Dark Romance

Dark romance is a subgenre of romance in which the love story unfolds inside a dangerous world and the man you fall for is part of that danger. Power, debt and desire are tangled together, and the happy ending has to be earned rather than assumed.

Readers coined the label to separate these stories from the rest of the shelf. A dark romance borrows the tools of the thriller: organised crime, gambling debts, blackmail, a club that runs after hours. The setting is rough and the feelings match it. What makes it romance rather than crime fiction is that the attraction is the plot, not a subplot.

Three signs tell you you're reading one. He holds leverage over you or over someone you love. The line between protecting and possessing keeps moving. And you catch yourself asking whether he can be trusted long after you've already started trusting him.

In the catalog, "Under His Protection" wears its genre most clearly: the new capo is at your door, and you're guarding a secret that could destroy him. In "The Antiquarian's Debt," you enter a London game club to ransom your brother, and the publisher is already waiting for you. Quieter, but no less dangerous, is the August summer in "Summer House on the Cornish Coast."

In the catalogue