Virtue & Vanity


Astrid Jane Ray - 2016
    On the surface, her rich and beautiful husband is the embodiment of every girl’s dream, but Isabelle will learn just how deceiving looks can be. By the time she discovers there is real danger hidden behind those captivating green eyes and thick layers of sophisticated appearance, it is too late to escape Sebastian’s cruelty. Without a thread of compassion, he shows her the true meaning of hell, making it abundantly clear her fragile feelings mean nothing to him. But life has strange ways of playing with one’s fate. In an intriguing turn of events, the same man who had once shattered her to pieces, suddenly starts treating her with extreme care and swears there will be no more pain. Isabelle has been tricked too many times to believe him, but the devil she bargained with refuses to give up on his mission to earn her forgiveness as well as her heart. While Sebastian unfolds from a monster into Prince Charming right before her eyes, Isabelle finds herself falling under his spell and getting closer to making a choice that might be fatal for both of them.

The Companion


Katie Alender - 2020
    Lucky to survive the horrible accident that killed her family. Lucky to have her own room because she wakes up screaming every night. And finally, lucky to be chosen by a prestigious family to live at their remote country estate. But it wasn't luck that made the Suttons rescue Margot from her bleak existence at the group home. Margot was hand-picked to be a companion to their silent, mysterious daughter, Agatha. At first, helping with Agatha - and getting to know her handsome older brother - seems much better than the group home. But soon, the isolated, gothic house begins playing tricks on Margot’s mind, making her question everything she believes about the Suttons... and herself. Margot’s bad dreams may have stopped when she came to live with Agatha – but the real nightmare has just begun.

The Escape Room


Megan Goldin - 2019
    Your goal is simple. Get out alive.In the lucrative world of finance, Vincent, Jules, Sylvie, and Sam are at the top of their game. They’ve mastered the art of the deal and celebrate their success in style―but a life of extreme luxury always comes at a cost.Invited to participate in an escape room challenge as a team-building exercise, the ferociously competitive co-workers crowd into the elevator of a high-rise building, eager to prove themselves. But when the lights go off and the doors stay shut, it quickly becomes clear that this is no ordinary competition: they’re caught in a dangerous game of survival.Trapped in the dark, the colleagues must put aside their bitter rivalries and work together to solve cryptic clues to break free. But as the game begins to reveal the team’s darkest secrets, they realize there’s a price to be paid for the terrible deeds they committed in their ruthless climb up the corporate ladder. As tempers fray, and the clues turn deadly, they must solve one final chilling puzzle: which one of them will kill in order to survive?

The Good Daughter


Karin Slaughter - 2017
    One runs for her life. One is left behind.Twenty-eight years ago, Charlotte and Samantha Quinn's happy small-town family life was torn apart by a terrifying attack on their family home. It left their mother dead. It left their father—Pikeville's notorious defense attorney—devastated. And it left the family fractured beyond repair, consumed by secrets from that terrible night.Twenty-eight years later, Charlotte has followed in her father's footsteps to become a lawyer herself—the ideal good daughter. But when violence comes to Pikeville again, and a shocking tragedy leaves the whole town traumatized, Charlotte is plunged into a nightmare. Not only is she the first witness on the scene, but it's a case that unleashes the terrible memories she's spent so long trying to suppress--because the shocking truth about the crime that destroyed her family nearly thirty years ago won't stay buried forever. Packed with twists and turns, brimming with emotion and heart, The Good Daughter is fiction at its most thrilling.

The Forgotten Ones


Steena Holmes - 2018
    She’s managed to piece together a solid life from a childhood of broken memories and fairy tales her mom told her to explain away bad dreams. But weekly visits to her mother still fill Elle with a paralyzing fear she can’t explain. It’s just another of so many unanswered questions she grew up with in a family estranged by silence and secrets.Elle’s world turns upside down when she receives a deathbed request from her grandfather, a man she was told had died years ago. Racked by grief, regrets, and a haunted conscience, he has a tale of his own to tell Elle: about her mother, an imaginary friend, and two strangers who came to the house one night and never left.As Elle’s past unfolds, so does the truth—if she can believe it. She must face the reasons for her inexplicable dread. As dark as they are, Elle must listen…before her grandfather’s death buries the family’s secrets forever.

