Paranormal Romance

The Gothic romance was always half in love with the supernatural, from brooding lords in haunted houses to the ghosts of earlier wives. Anne Rice's vampires, from 1976 on, made the monster itself seductive and sympathetic. Paranormal romance took both inheritances and put them under the rules of the romance genre: the love story is the plot, and it ends happily.

The modern subgenre took off in the 1990s. Christine Feehan's Dark Prince (1999) introduced her Carpathians, an ancient race searching for their lifemates, and the “fated mate” became one of the form's defining tropes. Sherrilyn Kenyon's Fantasy Lover (2002) launched the Dark-Hunter series and a shared world that ran for dozens of books.

The mid-2000s were the peak. J. R. Ward's Dark Lover (2005) began the Black Dagger Brotherhood, and Kresley Cole, Nalini Singh, Jeaniene Frost and Karen Marie Moning all launched long series between 2006 and 2007. Stephenie Meyer's Twilight (2005) brought the form to teenage readers, and much of today's romantasy grew from the audience these books built.

Expect a series built around a family, clan or brotherhood, with each book following a different couple to their happy ending while a larger supernatural conflict runs in the background. Readers often follow a favourite side character for several books until it's their turn.

The heroes tend to be powerful, protective and dangerous; the heroines, more and more, are dangerous too. Tropes such as fated mates, forbidden species pairings and immortal-meets-mortal are central, and heat levels are usually high.