That starts with the setting, which is not Regency England but Strassburg during the Plague, continues with the protagonists, namely a Christian daughter of a local noble and a Jewish apprentice physician, and ends with the plot, which reads not at all like a Romance story set against a historic background but more like a historical novel with a Romantic love story at its centre.

Samuel is a devoted long-distance walker who has hiked the Camino de Santiago in Spain and to the top of Pikes Peak in her hometown of Colorado Springs.įor more information about Barbara O’Neal, visit her website of Spices is very much not your run-of-the-mill historical romance novel.

Three of those novels have also won the RITA award.

Under Barbara Samuel, she has published 5 novels of women’s fiction, published by Ballantine Books, and 7 novels of historical fiction, published by Harper/Avon.

Category contemporary romances as Ruth Wind (Jezebel’s Blues, The Last Chance Ranch).

Historical romances as Barbara Samuel (A Bed of Spices, Heart of a Knight).

Contemporary women’s fiction as Barbara Samuel (No Place Like Home, Lady Luck’s Map of Vegas).

Contemporary women’s fiction, as Barbara O’Neal (Lost Recipe for Happiness, more).

Her work is published in several distinct genres and pseudonyms:.

Barbara Samuel has been writing novels of various sorts for two decades, collecting six RITAs, two Colorado Book Awards, Favorite Book of the Year from Romance Writers of America, and dozens of others.

She lives with her partner, a British endurance athlete, and their collection of cats and dogs, in Colorado Springs. Her novels have been published widely in Europe and Australia, and she travels internationally, presenting workshops, hiking hundreds of miles, and of course, eating.

She sold her first novel in her twenties, and has since won a plethora of awards, including two Colorado Book Awards and six prestigous RITAs, including one for THE LOST RECIPE FOR HAPPINESS in 2010. Barbara Samuel (O’Neal) fell in love with food and restaurants at the age of fifteen, when she landed a job in a Greek café and served baklava for the first time.

A Bed of Spices by Barbara Samuel