Love Rules / Love Stinks

Love really stinks, when Cami Anderson’s husband announces he is leaving her and wants a divorce. But as she works thru her feelings with her family of animals at her side, things begin to turn around. This is a moving story about the marvelous things that can happen when you are shoved through a door you really don’t want to go through. --Clytia

In a land where beauty and pleasure rule, where all reside under one rule, “love as thy wilt”, Phedre, god marked, is born. Trained as both courtesan and spy, Phedre is a beautiful, intelligent woman who must use her mind, skills, strength, and will to protect her country. Carey’s flowing prose weaves a magical, sensuous tale of love, intrigue, and destiny. I love this book so much, I have a tattoo of the rose. —Flannery

Next year marks the thirty-fifth anniversary of the publication of this sweeping, romantic saga, which follows an Australian family through three generations of hard work, heartbreak, passion and pain. McCullough's masterpiece remains one of the great literary love stories, beautifully told and filled with fascinating, complex characters whose hopes, dreams, and intense desires are complicated by both their personal circumstances and their strong religious beliefs. If you like epic love stories, read The Thorn Birds. It's a classic. —George

What happens when a depressed burn victim meets a beautiful woman in the hospital who claims to have loved him in a past life? He assumes she’s a patient from the psych ward, of course. But what if he’s got nothing to lose and lets her take him home? And what if her story starts to sound a little too compelling? At that point, you have the makings of a very strange love story. Read on. —Kat

Love stinks because people often hurt the one they love, intentionally or not. George and Lennie are farm workers in California in the Great Depression. Big Lennie loves to stroke cute little animals, but he is dim-witted and often accidently hurts them. After George and Lennie get in trouble, they flee, and George kills Lennie, who he loves as a brother, in order to spare him the pain that he knows is coming. —Ben

The protagonist of Aimee Bender’s debut novel is a young woman who is obsessed with numbers, who finds herself teaching a classroom of first graders rather by accident, and then falls in love with a science teacher. Despite the unusual elements of this story, I found it to be one of the sweetest love stories I’ve ever encountered. There’s a good reason Aimee Bender is a perennial staff favorite here! —Kat

Sometimes love can lead us astray and twist our good intentions into harmful actions. This story follows a young multi-racial girl growing up in the shadow of a terrible tragedy and trying to figure out what exactly happened to her family. Love plays an integral role in her background and in the events that lead to the final revelation, with universal themes that make a wonderful novel even more important to read. —Nici

Are you a crafty person who’s getting married? Are you someone who expresses their love through handmade gifts? Or do you simply enjoy making beautiful things? Then this book is for you. Handmade Weddings—packed with ideas for lovely and modern invitations, décor, wedding favors, and more—is positively gorgeous, sweet, romantic and inspiring. —S.B.