At first, you just want this Valentine’s Day to be the perfect romance: wake up to flowers and Belgian chocolates in the morning, take a nice walk in the park (plus hand-holding and maybe a kiss or two) in the afternoon, and enjoy a romantic dinner and movie in the evening. But this Valentine’s Day, that evening movie you watch is Fifty Shades of Grey,and, after watching that movie, well, you aren’t in the mood for just a little romance. You wanted something a little more…. erotic. So spice up your Valentine’s Day (and your love life!) with these five lascivious, sultry, and oh-so-sexy books that make Fifty Shades of Grey look like hand-holding!

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The Eighty Days Series by Vina Jackson

If you like romance with music…

Fifty Shades of Grey may have lots of kinky BDSM, but nothing ties you up quite like The Eighty Days Series by Vina Jackson, which has its own fair share of BDSM—and music too! There, Summer is a talented violin player, but she’s still looking for someone who can match the passion of her performance… in the bedroom. But then she meets Dominik, a university professor who may very well be the perfect conductor to the pleasure—and the pain—that can satisfy her passions.

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The Italian Pleasures Trilogy by Irene Cao

 If you like to double-dip…

Christian Grey is apparently quite irresistible—just ask his lover Ana. But you know what could make him even more attractive? If there were two of him. Meet Leonardo and Filippo, the two seductive lovers that ­­Elena can’t get enough of in The Italian Pleasures Trilogy by Irene Cao. Soon, Elena will have to make a choice between the two, a choice that may change her life—but let’s just say you’ll get to know both her lovers very well before then.

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Cosmo’s Sexiest Stories Everby Cosmopolitan

If you like classic romances….

Fifty Shades of Grey is well on its way to becoming an erotica classic—but the Cosmopolitan Magazine already is a classic. In fact, it has been around for 129 years, and over 50 years in its current, sexy style. So whenCosmosays its sharing its “sexiest stories ever,” you better believe it.

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Hot Blood XI edited by Jeff Gelb and Michael Garrett

If you like trying new things…

In Fifty Shades of Grey, Ana and Christian plan to sign a contract before they have sex. They have rules—kind of. But what if there were no rules? What if the sex was sometimes, quite literally, out of this world? From erotic body-swapping to lustful ghosts, these 18 stories from Hot Blood XI edited by Jeff Gelb and Michael Garrett no dark, secret desire is left unturned.

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Licking Our Wounds by Elise D'Haene

If you have a crush on a friend named Mona…

Ana has quite the sexual awakening when she meets Christian in Fifty Shades of Grey, to put it mildly. But in Licking Our Woundsby Elise D’Haene Maria has had quite the sexual un-awakening—after all, it’s hard to satisfy sexual urges when your lesbian lover has left you. Nevertheless, Maria’s rather intimate “friend,” which she calls Mona, continues to have desires that need to be met, and Maria is determined to satisfy her own, and her Mona’s, lust, one way or another. If the Vagina Monologues were made into an erotic novel that was both emotional and witty, this would be it.

Several of our staffers gathered in Brooklyn to try their hand at making dishes from Laurie Colwin's classic Home Cooking. The "chefs," seasoned and novice alike, will be sharing their experiences every Monday on the Open Road Media blog.

When a food writer has such an ardent fan base as Laurie Colwin, it can be intimidating to jump in and try to replicate her recipes in an unfamiliar kitchen for the camera and a dinner party of colleagues. So, I knew I wasn't up to trying a main dish, as delicious as her mustard chicken may look (that’s an at-home experiment for another day). I’d read about Colwin’s creamed spinach in a New York Times piece last year; I was intrigued by her idea of adding pickled jalapeños to a comfort food I’ve eaten many times, but never made myself. In perusing her ingredients further, I also appreciated the fact that Laurie’s recipe called for timesaving frozen spinach. (Washing and chopping many pounds of spinach in a crowded kitchen seemed a little nutty.) So, for our cook-in, I settled on Laurie’s creamed spinach with jalapeño peppers. Below is her recipe, with my thoughts and process interspersed:

Creamed Spinach with Jalapeño Peppers

(Serves 8)

1. Cook two packages of frozen spinach. Drain, reserving one cup of liquid, and chop fine.

Right off the bat, I had a question: what size package? I assumed Laurie referred to the 10-ounce cardboard boxes of frozen spinach, but Whole Foods only had 16-ounce bags. I wound up using about 1.5 bags. The dish might've been healthier had I gone all-in on the spinach, but it sure wouldn't have been as creamy. This step was done on the stovetop instead of in a microwave in order to ensure that I had enough cooking liquid for later.

Those italics made me nervous, but it wasn't a terribly tough step. Just keep the burner lower than you might want. I’m normally a very impatient cook, especially with this type of thickening step, so it was a good exercise.

3. Add two tablespoons of chopped onion and one clove of minced garlic.

4. Add one cup of spinach liquid slowly, then add ½ cup of evaporated milk, some fresh black pepper, ¾ teaspoon of celery salt and six ounces of Monterey Jack cheese cut into cubes. Add one or more chopped jalapeño pepper (how many is a question of taste as well as what kind. I myself use the pickled kind, from a jar) and then the spinach. Cook until all is blended.

