Here are 100 books that The Romantic Pact fans have personally recommended if you like The Romantic Pact. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Kiss My Putt

Susan Renee Author Of Smooch

From my list on romance that make you laugh.

Why am I passionate about this?

I like a good steamy emotional romance just like any other romance reader, but there’s nothing I love more than reading a romance that can make me laugh so hard I cry and then turn around and have a storyline with an unexpected twist that stomps on my heart a little before putting it all back together. Romantic comedies can be crazy and convoluted but I appreciate the fun release a good rom-com can deliver. That’s what I strive to provide through my rom coms as well. Relatable characters experiencing crazy life moments while finding their happily-ever-afters. 

Susan's book list on romance that make you laugh

Susan Renee Why Susan loves this book

Tara Sivec, in my mind, is like that crazy aunt who has an unfiltered mind and says what she wants and it’s funny every time! Her words make me cackle and this story is filled with crazy fun, witty banter, and a really hot rainstorm scene! Kiss My Putt is a friends-to-lovers mixed with enemies-to-lovers mixed with second chance romance. The story revolves around a cool, calm, and collected pro-golfer who is forced to take some time off after throwing a royal tantrum on television during a tournament.  He goes home, to Summersweet Island, where everybody knows everybody and there’s no place to hide. Especially when he runs into his best friend, Birdie Bennett. This book is a must-read!

By Tara Sivec ,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Kiss My Putt as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?


“Palmer ‘Pal’ Campbell has epic breakdown on the 18th hole of the Bermuda Open! Video at 11.”

After spending my entire pro golfing career being known as the quiet, controlled, no-nonsense golfer on the tour, there’s nothing more humiliating than throwing all of that down the drain—or into a water hazard—on national television. Needing some place to hide, to lick my wounds and figure out what I even want to do with my life once this blows over, I can only think of one place I need to be. Summersweet Island, where everyone treats me like one of their own,…


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Book cover of The High House

The High House by James Stoddard,

The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.

The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.

Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…

Book cover of My Brother's Billionaire Best Friend

Susan Renee Author Of Smooch

From my list on romance that make you laugh.

Why am I passionate about this?

I like a good steamy emotional romance just like any other romance reader, but there’s nothing I love more than reading a romance that can make me laugh so hard I cry and then turn around and have a storyline with an unexpected twist that stomps on my heart a little before putting it all back together. Romantic comedies can be crazy and convoluted but I appreciate the fun release a good rom-com can deliver. That’s what I strive to provide through my rom coms as well. Relatable characters experiencing crazy life moments while finding their happily-ever-afters. 

Susan's book list on romance that make you laugh

Susan Renee Why Susan loves this book

There’s something about a younger sister falling for her older brother’s best friend that gets me every time and this book does not disappoint. Maybe Willis moves to the big city and her brother’s best friend vows to help make sure she finds her way. But he’s in for a surprise when she accidentally sends him a text with a proposition he doesn’t see coming. The characters in this story feel remarkably relatable which is what sucks me in every time. And I’m a sucker for a protective Hero, so there’s that. 

By Max Monroe ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked My Brother's Billionaire Best Friend as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Mabel “Maybe” Willis died a virgin at the very young age of twenty-four.She leaves behind her parents, Betty and Bruce, her brother, Evan, a laptop filled with one too many Jason Momoa memes, and a Kindle library with more books than one human being could ever finish in a lifetime.Cause of death: a text message.Okay. So, I didn’t die.But I may as well have.One minute, I’m a woman trying to find her way in the world, and the next, I’m the sender of six of the most embarrassing text messages that have ever been sent in the history of time—or…


Book cover of By a Thread

Susan Renee Author Of Smooch

From my list on romance that make you laugh.

Why am I passionate about this?

I like a good steamy emotional romance just like any other romance reader, but there’s nothing I love more than reading a romance that can make me laugh so hard I cry and then turn around and have a storyline with an unexpected twist that stomps on my heart a little before putting it all back together. Romantic comedies can be crazy and convoluted but I appreciate the fun release a good rom-com can deliver. That’s what I strive to provide through my rom coms as well. Relatable characters experiencing crazy life moments while finding their happily-ever-afters. 

Susan's book list on romance that make you laugh

Susan Renee Why Susan loves this book

I said I was a sucker for the protective Hero and this is just another shining example except that this time, the protective Hero is also the grumpy boss! This is the classic story of Grumpy guy gets girl fired from her job only to have her start working for his family’s business. The pair hate each other, but they each have internal personal struggles and when those start coming to light, their relationship shifts into an angsty, compassionate, protective, steamy love that I can’t ever stop reading! All the feels with this one!

