BESTSELLING AND AWARD WINNING AUTHOR OF WESTERN ROMANCE!
Caroline Clemmons writes historical and contemporary genre fiction. Historical romances, contemporary romantic suspense, mysteries, and paranormals are among her current works. Learn more about her at https//www.carolineclemmons.com
Cozy evening rituals make Western romances feel even more comforting, turning your reading time into a small daily escape to the Old West.
Three cozy rituals
1. Create a Western‑themed reading nook
Set up a simple reading corner that you use mostly for Western romance. A comfortable chair, soft blanket, and warm lamp or fairy lights are enough to make it feel special, even if it is just one end of your sofa.
You can add small touches that echo the stories you love—maybe a horseshoe paperweight, a small framed photo of a Western landscape, or a candle with a warm, woodsy scent. When you sit there with a Caroline Clemmons book, your brain starts to recognize, “This is my time to unwind and visit the West for a while.”
2. Pair your book with a “prairie pantry” treat
Turning reading into a tiny ritual snack break makes it feel like more of an event. Before you start your chapter, fix a simple “prairie pantry” treat and a warm drink to enjoy slowly while you read.
You might choose hot tea, cocoa, or coffee along with something that feels a little rustic or homemade—shortbread, cornbread, nuts, or cookies. The point is not a fancy recipe but a small, cozy habit that tells you, “It’s time to put my feet up with my favorite Western couple.”
3. End the night with a few pages of a comfort reread
Many readers find that rereading favorite romances at night feels like catching up with dear friends. You already know the couple will get their happily‑ever‑after, so you can relax into the story instead of worrying about how the conflict will turn out.
Pick one or two of your favorite Western romances and designate them as your “evening comfort reads.” On nights when you are tired or stressed, read just a scene or a chapter you love—maybe the first meeting, the big declaration, or a quiet moment on the porch—and let that be the last story you hear before sleep.
Check out my website, CarolineClemmons.com, for a list of Western Romances to choose from for your evening rituals.
Great Pack Gathering. Three little words, one mandate that ruined my life.
I'm a doctor and a researcher. My pack is small, in a quiet part of central Texas. It's a simple existence, and I like it that way. It's just me and my two besties, living our best single lives.
That is, until the mandate comes. Every unmated wolf in the entire world, called to one place. I'm a psi, the weakest designation there is. I can barely shift, and there's no chance of me getting matched—only humiliated.
It can't get worse, until it does. I've barely made it off the bus when I lock eyes with the hottest wolf I've ever seen, and he reeks of power. There's no way he'll be interested in me, a psi wolf who can barely hold her shift.
Until my wolf starts acting crazy, my magic goes on the fritz, and I'm suddenly wielding way more power than a lowly psi. Goddess only knows what's going on, but there isn't much time for me to figure it out.
Oh, and there's one more little thing. Mr. Hottie McPowerful? He's the prince of the shifter world, and my fated mate, whether he wants to be, or not.
One-click now to dive into this steamy wolf-shifter romance.
★★★★★
If you love:
Wolf Shifters
Fated Mates (but not insta-love)
IYTHIKY ✨ Vibes ✨
Cinnamon Roll Hero
Supportive Girl Besties
This is the book for you!
★★★★★
This new paranormal romance from April L. Moon contains a HEA for our main couple. The story arc spans multiple books, but each one contains a new couple and a new romance, while still bringing in familiar faces until our world's problems are solved.
Review:
This is a cute romantasy that stays interesting not just in this book, but in the other books of the series. I read werewolf romances as my guilty pleasure. The premise for this one holds throughout the book and the series. If you are looking for a fast read to curl up with some stormy evening, this is a good book to have.
On an
alternate earth, a cataclysm has altered a subset of the population. Talents
are persecuted for their psychic and physical mutations, giving rise to two
conflicting societies based upon maintaining genetic purity. And the Source, a
shadowy corporate entity dependent upon the exploitation of captive Talents, is
hunting them…
Flynn
Scot is spiraling.
After a
cataclysmic chain of events and devastating loss, Flynn’s grasp on reality is
slipping. Backed into a corner by the Assembly and his sanity called into
question, the threat of exile and having his talent stripped endangers not only
him, but any chance he might have of getting his family back…if they’re not
already past saving.
Deep
in stasis, Kara’s fate is uncertain.
