Empire of the Vampire


Jay Kristoff - 2021
    For nearly three decades, vampires have waged war against humanity; building their eternal empire even as they tear down our own. Now, only a few tiny sparks of light endure in a sea of darkness.Gabriel de León is a silversaint: a member of a holy brotherhood dedicated to defending realm and church from the creatures of the night. But even the Silver Order could not stem the tide once daylight failed us, and now, only Gabriel remains.Imprisoned by the very monsters he vowed to destroy, the last silversaint is forced to tell his story. A story of legendary battles and forbidden love, of faith lost and friendships won, of the Wars of the Blood and the Forever King and the quest for humanity’s last remaining hope: The Holy Grail.Fromauthor Jay Kristoff comes Empire of the Vampire, the first illustrated volume of an astonishing new dark fantasy saga.

The Degradation of Shelby Ann


Emma Cole
    But beyond acquiring the skill and poise to pull off being a trophy wife, she would discover that all is not as it seemed.With the honeymoon over, the dirt and grime seeped through the loving facade to reveal the monsters that lie beneath.Dark and depraved, this series will twist in ways you won't see coming to reveal an anti-hero in disguise, dirty deeds in plain sight, and shocking secrets that will leave you cringing inside.18+ for mature content. RH as the series progresses. Warning: dark content, violence, drug use, dub/noncon, multiple gender pairings, plus some things I won't spoil yet, but aren't for anyone with reading restrictions.

Bacchanal


Veronica Henry - 2021
    But the carnival’s newest act, a peculiar young woman with latent magical powers, may hold the key to defeating it. Her time has come.Abandoned by her family, alone on the wrong side of the color line with little to call her own, Eliza Meeks is coming to terms with what she does have. It’s a gift for communicating with animals. To some, she’s a magical tender. To others, a she-devil. To a talent prospector, she’s a crowd-drawing oddity. And the Bacchanal Carnival is Eliza’s ticket out of the swamp trap of Baton Rouge.Among fortune-tellers, carnies, barkers, and folks even stranger than herself, Eliza finds a new home. But the Bacchanal is no ordinary carnival. An ancient demon has a home there too. She hides behind an iridescent disguise. She feeds on innocent souls. And she’s met her match in Eliza, who’s only beginning to understand the purpose of her own burgeoning powers.Only then can Eliza save her friends, find her family, and fight the sway of a primordial demon preying upon the human world. Rolling across a consuming dust bowl landscape, Eliza may have found her destiny.

The Upstairs House


Julia Fine - 2021
    Physically exhausted and mentally drained, she’s also wracked with guilt over her unfinished dissertation—a thesis on mid-century children’s literature.Enter a new upstairs neighbor: the ghost of quixotic children’s book writer Margaret Wise Brown—author of the beloved classic Goodnight Moon—whose existence no one else will acknowledge. It seems Margaret has unfinished business with her former lover, the once-famous socialite and actress Michael Strange, and is determined to draw Megan into the fray. As Michael joins the haunting, Megan finds herself caught in the wake of a supernatural power struggle—and until she can find a way to quiet these spirits, she and her newborn daughter are in terrible danger.Using Megan’s postpartum haunting as a powerful metaphor for a woman’s fraught relationship with her body and mind, Julia Fine once again delivers an imaginative and “barely restrained, careful musing on female desire, loneliness, and hereditary inheritances” (Washington Post).

Crimson Kiss


Trisha Baker - 2001
    That was hard to accomplish being a vampire. Just going into college in 1944 as a young adult, she met Lord Simon Baldevar who entranced her into his bloodlust life. Lord Baldevar, Simon, then becoming her Master, took Meghann into his dark realms of lust and destruction. For 13 years her pride could not adjust to this torture and possession. She leaves her Master on the roof, impaled and forced to meet his death with the sunlight.Decades later, Alcuin, Meghann's mentor and a different bloodline of vampires from the Black Plague Age, tells her that Baldevar has survived. Simon Baldevar was not expecting his estranged consort to be so strong; to have learned from Alcuin more than Simon ever meant to teach her. Along with Jimmy, Meghann's companion of six years, and Charles, her dearest blood friend, Meghann and Alcuin vow and plan to hunt down and kill the Master of her past and life blood of her being.The second book in this trilogy is Crimson Night and the third book is Crimson Shadows.

Gallows Pole


Eris Adderly - 2016
     In 1716, a capital crime costs a man nothing short of his head. If the condemned can't come to the hangman, there's no need to worry: Old Jack Ketch will come to him. Emmat Bird does what she must to keep her parents under a solid roof and her fool brother out of trouble, even if those things are dangerous and most days illegal. Today, that involves forging a stay of execution from Judge Couch and racing it to the gallows before her brother's neck stretches. A fine mess, indeed, but the only solution she can think of to keep her parents from disowning her once and for all. She just has to get the executioner to buy it. Bartholomew Vane travels his country circuit, meting out punishments demanded by the law. Shunned to live on the fringes for the taint of death surrounding his post, he cares very little for the wants of others. Why should he? The world shows him no mercy, and he sees fit to return the favor. When the third rider in the same grey morning appears at the foot of Gallows Hill attempting to stay the noose of the witless convict he's about to hang, the executioner finds himself losing patience. But then the pieces fall together. The flaming red hair, the name. He knows who the final rider is. Reason leaves him, and in its place, a terrible plan takes shape. The hangman makes a bargain. Against her better judgment, Emmat accepts. Follow award-winning author Eris Adderly off the beaten path where outcasts do what they must, and urges long-contained rise up to take what they want. Let her decadent, filthy prose sweep you into the past, into the unyielding arms of the hangman. This dark erotic romance novella twists across the page with graphic descriptions of sexual acts, and is intended for mature readers only.

