Ronni might be back in his life, but Hayden's going to watch her like a hawk! He thought he'd seen the last of her when she broke his brother's heart years ago. Ronni's betrayal hurt that much more because she was the only woman Hayden could've seen himself settling down with...except his brother wooed her first.

Originally published in 1984, Reading the Romance challenges popular (and often demeaning) myths about why romantic fiction, one of publishing's most lucrative categories, captivates millions of women readers. Among those who have disparaged romance reading are feminists, literary critics, and theorists of mass culture. They claim that romances enforce the woman reader's dependence on men and acceptance of the repressive ideology purveyed by popular culture. Radway questions such claims, arguing that critical attention "must shift from the text itself, taken in isolation, to the complex social event of reading." She examines that event, from the complicated business of publishing and distribution to the individual reader's engagement with the text. Radway's provocative approach combines reader-response criticism with anthropology and feminist psychology. Asking readers themselves to explore their reading motives, habits, and rewards, she conducted interviews in a midwestern town with forty-two romance readers whom she met through Dorothy Evans, a chain bookstore employee who has earned a reputation as an expert on romantic fiction. Evans defends her customers' choice of entertainment; reading romances, she tells Radway, is no more harmful than watching sports on television. "We read books so we won't cry" is the poignant explanation one woman offers for her reading habit. Indeed, Radway found that while the women she studied devote themselves to nurturing their families, these wives and mothers receive insufficient devotion or nurturance in return. In romances the women find not only escape from the demanding and often tiresome routines of their lives but also a hero who supplies the tenderness and admiring attention that they have learned not to expect. The heroines admired by Radway's group defy the expected stereotypes; they are strong, independent, and intelligent. That such characters often find themselves to be victims of male aggression and almost always resign themselves to accepting conventional roles in life has less to do, Radway argues, with the women readers' fantasies and choices than with their need to deal with a fear of masculine dominance. These romance readers resent not only the limited choices in their own lives but the patronizing atitude that men especially express toward their reading tastes. In fact, women read romances both to protest and to escape temporarily the narrowly defined role prescribed for them by a patriarchal culture. Paradoxically, the books that they read make conventional roles for women seem desirable. It is this complex relationship between culture, text, and woman reader that Radway urges feminists to address. Romance readers, she argues, should be encouraged to deliver their protests in the arena of actual social relations rather than to act them out in the solitude of the imagination. In a new introduction, Janice Radway places the book within the context of current scholarship and offers both an explanation and critique of the study's limitations.

Can He Save The Day? The firefighters of Firehouse 59 can't help but wonder when Brady's Tavern, the local hangout, will reopen after the owner passes away. Cute Julie Polk doesn't seem the type to run a bar, but hey, she's better looking than Brady ever was! Needless to say, they're stunned when Julie decides to convert the place into a… tearoom! Determined not to let that happen, the firefighters elect Tony Veracruz, the resident Casanova, to sweet-talk the blonde into changing her mind. Brady's Tavern should be back in no time! But as Tony gets closer to Julie and realizes he wants more than just a fling, he's not sure where his loyalties lie….

It's a media scandal! Flame-haired beauty Amber Wyatt has gate-crashed her ex-fiancé's glamorous society wedding! Groomsman Cal McFarlane knows she's trouble, but when Amber loses her job, the rugged cattle rancher comes to the rescue. He needs a nanny, and if it makes his baby nephew happy, he's willing to play with fire….

Is she "Cari" or "Cary"? One of them is the girl who Max Angeli was planning to meet for dinner. The other is the girl with whom he ends up wandering the dangerous streets of Dallas late at night with an infant in tow. Cari Christiansen finds herself attracted to this mysterious Italian Texan, but the battles facing the pair might be more spaghetti Western than romantic comedy...

In all her time as premier tour manager to Australia's stars, Charli Chambers has never had someone as infuriating--or delectable!--as successful businessman Luca Petrelli along for the ride. He might always be in the gossip columns, but there's no way she's letting him claim VIP status! But Luca's wicked eyes are just too tempting. In spite of herself, Charli's soon attending after-parties--just for two. She wants to believe this is one duet that's about to go platinum, but in spite of Luca being unprintably good in bed, can she ever get close enough to the real Luca for their fling to be more than just a one-hit wonder?