You want to know the secret to everlasting happiness? Never fall in love. That was the wisdom my father imparted to us James boys after our mom died, and it’s a piece of advice that’s served me well. Until dear old Dad asks me for a favor over Sunday brunch. No big deal, right? I love making my old man happy. Except this “favor” is a lot more complicated than picking up his dry cleaning. Dad wants me to marry and provide a few heirs for the James empire, and he’s even done me the courtesy of handpicking my bride-to-be. Lucky me.

It’s complicated. Two years ago, he broke my heart when he left me to do his father’s bidding. After months of crying, I finally accepted he was gone and wasn’t going to look back. That maybe he’d never loved me at all. I never wanted to see Luca again. Now, a cruel twist of fate has signed me over to him in a heartless deal. I’m his. He thinks he did me a favor, but I feel like I’ve been given a death sentence. He doesn't want to get married because he still loves me. No, he did it for money. More power.

He’s waited a long time for me, but I’ve waited longer for the truth. Not even the king himself could keep me from the only ties left to my identity. Then I meet him, and I’m stuck between uncovering who I am and discovering who I’m meant to be.

One look. One touch. One sound of her beautiful voice and I’m hooked. Like a dream I never want to wake up from, she pulls me in and wraps me around her. Consumed. Driven with need. Fueled by an unrelenting desire to make her mine. One night, I take more than she has ever given before, which only leaves me wanting more. Needing more. Craving more. She’s the one I’ve waited for my whole life.

To stop a brutal mafia war, I'm forced to marry a man I left tied up in a hotel room seven years ago. Griffin Quinlan, the new head of the Irish Mafia in Lower Manhattan, is as dangerous as he is gorgeous. Brutal and calculating, he’s the last person I ever expected to see again. Seven years ago, one night of passion brought us together, but I walked away without looking back. Or untying him. Now, he’s my husband and wants revenge. Our forced marriage is meant to seal the peace between the Irish and Greek mafia families—my brothers’ idea of a truce.

I’m Caleb “C-Bomb” Baumgarten, the bad boy drummer of Red Card Riot. After tragedy strikes, I get the bright idea to hire my daughter’s remaining lifeline, her “Auntie Aubbey,” as my live-in nanny in her small town. I’m determined not to give in to my white-hot attraction to Aubrey, since I need her to certify my sobriety and testify on my behalf at an upcoming custody hearing. But you know what they say about best laid plans, right? Yeah. My bad.

Ronan: This world was never meant for me—a shadowed figure wandering, fueled by carnal desires until I am destined for hell. And I embrace it wholeheartedly. But then she came into the picture after my successful hunt at a local coffee shop. She offered me a simple act of kindness, and in that moment, I was consumed by her. My obsession with Everly knows no bounds, and there is no escape. Her fate is to become one with me, bound by darkness and consumed by our twisted desires.

She’s my mission. My prize. My obsession. Ivy Kingston is the most wanted woman in the world for reasons she is completely oblivious to, reasons I intend to capitalize on. She needs a husband to receive her inheritance, so I’m on the hunt for a wife. As long as it’s her. I’m not who she thinks I am. But she has no idea who she really is either. I’ll be her groom. Her keeper. Her lover. And quite possibly her demise.

They warned me that the very sight of me would incite a side of Maverick I would want to flee in fear of. But I had no place else to go. My only option was to brave his wrath to survive. His darkness reaches into me, pulling at something raw, something I don’t understand. With every word he slays me, his every touch burns along my skin. He breaks down my walls, igniting my fiery temper all the while laying bare desires I was never meant to feel, much less act on. Beneath the fire and fury, I glimpse the cracks in his armor and the man he’s desperately trying to hide.

With green eyes and an easy smile, Frank McCabe stole me away from the nightmares that awaited me at home. But the son of the Irish Mob would never be mine. I belonged to the Italians. And the moment my mother sold me to the head of the Italian Mafia, I became the one the people of Boston were warned about. The only person more feared than me in our city is the Irish Ghost. When I finally flee my marital prison with my sons and my sister in tow, I unwittingly run straight into the ghost of the Irishman who died in a fiery explosion years ago.

My fiancé is the anti-Prince Charming.... Mateo Villani is darkness wrapped in Armani. He's a six-foot-tall, ruggedly handsome savage, a notorious gangster who's bedded half of Manhattan...and now he's my fiancé. My father betrayed me, signing my life away to the cocky bastard whose personality is colder than a block of ice. Mateo crushed my ambitions when he slid his ring onto my finger. He stole my life away, and now he's determined to mold me into a dutiful mob wife. But I have news for him: I obey no one.

My whole life, there was never a place I called my home. Because home wasn't a place to me; it was a person. Three people, to be exact. Everett, Griffin, and Zane. Three boys who always protected me against the harsh reality of our world. That is, until they aged out of the system before me. All the promises that were made were then broken. They left me behind and made a name for themselves as rock stars and never looked back. The next few years left me broken and closed off until it was my turn to leave. I had nothing and nowhere to go. That was until I found High Roller omegas.

