Nobody to smooch this Valentine’s Day? Curl up with a book from June Lee’s round-up of novels with notalways- sappy endings, for both girls and boys In February, there’s love in the air – and on TV. And in restaurants. And in malls. In fact, just about everywhere you look. Of course, bookstores are not exempt from Valentine’s clutches, so expect to be inundated with more romantic novels than usual, with the added bonus of wedding guides and relationship guidance books. In the chick-lit corner, we have a slew of modern romance novels. But if you’re thinking Danielle Steel, think again – a new sub-genre (which began with Bridget Jones’s Diary in 1996) has taken flight. Giddy with girl power, new authors deliver romance with a strong dose of emancipation and reinterpretations of happiness. 

If you’re getting over a break-up, pick up No Strings Attached (Review, $15.95) by Clare Dowling. What happens when romance wears off, and an Irish wedding goes awry? As expected from the author of My Fabulous Divorce and Fast Forward, this book makes sharp observations about marriage and jumping to conclusions. Through the tribulations of three couples – protagonist Judy and her errant fiancé Barry, her brother and her best friend, and Judy’s parents – there is a poignant sense that love is not the solution to everything. 

First-time novelist and longtime UK television producer Jane Fallon also delivers a tale of breaking up in Getting Rid of Matthew (Penguin UK, $19.50). Tired of being his mistress for four years, Helen decides to leave Matthew, her lover (and boss) – just as he decides to leave his wife Sophie and her two daughters to move in with Helen. A sparkling series of desperate moves by Helen ensues – not shaving armpits, making friends with Sophie, making out with Matthew’s son, getting a new identity – but the tale is really about honesty, and discovering the things in life that hold you back. We’re not sure if Fallon’s real-life partner, comedian Ricky Gervais, had a hand in the book, but the comic timing is impeccably fresh. 

As suggested by its title, Kate Harrison’s The Self-Preservation Society (Orion, $30.95) is about taking care of yourself above all others, and is by and large a fluffy chick-lit read about anti-heroine Jo and her equally boring, safe boyfriend. Weighing in at a hefty 370 pages, Jo’s journey is a colourful romp through her UK childhood, and a slow realisation of what it takes to be an independent, spontaneous woman. 

Divas Don’t Knit (Bloomsbury, $31.95) by Gil McNeil treads the same path, in the story of another Jo who loses her cheating husband, and moves to a small UK seaside town. McNeil enjoyed success with her previous tale, The Only Boy For Me, and this paperback similarly brings children into the picture. 

Spare yourself the pain, and love inanimate objects instead in The Chocolate Run (Sphere, $16.95) by Dorothy Koomson. The journalist-turnedauthor has had a slew of bestsellers, including The Cupid Effect, and this one is another crowd-pleaser. Dealing with a one-night stand, effervescent Amber has to learn to deal with the effects of disastrous love choices in her family and her own life. 

Guys need not despair. Just as you’ve got Maxim and FHM to answer to Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire, there’s man-lit to keep you from doing something rash. (Say, drunk-dialling your ex, or going out with that crazy bird you dumped after one date because she wanted to move in.) Stay in and devour Chelsea Cain’s Heart Sick (Macmillan, $30.80), a terrifying thriller about a female serial killer who plays cat-and-mouse with detective Archie, in a gender-reversal of Silence of the Lambs. Gretchen ensures that Archie remains obsessed with her by carving a heart on his chest, and cracking six of his ribs. Told from Archie’s perspective as he joins the hunt for a new serial killer, this is not for the squeamish. 

For more psychological insights, Emily Perkins’s no-less-chilling Novel About My Wife (Bloomsbury, price TBA) is published in May, and promises to be one of the year’s most intimate novels told from a man’s point of view. The story traces the relationship between Tom, who loves his wife Ann despite her increasing phobias – after buying their first house and expecting a child, a sense of impending, nameless threats seems to hang over their marriage. 

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Faber & Faber, $29.95) by Junot Díaz is for all the boys who’ve ever left secondary school without experiencing their first kiss. In fact, the eponymous hero leaves college a virgin. Fiercely tragic, yet with a lyricism that’s earned first-time novelist Díaz rave worldwide reviews, Oscar is an unforgettable character, and this book a potent hymn to love and relationships. 

For the ultimate literary Valentine’s read, join postmodern master novelist Mario Vargas Llosa as he reinvents Madame Bovary in his latest, the imaginative The Bad Girl (Faber & Faber, $29.95). First encountering the titular girl in the Peruvian capital of Lima, protagonist Ricardo is fated to love her in all her incarnations over the next few decades: an activist en route to Cuba, the wife of a UNESCO official, a ‘Japanese’ mistress. Capturing the intellectual landscape of the ’60s and beyond, the Latin American author allows his maddening bad-girl muse and the lovelorn good boy to drift through intense, fleeting, obsessive love affairs that characterise our restless, hedonistic modern world. 

Dishing out love : Our favourite books with ‘love’ in the title 

The Food of Love Wendy Hutton (Marshall Cavendish Cuisine, $45) The doyenne of Singapore cuisine, Hutton wrote the definitive Singapore Food cookbook in 1979, and since then she’s been collecting hard-to-find recipes for this ultimate tome of Eurasian recipes. You would have to love food as much as this freelance writer to want to attempt some of the admittedly tedious items here, but it’s worth it for dishes that span four centuries of the Eurasian communities. It follows the spice trail from Goa to Malacca, with dalliances in Macau and Java, showing how chorizo and Worcestershire sauce became incorporated into our grandmothers’ beloved dishes, and vice versa of how vindaloo and bergedels took on Western cuisines. 

You Don’t Love Me Yet Jonathan Lethem (Faber & Faber, $15.95) This is the latest surreal drama from the genre-bending American author, who has dabbled previously in science fiction, magic and Americana. This time around, enjoy a glorious combination of music, slackers and sex in Los Angeles, centred around bass player Lucinda, who is bewitched by an anonymous caller. Lethem deftly weaves in issues of plagiarism, and has famously given away the movie rights to this novel – read it before the movie comes out. 

An Hour to Live, An Hour to Love Richard Carlson and Kristine Carlson (Hodder & Stoughton, $18.60) For true romantics, grieving souls and even the pessimists, here’s a small, inspiring book to bring on the tears (of the good sort). Carlson, best-selling author of Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff died suddenly of pulmonary embolism in December 2006, leaving behind 25 years of love letters to his wife Kristine. Reflective without being sappy, Kristine pens her own thoughts as she shares Richard’s words from their 18th anniversary, and discovers that to love someone is to love life at the same time.