Stolen
away and in the clutches of a madman, Kara’s future depends solely upon Titus’s
sufferance. With unfettered access to her genome, his attention is fixated upon
the next iteration of Talents—especially after events in the North change her
status from prize to bait.
Because Flynn is coming
for her, and he’s not coming alone.
Cal grimaced and climbed to his feet as Glynfyls stopped shaking. He
clutched his breast, groping for the ward Miriam had set some thirty-odd years
ago that tied Flynn back to him. Please, God… Cal exhaled, his knees buckling in relief. Still there. Felt
different, but the boy wasn’t dead.
Not yet at least.
His gaze slid from the calamity outside the window to the blood
spattered across the wall and the gore-soaked carpet. In the unlikely event
House Scot survived the next seventy-two hours, the whole damned room would
have to be gutted. He dropped the last of his cigarette and ground it out beside Cordelia
Kerns’s corpse.
And if they didn’t survive, screw the resale value. What a goddamned mess.
“Here’s a spot, there’s a spot…” he muttered to himself, bastardizing lines from his brief stint in
community theater. Seemed appropriate. He couldn’t clearly remember his last wife’s smile or the faces of any of the children he’d buried, but every goddamned line from that play, every goddamned
moment he’d spent with her, was seared into his memory in high goddamned definition.
Her. Elize. Lizzy. His Lilith.
Cal ran a shaking hand down his face. Squatted. Knees cracking, he leaned forward to lower Kerns’s lids and cover the look of surprise in her grayed-over baby blues, his gaze locking on the imprint of a
bloody crescent between her brows—
A flash of memory—the same mark on his second wife—hit him hard.
He stumbled into a chair and pulled out his pouch of tobacco, cursing
the tremor in his hands. Fingers fumbling, he threw aside the botched attempt.
Deep breath. Rolled another. It was passible, barely. He lit it. Blew out a
frenetic puff of smoke and spat tobacco from his lip.
His gaze drifted back to Kerns’s corpse. Another woman with her throat slit. Wasn’t related to Julia’s earlier demise, but that wouldn’t stop Crandall and the city’s rumor mill from having a goddamned field day with it.
Christ. Between that and Flynn’s tantrum destroying everything as far as the eye could see, House Scot was on
borrowed time.
And when the press caught wind of Kara’s abduction, it would be worse.
What a clusterfuck. If there’d been any place to go, Cal would’ve started packing his bags, but this time, there wasn’t. Jane—Mother—had made sure of that.
He blew out a ragged stream of smoke and glanced at the couch as he
brought the sad excuse for a cigarette to his lips again. Kara’s cat glared back. Miserable animal was wrapped around Fitz’s throat with its green eyes narrowed. Cal frowned at the rise and fall
of the boy’s chest. Looked like taking pity on fuck ups was still part of Elize’s MO.
Not that the boy was losing any sleep over his brush with death. He was
sawing wood like he didn’t have a care in the world thanks to Nora’s induced coma. Must be nice.
Cal took another drag, cursing himself and the lingering scent of Elize’s perfume. The barest hint of bergamot dragging his mind back to that
first summer they’d met. To the stolen kisses during rehearsals. To the way the lighting had hit the curve of
her cheek and the look she’d throw over her shoulder as she sauntered into the wings. Christ, that
still got his dick hard.
Too bad her seduction had been as much of a role as the one she’d played on stage.
He’d hauled sets around the whole damned summer for that shit, podunk
production to be close to her. Senator Dashell’s daughter. What she’d seen in the son of a pig farmer—Christ. In retrospect, he knew exactly what she’d seen. Or rather, what her father had. Man hadn’t blinked twice at pimping her out for twelve hundred acres just
outside of town where the Corporation could build their research facility.
And damn them, but they’d gotten it.
Why her and her brother had stuck around after, slumming with the five
of them—
Cal shook his head, staring at the blood pooling beneath Kerns. What
was done, was done, and his hands had never been clean. No. He’d been up to his goddamned elbows in this shit from the get-go, but
this right here? This was gonna sink him and everything he’d worked for since.
As intended.
He fished the slip of paper Elize had left on Kara’s pillow from his breast pocket, his fingers shying from the braid
coiled beside it. Entwined E’s on the letterhead and beneath the monogram, a set of coordinates with
four damning words.
40°49’26.99” N-73°55’20.99” W
Queen takes pawn.
Check.
