Stories of Romance

Five Victorian masters of the heart reveal love's many faces in this rich anthology. Here is Scottish romance steeped in Highland mists and historical longing. Here is love wrapped in wit and intellectual sparring. Here are unions haunted by the supernatural, where desire trembles on the edge of the uncanny. The opening tale, "Iris," introduces a woman navigating a world of tender complexity, her heart a battleground of hope and hesitation. These are not simple love stories. They are investigations into what it costs to connect, to choose another person when society, circumstance, and the shadow self all stand in the way. The authors bring distinct registers to a shared obsession: the way love reveals who we truly are. For readers who want romance with teeth, with history, with the strange magic that only the 19th century could muster.