Everything was pretty easy here. We happened to have an 8-ounce block of cheese, so I upped that quantity a bit. And the pickled jalapeños were very large, so I just used two halves and the heat level seemed fine—enough to notice, but not so much that you couldn’t eat several bites of the finished product without breaking for bread or a beverage.

5. Turn into a buttered casserole topped with buttered bread crumbs and bake for about 45 minutes at 300°.

I used a 13-by-9-inch Pyrex, and it fit perfectly. Laurie didn’t have Panko when she wrote this recipe, but I used that and fingernail-sized pats of butter distributed around the top of the casserole. Other photos of this dish tell me that there’s room to add a lot more breadcrumbs than I did; next time, I’ll be a bit more liberal with them. The baking time was accurate, and it looked and smelled good coming out of the oven.

This dish was a hit with our little crowd, which included a first-time creamed spinach eater. The ratio of butter and cheese to spinach in this recipe is closer to even than I might want to admit, so it’s obviously quite rich, although it doesn’t taste it. The heat really sneaks up on you as you’re eating (spice lovers could certainly kick it up with another pepper or two), and it’s nice to pair with the beef stew. Very warm and comforting on a cold winter day by the fire! 

Cooking Laurie’s creamed spinach was a good lesson. As a still-building-my-repertoire home cook, I tend to focus on the main events—the meat and potatoes—and make steamed or stir-fried vegetables. This was a treat: my sole job was to make this one side dish as well as possible. It wasn’t hard at all; it required a few more steps and cooking vessels than I would normally devote to spinach, but the product was exponentially better and more luxurious than plain steamed veggies. I would make it again—it’s easy to stock up on frozen spinach, and a jar of pickled jalapeños would certainly get used up in my house if I purchased it for this recipe.

Open Road is proud to present Dr. Ava Cadell, leading expert on love, relationships, and sex. Dr. Ava was recently named the 2015 Sexpert of the Year by the Sexual Health Expo. Dr. Ava launched the education and news site Sexpert.com to inform people of the benefits of healthy love and sex and is the founder of LoveologyUniversity.com and President of the American College of Sexologists International. Her bookNeurolovologyexplores the science and psychology of romantic relationships.

Below, Dr. Ava shares her tips for a meaningful Valentine's Day.

In reality, 69 days, give or take, is the amount of time it takes to change habits and create new patterns as a couple. Or, to deepen your self-love to attract the right partner if you’re single. Why on earth would we allow something as important as our personal relationships to be crammed into this tiny box that only allows us to be romantic on one day of the year?

First you can try the Passion Wheel, which is simply a drawn circle divided into pie slices. Take turns writing something romantic or sexy activities in each slice, and then spin the wheel and take the plunge once a day or even once a week. For singles, start a gratitude journal to generate positive energy and attract romance by listing all the things you are most grateful for in your life.

Next, try something I call the Loveology Loop. Examine your romantic patterns and what triggers end up delivering unwanted results? Once you discover what’s happening, you can actively replace the behavior linked to your trigger with one that will yield a better result. For example, when the phone rings (trigger) right around bedtime and you answer it (behavior), then your partner is always too tired for sex once you get off the phone (negative result.) During the 69-day Valentine’s Season, replace your behavior with something new and see what happens. Instead of taking the call, kiss your partner! Let us all know how it goes.

For singles, do exactly the same thing with that habit of staying up late when that new lover doesn’t call. Always end up feeling lonely and pathetic? Change the behavior! If he or she doesn’t call, you go to the gym, take yourself out for dinner – something positive. The result will be building your self-esteem and loving yourself.

Lastly, try creating a couples mission statement. Write down your hopes and dreams together, and get back on the same page about how you want to live your lives, spend your money, and envision your future. This works for singles too. Imagine your ideal partner and write down everything you’d like them to be.

Let your 69-day Valentine’s Season bring you unexpected positive results! And find many more neur-cises in my book Neuroloveology.

Dr. Ava Cadell: www.avacadell.com

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Why are there so many books about war?

The simplest answer is because we’ve had a lot of them. But the most accurate answer is because conflicts bring out the very best and the very worst in the people who fight them. These stories of courage and honor, as well as cruelty and cowardice, inspire us to honor those who have fought America’s enemies.

Journey through great wars and little conflicts alike with these ten notable novels about war.

1853–1867: Bakumatsu

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Tokyo Bay

“We pray God . . . that our present attempt to bring a singular and isolated people into the family of civilized nations may succeed without resort to bloodshed.”

Tokyo Bay tells the story of Naval Lieutenant Robert Eden travelling with Commodore Perry. The US government intends to open the country up to trade—with force if necessary. Knowing the colonial intentions of his countryman, Eden jumps out of the ship and attempts to negotiate peace before the two cultures clash cataclysmically.

1939–1945: World War II

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Ice Brothers

“Forgotten now and little honored then, but still/ They’ll never have to wonder if they’re men.”

The dedication to Ice Brotherssays it all. Based on author Sloan Wilson’s service in the Greenland Patrol, this novel follows the crew of the Coast Guard trawler Arluk as they patrol the icy waters of the arctic and dodge Nazi patrols.

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Second Front

“Caution was a quality that he did not respect very much, particularly in fighting men.”

