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Originally Posted by VillageReader
I read a mystery ebook recently that I was surprised to find was a Harlequin imprint. So they do more than romance, although maybe not much more. When I visited the site the mystery imprint is "Worldwide Library".
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Harlequin became popular with and it known for "cookie cutter" romances. The idea is that if you like one, you'll like the others, and a reader can pick any Harlequin title off a rack with reasonable assumptions about what they are getting. They are crafted to a careful template, and
designed to be similar.
But in recent years, Harlequin has been attempting to expand beyond those confines, and in the process is broadening the idea of the romance genre. The traditional "bodice ripper" is still with us, but we now see mystery romances, paranormal romances, fantasy romances, and other cross-overs.
One current effort is their Luna imprint, which are fantasy romance crossovers. They are interesting in that romance is a sub-plot: the heroine is copying with other concerns, and getting the guy isn't the most important thing on her mind at the time.
I'm fond of Laura Anne Gilman's "Retrievers" series, set in a present day New York City where magic happens to work. Her heroine, Wren Valere, is a Talent - someone capable of using a magical force called "current" to perform various actions. In Wren's case, it means she can find and recover missing objects (which often means stealing them back from whoever stole them in the first place).
Wren lives in a world where most people are "nulls", incapable of sensing or using magic, and mostly unaware magic and magic users exist. She must cope with the attempts of the Cosa Nostradamus, a mage council, to control all magic users; increasing hostility between normals and magical creatures known as the Fatea; plus developing romantic feelings between her and her "null" business partner, Sergei as she attempts to fulfill contracts Sergei has negotiated for her. Her best friend is a demon named PB who looks like a four foot tall polar bear, and electronic devices misbehave in her presence because current and electricity don't mix well.
Great fun, and not at all what you expect in a romance.
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Dennis