By Lucy Score ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked By a Thread as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Things We Never Got Over

Dominic was staring at me like he couldn’t decide whether he loathed me or wanted to French kiss me.

Dominic

I got her fired. Okay, so I’d had a bad day and took it out on a bystander in a pizza shop. But there’s nothing demure about Ally Morales. She proves that her first day of her new job…which just happens to be in my office….And I can’t fire her, because it’s my mother the CEO who hired her…technically, Ally doesn’t work for me,…


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Book cover of December on 5C4

December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

Book cover of Circle Jerk

Susan Renee Author Of Smooch

From my list on romance that make you laugh.

Why am I passionate about this?

I like a good steamy emotional romance just like any other romance reader, but there’s nothing I love more than reading a romance that can make me laugh so hard I cry and then turn around and have a storyline with an unexpected twist that stomps on my heart a little before putting it all back together. Romantic comedies can be crazy and convoluted but I appreciate the fun release a good rom-com can deliver. That’s what I strive to provide through my rom coms as well. Relatable characters experiencing crazy life moments while finding their happily-ever-afters. 

Susan's book list on romance that make you laugh

Susan Renee Why Susan loves this book

KB Cinder is totally my cup of tea and I want to be her best friend. Circle Jerk is a single mom meets neighborhood grump trope and it has all the feels! The one-liners and the laugh-out-loud scenes coupled with the romance and steam through this story make it the perfect book to kick back and relax with! Think Beauty and the Beast but with a single mom in a modern neighborhood. It’s not super long and can be read quickly.

KB Cinder is a hilarious up-and-coming author who should not be overlooked!

By KB Cinder ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Circle Jerk as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Moving sounded like a dream come true.
New house, new job, new me, right?
Not quite.

For one, I can’t totally reinvent myself with a kid in tow, so hair dye will have to do.
Second, this new adventure brought Knox.
You know, the neighborhood jerk and all-around A-hole, Knox Brighton?
Or as my son calls him: The circle jerk.
Hey, I laughed, too.

Anyway, Knox always creeps up at the worst times and leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Until one day, he didn’t.
He put his tongue there instead.


Book cover of Goethe: His Faustian Life - The Extraordinary Story of Modern Germany, a Troubled Genius and the Poem that Made Our World

Mark Vernon Author Of Awake!

From my list on being free of the fear that you have no imagination.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I was a kid at school, I was told that I had no imagination. I wrote a short essay on what I did at the weekend and put my heart and soul into it. I handed in my homework, and I remember waiting one day, then two, then three, when finally my teacher said: “Mr Vernon, I have a bone to pick with you.” I did not know what the expression meant, but it terrified me. It was only years later that I discovered I could, in fact, write, and that the imagination was a friend, not an enemy. I want others to know the same.

Mark's book list on being free of the fear that you have no imagination

Mark Vernon Why Mark loves this book

I lived in Germany as a teenager and have only warm and exciting feelings for the country.

It seemed that everything from the food to the place itself was, somehow, far more interesting than England, my homeland. That was, no doubt, largely because it was not England and I was an agitated youth.

But this book also gave depth to my feeling because of Goethe’s presence in the German imagination, who is quite as important there as Shakespeare to England or Dante to Italy.

I am appreciative of this book for opening up the life and times, ideas and art, of this massive imaginative figure, about whom I previously knew very little. He knew that imagination is truth-bearing, carrying us to the heart of life.

By A. N. Wilson ,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Goethe as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'Wild, brilliant and has all the intelligence to rival its subject. Five Stars.' - Frances Wilson, The Telegraph
'Exuberant and wide-ranging' - Literary Review
'Passionate' - The Times

A spellbinding recreation of Goethe's life and work from one of our greatest biographers.

Goethe was the inventor of the psychological novel, a pioneer scientist, great man of the theatre and a leading politician. As A. N. Wilson argues in this groundbreaking biography, it was his genius and insatiable curiosity that helped catapult the Western world into the modern era.

A N. Wilson tackles the life of Goethe with characteristic wit and…


Book cover of A Bridge of Children's Books: The Inspiring Autobiography of a Remarkable Woman

Debbie Rix Author Of The German Mother

From my list on WW2 books that will inform and inspire.

Why am I passionate about this?

My parents both fought in the Second World War – my father as a bomber pilot, my mother as a Wren.  Dad often entertained us at family mealtimes with tales of his wartime adventures – of how was shot down over Germany, captured, imprisoned, but finally escaped. My interest in the period grew from there, and my first ‘wartime’ novel The Secret Letter was in fact largely based on my parents experiences.  Since then, I have become increasingly fascinated by the period, with now a total of four novels set in WW2, culminating in my present book The German Mother.

