I write sexy, stylish, and sensational romance. That means I write sentimental and steamy stories (like Hallmark movies, but with a lot of sex) featuring at least one main character who always keeps it cute. I’m a Brooklyn native who writes unapologetically bold, character-driven stories. My novels feature diverse ensemble casts who are confident in their right to appear on the page. My work has been featured in Entertainment Weekly, O-Magazine, and the Library Journal. If I’m not writing, I am probably trying on or looking for my next great makeup find.
Even before he loses his memory, Diesel is a man who says what he means and doesn’t take foolishness from anyone. That usually works to keep people in line. Except when it comes to Mandy, it seems to generate the exact opposite reaction. Before his loss of memory, her stubbornness irritates him to no end. Once he’s lost his memory, however, that annoyance turns to outright attraction and lust. The humor in this story comes as Mandy tries to keep things platonic between them because of Diesel’s memory loss, and the fact that she’s convinced herself she can’t stand him. But as they spend time together at his snowy cabin, Diesel is intent on wearing her defenses down.
This is the funniest, amnesiac love story I have ever read. It’s emotionally messy and yet so adorable and sexy at the same time. The two leads are both alphas, which leads…
My psychotherapist has always described me as a black and white thinker. Good and evil. Happy or sad. Up or down. I struggle with shades of gray in my day-to-day life. Which is maybe the reason I am drawn to literature that explores morally ambiguous characters and settings. Not only does every book on this list have no clear hero or villain, but each story forces the reader to question what they think they know about right and wrong. I may be a black and white thinker in every practical sense, but I read and write about people and situations that occupy that very human space of in-between.
Kazuo Ishiguro is known for stories rooted in real world contexts. Even his various forays into science fiction (Never Let Me Go and Klara and the Sun) are deeply grounded in contemporary, true-to-life settings. So, when I stumbled upon this classic fairytale by one of my favorite authors, I didn’t know what to expect. Talk about a gut punch!
This book explores morality and hope in creative and magical ways. And the twist at the end will leave you reeling—in true Ishiguro form.
*Kazuo Ishiguro's new novel Klara and the Sun is now available*
The Romans have long since departed, and Britain is steadily declining into ruin.
The Buried Giant begins as a couple, Axl and Beatrice, set off across a troubled land of mist and rain in the hope of finding a son they have not seen for years. They expect to face many hazards - some strange and other-worldly - but they cannot yet foresee how their journey will reveal to them dark and forgotten corners of their love for one another.
I fell in love with Adelaide and Felicity, two sisters who are opposites living at a 150-year-old family funeral home and farm in Kentucky.
Their personalities are like hens scratching at each other in a fun, witty manner that illuminates psychological and spiritual depth. Good medicine during the pandemic.
Throw in a bit of amnesia, a forgotten trauma, visitations from the departed, and Julian, whose funeral is delayed for reasons that are revealed, and you have an upbeat, thought-provoking, and sometimes delightfully irreverent glimpse into a rollicking multi-verse.
It made me consider more carefully what I do and say. For, when all is said and done, we may never be truly separate from each other, either here or in the hereafter.
Sunnyside Up is a deeply character-driven tale of two lovingly combative Kentucky sisters and a man named Julian, a miner’s son, who was not their social equal. It’s a story of love and survival, but also of quantum entanglement at a Jungian level. Entanglement that requires each character to dive deep into murky shadows with open eyes to consciously execute the unraveling. Such an unraveling requires cooperation from all involved. Cooperation that is buried alive in ego and resentment from a mysterious accident that tethers all parties to a single event in the past. Whether or not they’re successful depends on…
Ten-year-old me once looked in the bathroom mirror wondering who I would become. I tried to memorize the patterns in the tiles to hold on to that moment and carry it with me. My fascination with memory and the past permeates my novels. I love a good cold case—and my August Monet thriller trilogy is all about how the past weaves through the present—informing it, haunting it, transporting secrets. Maybe it’s our long, dark winters, but I see this same fascination in the novels of my fellow Canadian thriller writers. Many have created messy characters haunted by their messy pasts. Here’s a list of my favourites.
A thriller with a kick-ass premise: Chloe wakes up on the side of a highway not knowing who the heck she is or how she got there.
