Thanks to William Shakespeare’s OG status as a master wordsmith, his plays are de rigueur in high school and college classrooms alike. And so, of course, are his penis jokes.

Disguises, hidden identities, and gender-bending have been tropes in romance practically since the genre was invented! What better way to add tension to a plot than to have the two people falling in love unknowingly—or knowingly, with great deception—with someone without knowing who they truly are. Here are a few of my favorites.

Sometimes a book comes along that makes you stop and say, “Geez, this author must have done a crazy amount of research.” Like Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Marriage Plot (all that yeast!) or Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News (all those knots!). Gifted writers can supply an enormous amount of technical information seamlessly and without making it feel […]