A Touch of Darkness


Scarlett St. Clair - 2019
    The truth is, since she was a little girl, flowers have shriveled at her touch. After moving to New Athens, she hopes to lead an unassuming life disguised as a mortal journalist. Hades, God of the Dead, has built a gambling empire in the mortal world and his favorite bets are rumored to be impossible. After a chance encounter with Hades, Persephone finds herself in a contract with the God of the Dead and the terms are impossible: Persephone must create life in the Underworld or lose her freedom forever. The bet does more than expose Persephone’s failure as a Goddess, however. As she struggles to sow the seeds of her freedom, love for the God of the Dead grows—and it’s forbidden.

This is War: Travis & Viola, #1


Kennedy Fox - 2016
    His sculpted abs and gorgeous eyes are wasted on such an arrogant man, which makes me hate him even more.Even though I’ve had a crush on him since I was ten, the feelings weren’t mutual and he’s made that very clear. He’s always loved getting under my skin and one night against my better judgment, I let him in my bed. I’ve succumbed to his manw**re ways, but that doesn’t change a thing.Because the King is about to get played at his own game—and lose.Checkmate, King.This is book 1 in the Travis & Viola duet and must be read first. Suggested for mature readers only.

Nikolai: A Mafia Prince Romance


Shandi Boyes - 2018
    It is the women determined to tame the bad boys.By tame, we mean stake our claim.

Four


Sara Cate - 2021
    They say family is a circle of strength. But when mine is ripped away from me at the hands of a monster, My strength is all that’s left. I’ll give my last breath before they take anything else from me. Even if I’m the one they wanted all along. Find Silas Black. Those were my father’s last words. So I did. Only, I found so much more than just a man who was prepared to help me get my revenge. I found a tortured soul who in return gave me hope. But I also found his broken sons. One hates me. One desires me. And Silas wants to save me. They say revenge is a dish best served cold, but If I keep getting caught up in the heat of the moment, I’ll be my own demise.

Alone With You in the Ether


Olivie Blake - 2020
    Prior to their encounter, he is a doctoral student who manages his destructive thoughts with compulsive calculations about time travel; she is a bipolar counterfeit artist undergoing court-ordered psychotherapy. After their meeting, those things do not change. Everything else, however, is slightly different. Both obsessive, eccentric personalities, Aldo Damiani and Charlotte Regan struggle to be without each other from the moment they meet. The truth—that he is a clinically depressed, anti-social theoretician and she is a manipulative liar with a history of self-sabotage—means the deeper they fall in love, the more troubling their reliance on each other becomes. An intimate study of time and space, ALONE WITH YOU IN THE ETHER is a fantasy writer's magicless glimpse into the nature of love, what it means to be unwell, and how to face the fractures of yourself and still love as if you're not broken

Gothikana


RuNyx - 2021
    An enigmatic man. An ancient castle. What could go wrong?An outcast her entire life, Corvina Clemm is left adrift after losing her mother. When she receives the admission letter from the mysterious University of Verenmore, she accepts it as a sign from the universe. The last thing she expects though is an olden, secluded castle on top of a mountain riddled with secrets, deceit, and death.An enigma his entire life, Vad Deverell likes being a closed book but knowing exactly everything that happens in the university. A part-time professor working on his thesis, Vad has been around long enough to know the dangers the castle possesses. And he knows the moment his paths cross with Corvina, she's dangerous to everything that he is.They shouldn't have caught each other's eye. They cannot be. But a chill-inducing century-old mystery forces them to collide. People have disappeared every five years for over a hundred years, and Corvina is getting clues to unraveling it all, and Vad needs to keep an eye on her.And so begins a tale of the mystique, the morbid, the macabre, and a deep love that blossoms in the unlikeliest of places.

Good Girl Complex


Elle Kennedy - 2022
    So what could go wrong?Mackenzie "Mac" Cabot is a people pleaser. Her demanding parents. Her prep school friends. Her long-time boyfriend. It's exhausting, really, always following the rules. Unlike most twenty-year-olds, all she really wants to do is focus on growing her internet business, but first she must get a college degree at her parents' insistence. That means moving to the beachside town of Avalon Bay, a community made up of locals and the wealthy students of Garnet College.Mac's had plenty of practice suppressing her wilder impulses, but when she meets local bad boy Cooper Hartley, that ability is suddenly tested. Cooper is rough around the edges. Raw. Candid. A threat to her ordered existence. Their friendship soon becomes the realest thing in her life.Despite his disdain for the trust-fund kids he sees coming and going from his town, Cooper soon realizes Mac isn't just another rich clone and falls for her. Hard. But as Mac finally starts feeling accepted by Cooper and his friends, the secret he's been keeping from her threatens the only place she's ever felt at home.

