As the weather turns cooler, there’s no better way to spend a weekend afternoon than curled up in a comfy chair with a cup of tea and a good book. And if long hours have curtailed your love life for now, these reads are sure to set your heart aflutter.
Heloise and Abelard: A New Biography by James Burges. (HarperCollins Publishers; $14.95) This story is so passionate, dramatic, and romantic it’s hard to believe that it’s…true! Yes, Abelard (a brilliant philosopher) and Heloise (sigh, his student) fall in love. It’s Paris and the year is 1115. After an illicit child and secret marriage, the couple is torn apart by Heloise’s family. As a result, they spend the remainder of their days in sad seclusion. Throughout their relationship they write love letters to swoon over: passionate, erotic, tragic. Who knew real life could be this good?
Possession by A.S. Byatt. (Knopf Publishing Group; $14.95) A story within a story, Possession tells the side-by-side tale of Maud and Roland, two academics digging for clues about British poet Randolph Henry Ash and his secret love, Christabel. Just as Maud and Roland start getting hot and heavy in the library stacks, we cut to the story of the poet and his mistress. Poetry, corsets, and heaving bosoms abound. Is it getting hot in here?
Like Water for Chocolate: A Novel in Monthly Installments With Recipes, Romances, and Home Remedies by Laura Esquivel. (Knopf Publishing Group; $13.95) We all know food and drink are the best aphrodisiacs. And foreign men with a bit of an accent? What could be more delicious? Tita is such a passionate woman her fire infuses everything she does—especially her cooking. Case in point: When she makes a special meal with the rose petals given to her by Pedro (her unrequited true love), the food causes her sister to leap—literally—into the arms of a revolutionary soldier. This is an utterly romantic story of Tita’s journey to find true love and assert her independence. Not bad goals for any of us!
Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer. (Picador USA; $14) This painfully romantic love story tells the tale of Max, an ordinary fellow except for one extraordinary quality: He ages backwards. When he meets his love, Alice, they are mentally the same age, but he looks like an old man. Max marches in and out of Alice’s life until finally it is their time…a moment that will be far too short. This book begins with one of the best first lines from a love story ever: “We are each the love of someone’s life.” How can a great story not follow?
