My Love Affair with Nurse Novels

More than fifteen years ago, in a small antique store in rural Maine, I came across a small handful of overlooked paperbacks with titles like Society Nurse, Nurse in Yucatan, and, that enduring classic, Surf Safari Nurse. I grabbed them all up, thinking they would be good for a laugh, but when I actually started reading them, I found out how incredibly rewarding they can be. There’s the outdated medicine (especially intriguing if you actually are a nurse!), campy dialogue, fabulous cover illustrations, and bizarre plot twists. Most importantly, the nurse-heroines are usually smart, competent, and strong, women who can stand up to—or win over—condescending doctors, irritable patients, and evil co-workers. Times haven’t changed all that much, it seems!

Eager to share these neglected gems, I started blogging reviews of the books I’d read and collecting more titles. Now, having published more than 500 book reviews and owning what may be the world’s largest collection of vintage nurse romance novels (more than 700 books), I can credibly be called unbalanced at best.

And like all obsessed fans, I hope to keep growing the number of people who love nurse novels as much as I do. So I’ve plucked out the best of them, hunted down the rights to publish them, and foisted them on an unsuspecting public. Once you have tasted their joys, I think you will agree that nurse novels deserve so much more than a dusty, neglected corner in an antique store.

Susannah Clark
Founder of Nurse Novels Publishing