Second Front is the ultimate what if of World War II. What if the American armies had been directed at France first, instead of Italy? What if D-Day had happened earlier? Using fictionalized versions of historical figures, author Alexander Grace Sr. explores what may have happened if World War II had unfolded differently.

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The Young Lions

“It is always necessary to remain barbarians, because it is the barbarians who always win.”

In the timeless classic The Young Lions, author Irwin Shaw explores the war from the perspective of three soldiers: a young Nazi, a jaded Hollywood producer, and a newly married young Jew.

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The Haj

“And so Palestine became the ‘twice promised land.’”

Set before, during, and after WWII, The Haj portrays a Palestinian family caught up in the regional conflict and eventual formation of Israel.

1955–1975: Vietnam War

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Saigon, Illinois

“I thought that by not going to Vietnam, I would have no contact with death, but every day I carried bodies to the morgue. Sometimes on the el I felt I was choking to death.” 

Saigon, Illinois follows Jim Holder as he works doing alternative service at a hospital in Chicago. An irreverent but poignant look at the life of a conscientious objector in a controversial war, Holder’s novel brings a new perspective on Vietnam.

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Run Between the Raindrops

“Seems like making it through this Hue City deal is like trying to run between the raindrops without getting wet.”

Run Between the Raindrops is the gritty tale of a marine trying to stay alive in the horrific battle for Hue City during the Tet offensive. Based on the author’s own experiences, this new edition features an even more powerful narrative of survival.

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The 13th Valley

“We’re boonierats. We live in the boonies, we don’t just visit. The jungle is our home.”

John M. Del Vecchio’s classic The 13th Valley follows James Chellini, a telephone systems operator turned infantryman, through his harrowing experiences in Vietnam.

2001–Present: The War on Terror 

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The Blood We Shed

“You need to understand two things. First, people get killed every day in the U.S. military. Only the real spectaculars make the news.”

In The Blood We Shed, Lieutenant Mike Galway takes command of his platoon of unruly teenagers as they train to become fighting machines. Following the events of 9/11, their company deploys to fight the first battles of the war that continues to this day.

War is hell. Some are hardened in the fires and others dragged down to depravity. Click the links above or explore these stories of war in our interactive map. 

and found five things you didn’t know about this infinitely talented man.

1. Despite working extensively in England and Los Angeles as a screenwriter, Cross lives far, far away with his wife and two kids in Wellington, New Zealand. The one thing Mr. Cross doesn’t like about New Zealand? Rugby. As he told The Wellingtonian Newspaper, “I can get my head into the mind of a serial killer, but not a crazy sports fan.”

Nevertheless, Neil Cross feels he relates most to John Yossarian, the grimly humorous main character of Catch-22 by Joseph Heller.

“Back then, I had some romantic ideas about what it meant to be a writer. I’d use amphetamines and hammer at the keyboard for eighteen hours at a time, chain smoking, making myself wired, nocturnal, paranoid and unwell,” he wrote in his author note. “I thought this made me kind of legitimate. It didn’t, of course — it made me a dick. But I was only twenty-four, and what emerged was Mr In-Between”

It was the first story he has said he felt was good enough for someone else to want to read.

4. Neil Cross has written incredibly horrifying, psychological thrillers, and yet he is terrified of the one thing you experience every day: the dark. When he is alone in his house, Mr. Cross always has to keep all the lights on. This is somewhat ironic considering when he wrote Burial, his goal was to frighten readers and keep them up all night.

5. Neil Cross wrote Luther because he wanted to see characters that combined the classic puzzle-solving detective with someone who had a strong moral code but was beaten down in life. Luther was the first show Neil Cross created from scratch and he describes it as his biggest single project.

To celebrate the e-release of her acclaimed first novel, Linda Yablonksy introduces The Story of Junk to a new decade of readers and answers all of our burning questions!

Describe the book in your own words.

The Story of Junk is a tale of two plucky women beguiled by the drug that comes to rule their lives (Heroin). Told in spare, unblinking language that propels the story forward and back from their arrest by a federal agent through a wild adventure in Thailand to the horns of a moral dilemma that each [woman] resolves in her own way, the novel unfolds as a travelogue through New York in the first half of the 1980’s. A time when the simultaneous arrival of new money from Wall Street, drugs, and AIDS profoundly affected the downtown bohemia and gave it a certain, dark glamour. It’s tense. It’s comic. And it’s real.

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Who are the major figures, personalities and characters within the book?

The principal characters are Kit, the guitar player in a popular post-punk band, and the unnamed narrator, a writer who starts dealing heroin out of the hip restaurant where she works, then from their SoHo apartment. Honey, the dealer’s best friend, is a single mother who deals cocaine to make ends meet. Ginger is another friend, a photographer who documents the scene around them. Dick is a sympathetic DEA agent who puts the dealer out of business while pressuring her to give up her sources – the bigger fish he wants to fry. Other characters are people on the scene who are the dealer’s customers – people who want to change the world around them before AIDS or addiction changes them. And then there are the dealer’s main sources, Vance, Malik, and Angelo, the one who sends her on a smuggling trip to Thailand.

How did you come up with the idea for the book? How did it come to be?

It came out of my own experience but I was less interested in writing a factual account or memoir than in fashioning a story from it. I was driven by a desire to testify to the lives of people I’d lost to addiction and AIDS and couldn’t tell their own stories. I also wanted to create a narrative that would chronicle the period. It took eight years and three tries to find the voice and establish the emotional distance that allowed me to write the story with both honesty and a sense of humor. 

