Recs if you like The Duke Gets Even...

Every year we pick 10 books that we think rise above the rest. These are the 70 we've picked since 2019.

Updated to include our Best of 2025 picks.

Save a shirtless, bare-chested man! Each one is in dire need of a shirt! 👕 Those covers of romance novels are not very warm, although under the covers, it could be hot. Steaming, in fact. Maybe even scorching. 🥵❤️‍🔥

(Other editions exist where the book cover has a shirtless man, but this list only includes those shirtless on PB. ) Enjoy! 😉

Complex, often unlikeable antiheroines are some of my favorite women in historical romance. Unrepentant social climbers, gold-diggers, gossips. Strident, cold, sexually-liberated. All welcome, along with the besotted men they leave in their wake!

(comment with recs please!!)

We’re talking books that start with a bang — and we mean literally. It's hard to thread the needle on romance that starts with sex, but there are tropes that lend themselves to this particular theme. Enjoy!

Never read a historical romance? Choose one of these! All the balls, the inheritances, the petticoats, the rakes, and the reputations. May or may not be the first book in a series (but if it's on this list, my recommendation would be to just go ahead and read it)! Amazing writers doing incredible work building truly beautiful love stories in a world and time different from ours. All sex on the page (steaminess levels vary), all HEA (of course).

MMCs (usually starchy nobles) who love hearing their monikers from the FMC sweet lips