted to a spreadsheet to help with the names of their staffs! Remembering the names of the butlers and housekeepers in the various major houses is definitely a challenge!

In this novel, you upend the traditional romance trope of wrapping things up nicely at the end with a wedding by instead having Edwina and Declan already married at the start. Why did you make this choice, and how do you feel it affected the way you approached their romance?
An essential truth when working on the romance of strong-willed and independent characters is that often the wedding is only the beginning of the forging of their relationship, rather than the end. Although Edwina and Declan had a reasonable period of betrothal, with Declan often away at sea, they hadn’t spent that much time together, and during the time they had spent together before the wedding, both were projecting their most amenable faces. For characters like these two, after the wedding is when the real work of understanding each other starts.

As for how that affects the writing of the romance, not having to deal with the initial hurdles of getting to know each other, first lust and first intimacy, frees me to concentrate on the true building of the relationship and how it evolves to integrate the demands of their individual personalities.

Like Edwina and Declan, who travel to West Africa, you and your husband have undertaken some fairly epic travel adventures together. What is one of the most important lessons you have learned about love from traveling as a couple, and where did you learn it?
I couldn’t say where, as this is a lesson built on lots of experience over many years, but I would have to say that cultivating patience (perhaps that should be Patience) and the ability to just let the unimportant stuff pass without comment is arguably one of the most critical traits—and one that probably also applies in ordinary day-to-day life—but when travelling, it’s essential.

The Lady’s Command kicks off a new series and features a larger, overarching mystery and ends on a cliffhanger that will surely leave readers desperate for the next installment. Can you ease our curiosity and let us know what (and which couples!) the next three novels have in store for us?
The second installment, A Buccaneer at Heart (May 2016), is Declan’s older brother Robert’s story. Robert picks up the baton for what by this point become a multi-leg mission, and the third book, The Daredevil Snared (July 2016), commences when the youngest Frobisher brother, Caleb, steps in and effectively filches the next leg of the mission before anyone can tell him nay. The final installment, Lord of the Privateers (December 2016), is the story of what happens when Royd, the oldest of the Frobisher brothers, takes on the last leg of the mission, and in so doing, discovers a great deal he hadn’t known about himself—and about the lady who, for the past eight years and more, has held his heart.

(Author photo by Kingma+Kingma)

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The final book in Mary Balogh's New York Times bestselling Survivors' Club series, Only Beloved, is our May Top Pick in Romance. The series follows seven wounded veterans of the Napoleonic Wars who have returned to England to heal at the home of George, the Duke of Stanbrook. Only Beloved gives the generous and kind George the happy ending he so deserves. We asked the Welsh-born Balogh about bringing her touching and popular series to an end.

Describe your latest novel in one sentence.
After years of grief and loneliness as a widower, the Duke of Stanbrook decides to seek happiness with an unmarried music teacher he met briefly a year ago.

Most romance novels feature young lovers in their 20s and early 30s. For the final book in the series, what made you decide to write a love story between an older couple?
I really forced it upon myself. When I invented the Survivors' Club, I needed a character who opened his home as a hospital for officers. It somehow made sense to make him an older man rather than a young man who should perhaps have been away fighting himself, and so the Duke of Stanbrook was born. He is a very central character to the series, though, and was always going to have to have his own story. I would not pair him up with a young woman, so there had to be an older female character worthy of him. And then there is also the fact that I think there should be more love stories for older couples. Many avid readers, after all, are older people, and love and romance are not exclusive reserves of the very young. I am an older person!

What’s the biggest difference between writing a romance about an older couple and writing about a younger one?
It's the level of maturity. The Duke of Stanbrook is 48 in his book; Dora Debbins is 39. They have done a lot of living. They have gone through a lot, suffered a great deal, dealt with their sufferings, settled into productive and dignified lives. I wouldn't say they no longer feel passion (they do!), but they show it in a more considered, realistic way than is often the case with younger characters. There are fewer fireworks and ups and downs of emotion, but a slow burn can be just as hot.

What’s your favorite thing about George, the Duke of Stanbrook?
He is a man who lives love. He is the one who opened his home as a hospital for the Survivors and others, and he was utterly devoted to their care and wellbeing. Even after the three years are over, he is still totally supportive of his friends and absolutely unselfish. Yet he has deep wounds of his own. His only son died in the wars, and his wife committed suicide a few months later. Some of his neighbors believe he killed her. He never talks about his past. He listens, but he keeps his secrets and his pain locked up. My favorite thing? All through the series he is a hero just waiting to happen! I could hardly wait to get to his book.

Only Beloved is the seventh and final book in your Survivors’ Club series. What will you miss most about this series?
The seven characters, six men and one woman, who comprise the club, are a very close-knit group. And they are strong people, having been variously and severely wounded during the Napoleonic Wars before spending three years together recuperating and fighting their way back to physical and emotional health. I loved taking them one by one and pairing them up with suitable heroines and hero so that they could settle back into happy lives and love again. Characters like these become real people to me, and it is sad to say goodbye. However, there is a certain satisfaction in having completed a body of work and being able to turn to a new challenge.  There are numerous other characters and stories out there just waiting to be discovered, after all.

Has your childhood in Wales influenced your writing at all? And if it has, how so?
I have written a few books and novellas set in Wales (Longing and The Escape, for example), and my love of the country, the landscape, the language, the music, the spirituality carried me onward through those stories. I was perfectly at home writing those books because I knew my subject. I think a Welsh love of music and language shows itself in all my books, though. And the Welsh are a passionate people. My books are character-driven and passion-driven. That does not necessarily mean they are driven by sex. The passion of love includes sex but encompasses so much more.

To come at the question from another angle: I grew up in post-World War II Wales, in a city that had been almost flattened by bombing. We had very little, and our outdoor playground was the bombed buildings. Food, clothing, almost everything was severely rationed. We had few belongings, few toys. But did we feel deprived? Did I? In no way! I firmly believe that it was my childhood that ignited my imagination. With my few toys, I created rich imaginary worlds. I played in those worlds, and I wrote long stories about them as soon as I could read and write.

What’s next for you?
I am working on a new eight-part series, the Westcott family series. It is based on the premise of an earl dying without a will. His son automatically inherits the title and properties and fortune, but his widow and two daughters are well provided for, too—until, that is, a 25-year-old will surfaces, leaving everything except the title to the wife and daughter no one knew anything about. And that first wife died four months after his second marriage, rendering that union bigamous and the three children of the marriage illegitimate. His only legitimate daughter grew up in an orphanage unaware of her true identity. The first book, Someone to Love, is her story—Anna Snow, who is in reality Lady Anastasia Westcott. Grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins are also involved in the turmoil—one cousin inherits the title. The series will tell the stories of the various Westcotts and how they reshape their concept of their family as they deal with its new realities.

Author photo by Sharon Pelletier