How did you come up with the title of the book?

The moment I wrote the line where it occurs I knew it would be the title.

Since publishing her acclaimed first novel, The Story of Junk, in 1997, Linda Yablonsky has enthralled readers with her globetrotting reports from the front lines of the contemporary art world. Her byline has appeared in Artforum and T: The New York Times Style Magazine online and in print, as well as in the New York Times, the Art Newspaper, W, Elle, and Wallpaper, among many others. From 1991 to 1999 Yablonsky organized and hosted Nightlight Readings and Nightlight for Kids, innovative writers-in-performance series that introduced new work by more than two hundred authors to a broad audience in New York, where she lives. She was on the undergraduate faculty of the School of Visual Arts from 2001 to 2012 and is currently a member of PEN and the Conservators Council of the New York Public Library. 

Learn more about Linda Yablonsky through her blog or Facebook, or by reading her many New York Times articles. You can also follow her on Twitter and Instagram as @fabyab.

In honor of Multicultural History Month, we feel privileged to post this missive from Arnold Adoff on the early champions who sought to bring diversity to children’s publishing.

This r e m e m o r y of Walter Dean Myers

That word: r e m e m o r y is one coined by Virginia [Hamilton] and you must know I always feel since her death thirteen years ago . . . that she should still be here . . . and Walter should still be here . . . and Leo [Dillon] and Fred [McKissack] and others gone too soon.

Walter and Virginia were warriors . . . literary warriors . . . with that glinting consistency of effort and excellence. . . we were friends and comrades and fellow travelers . . . actually coming together only a few times a year to participate at a conference or speak at a convention . . . but always connecting over the years and decades as we published and spoke and struggled to break down the walls . . . open some of the musty rooms of youth literature . . . presenting images and stories to many thousands of young people of the post–(first) civil rights movement . . .

We first met after Virginia had published her first novel, Zeely, in 1967, and was receiving a Nancy Bloch award from the downtown community school. Bradford Chambers was one of the moving forces behind these early efforts at inclusion . . . and he and others formed the Council on Interracial Books for Children . . . their oversized bulletin devoting its back page to photos and bios and examples of work . . . and one day there was Walter . . . and a taste of his efforts . . . and his beginnings in our world.

So much of my anger is as much disappointment as it is a kind of negative rage. To have to revisit the Voting Rights Act—the way we’ll soon have to revisit the Roe v. Wade decision—kicks in the solar plexus . . . especially as my gut is far more tender than it was in struggles past . . . although no less keen. Some of what I write is simply and complexly to point out that the emperor is not even wearing a shred of silk around his sizable metaphoric rump.

“Walter and Virginia were warriors . . . literary warriors . . . with that glinting consistency of effort and excellence” 

But, I also think of this new generation of writers and artists working to create excellence, and the academics and parents who study inclusion and multicultural youth literature, the Children’s Book Council Committee on Diversity and the Diversity Matters/We Need Diverse Books Now initiative, and the fine people making those open-eyed and openhearted efforts.

That’s why I mention Brad Chambers and his group of dedicated educators creating the Council on Interracial Books for Children—fifty years ago. And I mention now an organization begun several decades ago by Walter Dean Myers and Virginia [Hamilton] and [Leo and Diane] Dillon and Pat Cummings and Nicholasa Mohr and myself and Sheila Hamanaka . . . the Center for Multicultural Children's Literature.

Working out of a small office donated by Scott Foresman/Harper’s and with a small budget from them as well, we were able to employ a part-time grad student to do preliminary reading of manuscripts and art portfolios from people around the country who needed those connections and an opening of the door to enter our field.

Finally, unlike these previously mentioned, an institution which is still flourishing at Kent State University after more than thirty years of annual conferences: the Virginia Hamilton Conference on Multicultural Literature for Youth. This is the oldest conference of its kind functioning annually as other worthy ones have been disbanded—Columbus, Boston, and San Francisco to name a few. This year the conference, which takes place on April 9 and 10, will feature keynote speakers David Macaulay, winner of this year’s Virginia Hamilton Literary Award, Rita Williams-Garcia, Newbery Honor winner, and Grace Lin, Newbery Honor winner. A host of others will speak and run workshops. Awards will be announced for academic articles and grants for those teachers and librarians who are working with multicultural materials on projects with their students.

Please go to their website at Kent State and you will find dozens of participants black, white, Hispanic, Asian, female, male, young, and old . . . year after year representing that grand metaphor of inclusive emperor dressed in the deepest and hippest outfits.

Of course Walter [Dean Myers] was the first recipient of the Virginia Hamilton Literary Award for the body of his work in 1999, just as a few years ago in 2010, Walter Dean Myers was honored at the Coretta Scott King/American Library Association conference with the inaugural Virginia Hamilton Lifetime Achievement Award.

Besides—as my son Jaime taught me years ago—you bop ’til you drop.
The struggle continues.

—Arnold Adoff

 Virginia Hamilton

Fred McKissack

 Leo Dillon 

 Walter Dean Myers

Dangerous Love

You can’t choose who you love, even if that means falling for the bad boy next door instead of his sophisticated brother, or a romance with a boy who could ignite a war between your families. When events start to spiral out of control, can love survive?