Sugar Daddies


Jade West - 2016
    Someone who can entertain them, amuse them, fit in with their corporate schedule. And sex. They want sex. Lots of sex.Bonus, right? One major dose of epic win. Of course, guys like Carl and Rick have their conditions. One being that they come together, or not at all. Hell, I can live with that.And there are no skeletons in their designer closet, none that I can find. Just two hot sugar daddies, with particular tastes, nothing to worry about.Until Carl and Rick spill the big one, the one that sends the girls running. A whole string of them before me, running to the hills without so much as a backward glance. Maybe I should run, too. Thanks but no thanks, see you around, guys, nice knowing you. But I’m already in way too deep for that. Warning – as with every other Jade West book, reader discretion is highly advised. This novel contains vivid depictions of MMF / MM relationships, and Jade’s characters, as always, have very filthy mouths. Mature readers only, please.

The Sweetest Oblivion


Danielle Lori - 2018
    . . Nicknamed Sweet Abelli for her docile nature, Elena smiles on cue and has a charming response for everything. She’s the favored daughter, the perfect mafia principessa . . . or was.Now, all she can see in the mirror’s reflection is blood staining her hands like crimson paint. They say first impressions are everything . . . In the murky waters of New York’s underworld, Elena’s sister is arranged to marry Nicolas Russo. A Made Man, a boss, a cheat—even measured against mafia standards. His reputation stretches far and wide and is darker than his black suits and ties. After his and Elena’s first encounter ends with an accidental glare on her part, she realizes he’s just as rude as he is handsome. She doesn’t like the man or anything he stands for, though that doesn’t stop her heart from pattering like rain against glass when he’s near, nor the shiver that ghosts down her spine at the sound of his voice.And he’s always near. Telling her what to do. Making her feel hotter than any future brother-in-law should. Elena may be the Sweet Abelli on the outside, but she’s beginning to learn she has a taste for the darkness, for rough hands, cigarettes, and whiskey-colored eyes. Having already escaped one scandal, however, she can hardly afford to be swept up in another.Besides, even if he were hers, everyone knows you don’t fall in love with a Made Man . . . right?This is a standalone forbidden romance.

The Summer Proposal


Vi Keeland - 2022
    He only pretended to be until my real date showed up.To say I was disappointed would be an understatement.Before he left, he slipped me a ticket to a hockey game a few blocks away, in case things didn’t work out on my actual date.I tossed the ticket into my purse and went about trying to enjoy the man I was supposed to meet.But my real blind date and I had no connection.So on my way home, I decided to take a chance and stop by the game.When I arrived, the seat next to me was empty.Disappointed again, I decided to leave at the end of the period.Just before the buzzer, one of the teams scored, and the entire arena went crazy.A player’s face flashed up on the Jumbotron. He was wearing a helmet, but I froze when he smiled.You guessed it: Dimples.Apparently, my fake blind date hadn’t invited me to watch hockey with him, he’d invited me to watch him play.And so began my adventure with Max Yearwood.He was everything I needed at the time—fun, sexy, up for anything, and only around for a few months since he’d signed with a new team three-thousand miles away.Max proposed we spend the summer helping me forget my ex. It sounded like a good plan. Things couldn’t get too serious when we had an expiration date. Right? Though, you know what they say about the best-laid plans.

