Book picks similar to
Tainted Crown by G.N. Wright
dark-romance
novellas
novella
dark
Bad Boys Break Hearts
Micalea Smeltzer - 2020
Rich. Hotter than sin. The campus’s reigning bad boy. We knew each other once upon a time, but even if I’m named after a princess, it doesn’t mean my life is a fairytale. My plan is to keep my head down, get my degree, and leave this town.But the moment Mascen Wade recognizes me all my carefully laid plans come crumbling down. He’s decided he wants to make my life a living hell. But I’m not so easy to push around and won’t put up with his bully playground antics. Too bad for me I’ve never been able to resist him.
Last Gift
Jessica Clare - 2013
It's about 7500 words of holiday goodness.
Mayhem
Becca Steele - 2021
Takes place approximately one year before the events of The Lies We Tell.I thought I was finally done with Elijah Ripley. My former tormentor, the boy with the dark hair, the cruel mouth, and the black soul, had left Alstone behind for good. Or so I thought. I was wrong. Now he’s back, and I know that he’ll never be done with me. It’s Halloween. A night when everything will change. A night of mayhem.Available for free from Becca Steele's website.
Vital Sign
J.L. Mac - 2014
My little world was bright. I had no complaints. My perfectly simple life made the fall from grace that much more devastating. I plummeted from the heavenly little bubble that I shared with Jake. I fell fast and hard straight into the fiery pits of hell. The knowledge of how things used to be is a bittersweet torture that refuses me even one moment of respite. I live in a painful reverie that I can’t escape. I had it good once.That’s gone now. All of it disappeared like vapor into the ether. I’m a lost woman, wandering through grief and struggling to come to terms with my new title: widow. My family says I need understanding and closure. I say a cigarette and a bottle of wine is a much better option for instant gratification.I’m the awkward, depressed one standing in the corner making everyone around me miserably uncomfortable. I’m the one with vacant eyes that society strives to help but can’t. I’m the one who hands out tight smiles and derisive snorts. I’m the widow adrift in this world with no direction. No meaning. No hope. No vital sign.***Sadie sets out on a journey to healing without knowing that things will get far worse before they get better. Despite her general indifference to organ donation, she finds herself on a journey to seek out the only people who benefited from her husband’s tragic death.Resentment runs rampant as she meets the thriving organ recipients. Anger and jealousy spiral, sending the delicate structure of Sadie’s emotions into a tailspin.Alexander McBride got a second chance—one that he didn’t necessarily want. Alexander is a game changer for Sadie. She hates him for his health but can’t help feeling at home in his presence. He soothes her grief in a way that is intoxicating, addictive even.The heart that once fell in love with her now resides in Alexander McBride’s chest. It’s a circumstance that forces her to wage an internal war fueled by grief, anger, guilt, love, lust, and loyalty.Sadie must discover the things that are vital to going on with her life if she has any hope of finding her way through the all-consuming grief that dominates every waking moment.
Frivolous
Veronica Lancet - 2021
He belongs in the shadows. The boogeyman has a name. Bastiano "Bass" DeVille. A killing machine.Loyal to his famiglia, there's nothing Bass wouldn't do in his don's name. Including accepting his latest mission. Ruin Gianna Guerra. Sounds simple enough. For a man with his past, Gianna represents everything he hates about high society and frivolous women. She's spoiled, nasty, and downright mean. She's also incredibly beautiful and every man's walking wet dream.And he's not immune.When he finds out the terrifying secret she's been hiding for years, Bass becomes conflicted between his mission and the girl that awakens all his protective instincts.But what if it's too late?When plans have already been set in motion and mistakes have been made, can Bass convince Gianna to give him another chance? One mission. One girl's ruin. One man's path to redemption.
