That heart is believed to be the greatest weapon of the time - the secret to a constantly replenishing army. When Cornelius discovers Austrian soldier Johann at near death, he decides to work his magic on the other man by installing a clockwork heart. Cornelius Stevens is the bastard son of the leader of the French military, and a pacifist, as well as a 'tinker-surgeon,' specializing in mechanical body parts that give wounded soldiers a second chance at life. The French and Austrian empires are locked in battle, sending a stream of soldiers to war. In her steampunk romance, Clockwork Heart (Samhain paperback, $15.99), Heidi Cullinan deftly builds an alternate history, where Napoleon did not lose his wars to Britain and Russia. This is historical romance at its very best.

Jenkins does not shy away from the challenges that Eddy and Rhine and all black Americans face in the 1870s, and the truth of their journey makes this romance even more powerful when Rhine must reveal the truth to be worthy of Eddy's love. The history is rich and thorough, and the cast of secondary characters are wonderfully - sometimes brutally - honest. However, when he meets Eddy Carmichael, a black woman who was born free, everything he believes is thrown into chaos. Light-skinned, Rhine is able to pass as white, and he does so, building an empire in the Nevada desert and working to help the African American community from his position of power. Her latest, Forbidden (Avon paperback, $7.99), begins with Union soldier Rhine Fontaine standing in the ashes of the Georgia plantation house where he was born a slave, son to a brutal master. It's possible that no one sets the scene for romance better than Beverly Jenkins, in part because her love stories evolve in a time and place that often feels bleak and without hope: She writes African American romance stories of the Civil War and Reconstruction eras.

Clockwork Heart by Heidi Cullinan