Giovanni is my savior... But he wants me for himself. I’ve grown used to men wanting me and taking what’s not theirs to take. But he’s different. He wants to keep me, make me part of his dark world, and I would gladly follow him into the darkness. But his life is trapped in a cage, and his family holds the keys. If forced to choose, we could lose it all.

On the secluded continent of Edenvale, possessing magic is a death sentence. Those who have it are labeled Cursed, and by order of the king, they are Cleansed—a horrific event utilizing a hot, hungry pyre and an iron collar. Enemy to the king, a group known as the Cursed rebels defend their lands from his reach, creating an ongoing bloodthirsty war. When Sage's brother is conscripted for the war, she is forced to trade in her cozy, peaceful cottage life and join the Cursed rebels to get him back.

I've always been the feisty sidekick who's up for anything. So, after I'm trapped in an elevator with the gorgeous grump Blake Wilder, Mr. Hockey himself, I'm willing to listen to his scheme. Turns out the grouchy goalie needs a fake fiancée to earn his inheritance. I'm not real girlfriend material (my ex was clear about that), but I agree to help him out with the temporary farce. But only if I can keep seeing the sexy fireman, Aidan, who rescued us from the elevator. Oh, and my billionaire ex-boss, Simon—the one I shared a steamy kiss with just before I quit. Talk about hot.

A simple promise I made to myself after escaping a brutal childhood of abuse and being trained to enact violence on unblessed witches. Since that moment, I've managed to survive on the streets by successfully pickpocketing. Unfortunately, after years of hiding, the monster who stars in all my nightmares is closer than ever, and I'm faced with only one option—to seek refuge at the Dark Imaginarium Academy. The Academy is filled with the elite witches of our society. I should have expected I'd run into some of my previous targets. Normally, that wouldn't be a proble—except for my last hit.

I'm known as the bad boy of baseball, and I've always used that to my advantage. Men want to be me. Women want to be with me. I've ridden that wave all the way to the top. But when my quick temper lands me in hot water with my team, I have to think fast in order to save my spot on the Daytona Fury roster. Unfortunately, the only person who can help me carry out my crazy plan is the one woman I can't stand but also want so badly that I can barely control myself.

Rani Shah is everything I can't have—too young, too sweet, too innocent. Not to mention, she's my late wife's sister and my son's nanny. So when she asked me to kiss her, I should have refused. When she begged me to touch her, I could have turned her down. When she coaxed me to take the one thing she's never given away—her virginity—a better man would have walked away. Should have, could have, would have... But I didn't.

Not everyone in Sweetbriar Ridge is as sweet as the town name would suggest. But single mom Jade Mackenzie is up to the challenge of winning over the town if that's what it takes to make her new shop a success. After all, this is just the latest in a long string of battles she's had to face. Since she's given up on men—all of them except for her son—she can throw all her energy into the new business. Or so she thought until the most charming and too-good-looking-for-his-own-good man walked into her shop...and she literally falls into his arms.

My ex taking our daughters to Disneyland is his latest way to prove Dad Rules and Mom Sucks. While they're riding roller coasters, I'm taking a trip of my own—a long deserved island getaway for one. And I'm letting my oldest's swim coaches stay at my place while we're all gone, and their apartment is fumigated. Except a last minute work emergency means I'm stuck at home, rather than lying on a beach enjoying the view.

One look. One touch. One sound of her beautiful voice and I’m hooked. Like a dream I never want to wake up from, she pulls me in and wraps me around her. Consumed. Driven with need. Fueled by an unrelenting desire to make her mine. One night, I take more than she has ever given before, which only leaves me wanting more. Needing more. Craving more. She’s the one I’ve waited for my whole life.

Dallas Barnes is tall, dark, and handsome. He's also scarred, rough, and broken down by burdens. A single dad. A widower. A lost soul. We found each other in the back of a dark pub. He brought the whiskey. I brought the bad decisions. He called it a mistake. I vowed never to speak to him again. That vow is broken with one test. Two pink lines have turned my life upside down. One night can change everything.

One evening, two years’ worth of memories lost. Under the pretense of recovery, my father sends me to an elite boarding college, but soon, my memories start rushing back, and it’s obvious I’m not at Lakeside to heal. I’m here to hide. Navigating the scattered past to decipher the threat lurking in the shadows is hard while I’m kept in the dark and even harder when he steals my focus. Crude, arrogant, and threatening, he draws me in, and the closer I get, the less I understand. Waking up without memories is terrifying, but remembering the time I lost is infinitely worse.

As the VP of Kings of Retribution MC, I live and breathe club life. After suffering the loss of two women in my life, I grew cold and indifferent to the idea of love. I don't need to let anyone in. I've seen the aftermath it can leave in its quake. The last thing I'm looking for is someone to fill the void, until Bella Jameson.

I’m Vallie, but BookTok knows me as @CurvyandBooked. Dark romance is my jam, peanut butter, and marmalade. Mafia. Bully. Why choose? You name it, and I want to sit in my beanbag with my battery-operated boyfriend and read it. Look, if I don’t need a chöochie ice bath after a romance, was it even a love story? If someone didn’t bleed for looking at her, was the hero really that into her? But it’s just fiction. Until it’s not. So, when I find a masked man in my living room skimming my favorite romance novel, all my dark desires become very real nightmares.