Love in a Fantasy

Two warriors take on a world full of tyrant kings and unspeakable evils while coming to grips with hardships, tragedy, and their love for each other.

First Love

Ah first loves, it’s all so very… frustrating. How can you find love when you can’t even figure yourself out? Then there’s the summer romance that keeps you second-guessing — could it be more? And what about the scrawny jerk who turned into a handsome hunk — are you actually attracted to him now?

Love Overseas

It’s easy — and oh so fun — to lose yourself in a foreign country where anything can happen. When you fall in love with the magic of being overseas, how can you ever go back home?

Love on the Big Screen

Fame may make some things easier, but love is not one of them. As the cast of a budding television show finds themselves thrust into the limelight, will they be able to keep their love lives in check?

It’s Complicated

Love is complicated. Really complicated. How do you know when to let someone else know the true you? What will others think? Modern love is a balancing act between not only your object of desire, but between your friendships, your community, and yourself.

Paranormal Love

Ghosts, vampires, and sea witches fall in love like the rest of us… but maybe with a few more problems.

Sizzling Series

When love comes between friends, things get messy. How strong is the bond of friendship in the face of true love?

Star-Crossed Love

Where do your loyalties lie when your love starts to hurt the people around you?

True Love

How do you know when you’ve finally found someone who loves you exactly the way you are?

Unlikely Love

One moment you can be so sure of everything, only to be shaken to your very core the next. Your salvation may be from the love you didn’t even know existed.

Love Lost

Everything you knew about love turned out to be wrong. When love doesn’t meet your expectations, there’s nothing to do but change your perception.

On February 12, 1926, Albert Einstein was awarded the Gold Medal from the Royal Astronomical Society. The Gold Medal is the highest award given by the RAS and was awarded to Einstein for special performance in the field of astronomy. The RAS was formed in 1820 with the mission of promoting astronomy and geophysics. The society awards an individual with the Gold Medal for their outstanding achievements in the field. Astrophysicist Arthur Stanley Eddington proposed giving Einstein the award in 1920, but the issue of his non-British citizenship prevented him from receiving it. He was finally awarded the Gold Medal six years later.

Read More from Einstein: 7 Ebook Editions of His Great Works

Everyday I go into my office in Manhattan and work hard on behalf of trauma victims who engage my services as a personal injury attorney. While I know it to be a misperceived profession — the stale old “ambulance chaser” tag is a hard one to shake — the reality is the wounded I represent are real people exactly like you and me, going about their business and not planning for catastrophe. Yet, out of the blue, their lives and those of their families have been suddenly and tragically, compromised. Forever.

Recognizing this, I see it as my responsibility not simply to strive to achieve the fullest justice for my client’s, but also to help them in any way I can.

Early in my career, a woman in her late 30s retained me in an auto accident case. During her emergency room visit she was diagnosed with two rib fractures and upon discharge was instructed to follow up with her private physician if her pain continued. The pain did not continue, thus, she never followed up.

Upon my review of her hospital record, I noted that in addition to the broken ribs, the radiologist reported a spot on her left lung suggesting further evaluation. I picked up the phone and called my client concerned to know the result of her lung imaging. She responded, “What are you talking about?”

Yes, the radiologist documented the lung lesion in his report; but no, the emergency room doctor did not communicate the finding to my client. Soon thereafter, the client, a mother of three young children, called expressing gratitude for saving her life. She was diagnosed with early stage cancer and underwent lung resection.

Just as there are unscrupulous lawyers responsible for the “ambulance chaser” label, there are also fully committed injury attorneys thinking of the client’s best interest beyond the terms of the retainer agreement. In Cookie's Case, the main character Tug Wyler reveals himself to be such a lawyer during the journey he takes with Cookie, an exotic dancer still battling to recover from botched spine surgery three years later; and,with his other new client, Robert Killroy, a young man born with certain life challenges who was struck by a van.

Tug represents Robert pro bono solely to prevent his becoming a casualty of the legal system. With Cookie, Tug interjects himself into her care and treatment — seeking cure for her — by raising the possibility of an alternative explanation as being responsible for her devastating medical condition, which leads to the unveiling of the sinister plot against her.

About Andy:

Andy Siegel is a personal injury and medical malpractice attorney in New York City. A graduate of Tulane University and Brooklyn Law, he grew up on Long Island and now lives in Westchester County. In 2008 he was elected to the board of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association.

Cookie's Case (2015) is the second novel in the Tug Wyler series. The first, Suzy's Case, was published in 2012 and selected as a Poisoned Pen Bookstore 2012 Best Debut Novel and a Suspense Magazine Best Book of 2012. In 2013 it was named a People.com Best Beach Read.

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People do crazy things for love: from the Queen of Sheba’s romance to this mailman who built a mini Taj Mahal in memory of his wife; from Heath Ledger singing "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You" in 10 Things I Hate About You to this Russian man who staged his own death as a proposal to his girlfriend, you just never know what you’ll get. Love is a most extraordinary thing, and here are 8 romantic books that say it best.

