Susanna Kearsley

A walk through the storage facility of the community museum where I worked might easily have convinced you that people in the past wore only wedding dresses, carried silver candlesticks, and played with porcelain dolls.

People didn't just wear wedding dresses in the past. They also wore plain cotton shifts beneath them. As pretty as the dresses might be, and as lovely as they might look on display, if a museum doesn't hang the shifts beside them or acknowledge that the shifts existed, that exhibit's incomplete.

I have seen and really liked the varied movie adaptations of the book, but 'Little Women' has a sprawling, richly tangled story that needs time and space to weave its magic.

As a former waitress myself, I know firsthand how a simple smile from someone can improve your day and how a single harsh word can destroy it. Being courteous and thoughtful costs you nothing and can sometimes pay you dividends in unexpected ways.

It's the pursuit of love and happiness that is the driving force of the romantic novel.

Romantic fiction, in the broader sense, can be any novel that has a love story somewhere in it. It can be a mystery or a historical novel, as long as it has this very strong romantic thread running through it.