Laurens writes excellent, sensuous sex scenes in all her books, but the very best is in her short story, Melting Ice, in the romance anthology Rough Around the Edges. In this story, the hero has been out of the country for 10 years, having left for India thinking his childhood sweetheart married his friend. When he returns he finds that she has in fact never married, and he rescues her from unwitting involvement in a weekend orgy only to engage her in a version for only two.

My second favorite romance author is Julia Quinn, who mixes good stories with a lot of wit and humor. You like her hero and heroine; you want to hang out with them. You'll find yourself laughing out loud, clapping for the heroine, and feeling reluctant, amused commiseration for the hero. She also writes in the "big book" Regency genre, but like Laurens she keeps your attention through the entire book. The romance is intense, the sex gets pretty hot (and detailed), and the stories are different enough so you don't feel that you've read all her books after reading just one (unlike, say, Danielle Steele, who has written the same book over and over for 20 years). Most romances are charming stories, and the best authors are very talented - I don't disparage their work - but it's not Great Dramatic Fiction, which unfortunately some writers don't understand, to the detriment of their work. Quinn realizes it, but her own intelligence - she's a graduate of an Ivy League school who was in medical school when she finally decided her destiny was romance writing - translates into intelligent heroines who feel like real people dealing with real struggles, without being maudlin or gothic. I suspect that Quinn and Laurens will be read and loved as authors decades from now, as the originator of modern Regencies, Georgette Heyer, is today. And I don't think it's an accident that smart, fascinating stories come from smart, fascinating women - Laurens herself has a PhD in biochemistry, and was a cancer researcher when her first books were published.

Quinn has written as much out of series as in it. Her series involves the Bridgerton family, with eight children - she's written several of them, but there are more to go. I don't have a favorite amongst Quinn's books, but they're good enough that I keep all of them and am in my third reading of some. I just finished rereading Splendid, and am in the middle of To Catch An Heiress now. One recurring theme is Lady Whistledown, a society gossip columnist who is the bane of the Bridgertons in a couple of books, until the mystery is solved in Quinn's latest book, Romancing Mr. Bridgerton (a very sweet ugly-duckling-to-sort-of-swan story). Quinn has also written in anthologies, and I can recommend Scottish Brides highly. It's actually the book where I discovered both Quinn and Laurens, and therefore itself one of my all time favorites.