This week is a special one for us at Pop Culture Happy Hour: we invited our pals Barrie Hardymon and Petra Mayer, along with the marvelous and hugely knowledgeable Sarah Wendell, who runs the romance web site Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.
Here's what you're really looking for if you're looking at this post: the list of recommendations, both authors and specific books (and a couple other things) that all of us (mostly Sarah) rattled off over the course of this show. So let's just get on with it.
Sonali Dev (A Bollywood Affair and the upcoming The Bollywood Bride)
Beverly Jenkins (and the Destiny trilogy)
Rochelle Alers
Kwana Jackson (again, @KwanaWrites — we got the wrong last name and said "Bradley"; we're so sorry — this is who Sarah meant to recommend, and it was a super lot of names in a short time)
Linda Holmes is a pop culture correspondent for NPR and the host of Pop Culture Happy Hour. She began her professional life as an attorney. In time, however, her affection for writing, popular culture, and the online universe eclipsed her legal ambitions. She shoved her law degree in the back of the closet, gave its living room space to DVD sets of The Wire, and never looked back.