Best Erotic Romance

This sizzling erotic romance anthology, which launches an annual series, delivers 17 hot tales of (predominantly heterosexual) love and lust, with a wide variety of premises and settings. The most touching is Kate Dominic’s “Blame It on Facebook,” the story of a military widow who locks her sexuality away for two decades until her husband’s former colleague reveals his longtime love for her. Other standouts include “He Tends to Me,” Justine Elyot’s account of a husband’s unorthodox techniques to cure his wife’s strep throat, and Kate Pearce’s “Cheating Time,” in which a weary, wary couple find a new spark with a sexy fantasy. The stories are deeply passionate, and each tale first makes the reader care about its characters before pulling them into the steamy sex scenes. No matter what the surroundings, one thread runs through every story in this volume: true love endures. (Jan.)