Best Independent Stories & Novels Collection

Travis Savage and I were a notorious public pair, bound together by nothing but hatred.

In the glittering, indulgent world of Chicago, he was an untouchable mafia king who ruled with absolute power, making and breaking rules on a whim. And I? I was the wife he loathed above all others in his criminal empire.

It all started when my parents lost their lives saving him, gunned down by his rival...

Lina Simpson knows two things for certain... life is cruel and trusting people always ends badly.

After getting thrown out with nowhere to go, the last person she expects to Payton paths with is Bellamy Middleton, the campus golden boy. He wants her the second he sees her and she wants nothing to do with him.

But when the line between obsession and protection begins to blur, Lina realizes Bella...

Three years ago, I took off the ring and became a mechanic, just to keep a promise to my brother — to protect his widow and daughter.

Three years later, Connor from Brooklyn tried to force my brother's daughter into marriage, blacklisted me from every job, and had the hospital turn away my sister-in-law.

They thought I was just some grease monkey.

They didn't know the ring had a lion carved on ...

Isolde Crane knows the rules of Ashenmere the way she knows how to breathe: without thinking, because stopping means dying.

She is a blood-scribe, a mortal employed by House Vaelthar to maintain records no living person is supposed to read twice. She does not ask questions. She does not linger. She keeps her head down and her ink dry and sends every spare coin back to her younger sister in the ou...

On Halloween night, a sharp stench of chlorine and cheap booze woke me up.
I opened my eyes to a man grinning at the bedroom door.
It was my husband, David, soaking wet and showing off the liquor he’d vanished hours ago to buy.
I cursed him out, called him a liar, and demanded a divorce. He just kept that idiotic smile.
Then my phone rang. It was his best friend, Mark.
"Claire, David drowned drunk...

The day college applications were due, Fern Whitmore wouldn't stop crying — and my two childhood best friends were completely wrapped around her finger.

They actually threatened to give up their Ivy League spots to follow her to community college.

I tried everything to talk them out of it. Nothing worked. So I went behind their backs and called both their parents.

Their parents showed up that s...

“End the ceremony,” Prince Kael ordered, his cloak wrapped around another woman’s shoulders.

Our six-year-old son stood beneath the moon glass, wings trembling, the royal binding already burning under his skin. If the ritual stopped now, Rowan could be scarred for life.

Kael did not even look at him.

So I picked up the sacred blade and pressed it to the bond mark in my palm.

“You wanted freedo...

At my engagement dinner, my fiancé asked me to sign the prenup that killed me once before.

Last time, Adrian smiled, kissed my hand, and promised I would never be alone again. Three weeks later, debt collectors came for money I had never borrowed, black veins crawled under my skin, and his dying mother walked out of hospice in pearls.

This time, I turned to the second page first.

My name was al...

Have you ever seen a screaming toddler and thought, wow, they just can’t be the same good-natured kid who was eating cereal ten minutes ago?
Well… Sometimes you just might turn out to be right.
It turns out, the fae stole my little brother. In his place? A pixie with boundary issues and a talent for home repairs.
I’ve spent my life taking care of everyone else. So when my baby brother is taken, I...

"Did you take the morning-after pill?"

Silence stretched for two seconds on the other end of the line.

"Are you out of your mind?" The woman let out a cold laugh. "You think every woman who sleeps with you is going to get pregnant?"

"I tested positive for pregnancy." The man spoke through gritted teeth.

"You're absolutely fucking insane."

With that, she hung up directly.

As the heir to New Y...

My husband sent me to a clinic to erase my "attachment distress" toward him and our daughter.

He said I was too obsessive, too clingy, that my love was suffocating him. So the day I found he'd booked three tickets to Zurich—one for himself, one for our daughter, one for another woman—I signed the consent form.

He said the treatment was temporary. That once I was "better," we'd still be a family....

"You're really going to marry my good-for-nothing uncle?"

Julian sneered as he stared at the ring on my finger, his eyes full of mockery.

"Isabella, you don't actually think a playboy so poor he drives a secondhand car can give you a future, do you?"

