Nora Roberts (born 1950) is an American novelist best known for romance, romantic suspense and family sagas. Born Eleanor Marie Robertson in Maryland, she began writing during a snowstorm in 1979 and published her first novel, Irish Thoroughbred, in 1981. She has since become one of the world’s most prolific popular novelists, with more than 250 novels and over 500 million copies of her books in print. She also writes the long-running futuristic In Death crime series under the name J. D. Robb. Most of Roberts’s fiction is contemporary romance, suspense, fantasy or paranormal fiction rather than historical fiction.
Her clear historical fiction is concentrated in two early MacGregor stories. Rebellion is a historical romance set during the Jacobite Rising of 1745, following Scottish Serena MacGregor and the English aristocrat Brigham Langston as the MacGregor family becomes involved in the Jacobite cause and the conflict between Scotland and the Hanoverian government. In from the Cold moves the family story to the American Revolution: Ian MacGregor, a revolutionary and minuteman injured after the Boston Tea Party, is sheltered by Irish widow Alanna Flynn, whose concern for her family conflicts with Ian’s commitment to rebellion. These are the two Roberts books I would classify as straightforward historical novels for your collection; the remainder of the MacGregor series is contemporary, and her time-travel, paranormal and fantasy stories should not be included merely because they contain historical elements.
