Lost in the library: what to read next?

I get asked a lot what I personally like to read.

It's quite a list. Lol!

I grew up in a family of romance readers. My mother, my aunt, my grandmother were all avid readers, so I grew up with romances everywhere! Bags upon bags of them. We would go to yard sales and Library sales and bring home bags and boxes of fresh reading material.

I could never get into the thick, sweeping westerns my mom loved, but the shorter, spicier books? Oh, yeah, I was all over them! I would even sneak them into school to read when I was supposed to be doing other things! They couldn't really bitch at me, though, because I had excellent grades.

As you can see by my keeper shelf above, I tend to lean toward paranormal, paranormal military, fantasy, contemporary. You wouldn't know that I write military. There are even some historicals in the back. I don't discriminate. If the writing is good and there's a happy ever after, I'm all for it.

So, who's on my shelf? Let's start with paranormal/fantasy.

~Christine Feehan is a big one. LOVE her Ghostwalkers. I found her through reading her Carpathians, but then slid over to the military.

~Anne McCaffrey was a huge influence in my life. I remember dragging the Dragonriders of Pern around on the bus. She made me DREAM, in a huge way. And yes, I may have 20,000 words of my own dragon romance floating around on a hard drive somewhere.

~Nalini Singh is one of my current favorites. Her Archangels are AMAZING!

~Marjorie M Liu- She's getting more into comic books now but she's an amazing contemporary paranormal author.

~Laurell K Hamilton- LOVE her Anita Blake series, though it kind of took a different direction in the middle. I appreciate the kick ass heroines.

~Ilona Andrews and Kate Daniels- same lines. I LOVE Kate! She kicks ass. And I'm so happy for the new series as well!

~JR Ward- fellow Kentucky girl. Love her BDB!

~Sherillyn Kenyon. I read her early!

~Gena Showalter.

~Lynn Viehl

How about contemporary or military?

~Right in the middle of the shelf is a Silhouette Special Edition by Jessica Barkley. I absolutely loved that book. As far as I can tell she only wrote 3, and that was her first. I read it about once a year now.

~Lindsay McKenna was my first foray into military romance. Her Morgan's Mercenaries... man. I remember dumping bags of romances on the living room floor looking for other books in the series! Thirty years ago ( hell I'm old...) there was no grabbing it off Kindle. You had to hope another book was in the mystery bag. I can still remember lines of dialogue because I read them so many times.

~Elle James is amazing. You can always count on a good read with her. I don't know how she puts out as many words as she does.

~Susan Stoker is an incredible writer. Another woman that puts out books faster than I can keep up with! Lol

~Suzanne Brockman is also an incredible writer.

~Susan Mallery

~Nora Roberts- seems to literally have a book for every season/feeling/mood. Lol

~Desiree Holt- I want to be her when I grow up!

Whew! That's a good start on what I like to read. These days I prefer to listen to audiobooks just because of time constraints, but every once in a while I sit down with my phone and absorb words.

Have you read any of these authors?