High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Irish Thoroughbred, Nora Roberts`s debut novel, was originally published by Silhouette in January 1981 as a category romance. Like other category romances, the novel was less than 200 pages and was intended to be on sale for only one month. It proved so popular that it was repackaged as a stand-alone romance and reprinted multiple times. Roberts wrote two sequels, Irish Rebel and Irish Rose.