Book picks similar to
Gwendolyn vs. the Band of Barren Hearts by Mary E. Palmerin
dark
abuse
favorites
dark-romance
The Sect
Courtney Lane - 2014
This is not a love story.Keaton Mara ran away from a life that had become a nightmare to live on the streets. While the location she now calls home is a dangerous place, she is protected by an unlikely friendship. The streets provided her with the education she could’ve never earned from the prestigious university she attended. Regrettably, the term ‘educated fool’ becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Due to meeting a man with whom she shares a captivating chemistry with, her judgement is clouded, resulting in a fateful decision. The consequence of trusting the prepossessing stranger results in her being stolen away to a place unknown. Her deceptive new surroundings are just as beautiful as the people who reside there. She discovers that it’s a place where the culture of sex without limits or morals is their religion. Keaton quickly begins to realize that the beautiful scenery serves to hide a very dark truth. The seductive and enigmatic man—who lured her there—desires to save her soul. His intentions are sinister, because saving her soul is synonymous with breaking her. Because Keaton believes her soul was brutally stolen from her many years ago, she thinks he can’t save (or destroy) something she no longer has. She…was…wrong.
Torrent
Gemma James - 2014
Now, eight years later, he's returning the favor...I've been obsessed with Rafe Mason since I was thirteen. The twisted part of this story is that I still want him even now that he's holding me captive on an island.Rafe has his reasons for doing what he's doing, and if I'm honest, I can't blame him. I'm the girl who sent him to prison for a heinous crime he didn't commit.But now he's free and the tables have turned...now he's the one driven by obsession.NOTE TO READERS: Torrent is a dark romance with kidnapping and other disturbing themes. Intended for mature readers. Not for the faint of heart. You've been warned. Part 1 in the Condemned series.
Takeover
Lana Grayson - 2015
Imprisoned. Ravished.When tragedy stole my family, my father’s will mandated my future. I didn’t inherit Atwood Industries. I became the only one capable of protecting it. Atwood Industries belongs only to a male heir, my heir. And my enemies—my own step-brothers—will stop at nothing to create a shared bloodline.But they’ve made a mistake, and they’ll forever regret trying to control me.Nicholas: Damned. Destroyed. Enthralled.My family’s livelihood depended on acquiring the rival Atwood Industries and seizing the innocent woman bound within its terms of succession. I never expected such a challenge from my step-sister.I never thought I’d betray my own blood to protect her from the nightmare we began.But if I don’t stop her, the woman I’m forbidden to love will be responsible for tearing apart the empire my family spent generations building.
Caged
D.H. Sidebottom - 2016
After an extensive search he was never found. Twenty-one years after a random call out, Judd is found chained and beaten in the basement of an old rundown farmhouse where he has lived the life of an animal for the last twenty-one years. Kloe Grant is assigned as Judd’s personal therapist. It’s her job to rehabilitate him, to guide him back to normal life. But as Judd’s only emotion is rage, Kloe finds it both heart-breaking and challenging mending a soul that’s not only broken but caged inside him by the demons of his past. However, when Kloe’s relationship with her patient raises some eyebrows, Kloe can’t fight against the powers that want to see her fail, and with an arm behind her back, she walks away, leaving behind a man who has come to live life again for her. Four years later Judd, now known as Anderson Cain, the darkest and most formidable cage fighter in a world where violence and crime are the only way to keep breathing, Judd finds there’s not a lot in life that can abate the rage that still twists and prowls beneath his skin. Not until a chance encounter brings him to her door. To the woman with the bluest eyes and the most stunning smile, the woman who took his hand in the darkness and led him through the door into the sun. But Kloe Grant left him when he needed her the most. She took the only shred of hope and trust he had left and annihilated it. She starved his belief, and she fed his fury. She owes him. And he’s going to make sure that this time, she pays. In blood. In lust. In pain. And with her soul.
Toxic
Nicole Blanchard - 2017
A criminal.As a prison nurse, I knew the rules: do my job, don’t get involved, and never let a prisoner get under my skin.I broke all three.My passion, my obsession, my addiction. I risked my entire life so we could be together.I thought helping him escape from prison would be the hard part.It turns out when you fall in love with a villain, you also turn into one.
