LOL...so I started reading romance novel back in my mid teens after discovering several interesting looking bodice rippers on the top shelf in my mom's closet. Funny to think that those were some of the best books I ever remember reading.

Let's list all the golden oldies and give some girls some new suggestions...especially me since my bookshelf was limited to whatever I could find in my mom's closet...lmao

Wild Jasmine - Beatrice Small

Sweet Savage Love - Rosemary Rogers

Follow the Wind - Janelle Taylor

The Taming and Ride Out the Storm - Aileen Malcom

Teresa Weir

Elizabeth Elliott  Scoundrel

Lisa G Brown  Billy Bob Walker Got Married

how far back are ya'll calling oldies?! I love Jayne Ann Krentz's older stuff..a few of Elizabeth Lowell's older silhouettes, LInda Howard's older stuff like the Mackenzies

mountain mistriess by nadine crenshaw(bodice ripper days)!

zach's law by kay hooper(loveswept), the man a la valaise (older harlequin) , the taming of tamsin(older harlequin) hostage to dishonour (older harlequin), a little luck and beware the stranger by janet dailey..sigh..may have to revisit my special keeper shelf..

Susanna I think anything early 90's and before are oldies.

And I'm with you about visiting the special shelf!

I stole some of my first adult romance novels out of a garage sale box.  We were having the sale and a friend of my mom's brought some books over.  I remember snitching some good looking books and then sneaking some $$ into the cash box on garage sale day to cover it.

I don't even remember the name of the longer book I had.  I also got some Harlequin Presents.  After that, I starte buying those and Loveswepts rather than the teen romances I'd been buying.

ETA:  This would have been mid-80's.

Jayne Ann Krentz and Linda Howard have oldies but goodies that I love to read.  Actually I think Linda Howard's older books are better then her more recent books.

All those old white cover Harlequins are what I read as a teen.  Penny Jordan and the like!

I remember a friend of mine came to school with  romance novel she'd swiped from her mother.  It was 1988 and I was finishing 7th grade at the local junior high school and I was bored with what was being offerred to me to read.  I'd either already read it or the material was babyish.  My friend brought a Harlequin Superromance to school and let me read some at lunch and I was hooked.  She later let me take it home if I promised to bring it back the next day so she could sneak it back into her mother's hidey-spot.  (I did, by the way!) The book was Twice Shy by Evelyn A. Crowe (#262) and I later went to a used book store and purchased it after convincing my mother that "there was nothing bad in it."  I held on to this book until my mid-twenties when it was lost during a move.  Last year  I was able to get another copy here at PBS. (I'm in my mid-thirties now.)  It's funny, but I never forgot the book. 

Speaking of Penny Jordan and the white cover Harlequin Presents..... I still have a copy of Beyond Compare by Penny Jordan (#1282) and I still re-read it at least once a year.  I bought it new at Waldenbooks in the mall and fell in love with the hero.  That was 1990 and I still have it.

Desert Hostage
Author: Diane Dunaway
ISBN-13: 9780440119630 - ISBN-10: 0440119634  Publication Date: 1982

Ashes in the Wind
Author: Kathleen E. Woodiwiss, Kathleen E. Woodiwiss
ISBN-13: 9780688125028 - ISBN-10: 0688125026  Publication Date: 1979

For me the early romance I read was the Bodice Rippers of the late 70's and early 80's.  After that I found books that were erotic without any actualy sex in them pretty hot, especially Anne Rice's books.   Cry to Heaven and the Interview with the Vampire series for example. 

I admit that when I joined PBS two years ago or so, I read my first Harlequin romance.

ooh, I love Desert Hostage by Diane Dunaway, - good recommendation - a great "sheik" romance.  

I also like older Rosemary Rogers such as, Sweet Savage Love, The Insiders, Love Play, The Crowd Pleasers.   Not everyone's cup of (romance) tea...

Stormfire by Christine Monson

Whitney, My Love by Judith McNaught

I read and still own all of Rosmary Rogers, Kathleen Woodwiss, Laurie McBain, Day Taylor, Cynthia Wright and a few others.