Debbie's book list on WW2 books that will inform and inspire

Debbie Rix Why Debbie loves this book

I discovered this autobiography some years ago while researching another novel. As I read, I became fascinated by this account of a brave Jewish journalist who managed to escape from Germany in the mid-1930s, and move to London where she worked for the BBC’s German service. At war’s end, she returned to her homeland, where she was employed by the US Army to help with the “de-Nazification” of German women and children to try and restore a sense of decency and democratic ideals among her compatriots. It’s an extraordinary account of one woman’s bravery and served as inspiration for one of my central characters in “The German Mother”.

By Jella Lepman ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Bridge of Children's Books as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The remarkable story of Jella Lepman, who, having left Germany to escape the Nazi regime in the 1930s, chose to return in the aftermath of the Second World War, as 'Adviser on the Cultural and Educational Needs of Women and Children in the American Zone'. She soon decided that what Germany's war-ravaged children needed was to see a world of the imagination, beyond their landscape of bombed-out buildings and military vehicles.

Battling with bureaucracy and meeting with generals and statesmen, including Eleanor Roosevelt, she founded the International Youth Library, filling a huge void in the lives of Germany's children with…


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Book cover of Trusting Her Duke

Trusting Her Duke by Arietta Richmond,

A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.

Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…

Book cover of Defying Hitler: A Memoir

Moritz Föllmer Author Of Culture in the Third Reich

From my list on life in Nazi Germany.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a historian at the University of Amsterdam, one of my concerns is to understand why so many Germans supported and participated in Adolf Hitler’s atrocious political project. I am equally interested in the other side: the Nazis’ political opponents and victims. In two decades of researching, writing, and teaching, I have read large numbers of official documents, newspapers, diaries, novels, and memoirs. These contemporary texts have made me vividly aware of how different people lived through the Nazi years, how they envisioned their lives, and how they remembered them after World War II. The questions they faced and the solutions they found continue to challenge and disconcert me.  

Moritz's book list on life in Nazi Germany

Moritz Föllmer Why Moritz loves this book

How do people react when a dictatorship forces them to make choices? To learn more, read this brilliant memoir by a journalist looking back on his life in 1930s Berlin. Happily focused on his legal training and circle of friends, Sebastian Haffner at first showed little interest in politics and rejected the Nazis out of instinct rather than principle. Disgusted but powerless, he was content to keep a low profile under the new regime. To his own lasting shame, however, he one day answered “yes” when an SA stormtrooper demanded to know if he was “Aryan.” But Haffner’s friendships and liaisons with Jews, and his belief in the rule of law, ultimately made him realize that he couldn’t live in Nazi Germany. His final choice? Exile in Britain.   

By Sebastian Haffner , Oliver Pretzel (translator) ,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Defying Hitler as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An absolute classic of autobiography and history - one of the few books to explore how and why the Germans were seduced by Hitler and Nazism.

'If you have never read a book about Nazi Germany before, or if you have already read a thousand, I would urge you to read DEFYING HITLER. It sings with wisdom and understanding' DAILY MAIL

Sebastian Haffner was a non-Jewish German who emigrated to England in 1938. This memoir (written in 1939 but only published now for the first time) begins in 1914 when the family summer holiday is cut short by the outbreak…


Book cover of Ravensbrück: Life and Death in Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women

Susan J. Eischeid Author Of Mistress of Life and Death: The Dark Journey of Maria Mandl, Head Overseer of the Women's Camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau

From my list on Holocaust books exploring the precious lives lost.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been drawn to the Holocaust ever since a school project in the tenth grade. Later, as I worked to become a professional musician, the passion to learn more about the topic never left me. When I was first asked to perform some music of the Holocaust, the reaction of the audience (tears) and my own realization that through the power of this music, I could return a voice to so many who had their own voices so cruelly silenced changed my life. To date, I have interviewed multiple survivors of the Holocaust. Many became very dear friends, and my life has been infinitely enriched by knowing them. 

Susan's book list on Holocaust books exploring the precious lives lost

Susan J. Eischeid Why Susan loves this book

I was immediately captivated by the depth of material and engrossing writing style of this book. Despite being a serious and challenging topic, Helm drew me in from the first page and never let up.

I also learned quite a bit of new information about a topic I thought I knew quite a lot about already. 