Beauty Tempts the Beast
Mink - 2020
Helen. She seems innocent and sweet, but she comes from a family that left me scarred and broken. Taking her will be the pinnacle of my vengeance. So I do. But once I have her -- I can’t seem to continue with my plan.This has never happened... I’ve killed without remorse, taken revenge again and again on any who wronged me. But when it comes to Helen, I can’t bear to see her so much as break a nail, which happens with a frightening frequency given her adorable clumsiness. So I keep her. And I protect her. And before I know it -- I love her.But her family isn’t the sort to let anything or anyone go. I’ll have to fight to keep her, but will my beauty decide to stay with her beast -- or leave and break my heart?*-*MINK's Note: Who doesn't love a tale as old as time, made so much better with a kitty and a coffee, and a beast who would do anything for the beauty he loves?
Immoral Confessions
R. Holmes - 2021
Augustine’s very own fallen angel had me in his hold and he wasn’t giving up until I was ruined.I was a snitch. A liar. A pawn.He was cruel. Merciless. The King.Together, we were fated for destruction.And where there are secrets and untruths… there are demons lurking beyond the shadows.
Don't Kiss the Bride
Carian Cole - 2021
He was my own personal hero who seemed to be in all the right places at the right times. Like when my car broke down and I needed a ride home, and when I face planted on the sidewalk right in front of him and had to be taken to the emergency room.Those weren’t exactly my best moments, but they were his. We became friends, and it didn’t matter that he was sixteen years older than me. We had a lot in common—like our love of old rock music and vintage fast cars, and our aversion to relationships.When he approached me with a crazy idea to help me out, I couldn’t say no.The arrangement was supposed to be temporary. A marriage on paper and nothing else.It should’ve been easy, but it wasn’t.Because here I am, eighteen years-old, still in high school, and married to a man I was never supposed to fall in love with.We had just one rule—no kissing the bride.But we broke that rule, and it sealed our fate forever.
These Monstrous Ties
K.V. Rose - 2019
He was Lucifer.Halloween night, one year ago, I sold my soul to the devil. Complete with a blood rite and everything. I had less than nothing. He promised me the world. And then he disappeared, taking my heart with him. But now, he’s the one with everything to lose. A family. A name. A reputation. I’ve still got nothing, but I’m clawing my way to the top, one body at a time. This Halloween, things are going to be different. This Halloween, ‘Lilith’ is coming to take what’s hers. Book 1 of the Unsainted series. Dark romance, only suitable for those 18+.
Scorned Princess
Eva Chance - 2021
Marry a man I might eventually love, forge an alliance between his gang and my father's, and get out from under Dad's sadistic thumb.Turns out my fiancé has other plans. Like slaughtering me and my entire family the night before the wedding.I make it out alive, left with nothing but a thirst for vengeance. But if I want to crush the prick who betrayed me, I have to turn to the biggest pricks of them all.Hot, cocky, and dangerous, Wylder Noble and his men rule Paradise Bend. Their help doesn't come cheap. I've got to prove I'm strong enough to deserve it.Whatever they throw at me, I can take it. No taunting words or scorching looks will break the wall around my heart.They think I'm made of glass? I'm a girl of shards that can cut you to the bone.Before this is over, someone's going to bleed. And this time, it won't be me.*Scorned Princess is the first in a new gritty contemporary romance series from bestselling author Eva Chase (writing as Eva Chance) and Harlow King. No major triggers, but be prepared for domineering men who make their own rules, a rebellious heroine who's not afraid to get her hands dirty, and an enemies-to-lovers romance where the girl gets all the guys. It's going to be a wild, bloody ride!*
Hush Hush
Lucia Franco - 2019
Don’t get close to the clients. The dark and glamorous lifestyle of the rich and shameless open my eyes to a lavish world of sin and wealth, and a man I can’t have. A man I desperately want—James Riviera. We're treading a fine line as we live the ultimate double life until we make a startling discovery that tests both our loyalties. I only had to follow the rules, but rules are meant to be broken.