Breaking Beth
Jennifer Bene - 2019
Time to destroy who she used to be... time for all her hope to die... time to truly make her a thing. But he would. Anthony took Beth to remake her into the perfect toy for his customers. Mindless, obedient, a broken thing without complications. But Beth is strong. She refuses to break, refuses to let Anthony erase her... even if that means losing in the end.
The Lonely
Tara Brown - 2013
Emalyn Spicer has lived with it for a long time. She thinks it goes back further than her memories do. She knows it goes back further than the OCD.When she arrives at college, her OCD's and the lonely refuse to let her have her wish to be normal. When she meets Sebastian and starts to fall for him, she lets herself believe it's possible to outrun the things chasing her from the past. But how to you get away from the things inside of you? How do you run from yourself?Just as she gives up and succumbs to the lonely, the unthinkable happens. She finds herself once again trapped in the dark, once again held against her will.This time she meets the lonely head on. In the darkest corners of her mind, she discovers there is more to her world than she ever imagined. She discovers that the lonely was there for her, protecting her from herself and her secrets.How far would you go to find yourself?This is a dark and captivating novel, tread lightly
Prisoner
Annika Martin - 2014
He’s dangerous. He’s wild. He’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.So I hide behind my prim glasses and my book like I always do, because I have secrets too. Then he shows up in the prison writing class I have to teach, and he blows me away with his honesty. He tells me secrets in his stories, and it’s getting harder to hide mine. I shiver when he gets too close, with only the cuffs and the bars and the guards holding him back. At night I can’t stop thinking about him in his cell.But that’s the thing about an animal in a cage—you never know when he’ll bite. He might use you to escape. He might even pull you into a forest and hold a hand over your mouth so you can’t call for the cops. He might make you come so hard, you can’t think.And you might crave him more than your next breath.
Mad Girl
A.A. Dark - 2016
At nine, I was given a new start—a new life. My adoptive parents did everything they could to help me forget my past, and for a while, they succeeded. But I was never normal. I never truly forgot all I saw or did.Now, twenty years later, I work in the billing department for a small city newspaper. And like decades before, not that far away, another serial killer is on the loose. I can still see her. I can still hear my mother coaxing me to slide the bright red lipstick over her beautiful victims' lips. But this isn’t her and I’m determined to figure out who it is. I may work behind the scenes at the Rockford Times, but I’m about to get thrown right in the middle of the biggest story our city has ever seen. My name is Anna Monroe and I’m full of secrets.They say you’re not your past. I’m not so sure they’re right.
Fable of Happiness
Pepper Winters - 2021
A man who’s lived alone for a decade.A woman who trespasses on his solitude. A love full of hate as well as hunger. The thing about my life is... I was never in control of it.I just I thought I was.I thought I had everything figured out—a good career, fun hobbies, a bright future, but everything changed when I found an ivy-cloaked house, tucked in a forgotten valley, hiding the man who would corrupt my world forever.I thought I was successful, until he showed me fortune and happiness could be snatched away in an instant.I believed I was blessed, but really, I was cursed.Cursed to become a plaything for a monster.Cursed to become a prisoner just because I trespassed.Now, I know nothing.I am nothing.I’m just his.It’s the start of something huge. From New York Times Bestseller, Pepper Winters, comes a new Dark Romance full of decadent angst, monstrous heroes, and pages chock-full of lust.