By Sarah Helm ,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Ravensbrück as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Months before the outbreak of World War II, Heinrich Himmler—prime architect of the Holocaust—designed a special concentration camp for women, located fifty miles north of Berlin. Only a small number of the prisoners were Jewish. Ravensbrück was primarily a place for the Nazis to hold other inferior beings: Jehovah’s Witnesses, Resistance fighters, lesbians, prostitutes, and aristocrats—even the sister of New York’s Mayor LaGuardia. Over six years the prisoners endured forced labor, torture, starvation, and random execution. In the final months of the war, Ravensbrück became an extermination camp. Estimates of the final death toll have ranged from 30,000 to 90,000.…


Book cover of A Stranger to Myself: The Inhumanity of War: Russia, 1941-1944

Edward B. Westermann Author Of Drunk on Genocide: Alcohol and Mass Murder in Nazi Germany

From my list on perpetrator motivation in the Holocaust.

Why am I passionate about this?

Since I first began to study the events of the Holocaust in 1991, I became deeply engaged and committed to trying to understand why individuals engaged in the abuse and murder of their neighbors, fellow countrymen, and those deemed racially or politically inferior. In exploring this question, I drew in part on my own military experience to think about how a warped organizational culture and corrupted leadership emerged in Nazi Germany in which state-sponsored propaganda and ideological socialization combined to pervert existing moral and ethical norms and led many within the SS, police, and the German military to engage in genocide.

Edward's book list on perpetrator motivation in the Holocaust

Edward B. Westermann Why Edward loves this book

Before being drafted into the German Army in 1941, Willy Peter Reese was a bank clerk who spent his time engaged in reading German literature and attempting to become a writer in his own right.

The memoir is a compilation of his journal entries as he reflected on his transition from civilian to soldier. Originally published in German, Reese’s journal demonstrates the way in which a relatively naïve and carefree intellectual became involved in the Nazi war of annihilation in the Soviet Union.

The transformation from a bookish, sensitive, and brooding teenager into a soldier who lost empathy for the people suffering under German occupation demonstrates how some German youth became actors and accomplices in the Nazi regime’s crimes.

By Willy Peter Reese , Stefan Schmitz (editor) , Michael Hofmann (translator)

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Stranger to Myself as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"A Stranger to Myself: The Inhumanity of War: Russia, 1941-44" is the haunting memoir of a young German soldier on the Russian front during World War II. Willy Peter Reese was only twenty years old when he found himself marching through Russia with orders to take no prisoners. Three years later he was dead. Bearing witness to-and participating in-the atrocities of war, Reese recorded his reflections in his diary, leaving behind an intelligent, touching, and illuminating perspective on life on the eastern front. He documented the carnage perpetrated by both sides; the destruction that was exacerbated by the young soldiers'…


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Book cover of Aggressor

Aggressor by FX Holden,

It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.

The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…

Book cover of Goebbels: A Biography

Debbie Rix Author Of The German Mother

From my list on WW2 books that will inform and inspire.

Why am I passionate about this?

My parents both fought in the Second World War – my father as a bomber pilot, my mother as a Wren.  Dad often entertained us at family mealtimes with tales of his wartime adventures – of how was shot down over Germany, captured, imprisoned, but finally escaped. My interest in the period grew from there, and my first ‘wartime’ novel The Secret Letter was in fact largely based on my parents experiences.  Since then, I have become increasingly fascinated by the period, with now a total of four novels set in WW2, culminating in my present book The German Mother.

Debbie's book list on WW2 books that will inform and inspire

Debbie Rix Why Debbie loves this book

Joseph Goebbels was the Minister for Propaganda in Hitler’s Nazi Germany, and is one of the central characters in my latest novel. I recommend Longerich’s biography of this complex man in its own right, and not just because I plundered it for information when writing my novel.

Scholarly but written in a lively style, the book will appeal to anyone interested in what made the ‘master of the dark arts of propaganda’ tick. Drawing heavily on Goebbels’ own diaries (which run to an astonishing twenty-nine volumes), Longerich has written the definitive history of this complex and fascinating man, who was so attracted to Nazi ideology that he ultimately lost his soul to evil.

By Peter Longerich , Alan Bance (translator) , Jeremy Noakes (translator) , Lesley Sharpe (translator)

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Goebbels as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Joseph Goebbels was one of Adolf Hitler's most loyal acolytes. But how did this club-footed son of a factory worker rise from obscurity to become Hitler's malevolent minister of propaganda, most trusted lieutenant and personally anointed successor?

In this definitive one-volume biography, renowned German Holocaust historian Peter Longerich sifts through the historical record - and thirty thousand pages of Goebbels's own diary entries - to answer that question. Longerich paints a chilling picture of a man driven by a narcissistic desire for recognition who found the personal affirmation he craved within the virulently racist National Socialist movement - and whose…


Book cover of Kiss My Putt
Book cover of My Brother's Billionaire Best Friend
Book cover of By a Thread

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Interested in Germany, Romanticism, and Nazism?

Germany 510 books
Romanticism 95 books
Nazism 238 books