Bloodraven


P.L. Nunn - 2007
    Only grim tales of the barbaric giants had reached the forest, but Yhalen soon learns that even the darkest fireside story only hinted at the brutality of these Northern warriors. He discovers the meaning of true fear at their hands, and only the awakening of ancient magic saves him from destruction.Surviving ogre viciousness, he finds himself given to Bloodraven, the half ogre, half human war leader as a slave. Yhalen, refusing to bend, soon pays the price for offending prickly ogre pride.But Bloodraven is no mindless, violent ogrish beast. Bloodraven has an agenda and Yhalen finds himself drawn in the wake into human and ogre politics, into bloodshed and cruelty and into the forbidden magic that is damnation in the eyes of his own people, but which might mean the difference between death and salvation.Note: Lulu's page count of 287 is for the PB (and PDF) versions. But 220,735 words equates to approx 663 pages.

Guilty Pleasures


Laurell K. Hamilton - 1993
    Her turf is the city of St. Louis. Her job: re-animating the dead and killing the undead who take things too far. But when the city’s most powerful vampire asks her to solve a series of vicious slayings, Anita must confront her greatest fear—her undeniable attraction to master vampire Jean-Claude, one of the creatures she is sworn to destroy...

Dolly


Measha Stone - 2020
    Hope for a better future. Freedom from this horror. A life that doesn’t end in a dark cellar. But, we’re trapped together. Forced to live for the worst kind of people. Desperate to survive for each other. I crave his touch with every breath I take. My heart aches for him. He’s my hope for survival. The man I want a future with. I can have it all again, if only I trust him. Even if that’s the only thing I can’t do.

Josie and Jack


Kelly Braffet - 2005
    The only adult in their lives is their rage-prone father, a physicist, whose erratic behavior finally drives them away. Without a moral compass to guide them, Jack leads Josie into a menacing world of wealth, eroticism, and betrayal. His sociopathic tendencies emerge, and soon Josie must decide which is stronger: the love and devotion she feels for her brother or her will to survive.From its opening page to its shocking climax, this contemporary Hansel and Gretel story is compulsively readable and hugely entertaining.

Never Knew Another


J.M. McDermott - 2011
    M. McDermott delivers the stunning new novel, Never Knew Another — a sweeping fantasy that revels in the small details of life.Fugitive Rachel Nolander is a newcomer to the city of Dogsland, where the rich throw parties and the poor just do whatever they can to scrape by. Supported by her brother Djoss, she hides out in their squalid apartment, living in fear that someday, someone will find out that she is the child of a demon. Corporal Jona Lord Joni is a demon's child too, but instead of living in fear, he keeps his secret and goes about his life as a cocky, self-assured man of the law. The first book in the Dogsland Trilogy, Never Knew Another is the story of how these two outcasts meet.Never Knew Another is the first book in the Dogsland Trilogy.

Dirty Love


Bethany Winters - 2022
    In a small town like ours, you’re either straight or you keep your mouth shut.Being gay would be dirty.Touching the guy who’s been your little brother since you were three would be dirty.Falling in love with him would be even worse.I protect him because it’s my job.I resist him because I have to.But when one night leads to two and two nights lead to more, lines are blurred and morals are tossed and my sanity takes a walk.Now we’re risking everything we have for something we know we shouldn’t want.And the only thing we’ll have left is each other.This is a 60,000 word, M/M, dark high school, stepbrothers-to-lovers romance with themes some readers might find offensive.Complete standalone with a HEA and no cliffhanger.

That Night


Amy Giles - 2018
    They slowly become friends and then something more, learning to heal and move forward together. But what does it mean to love after an unspeakable tragedy?

Kick


C.D. Reiss - 2014
    Don't come back to me with your therapy bills.This is the first part of the full story featured in FORBIDDEN. If you have read Forbidden, you don't have to read this.

Mesmer


Cari Silverwood - 2019
    He wanted to dress her in wings, make her crawl to him, do things to her body that were worse than sinful... they were nightmarishly obscene.But Hannah isn't like any other collectable.She's the girl he ran away from, tried to protect... until she called him back.Now there's no stopping the darkness inside him, the cravings that demand he keep her all to himself -- but that's against the rules and his mesmer brothers are dangerous. Unpredictable. And how can he keep her safe when all he wants to do is make her scream?Before love will come pain, blood, and the near destruction of her soul, and his."A twisted, upside-down, out-there love story.""I could still feel the darkness creeping and crawling through my imagination long after I closed the final page.""This is darker than 13 midnights - PITCH BLACK type of dark. There are more bad things than I can even prepare someone for." Mesmer is a standalone dark romance and is based in the Dark Hearts trilogy world created by Cari Silverwood, that begins with Wicked Ways.