Love That Will Make You Smile

 “Love loves to love love.”–James Joyce

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Sheridan Drake is the quintessential swashbuckling scoundrel, and so (of course) when the princess Olympia St. Leger needs help, he is right there to lead her astray—err, to “help her”—but even scoundrels can be tamed by love. 

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It’s that time of the year again, and Vickie Knox has to humor her grandfather by putting on the same old garbs and participating in her town’s Civil War reenactment. Only this year, she is captured by a confederate soldier—a soldier that is taking this reenactment just a little too seriously, and may actually be the real deal…

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Clemency Jervis is a spoiled 20^th century noblewoman; Hetty Brown is just her maid. But when their ship is torpedoed by Germans, leaving Hetty as the sole survivor, Hetty decides to take matters into her own hand by masquerading as Clemency… including marrying Clemency’s ordained husband-to-be.

Love That Will Make You Cry

“Love is a smoke and is made with the fume of sighs.”–William Shakespeare 

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Camille Hart is a professional matchmaker, and she’s pretty good at her job. But when she realizes she has terminal cancer, she decides to take on the most difficult matchmaking assignment of her career: finding a replacement wife for her husband. But things don’t always work out as planned, even for a professional matchmaker.

Love That Will Break Your Heart

“You don’t love because: you love despite; not for the virtues, but despite the faults.”–William Faulkner

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Whether trying to rekindle a lost love with a famous musician, having a relationship with an ex-husband (an ex-husband who may be a murderer), or falling in love with a doctor who refuses to love back, these three tales bring to life the beauty of love, and also its heartbreak.

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Lady Lilliane has been betrothed to Corbet of Colchester since she was 14 years old. But now their families are enemies, and yet Corbet has nevertheless come to claim Lilliane—by choice, or by force.

Love That Will Change Your Life

“I have learned not to worry about love; but to honor its coming with all my heart.”–Alice Walker

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This isn’t just a love story, but a love saga, spanning through generations of the Tarakanov family, and the love and lust, betrayal and forgiveness, that have helped shape them both and their home of Alaska. If Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann was made into a heartfelt romance, then this would be it.

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You’re always reading romance books about other people, but here is a romance book for you. Dr. Cadell (who was just named 2015 Sexpert of the Year!) goes into depth about the emotional and physical, neurological and erotic, elements of love—and how you can help forge a worthwhile relationship between yourself and your significant other.

Love this classic?                                         Try this one.

Bellairs said of his third book: "The Face in the Frost was an attempt to write in the Tolkien manner. I was much taken by The Lord of the Rings and wanted to do a modest work on those lines. It was simply meant as entertainment and any profundity will have to be read in." Writing in 1973, Lin Carter described The Face in the Frost as one of the three best fantasy novels to appear since The Lord of the Rings.

Thanks to two Disney movies, Alexander Key is best known as the author of Escape to Witch Mountain. But he was once most well known for The Forgotten Door. Like so many classic Key titles, The Forgotten Door features a character, out of place, persecuted and feared because of his astonishing abilities and extraterrestrial origins.

Like Laura Ingalls Wilder, Lois Lenski used her travels to compose historical fiction novels that “describe the everyday life of people." On Lenski's trips south she saw "the real America for the first time." Of her trip she said, "I saw and learned what the word region meant as I witnessed firsthand different ways of life unlike my own. What interested me most was the way children were living.”

Beyond the obvious anthropomorphic pig, Walter Brooks’ similarity to E.B. White can be found in his wit, wisdom and wry prose. Honing his writing at The New Yorker, Brooks imbued the inhabitants of Bean Farm with a sophistication that displayed substantial respect for his young readers.

The author of the famous novel To Sir, With Love penned Billingsly: The Bear with the Crinkled Ear, a moving novel about an extraordinary friendship. If you loved The Velveteen Rabbit, you must meet Billingsly.

Without John R. Tunis there may not have been The Natural. If you haven’t discovered Tunis, the “inventor of the modern sports story,” start with his eight-book baseball series about the Brooklyn Dodgers. It begins with The Kid from Tomkinsville, a book Phillip Roth usedalong with its main character Roy Tucker in his book American Pastoral. It is also considered an influence for both Bernard Malamud's The Natural and Mark Harris' Bang the Drum Slowly.

Like Dahl’s The Witches, Yolen’s The Wizard of Washington Square reveals the magic hiding around us in plain site.

Musings For February

The newsletter dedicated to the memory of Walter R. Brooks.

By Michael Cart, Editor, “THE BEAN HOME NEWS”

Greetings from frigid Indiana, where the temperature is cold but the heart is warm (or is that my acid indigestion?). Whenever I think of winter, I immediately recall the opening chapter of Freddy the Pied Piper.“It had been a hard winter. A foot of snow had fallen on the 3rd of December and another foot on the 10th, and then the mercury crawled down to ten below and stayed there until after Christmas. Then it warmed up just enough to snow some more. And the weather kept on like that for another six weeks. It was still that way on the morning of February 14th when Freddy, the pig, crawled out of his warm bed and went to his study window and looked out and said disgustedly: “Oh, my goodness sakes!”

Oh, my goodness sakes, indeed. Poor Freddy had hoped that, it being St. Valentine’s Day, the mailman would be bringing him lots of valentines, ideally with money in them. But, as Walter tells us, “the mailman hadn’t been up the road past the Bean farm in over a week, and he certainly wouldn’t try to buck those drifts in his old Ford today, even to bring Freddy a valentine.”

