"Find your one true love and live happily ever after." The trials of love and desire provide perennial story material, from the Biblical Song of Songs to Disney's princesses, but perhaps most provocatively in the romance novel, a genre known for tales of fantasy and desire, sex and pleasure. Hailed on the one hand for its women-centered stories that can be sexually liberating, and criticized on the other for its emphasis on male/female coupling and mythical happy endings, romance fiction is a multi-million dollar publishing phenomenon, creating national and international societies of enthusiasts, practitioners, and scholars. Catherine M. Roach, alongside her romance-writer alter-ego, Catherine LaRoche, guides the reader deep into Romancelandia where the smart and the witty combine with the sexy and seductive to explore why this genre has such a grip on readers and what we can learn from the romance novel about the nature of happiness, love, sex, and desire in American popular culture.

Mona Reynolds needs to do some major overhaul on her new bookstore and cafe and hires Joe Michaels, a handyman running from his past to accomplish the renovations.

Nina Redmond is a librarian with a gift for finding the perfect book for her readers. But can she write her own happy-ever-after? In this valentine to readers, librarians, and book-lovers the world over, the New York Times-bestselling author of Little Beach Street Bakery returns with a funny, moving new novel for fans of Nina George’s The Little Paris Bookshop. Nina is a literary matchmaker. Pairing a reader with that perfect book is her passion… and also her job. Or at least it was. Until yesterday, she was a librarian in the hectic city. But now the job she loved is no more. Determined to make a new life for herself, Nina moves to a sleepy village many miles away. There she buys a van and transforms it into a bookmobile — a mobile bookshop that she drives from neighborhood to neighborhood, changing one life after another with the power of storytelling. From helping her grumpy landlord deliver a lamb, to sharing picnics with a charming train conductor who serenades her with poetry, Nina discovers there’s plenty of adventure, magic, and soul in a place that’s beginning to feel like home… a place where she just might be able to write her own happy ending.

In this playful and informative exploration of the science behind how to choose a great mate, acclaimed relationship psychologist Dr. Ty Tashiro explores how to find enduring love. Dr. Tashiro translates reams of scientific studies and research data into the first book to revolutionize the way we search for love. His research pinpoints why our decision-making abilities seem to fail when it comes to choosing mates and how we can make smarter choices. Dr. Tashiro has discovered that if you want a lifetime of happiness--not just togetherness--it all comes down to how you choose a partner in the first place. With wit and insight, he explains the science behind finding a soul mate and distills his research into actionable tips, including: Why you get only three wishes when choosing your ideal partner. Why most people squander their wishes and end up in unfulfilling relationships. How wishing for the three traits that really matter can help you find enduring love. Illustrated using entertaining stories based on real-life situations and backed by scientific findings from fields such as demography, sociology, medical science and psychology, Dr. Tashiro provides an accessible framework to help singles find their happily-ever-afters.

Sometimes love needs a little shove. At the Happily Ever After Bookstore, happiness is always found within the pages of the books on its shelves. Its owner, Leona, revels in finding each reader just the right book to bring them joy. She also enjoys meddling just enough to bring readers together who might not know they are destined for one another. In need of a holiday pick-me-up, Sadie seeks out Leona’s advice for a good holiday romance. While scanning the book selections, she knocks into Charlie McGowan, who is certainly out of his element. When they learn that Leona “accidentally” gave them the wrong bags at check out, Sadie and Charlie set out to find one another, only to fall for Leona’s matchmaking tactics. When author Fiona Gable and her ex-husband Price Richter end up in the same town, leave it to Leona to put them in one another’s paths. Decades of marriage couldn’t keep them together after love and loss, but could finding one another under new circumstances change everything? Though skilled at pairing people together, Leona’s ability to find love eluded her. Her true love was her bookstore. When the bookstore is in need of repair, Jon Ford is sent to fix it. Leona wonders if she might have finally found her happily ever after. But, as fate would have it, Jon comes with baggage—ages three and four. Does Leona have it in her to take on a store, a man, and a family just to have a happily ever after of her own?

2004 Christy Award finalist! God has answered Mona Reynolds's prayers and given her the opportunity of a lifetime: she is about to open her own bookstore-coffee shop, the Footstep of Heaven. Now Mona has no time for love and no hope that a man can ever be the hero of her dreams. But when she hires mysterious drifter Joe Michaels to be her handyman, she discovers that it isn't only in fairy tales that people live “happily ever after.”

One day, while holding her treasured baseball mitt, Kate makes a wish. And poof!— she turns into a princess in a fairy tale. But being a princess isn't at all what Kate imagined. Before long, she's fighting off dragons, entertaining witches, and teaching the ladies-in-waiting how to play baseball. With Kate around, fairy tale land will never be the same again!