a list of leitmotifs

[fiefoe]

... mined from romance books.

The genre is not shy about having attractive leads, even though one can't always count on both in the pair having angelic and/or sinful looks. Authors who gravitate towards certain physical types are easy to spot:
Jude Deveraux's Cinderellas are petite yet well-endowed.
Jennifer Crusie's women tend to bear resemblance with a kewpie doll. (They are also often hung up on mutts.)

Beyond the physical:
Joan Wolf's characters are unfailingly horse-mad and well-versed in Shakespeare.
Carla Kelly has a thing for middle-aged soldiers not in the best physical shape.
Susan Elizabeth Phillips goes for wounded wild girls.
Laura London dotes on girls whose naivete defies laws of nature.
Judith Ivory gives specific locations starring roles: Paris in the 20s, an ocean-liner, Dartmoor. (Yihua accuses her of a mind-numbing 'bombardment of words', while I prefer to say her style is informed by Victorian aesthetics.)
Kathleen Gilles Seidel's books are almost excuses to explore unusual professions: "Summer's End" (figure skating), "You Will Remember This" (dry excavation), "Again" (daytime soaps). (Speaking of which, why hasn't anyone picked up her idea of a Regency soap-opera? BBC, hello?)

Lastly, Yihua rightly points out that Laura Kinsale's special preserve is sanity-challenged people. In "Flowers From the Storm", the mathematical duke is literally sent to Bedlam. In "My Sweet Folly", the man's madness is induced by poison. The girl in "Uncertain Magic" is so plagued by her witchery that she is constantly out of her head. Other characters with wrinkles in their psychological makeup can be found in "Seize the Fire", "The Shadow and the Star", and her latest "The Shadow Heart".