Waterfall Effect


K.K. Allen - 2018
    Allen comes a new and suspenseful small town mountain romance.Lost in the shadows of a tragedy that stripped Aurora June of everything she once loved, she’s back in the small town of Balsam Grove, North Carolina, ready to face all she’s kept locked away for seven years. Or so she thinks.As one of the victims of a string of mysterious disappearances in the small, picturesque Appalachian Mountain town, darkness has become her home—her safe blanket when the world reveals its true colors. But as the walls of darkness start to move in on her, she knows the only way to free herself from her past is to face it, head-on. She just needs to figure out how.Upon arrival, Aurora isn’t expecting her first collision to be with the boy she left all those years ago. The boy who betrayed her trust with no regrets. The boy who is no longer a boy, but a man with the same stormy eyes that swept her into his current before she ever learned to swim.She’d thought he was safe. He’d thought their path was mapped out. Turns out neither of them was ready for the crash at the bottom of the cascade.

They Never Learn


Layne Fargo - 2020
    But she’s even better at getting away with murder.Every year, she searches for the worst man at Gorman University and plots his well-deserved demise. Thanks to her meticulous planning, she’s avoided drawing attention to herself—but as she’s preparing for her biggest kill yet, the school starts probing into the growing body count on campus. Determined to keep her enemies close, Scarlett insinuates herself into the investigation and charms the woman in charge, Dr. Mina Pierce. Everything’s going according to her master plan… until she loses control with her latest victim, putting her secret life at risk of exposure.Meanwhile, Gorman student Carly Schiller is just trying to survive her freshman year. Finally free of her emotionally abusive father, all Carly wants is to focus on her studies and fade into the background. Her new roommate has other ideas. Allison Hadley is cool and confident—everything Carly wishes she could be—and the two girls quickly form an intense friendship. So when Allison is sexually assaulted at a party, Carly becomes obsessed with making the attacker pay... and turning her fantasies about revenge into a reality.

Stolen


Jay Marie - 2015
    It contains violence, mature and explicit content and non-consensual/dubious, graphic sexual activity that some readers may find upsetting. This is a dark erotic thriller, not to be confused with a dark romance. HERThis was never supposed to happen to me. I was smart. I was strong. I was a fucking first degree black belt for fuck's sake, but none of that mattered. Not when you're out-gunned and outnumbered. I was stolen from my life and thrown into the dark and hollow depths of human trafficking. But it’s not all glitter and rainbows...especially when it comes to him. He wants me beaten. He wants me broken. But most importantly, he just wants me and that's the scariest thing of all. I won't let him win. I won't let him break me. I'll come back like steel every time. Because in the end, what doesn't kill me will only make me stronger...HIMI'm not a very nice guy. I'm a terrible person in fact, but I'm not going to pretend to care. I have a billion-dollar empire to run that manifests carnage, blood, and money and I crave it all. Nothing ever got in my way, nothing stopped me. If I wanted something, I made it happen, that is until this damn red-head crawled into my life. Strong, defiant, and a mixed martial artist, she was everything I never expected to want in a woman. Breaking her down became an obsession as she'd always somehow pop back up like a damn weed I couldn't kill. It was addicting and it became harder and harder for me to pretend I didn't love the taste of her fire every time I covered her with my ice. I wanted more and I'll be damned if I didn't get it. Because in the end, I always get what I want. *NOTE: For every book that is sold, a portion of the proceeds will be donated to a charity that benefits victims of human trafficking.*

Ward


Zoe Blake - 2020
    Not anymore.He planned this before I even knew his name. He made the life I've always known vanish as if it never existed, and now I'm his helpless captive, forced to play my part in his sadistic fantasy.It could have been a fairytale... A wealthy, handsome Duke sweeps a poor orphan girl from America off her feet and brings her to a beautiful estate hidden away in the English countryside.But this isn't the Victorian era, and I'm not Richard Payne's bride or his guest. I'm his prisoner.I know it is all a sick, twisted game. But what I know doesn't matter. My delusions will be cured by pain and punishment and nothing will stop him from using me as shamefully as he pleases.I'm his ward now. Perhaps one day soon he'll have made me forget I was ever anything else...Publisher's Note: Ward includes spankings, rough sexual scenes, intense and humiliating punishments, and strong D/s themes. If such material offends you, please don't buy this book.

Abuse


Nikki Sex - 2015
    It has been my joy and my great honor to help those who have lost their way. Not long after I began my journey, I met two such wounded souls. Renata Koreman, my little mouse. She came to me as a child—shy, mute, injured… broken. It took oh-so many years to start to bring her back to herself! Yet, I could not fully heal her. Years later, Grant Wilkinson, he too fell into my hands. The ex-Army Ranger was badly disfigured and saw himself as a monster. Isolated by secrets, solitary and self-contained, his colleagues affectionately named him ‘Frosty.’ Yet, how should one behave when besieged by a lifetime of confusion and guilt? The moment I saw him, I thought of her and I wondered. The eyes, they cannot always see clearly. And the heart? Ah, the heart can only guess at the truth. So it was that I remained uncertain. Could the mouse and the monster heal each other?