I looked down at the ring on my hand, then slowly raised my head.

"At least—he won't sleep with another woman in my grandmother's manor."

My nam...

Ava Monroe was made for the spotlight, a basketball star with trophies and talents, she's at the top of her game until a scandal, caused by her ex boyfriend, Chase Maddox, threatens to end her career.
To save her brand and her career, she agrees to one crazy solution: a fake engagement, but not to just anyone, to Noah Lark, her quiet, reclusive childhood best friend who she hadn't seen in years.
N...

For 18 years, I was just a normal human.​​
Then the magic woke up—and everything changed.
The parents who looked down on me, the sister who spent years keeping me under her thumb… they don’t get to touch my life anymore.
​I left them behind.​​
First day at the magic academy: new uniform, new wand, new rules.
And then I find out who’s sitting at the desk next to mine.
He looks like a student.
He do...

I clutched the diagnosis paper that read "Stage 4 Gastric Cancer," my knuckles turning white. For twenty-two years, no matter how bad things got, Ethan always said he could handle it. But this time, my call only reached his voicemail.

I still remember that snowy night when I was seventeen. Under that tree, he squeezed my hand and promised, "You don't have to be strong anymore. Just lean on me." H...

At the annual charity gala, I stood in the spotlight as the student representative.

My roommate, Harper, suddenly stormed the stage, publicly accusing me of being a sugar baby who seduced her father.

"That diamond necklace around her neck was bought with my dad's money!"

I instantly became public enemy number one. The crowd erupted into a frenzy of boos, and the administration, caving ...

As a wife and mother, she came home one day to find another woman in her place.
That was when she knew. This marriage was beyond saving.
The lies and deception were just a thin veil no one bothered to see through. The favoritism. The blame. Year after year, cutting into her like glass.
When the birthday cake she had fought so hard to get ended up in the trash, she swallowed her tears along with th...

When she called her husband to tell him their son was dead, all she heard on the other end was laughter—him, his mistress, and their child, living like a happy little family.
Her heart turned to ash.
Terminally ill or not, she would find whoever killed her son.
But her husband didn't believe her. Her own family turned against her. They were all protecting the killer.
She was locked away. Threatene...

I spent three years acting as a servant for the Alpha who secretly married me, only to find out he was marrying his mistress because she was "dying."

“This marriage is her last wish, and I am fulfilling it,” Ace told me coldly.
“And me? What do I become?” I asked, my heart shattering.
“You remain my hidden wife. When she is gone, we will go back to normal.”

Normal? Being humiliated, abused by hi...

Sienna Vale has spent her entire life perfecting the art of control , on the ice, in her relationships, in everything. So when she catches her boyfriend Ethan Cross in bed with her roommate three weeks before the campus reality series launches, control is the first thing she loses. Roman Mercer is the last person she would ever ask for help. Cold, intimidating, and currently suspended from the Har...

On the day I got engaged to the heir of an elite old-money family, my own birth mother spread vicious lies about me in front of the entire crowd. She claimed I’d lived a wildly promiscuous life while studying abroad, and had even secretly given birth to a stillborn child with no known father.
Afterwards, she took my hand and sobbed out an apology, saying she’d only wanted to test whether my fiancé...

Five years of love, loyalty, and promises—destroyed in one wedding vow.

Judy believed Clark was the man she would spend her life with. After dating for five years, meeting his family, and planning their wedding, she thought love was enough.

She was wrong.

On the day she was supposed to be his bride, Judy watched Clark marry his rich ex-girlfriend instead—leaving her humiliated, heartbroken, an...

"Someone is right behind you."
It's the most common comment I get in the chat during my late-night streams.
But when that exact phrase abruptly hijacked my screen, spammed in bold, blood-red letters, my blood ran completely cold.
Because deep down, I knew. This time, they weren't joking.
It was real.

