Kick Off 2014 With These 14 New Books

Set in 19th century New York and San Francisco, Phillip Margulies's historical fiction Belle Cora tells the tragic, scandalous, and passionate story of a powerful madam and the love she never forgot.

Out Jan. 7

Cindy Chupack, a writer for Sex and the City and Modern Family, writes of her own relationship ups and downs in this witty collection of essays about her two husbands — the first turned out to be gay — The Longest Date: Life as a Wife.

Out Jan. 2

In The Light and the Dark, acclaimed Russian author Mikhail Shishkin enchants with an imaginative tale of two young lovers — separated by both space and time — as they exchange letters to keep their romance alive.

Out Jan. 7

Rowan Pelling pulls together a collection of short stories on the sexual appetite in Erotic Stories. As the description reads:

"The elegant depravity of an eighteenth-century French aristocrat, the dreamlike seductions of an Egyptian jinni in the form of a snake, the brutal anonymity of a highway truck-stop encounter — the stories in this richly varied collection reveal that the urge to articulate sexual desire is as inventive as it is timeless."

Out Jan. 7

Kirstin Chen's "foodie love story" Soy Sauce For Beginners follows a 30-year-old woman who leaves her marriage behind in San Francisco for her family home and soy sauce business in Singapore.

Out Jan. 7

In British journalist and novelist Louise Doughty's erotic thriller Apple Tree Yard, a married scientist gets involved in a dangerous affair that results in her and her lover being on trial for murder.

Out Jan. 14

Lara S. Ormiston's twist on the Jane Austen classic Unequal Affections: A Pride and Prejudice Retelling begins by wondering: what if Elizabeth had chosen to accept Mr. Darcy's original proposal?

Out Jan. 2

Ariel Lawhon's novel The Wife, The Maid, and The Mistress takes a real unsolved mystery of Old New York — Justice Joseph Crater's disappearance in 1930 — and explores it through the three most important women in the judge's life.

Out Jan. 28

Anna Quindlen's novel Still Life With Bread Crumbs tells the unlikely love story between a photographer reevaluating her life and the roofer she meets along the way.

Out Jan. 28

James Patterson incorporates some of his own life story in the romantic novel he wrote with Emily Raymond, First Love, about best friends who find love on a cross-country road trip.

Out Jan. 13

Ty Tashiro, a relationship expert for Discovery's Fit & Health channel, explores how you can find love using scientific methods in The Science of Happily Ever After: What Really Matters in the Quest For Enduring Love.

Out Jan. 28

Brian Payton's historical novel The Wind Is Not a River tells the love story of a journalist trapped in the Alaskan wilderness amid the Japanese invasion of World War II and his wife who won't give up hope that he's still alive.

Out Jan. 7

A forensic genealogist and her former crush, an ex-cop, reunite after more than a decade amongst dangerous circumstances in the romantic thriller River Road by Jayne Ann Krentz.

Out Jan. 7

Nicholas Shakespeare shares the heartbreaking and inspiring story of his aunt's hidden past in his work of narrative nonfiction Priscilla: The Hidden Life of an Englishwoman in Wartime France.

Out Jan. 7