This new game celebrates all those great older books!  Celebrating the 90s - A 2 Round Romance Swap
 

Sign ups close tomorrow so you still have time to join us!

The first real romance novel I ever read was an beat up copy of A Dangerous Longing by Veronica Sattler.  It was  found it in the closet of a beach house my parents were renting for us.  I think I ended up reading it about 10 times.  After that I grabbed every romance I could find with "discreet" covers at the used book store and the library.  By that time I read a bag of books in a week during the summer, so my mom had given up trying to control them, but she would not have tolerated trashy covers.

I like Heather Graham's older books.  I think I started reading the white cover romances when I was about 16 - telling my age here -probably about 1965.

Margy

EDIT:  Maybe there were regular Harlequin and then the Harlequin Presents?  Anyone remember?

Judith McNaught - Kingdom of Dreams and Whitney My Love (and I just love the rip-off of it called Defiant Angel by Stephanie Stevens reading it again!)

Anita Mills Fire Series

Meagan McKinney

Brenda Joyce - The Prize and The Game (?)

Jo Goodman - My Steadfast Heart

Elizabeth Elliott - The Warlord

Jude Deveraux - Velvet Series

Denise Domning - Spring's Fury, Winter's Heat (and a couple others--summer and autumn)

Elizabeth Elliott is coming out with a new book next Spring.  After years of writer's block.  (But her website has this really loud music.)

Prisoner of my Desire by Johanna Lindsey and Anise by Patricia Phillips were the first romances I ever read (I was ten years old so most of it went over my head) I actually stole them from my great grandmother's house when I discovered them, lol.

Wow Amanda! If I had read Prisoner Of My Desire when I was a young girl,  I think I would have been shocked senseless. LOL!  Good thing, it went over your head. I had to keep reading to see how this book could have a HEA. 

i started reading anything and everything in jr. high school. it did not matter what. (needed to escape homelife)  my mother read them. and my grandmother had a huge white harelquin collection. i was told to pick a book and be quiet. later i found the good stuff that was hidden behined the white ones.  i have read romance books since then. the one i remember as the first one i checked out of the library was Silken Savage by catherine hart.

lol @ Brenda! I actually don't like Prisoner of my Desire now beyond the soft spot I have for it because it introduced me to other, better romance novels :) I read a lot of Lindsey's stuff when I was a kid but now that I think about it  I think it gave me an extra appreciation for decent men and non-violent sexual relationships...in the most warped possible fashion but hey, whatever works.

Some of the first romance books I read were by Janet Dailey (probably back in the early 70's):  Touch the Wind, Ride the Thunder, Terms of Surrender,  Nightway, etc. 

Shanna by Kathleen Woodiwiss.

The Proud Breed by Celeste de Blasis was also one of the first "romance" books I read. I didn't like that one as much, even at 12 I liked the HEA and this one went all the way  to death do us part. at 750 some odd pages, it was just overkill for my young mind.

A Rose in Winter by Kathleen Woodiwiss

I still have my old copy that I read in junior high. I've come across it several times at Goodwill, but just can't find it in me to replace that old battered copy. 

I wish I could remember the first novel I read. Like others here, I sneaked it from my sister's room. I don't even remember why now that I think about it. Lol. But I got hooked right away. I'd always loved romance stories. All the fairy tales and such. I had a dog-eared copy of a Brothers Grimm compilation.

I do however, remember the first romance I ever bought myself at a used book table of my local library. It was Catalina's Caress by Sylvie F. Sommerfield. I haven't read this book in a long time and I wonder if it's still as good as I remember. But the book itself takes me back.

And speaking of oldies but goodies. I just re-read a book that came out in 1993 or so called In My Dreams by Susan Sizemore. Now this book I can tell you is an awesome book. Some of the hero's dialogue makes me roll my eyes, but the rest of it is awesome. I've got my original battered copy as well. The cover is starting to rip off, but it's just not in me to get a newer copy.