The Goodbye Man
Ashleigh Giannoccaro - 2015
Broken and conflicted. I am a man who gives false goodness to those who crave it. I provide solace to the ones who beg to be saved, giving them the goodbyes they want. But, my quiet little world is about to be shattered by the whispers from heaven and hell.I am Mateo. Unlovable and unworthy. I am the boy everyone runs from. I keep love close to me in little jars of perfection, reminding me of a thousand goodbyes I never had to say, because I left them before they could leave me.I am Svetlana. Dirty and Used. Birthed into brutality while still trying to comprehend my version of normal. I am an injured lamb, eaten by filthy wolves day after day. Just as salvation seems like it's within reach, a goodbye from this awful world is all that I wish for.**Graphic content warning including detailed depiction of brutal, bloody acts. Physical and emotional abuse is also apparent throughout this book with graphic sex scenes, both consensual and non-sensual. Reader discretion is highly advised. Not suitable for readers under the age of eighteen or those who are easily offended by the above mentioned acts.**
Corrupted
Alicia Taylor - 2014
He is my everything. He manipulates people for fun. He takes over their lives, consuming them. He dominates and crushes, ruling them, claiming their souls. No one has survived the games of Damon Hunt, so far. Before now. Before me. I am Ella Knight. I am corrupted. My sister was a victim of Damon's games. It’s my turn to play now. Damon Hunt has been my sole focus, my everything for three years, since my sister’s death. I'll manipulate him. I'll take over his life, consuming and crushing him. I am going to take away his soul. Damon Hunt will not survive my games. I will win. I hope.
With Visions of Red
Trisha Wolfe - 2015
Dark and light battle. This explosive first installment of the Broken Bonds series sets the exhilarating pace for a cat and mouse game where no one knows who’s really pulling the strings.Criminal profiler Sadie Bonds knows blood. Her affair with the gruesome, dark world of killers began long before she started applying her analytical skills to investigate gory crime scenes. She gets inside the killers’ heads, breaks them down, relates to them on an arcane level. She prefers it this way—because it’s safer to ally herself with the villain than the victim. At least, that’s how she’s coped ever since she was abducted and tortured as a teen.She will never be a victim again.Now, she’s honed her skills in order to bring justice to these ritualistic offenders. Working alongside her colleagues, armed with sharp wit and a SIG, Sadie always catches her sadist. Until one ruthless serial killer gets inside Sadie’s head, turning the tables. He knows her secrets. Her obsessions. The darkest, most deviant part of her soul.When she meets Colton Reed, dangerous stakes are raised as he threatens to unravel her control and reveal her darkest fantasies. The sexy-as-sin bondage rigger at an exclusive BDSM club pushes her boundaries, forcing her to acknowledge that side of herself she fears. Plunged into a realm of torture and suffering, pain and pleasure, Sadie balances on the razor-sharp edge of two intersecting worlds threatening to swallow her.
Escape from Paradise
Gwendolyn Field - 2013
One spontaneous choice whisks Angela across the world to the pseudo paradise of Spain’s Mediterranean Riviera where she has another choice to make: live cooperatively as one of billionaire Marco Ruiz’s slaves, or die.* * *Colin Douglas’s future was seized and choked when deliberate tragedy struck his Scottish family at the age of sixteen. He spent his remaining youthful years infiltrating the U.K.’s crime world, seeking power, control, and revenge, all leading to a position as an undercover agent. With nothing to lose, Colin accepts the seemingly impossible job of rescuing America’s famous missing girl, Angela Birch. Colin knows that to enter a snake lair, one must become a snake. It turns out to be a mission which will put his desire for control to the ultimate test, and make him wish for things he never knew he wanted.*AUTHOR'S NOTE* Escape from Paradise is a work of fiction intended for adult readers, containing graphic sexual scenarios and strong language.
Chosen
Barbara Elsborg - 2011
She chose her apartment with care—a safe district with a good neighbor—a place where she can live a quiet, unassuming, under-the-radar existence. Then she makes one mistake and opens her door to accept a delivery of flowers from a secret admirer and her life will never be the same again. A guy she’s never seen before bursts into her apartment and asks her to marry him. Jack Thompson won’t take no for an answer and drags Kate on a cross country journey to hell.Invalided out of the police, Nathan Beranson works as a private investigator in San Antonio, Texas where he spends too much of his time following unfaithful spouses and delivering the bad news to their partners. When his fiancée cheats on him with Jack Thompson, the half-brother Nathan’s only just met, he becomes obsessed with Jack in the same unhealthy way as his revenge-seeking clients. By the time Nathan finally realizes putting the ghosts of the past to rest is a wiser option than settling an old score, it’s too late. He’s already been drawn into his sibling’s latest deadly game and Nathan and Kate find their nightmare is only just beginning.