Whisper Down the Lane


Clay McLeod ChapmanClay McLeod Chapman - 2021
    For him, there is only the present: a new marriage to Tamara, a first chance at fatherhood to her son Elijah, and a quiet but pleasant life as an art teacher at Elijah’s elementary school in Danvers, Virginia. Then the body of a rabbit, ritualistically murdered, appears on the school grounds with a birthday card for Richard tucked beneath it. Richard doesn’t have a birthday—but Sean does . . .Sean is a five-year-old boy who has just moved to Greenfield, Virginia, with his mother. Like most mothers of the 1980s, she’s worried about bills, childcare, putting food on the table . . . and an encroaching threat to American life that can take the face of anyone: a politician, a friendly neighbor, or even a teacher. When Sean’s school sends a letter to the parents revealing that Sean’s favorite teacher is under investigation, a white lie from Sean lights a fire that engulfs the entire nation—and Sean and his mother are left holding the match.Now, thirty years later, someone is here to remind Richard that they remember what Sean did. And though Sean doesn’t exist anymore, someone needs to pay the price for his lies.

Enemies and Playmates


Darcia Helle - 2009
    Lauren Covington's family maintains a grand facade that belies the life they live behind closed doors. Alex Covington, Lauren's father, keeps a tight rein on his family through dominance, abuse, and obsessive control. Consequently, Lauren doesn't believe she could ever trust a man, much less fall in love with one. When Lauren meets Jesse Ryder, her carefully constructed protective wall shatters. She falls hopelessly and completely in love. It's only fitting that Jesse is a private detective who had once worked for her father, had defied him, and was now the subject of Alex Covington's wrath. Amidst devastating loss, betrayal, and her father's destructive pursuit of Jesse, Lauren finds the trust and love she had always longed for.

Precious and Fragile Things


Megan Hart - 2010
    But the machine has broken down. Burnt out by the endless days of crying children and menial tasks, and exhausted from always putting herself last, Gilly doesn't immediately consider the consequences when she's carjacked. With a knife to her throat, her first thought is that she'll finally get some rest. Someone can save "her" for a change.But salvation isn't so forthcoming. Stranded in a remote, snowbound cabin with this stranger, hours turn to days, days into weeks. As time forges a fragile bond between them, she learns her captor is not the lunatic she first believed, but a human being whose wasted life has been shaped by secrets and tragedy. Yet even as their connection begins to foster trust, Gilly knows she must never forget he's still a man teetering on the edge. One who just might take her with him.

The Caretakers


Eliza Maxwell - 2020
    But there’s no escaping the past in this chilling novel from the bestselling author of The Unremembered Girl. Filmmaker Tessa Shepherd helped free a man she believed was wrongly imprisoned for murder. When he kills again, Tessa’s life is upended.She’s reeling with guilt, her reputation destroyed. Worse, Tessa’s mother has unexpectedly passed away, and her sister, Margot, turns on her after tensions from their past escalate. Hounded by a bullying press, Tessa needs an escape. That’s when she learns of a strange inheritance bequeathed by her mother: a derelict and isolated estate known as Fallbrook. It seems like the perfect refuge.A crumbling monument to a gruesome history, the mansion has been abandoned by all but two elderly sisters retained as caretakers. They are also guardians of all its mysteries. As the house starts revealing its dark secrets, Tessa must face her fears and right the wrongs of her past to save herself and her relationship with Margot. But nothing and no one at Fallbrook are what they seem.

Zeke


Wodke Hawkinson
    Captivated by Zeke’s brooding good looks and menacing but irresistible charisma, Sue capitulates to his will, leaving her wide open for exploitation. Zeke begins to exert subtle control and entices her to leave town with him. As they travel, his behavior grows more deviant and increasingly volatile.After Sue’s car is found deserted in an outlying cemetery, the police dismiss her parents’ concerns since it appears Sue left willingly. The Coxes immediately hire William Falstaff, a small-town private investigator. He begins his inquiry with only two objectives. First, to verify that Sue’s departure is voluntary. And second, to provide her family with information on her whereabouts. A simple case. However, he soon finds himself locked into a chase to save Sue’s life. Will he find her in time or will she become another victim of a cunning sociopath?Approx. 102,000 words. Advisory: Zeke contains sexual situations and violence.