It’s a haunting, scary, unnerving story about a woman trying to figure out what could have happened to completely wipe out her memory. What I love about the novel is how Wong’s relentless pace matches lockstep with her protagonist’s frenzied and fractured state of mind.
Bits of the past begin to slip through the cracks as Chloe searches for the truth. I love that Wong chose to tell the story from Chloe’s POV so we’re only privy to what this messy character remembers—or chooses to tell us that she remembers. Twisted, damaged characters with secrets are my cup of tea.
“A chilling, nerve-jangling journey into lost memories and unforgettable terrors. Sandra Wong knows what scares us all—and what we can never forget.” —Tess Gerritsen, New York Times–bestselling author of Listen to Me
A jolting psychological suspense novel from an up-and-coming Chinese-Canadian crime writer about missing parents, a winning lottery ticket and the lies we tell ourselves in order to survive.
Some things are better left forgotten . . .
When a woman wakes up with amnesia beside a mountain highway, confused and alone, she fights to regain her identity, only to learn that her parents have disappeared—not long after her…
Michael Corballis is a psychologist and brain scientist. His interests lie in how the mind works, how it maps onto the brain, and how it evolved. Much of his work is published in books and scientific articles, but he has also written books aimed at a general readership. These include Pieces of Mind, The Lopsided Ape,The Recursive Mind, The Wandering Mind, and The Truth about Language.
Henry Molaison is surely the most famous patient in the history of neurology, widely known in the scientific literature and to psychology and medical students throughout the world as H.M. In 1953, he underwent brain surgery for the relief of epilepsy, which left him mentally stuck in the present, unable to remember past events or imagine future ones. Although the case is a tragic one, it led to significant advances in the scientific understanding of how the brain works. But the book is more than that; it is as fascinating for the backstory as for the case of Henry himself. Luke Dittrich is the grandson of H.M.’s surgeon, a maverick figure in the history of psychosurgery. It is an often uncomfortable but always fascinating tale of intrigue, ambition, secrecy, and surgical recklessness.
In the summer of 1953, maverick neurosurgeon William Beecher Scoville performed a groundbreaking operation on an epileptic patient named Henry Molaison. But it was a catastrophic failure, leaving Henry unable to create long-term memories.
Scoville's grandson, Luke Dittrich, takes us on an astonishing journey through the history of neuroscience, from the first brain surgeries in ancient Egypt to the New England asylum where his grandfather developed a taste for human experimentation. Dittrich's investigation confronts unsettling family secrets and reveals the dark roots of modern neuroscience, raising troubling questions that echo into the present day.
I’m a historian of medieval Europe who specializes in twelfth-century England and France. I’ve been fascinated with history since childhood and distinctly remember being obsessed with a book on English monarchs in my mom’s bookcase when I was young. In college, I took a class on Medieval England with a professor whose enthusiasm for the subject, along with the sheer strangeness of the medieval world, hooked me. I’ve been exploring medieval Europe ever since, and deepening my understanding of how our own world came into being in the process.
This book isn’t just about historians or history writing, but I love it because it addresses some really important questions related to history writing: why was the preservation of memory gendered labor, with different types of memorialization expected of men and women, and how was the past preserved in forms other than chronicles?
It also grapples with the fact that some events and people were purposely forgotten or intentionally left uncommemorated. This practice of collective amnesia or whitewashing the past is something I find particularly compelling. It’s a fascinating look at the gendered practices of memory, and a great reminder that chronicles were not the only means by which the past was preserved for posterity.
Who, exactly, was responsible for the preservation of knowledge about the past? How did people preserve their recollections and pass them on to the next generation? Did they write them down or did they hand then on orally? The book is concerned with the memories of medieval people. In the Middle Ages, as now, men and women collected stories about the past and handed them down to posterity. Many memories centre in the aristocratic family or lineage while others are focussed on institutions such as monasteries or nunneries. The family and monastic contexts clearly illustrate that remembrance of the past…
Brandon Sanderson takes a hard left turn into a world of wizards mashed up with sci-fi technology. As a lover of mixed-genre stories, I greatly enjoyed the human and self-awareness of this witty tale. The story jumps back and forth between the handbook itself, and an amnesiac man who awakes in medieval England with only a half-fried handbook to guide him into the weird and wonderful world of wizardry.