To make matters worse, the pig is practically sty-bound by the deep snow. But then inspiration visits: he will ski down to the cow barn, where, he has learned, Jerry the rhinoceros from the Boomschmidt Circus is waiting to see him. What he doesn’t know is that it has rained overnight and then frozen so the snow is slick as glass. “He put on his skis” (don’t ask me why a pig has skis but, come to think of it, he has a bicycle, too) “and stepped out on the snow. And it was a good thing that the skis were pointed towards the barnyard or goodness knows where he would have ended up. For the minute the skis touched the icy crust, they started. Freddy gave a yell of surprise and pushed backwards with the ski poles to keep from falling, and then the whole farm seemed to come whizzing up towards him, and though it was a still day the wind whistled in his ears; and then before he knew what had happened the dark square of the cow barn door rushed at him and swallowed him and there was a crash and a thump and he was sitting on a hard floor with a pain in his shoulder and a lot of comets and constellations whirling around his head. And when these cleared away he couldn’t see anything.”

No, he hasn’t gone blind (though at first he thinks he has); his eyes are just shut!

It doesn’t take very long thereafter for Freddy to learn why Jerry has walked all the way to the Bean farm from Virginia. Mr. Boomschmidt, in financial trouble, has had to close his circus. Worse, Freddy’s dear friend Leo the lion has gone missing. What’s a pig to do? Why, assume his persona as Freddy the famous detective, of course. And so he does. Just how he does it, is the stuff of this very funny adventure. But before he gets very far, there’s another weather-related problem to deal with: the horrible weather has driven mice into houses all over Centerboro. They’ve even infested the bank where they’ve chewed up half the important papers in the vault not to mention a whole package of five dollar bills (cha-ching!). It doesn’t take Freddy very long to come up with a scheme to rid the houses of their vermin (my apologies, Eek, Quik, Eeny and Cousin Augustus; I should have said “mice”) and, in the bargain, make enough money to save the circus. He will rent a good, tight barn where the mice can spend the winter, charging householders $5.00 a pop to entice the mice away. “Now Freddy could have moved the mice over into the barn quietly without any fuss, but that was not his way of doing things.” Instead, he takes out a big ad in the “Centerboro Guardian” with the headline “THE PIED PIPER OF CONTERBORO will free your town of mice Monday at 2 p.m.” At the appointed hour Freddy, resplendent in a pied piper costume that Miss Peebles (see Freddy and the Popinjay) has helped him fabricate, appears at corner of Main and Elm, pulls a tin fife out of his pocket and, tootling the first seven notes of “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” starts up Main Street. The mice have their instructions and so come tumbling out of the houses as Freddy passes, falling in line behind him, “dancing and squeaking.” This is a bit overwhelming for some of the more timid citizens and Old Mrs. Peppercorn is so scared she swarms up the trellis on Judge Willey’s porch and the fire department has to come to get her down.

With that mission accomplished the portly pied piper – with $1,726.00 in his pocket – along with Jerry, Leo (who has been rescued by now), and Jinx head for Virginia to bail out the circus. They say a fool and his money are soon parted; now, Freddy is no fool but he is soon parted from his money. How he contrives to get it back provides one of the funniest scenes in the Freddy series. In fact, Pied Piper boasts two of the funniest scenes in the series: the other is the rescue of Leo from the clutches of the evil pet shop owner Gwetholinda Guffin.

So do yourselves a favor: on one of these long winter evenings, curl up with a copy of Freddy the Pied Piper. You’ll thank me later.

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Presidents’ Day is more than just a long weekend. Originally a national holiday meant to celebrate George Washington’s birthday, it’s now a day that celebrates all our past U.S. presidents (although, it’s a shame we can’t have a day off for each and every one, isn’t it?).

Here’s a list of books that offer an insider’s look at life at White House, told by bodyguards, White House ushers, ace reporters, and even the presidents themselves.

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Upstairs at the White House

For three decades, J. B. West, chief usher of the White House, supervised nearly every activity of the first family, conversing daily not just with the president, but his family members, guests, and heads of state. This New York Times bestselling book gives us an intimate and charming look at the life of America’s first families.

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Through Five Administrations

Colonel William H. Cook, one of four White House bodyguards assigned to protect President Abraham Lincoln, was not on duty the night of the president’s assassination. If he had been, history might have been entirely rewritten. This is his account of his next fifty years as a dedicated and key White House employee, serving seven different presidents.

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Conversations with Kennedy

Benjamin C. Bradlee and John F. Kennedy had an intimate friendship, probably the closest friendship between a journalist and a president that has ever existed. Conversations with Kennedy paints a very different picture of John F. Kennedy than the one the public is familiar with.

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How the Good Guys Finally Won

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jimmy Breslin goes behind the scenes of the Watergate hearings and Nixon’s impeachment, one of the nation’s biggest scandals at the time.

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Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox

If you couldn’t get enough of PBS’s The Roosevelts: An Intimate History, this book is for you. James MacGregor Burns’ definitive biography of FDR is a must-read for fans of presidential history.

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The Wisdom of Theodore Roosevelt

In this collection of speeches, articles, and letters, one of the most prolific U.S. presidents reflects on everything from life as the world’s most powerful leader to his daughter Alice. Did you know that Teddy was the first U.S. President to win a Nobel Peace Prize?