Rootbound


Tarah Dewitt - 2021
    Despite her world-shattering divorce, the absence of a pet, not having any genuine connections with other humans (apart from her sister Ava), and the fact that the remainder of her family is estranged from her life, she’s happy…Happy-adjacent, at least. She’s rebuilt herself through her photography; her dream career, the one thing she does still have.So, when that career contracts her to do an assignment on her estranged family's home, Logan Range - a now famous ranch functioning as the setting for a popular show - she’s left with no choice but to agree.Thus, Tait is bound, on a reluctant course back to her roots, and to the family she feels abandoned by... to the family that, seemingly, has had no interest in a relationship with her since her parents' divorce, when she was seven.Henry Marcum has dedicated his life to the Logan family and to their ranch. He owes them for raising him, rescuing him, and for his life's purpose and opportunities… He also owes them for every hardship he’s inadvertently brought their way. So, when Tait Logan shows up after 20 years of near total silence, he takes it upon himself to protect the people he knows and loves.It’s a rocky start when Tait and Henry first collide; he is naturally wary of her intentions, and she is more than perturbed by their literal collision - which results in her broken camera, during her first night on location, no less.There’s no shortage of shaky ground here in the mountains and valleys of Idaho. They’re thrown off balance time and time again by their growing feelings for one another, and by the story of the Logan family as it becomes increasingly less clear from their perspectives. As they confront the past, theirs naturally get brought to the foray. They’ll have to weigh their feelings against their experiences of heartbreak, and decide if the potential for disaster is worth the risk that accompanies love.

Push


Nyla K. - 2019
    Aside from the fact that he’s only thirty-six and his daughter is a sophomore in college. He and his wife, Jessica, had their only daughter, Hailey, when they were in high school. So you can imagine the unease Ben is feeling when said daughter brings her new boyfriend home for Thanksgiving… To stay, in their house, for the whole weekend. Ryan Harper, otherwise known as The Boyfriend, is every dread Ben’s ever had in his daughter dating come to fruition. There’s nothing wrong with Ryan. He’s polite, smart, and charming… He doesn’t have any neck tattoos or facial piercings, and he drives a BMW. But still, he’s dating Ben’s daughter. That makes him a threat. It’s in Ben’s best interest to keep an eye on the kid. You know, to make sure there’s no funny business going on under his roof. Unfortunately for him, the tension in the house is less about Ryan being his daughter’s boyfriend, and more about him being a strangely intriguing human. And soon enough, Ben can’t tell if he’s watching Ryan to protect his daughter’s innocence, or obliterate his own. It seems like the boring married-guy image isn’t going to hold up for long… Not after this bizarre, life-changing weekend. What are these new, strange feelings and desires? Where did they come from? And why do they have to center around what belongs to his daughter? Ben and Ryan’s situation couldn’t get much more complicated… Until Jessica steps into the mix. An unexpected push is all it took for their lives to change forever. ***PUSH by Nyla K is a label-free HEA love story. It contains infidelity triggers, which do work themselves out, so I urge you to give it a shot. MM turns to MMF, in a very steamy, explicit romance that will make you laugh, maybe cry, and definitely swoon. The theme of love is love is key here, so there aren’t many defining, or coming out moments. That being said, this book does explore male-male bisexuality, pansexuality and polyamory, but in a very casual, unassuming way. If MM and MMF are not your cup of tea, then steer clear. However, if you’re looking for an open-minded tale of taboo and forbidden romance that ultimately works out for its characters, then this book is for you!***

The Truth about Heartbreak


B. Celeste - 2019
    The guy I could never touch.Then one night changed everything for us. But there was one huge problem.He belonged to her.

Carnage


Sarah Bailey - 2021
    A girl. Scarlett.She was one of us until she was ripped away from her life. The only trace of her was dust in the wind.One day she returned to the city and sought us out. Scarlett couldn’t remember who we’d been to her, but we recalled her all too well.If she knew what was good for her, she would have never come back. The moment she stepped through the doors of Fortuity, it was the beginning of her end. And the start of our reign over the girl who wanted us dead.A dark reverse harem contemporary retelling of the four horsemen of the apocalypse set in Sarah Bailey's Dark Universe with cliffhangers and a HEA in the final book.This is a DARK romance and therefore comes with a content warning. Please see the author's website for full details.

Hating the Boss


Kristen Granata - 2021
    That’s all it was supposed to be. Imagine my surprise when Mr. Sexy in a Suit breezed through the door on the first day of school. Ladies and gentlemen, meet my new boss. Not only does he instantly recognize me, but he accuses me of stealing something valuable from him the morning I walk-of-shamed out of his apartment. When bullying me into a confession doesn’t work, he turns my life into a living nightmare – as if that will coax me into returning what I supposedly stole. But this is my school, and the only thing I’ll be returning is payback. Game. On. There’s only one problem. I wanted him before I hated him, and even now, a part of me still wants him. Somehow, through all of our fighting, through the anger and the pranks, I think I’m falling in love with the enemy.