The ending was surprisingly different than the usual Sanderson fare, and I love how this book—unlike Sanderson's other work in a sweeping Cosmere—stands on its own.
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson―creator of The Stormlight Archive, the Mistborn Saga, and countless bestselling works of science fiction and fantasy―comes this captivating standalone adventure that meshes Jason Bourne, epic fantasy, and time travel.
A man awakes in a clearing in what appears to be medieval England with no memory of who he is, where he came from, or why he is there. Chased by a group from his own time, his sole hope for survival lies in regaining his missing memories, making allies among the locals, and perhaps even trusting in their superstitious boasts. His…
From the first time I snagged a romance book off my mother's shelf as a teenager, I've always been a hopeless romantic. I'm fascinated by love stories that feel like real life, entwined with the good, bad, and sometimes ugly. This is why I enjoy exploring the duality of life and love in my own novels as a romantic suspense author.
I fell for this book from startup. I had never read an android-themed romance novel until I discovered Roxie McClaine. Seeing a futuristic world that's not too different from ours but with lots of interesting nuance and action was fun.
I enjoyed the many ways the android Codi becomes human through a different lens.
I’ve always loved characters with ambiguous morals, and the inherent tension they bring to stories: their path from ruin to redemption, the examination of their past misdeeds that requires them to choose what kind of person they want to be. As a former software engineer, I was traumatized by the Polytechnique massacre in Montréal, which happened while I was studying at a neighboring university, and in which fourteen women were murdered. I don’t consider its perpetrator redeemable, but after I wrote The Tree of Souls, I realized its character arcs were me trying to understand why people do bad things and forcing my characters to confront the pain they’d caused.
This is the book that launched my Zelazny obsession as a teen. Carl Corey wakes up after a car crash with amnesia (sense a theme here?), which he hides from those close to him, some of whom insist on calling him Corwin. He gradually discovers he’s an immortal with a strong claim to the throne of Amber, the one true world at the center of infinite shadow worlds, including our Earth. As Corwin’s memories return, he realizes he was a cruel and arrogant man, and some of his numerous siblings have good reason to hate him. Here the amnesia trope truly allows a character to examine their past through a less biased lens. Top-rate fantasy set against a war for succession to the keys to the universe.
One of the most revered names in sf and fantasy, the incomparable Roger Zelazny was honored with numerous prizes—including six Hugo and three Nebula Awards—over the course of his legendary career. Among his more than fifty books, arguably Zelazny’s most popular literary creations were his extraordinary Amber novels.
Now officially licensed by the Zelazny estate, the first book in this legendary series is now finally available electronically.
Carl Corey wakes up in a secluded New York hospital with amnesia. He escapes and investigates, discovering the truth, piece by piece: he is really Prince Corwin, of Amber, the one true world…
I am a care aide (aka personal support worker) who has happily worked at an extended care facility for more than twenty years, and as such, I have been a compassionate listener to many a family member suffering from the tsunami of feelings involved when coping with aging parents or spouses, so I thought I would be well-positioned and emotionally prepared to cope when it was my turn to face my own mother's deterioration. How wrong I was! Thank goodness for the generous souls who write memoirs. Each of the books that I have chosen was an education and an affirmation to me as I tried to maintain my equilibrium while supporting my mother and my mother-in-law through their final years.
When Jann Arden falls into her role as caretaker to her parents, she uses journaling and social mediato maintain her sanity. "I didn't want to feel alone in a room with Alzheimer's," she writes, and so she brings the reader into her home. Comprised of excerpts from Jann's journals, photographs that make the daily minutiae feel real, and recipes, Jann's beautiful book is a generous and very personal gift. Even those who are not already ardent Jann-fans will feel like her friend when immersed in this memoir. I did my first reading in one sitting, cried, and then read it again.
This edition of the inspirational #1 bestseller draws on a new year of Jann's diaries and her mother's final days.
When beloved singer and songwriter Jann Arden's parents built a house just across the way from her, she thought they would be her refuge from the demands of her career. And for a time that was how it worked. But then her dad fell ill and died, and just days after his funeral, her mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.
In Feeding My Mother, Jann shares what it is like for a daughter to become her mother's caregiver--in her own frank…