Elize…Enoch…the twins were just pieces, not who he’d been playing against. Cal stroked a heavy hand over his mustache.
Knowing the message for the invitation it was.
Jane had made her move, and now it was his. For better or worse, the
endgame had begun.
AK Nevermore enjoys
operating heavy machinery, freebases coffee, and gives up sarcasm for Lent
every year. A Jane-of-all-trades, she’s a certified chef, restores antiques,
and dabbles in beekeeping when she’s not reading voraciously or running down
the dream in her beat-up camo Chucks.
Unable to ignore the
voices in her head, and unwilling to become medicated, she writes Science
Fiction and Fantasy full time.
She pays the bills
editing, wielding a wicked hot pink pen and writing a column on SFF. She also
belongs to the Authors Guild, is a chapter treasurer for the RWA, teaches
creative writing, and on the rare occasion, sleeps.
If you love Western romance but do not always have time—or budget—for a real trip, armchair travel is the next best thing. Western stories let you trade your everyday routine for big skies, rugged landscapes, and hard-won happily-ever-afters, all from your favorite reading chair.
From the moment you open a Western historical romance, you step into a world where the land is wide, danger lurks at the edges, and love means standing strong together. A good book lets you “go West” for a few hours and come back refreshed, no luggage required.
Texas: Big-Sky Armchair Adventures
Texas settings feel made for Western romance readers. Think dusty trails, small towns with wooden sidewalks, and ranch houses standing alone under a huge, star-filled sky. Stories set here often follow ranchers, lawmen, or determined heroines who have come West to start over and discover just how strong they really are.
When you sink into a Texas-set romance, you can almost feel the heat shimmering off the road, hear boots on the boardwalk, and smell supper cooking in the ranch kitchen. All from your couch, you get barn dances, cattle drives, and heroes who mean what they say and back it up with action.
Desert Southwest: Sun, Shadows, and Second Chances
If you enjoy a tougher, more dramatic landscape, desert settings deliver. Red rock cliffs, arroyos, dust storms, and relentless sun turn every ride into an adventure. These stories often feature outlaws, lawmen, or travelers who must rely on each other just to survive the next bend in the trail.
As an armchair traveler, you feel the tension of scarce water and distant help, but you get to experience it with a cool drink in your hand and a soft pillow behind you. The contrast makes the romance and hard-won hope in these books all the sweeter.
Mountains and High Country: Wild Romance in Thin Air
Maybe your dream escape includes pine forests, crisp air, and rugged peaks. Mountain and high-country Westerns offer logging camps, mining towns, and isolated ranches tucked into narrow valleys. Blizzards, rockslides, and treacherous passes raise the stakes for every trip into town and every rescue.
For readers, these stories feel like a chilly, invigorating vacation. You can enjoy snowbound cabins, crackling fires, and couples forced into close quarters, all while staying safely warm under your own blanket. That cozy contrast is one reason snowed-in and mountain romances are so popular.
Plains and Prairie: Quiet Strength and Community
If you prefer stories about building a life, the plains and prairie might be your favorite destination. Tall grass, scattered farmhouses, and small towns where everyone knows everyone create a quieter but deeply satisfying kind of Western setting.
These books are full of homesteaders, shopkeepers, schoolteachers, and ranchers forming friendships, facing down storms, and carving out a future. As an armchair traveler, you experience blizzards, droughts, and grass fires from a safe distance—and you get to attend church socials, picnics, and barn dances whenever you open the book.
If you like the idea of stepping straight from the present into the past, time-travel Western romances might be your favorite escape. A modern hero or heroine wakes up in a different century, suddenly dealing with danger, strict rules, and life without modern conveniences.
As a reader, you get both perspectives at once: the familiarity of a contemporary character reacting as you might, and the immersive richness of the historical West. That mix makes time-travel Westerns a particularly fun form of armchair travel—two eras for the price of one trip.
You can turn your reading time into a mini-vacation with just a few simple choices:
Pick a “destination”: Texas ranch, desert town, mountain cabin, or prairie homestead.
Create a little ritual: favorite blanket, drink, and reading spot.
Decide on a “stay”: one evening in a standalone or a whole “week away” with a series.
You can also organize your Western TBR pile by setting—read all the Texas stories in a row, then move on to desert or mountain books. Before long, you will have “visited” several regions of the Old West, all from your couch.