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The Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln

From a small-town political leader to dealing with the country’s greatest internal crisis in history, Abraham Lincoln made one of the biggest impacts on the United States. This readable account examines Lincoln’s statements on politics, education, slavery and more.

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The Wisdom of Thomas Jefferson

Not only was Thomas Jefferson a president, but he was also an inventor, an architect, and a scholar, just to name a few. Find out how this American renaissance man influenced and built a young nation.

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The Wisdom of FDR

During a time of great peril, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s policies and decisions not only shaped U.S. history, but the world’s.

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Remembering America

Find out why one Goodreads reviewer has called Richard Goodwin’s personal account of 1960s American politics “an absolute must read for the political junkie.” Remembering America is a firsthand look at one of the most momentous decades in American politics.

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Student's Guide to American Political Thought

American politics can get complicated. It never hurts to brush up. After all, what are you going to say when someone asks you, “How ought we regard the beliefs and motivations of the founders, the debate over the ratification of the Constitution?” It’ll happen when you least expect it.

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Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant

Completed just before his death, Grant’s memoir has been hailed as one of the most powerful and greatest American autobiographies.

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First Hubby

Both political satire and sexy romance, Roy Blount Jr.’s humorous novel chronicles the life of America’s first First Husband.

Several of our staffers gathered in Brooklyn to try their hand at making dishes from Laurie Colwin's classic Home Cooking. The "chefs," seasoned and novice alike, will be sharing their experiences every Monday on the Open Road Media blog.

I almost never cook, so when choosing a recipe, I needed to find something that would be relatively simple. I had never had chocolate bread pudding before, but I was a fan of regular bread pudding. I was also looking forward to making a dessert that didn’t come from a box. Yet it proved harder than I initially thought, since there was no actual recipe for the bread pudding in Home Cooking.

Colwin writes, “any standard cookbook has a recipe for bread pudding” and adds her own adjustments. I discovered it’s really hard to find a “standard” recipe for bread pudding, and even more difficult to find one that will go well with chocolate. I settled on a combination of recipes from Alton Brown and Martha Stewart (both expert chefs, ironically).

In true Laurie Colwin form, the remainder of the recipe was mostly improvised except for the bake time and temperature. Once I had created my own recipe to follow, the process went smoothly. Learning how to temper eggs was pretty exciting for me; I consider this to now be the only “fancy” technique I know.

The dessert came out way more amazing than I ever thought it would, and I’m really looking forward to making it again and eating the whole thing myself.

So you think it costs tens of thousands of dollars to own a piece of high-end art? You can actually own an Andy Warhol collectible for less than $100 and even become a patron of the arts (of sorts). If you’re an Andy Warhol fan, or just a fan of contemporary and pop art in general, you’re going to want to check out these five completely affordable Warhol-inspired pieces.

Spring 2015 Converse All Star Andy Warhol Collection ($35 - $90)

This spring, Converse, in partnership with The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, is launching its Spring 2015 Converse All Star Andy Warhol Collection. A blending of two pop culture icons, the collection features your favorite Converse sneaker designs with prints of one of Warhol’s most famous works: The Campbell’s Soup Cans. You can pick up your pair at selected Converse retailers or online.

Beautiful Darling on DVD ($15.99)

Candy Darling, one of Andy Warhol’s most provocative and alluring factory superstars, was a rising Hollywood starlet. Darling starred in two of Warhol’s films, Flesh and Women in Revolt, and appeared in films alongside Jane Fonda and Sophia Loren. Born James Slattery and raised in a cookie-cutter suburb of Long Island, Darling identified with a female identity at a young age, and by his early twenties had transformed into the true star he was meant to be: Candy Darling. Darling died of lymphoma at the age of twenty-nine, but her life is vividly remembered in Beautiful Darling, a documentary film by writer and director James Rasin, told through interviews and excerpts from her diary.

Uniqlo x MoMa Andy Warhol SPRZ NY clothing line: ($30 - $90)

Everyone’s favorite wallet-friendly clothing brand, Uniqlo, has partnered with MoMa to bring you Warhol-inspired printed tees, jackets, and tote bags suitable for any budget. Now you can be decked out in Warhol all day, everyday. In addition, a portion of every purchase is given to The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the leading funders of contemporary art. Now you, too, can become a patron of the arts! For the entire Warhol line, visit Uniqlo’s SPRZ NY store.

Incase MacBook and iPad sleeves ($59.95 - $79.95)

Warhol isn’t just for clothing or your wall; it’s also for your tech. Incase features a collection of iPad and MacBook sleeves for fans of pop art. Choose your design at Incase’s online store.

Warhol Brillo Memo Block ($14.99)

One of Warhol’s most famous works, Brillo Boxes, now comes to you in the form of a block. This block contains a “box” of a pad of papers (not a pad of… Brillos?). Check out the Warhol Store for this very meta piece of Warhol and other collectibles.

Beginning today, you can collect Warhol memorabilia on your ereader, too. Open Road is thrilled to release Factory Books, a lively collection of memoirs, biographies, cultural criticism and fiction devoted to chronicling the world of Andy Warhol from its beginnings through his untimely death.