The Bet
J.L. Beck - 2019
“Yeah, so was I but you seem to have forgotten that part of your life.” The bet was simple. You draw a name from the hat. That’s the girl you have to seduce. The girl you have to make fall head over heels in love with you. It wasn’t hard for me to do, in fact, it was something I did all the time. I was known for breaking hearts. Sex was just that, sex. And it didn’t take me very long to get a woman on her back. And then I drew her name: Jules Peterson. My former best friend. My first kiss. My first love. She shattered my heart into a million pieces three years ago. She left me right when I needed her most. And as fate who have it, she had entered my life once again, at almost the perfect time. She was a transfer, fresh meat, and she had just put a target on her back. It was my turn to make her pay. It was my turn to break her heart. Holding onto that hate, that anger, that f*cking heartbreak. It does something to you. It breaks you, and it broke me, it tainted me, just like I would do to Jules. She used to be my everything, but now she was nothing but The Bet. **The Bet is book one in the North Woods University series. It is a full length, standalone, novel. It contains adult themes, and content not suitable for all readers. It is NOT a young adult novel.**Dear Reader, We're so happy that you are thinking about reading our newest book The Bet. We hope you enjoy it to your fullest and we cannot wait to read your reviews on it. However, we wanted to leave a little note to warn readers with sensitivity to dubious content, sexual themes, and verbal abuse. For those readers, this book may not be a good read for them. We also would like to say that while the book is entirely fiction we know that abuse, sexual, physical, and verbal is a very real thing in our world and that we do NOT condone any behavior of that nature nor do we think that it's okay to treat someone that way. Just like the makers of gory horror movies dont actually want people to be brutally murdered, we do not want anyone to be bullied or abused in any way.Again, this is fiction and while we don't always agree with the things our fictional characters do, sometimes it works for a story line. As writers, it is our job to draw out real emotions. Sometimes we will make you fall in love with a character and other times we might have you yelling at the book. With love, J.L. Beck & C. Hallman
All About You
Joanna Mazurkiewicz - 2014
I drag him down a road of humiliation and pain to try to cope with what his brother did to me. A few months after Christian’s passing, Oliver leaves town, and for the next two years, he is absent from my life. The demons claw their way back in, and I must learn to live with the secret that has destroyed me. Now I’m starting a new life, away from Gargle and away from my past, but everything crashes when I see Oliver the first day at university. It’s clear that many things have changed since we’ve been apart. Now he is captain of the rugby team and the most popular bloke on campus. Then he makes a bet and gives me an ultimatum: I leave Braxton forever and start somewhere else, or I stay and play his game… because he’s never forgotten that it was me who ruined his life two years ago.
Tramp
Mary Elizabeth - 2020
After fleeing a tragic past, Lydia’s determined never to go back to the life she left behind at any price. She lands in Grand Haven, California—a city booming with billion dollar corporations and tech money—and everything changes. Armed with the only lesson she learned from her mother, Lydia builds a life of routine, solitude, and success. Nothing is out of reach when you’re beautiful. Nearly a decade after her arrival, Lydia's the highest paid escort in the city, and only the most influential people in Grand Haven can get near her. She's a goddess among her clients, and out of reach to everyone else. Lydia's created the perfect illusion, and no one will take it from her again.Until a misunderstanding lands her in the office of the city’s most eligible bachelor. Talent Ridge is Grand Haven royalty. Despite running in the same circles as Lydia’s clients, he’s scandal-free and on his way to being the most powerful man in the area. Their chemistry is undeniable, but a relationship has the potential to destroy everything they’ve worked for. Especially when Lydia is running from her past, and Talent is running toward a future she can never be a part of. Beauty and money can’t save them this time. Are Lydia and Talent willing to give it all up for each other, or will their differences cost too much?
Sweet Sin
Sav R. Miller
It ends in a cliffhanger, to be resolved in Promises and Pomegranates. The book follows Kal and Elena's story. Sweet Sin is a dark mafia romance and has content some might find triggering. It is not suitable for all audiences. This is not a safe romance. Reader discretion advised.