Welcome to September, the month of school buses, homework struggles, and sports, and the gateway to all things pumpkin spice. For those who live at my house (two rowdy children we call Turbo and Lunchbox, me, and my former-Marine husband), the next few weeks will be busy as we find out what middle school is like (Turbo) and progress into the solidity and comfort of mid-elementary school that is third grade (Lunchbox).

Every year at this time, I find myself becoming sentimental. I have thoughts about how many more “first days” we have, and look at the backpacks in the living room and lunchboxes on my counter, becoming wistful even about the mess.

I think about what it means to be a family, and what I want my children to take with them when they leave our house in just a few years, what messages I hope to instill in their hearts as they head out into the world.

And I realize that what I want them to learn is intimately connected to what my books — both the romance novels I write and those books I love to read — are about.

Let’s step back for a second. Sure, romance novels can be about relationships between two or more people, and they can involve dating and sex and witty, flirtatious banter, and my books have some of that, absolutely.

But I tend to reach for something else in every one of the stories I write, and it’s the same thing I like to read about. It’s that thing I want my children to learn about. My favorite books are about building strong families. They’re about finding a place to call home and feeling safe and secure in that place.

I want my kids to learn the same thing many of my characters learn — that the key to being happy lies in finding a place you belong, and that home doesn’t have to be the house where you grew up. Home is the place you are accepted and loved for yourself, and family is the people who love you and help you become the very best version of you.

Though the books I write are always about those things, and they are definitely romances, I have a few recommendations for other books I’ve read lately that embrace these same concepts. I present my fall reading list here. Grab a pumpkin-spiced treat in honor of the season, and pick up one of these great books about finding family:

1. Come Sundown by Nora Roberts. This book has a romantic plotline, but it also has a mystery at its heart and a well-wrought family dynamic that makes me want to seek out the Montana ranch where it all takes place and see if they might adopt me into their warm, complicated family for a month or two.
2. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. I might be late to the Neil Gaiman game, but my kids and I loved this quirky book about a boy raised by ghosts and other supernatural creatures in a graveyard. Inside of that unique setting, Gaiman finds room to deal with the themes of friendship, romance, and, most of all, what it means to find a family and a home.
3. How to Stop Time by Matt Haig. I loved this book, which featured a man who didn’t age at the same rate as others trying to find a sense of belonging in a world where he definitely didn’t fit in. There was a satisfying love story — a couple of them, actually — and a clear message about finding family, too.
4. The Nightingale by Kristen Hannah. I’m sure I’m the last person on Earth to read this one, but this WWII story had my attention and my heart from the beginning as I followed the stories of sisters in a fractured family finding their way together amid war and devastating loss.

Delancey Stewart is the award-winning author of numerous contemporary romance and chick-lit novels. A former travel writer, personal trainer, and wine-seller, she's happy to have finally discovered what she wants to be when she grows up. Stewart has held a board position with the DC Chapter of Romance Writers of America, and founded the St. Mary's County Chapter of the Maryland Writer's Association. She lives with her husband and two sons in Southern Maryland, where she spends her non-writing time kayaking, socializing, and finding her next favorite wine.

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