Ava Quinn is no stranger to hard work, but her dreams of becoming a successful writer are quickly fading under the weight of unpaid bills and a dead-end job at a local cafe. When an accidental encounter with billionaire tech mogul Ethan Blackwell spirals into an offer she can’t refuse, Ava finds herself thrust into a world she barely understands... a world of luxury, danger, and secrets.

Ethan Bla...

I was born a girl — and immediately erased.

Raised as a boy.
Obedient to the last breath.

They had one final instruction:
transition, marry the woman they chose,
and disappear completely into the lie.

I refused.
So they killed me instead.

I died with a cursed pendant around my neck
and hatred in my heart.
That hatred broke the seal.
The gifts my bloodline had buried for generations —
I woke up...

Three years ago, my sister fled her wedding to a man in a coma. I took her place. I nursed him, cared for him, and loved him back to health. But when she returned, he gave her everything—his time, his fortune, his heart. To me? Just a cold shoulder and accusations of being insane. They thought I would just disappear quietly. They were wrong.

"I hope you're not serving that dirty maid my food!" Eliora—the woman Adrian truly loved and the one who acted as if she already owned the house—snapped with a sharp, venomous voice from the staircase.
"I wasn't planning to eat it anyway," I said calmly, rubbing my stomach. "I have better taste than that. And I don't want anything, or anyone, that might harm my child."


She loved him in sil...

River Wilson has her entire life planned: earn top grades, avoid distractions, and graduate as valedictorian. Love? Boys? Drama? Not on the schedule.
But her perfect plan unravels the moment she steps into her new university apartment… and finds Taylor DeLuca shirtless, tattooed, and infuriatingly smug, standing in her kitchen.
Thanks to a university housing glitch and a name too ambiguous to ques...

"I didn't marry him for love. I married him to survive."
Amara Kline, a woman defined by her lifelong habit of seeking safety through silence. To rescue her family's failing logistics business, she enters a three year contract marriage with Gideon Moore, a billionaire who views the union as a purely clinical transaction.
While Amara endures systemic mockery from Gideon's status obsessed family an...

One catastrophic night, waitress Brianna spilled creamy pasta all over a handsome bastard. After he ordered her to be fired, she kicked him hard in the groin, fled the scene—and swore she'd never see him again.
But destiny has a twisted sense of humor.
To save her sick mother and pay her sister's tuition, Brianna applies for a high-paying executive assistant job at A.C. Organizations. Little does...

She thinks she can resist him. He knows she can't.
Henry Moore is a man who always gets what he wants, but Andrea Collins is the one woman daring enough to defy him. Every glance, every word, every touch ignites a war between control and desire… and neither of them will surrender.
Andrea's heart is still broken from a betrayal that shattered her on her twenty-fourth birthday with her first love. S...

"Whoa. What the…"
Standing in the door frame was the most gorgeous man I had ever laid eyes on. 
"Oh, hell no," I yelled as I yanked my robe to cover up, nearly falling off the couch in my haste, "What the hell are you doing here? Get out!"I screamed, "This is my room!"
He raised an eyebrow, smirking, "Your room? Princess, I think you're confused. This is my room."


Lily Rose, a creative and...

Are nice guys really the real monsters… or are monsters carved out of nice guys?

Detective Cassidy has spent three years hunting killers—studying them, outsmarting them and locking them away.

She thought nothing will surprise her anymore until her father dies and his final wish drags her back to the town she swore never to return to… and straight into the path of a serial killer known only as t...

When Trevor Sullivan had nothing, I gave up billions to follow him to Silicon Valley. Everyone said I was crazy in love with him, until his first love came back to the States right after he made it big.

Seven years of playing the perfect wife and mother, and then I hear him coaching our five-year-old daughter: "Ruby, you can't tell Mommy about my fake wedding with Amber. Not a word, okay?"

"But ...

After seven years of being an ignored wife and mother, she finally files for divorce.
She returns to her career as a top designer and shines brightly.
When her billionaire husband realizes what he lost, he begs her to come back.
But it’s too late—she’s already moved on.

I got dragged online by one of my lead devs.

He claimed my "Incubation Project" was a gilded cage—a trap to exploit the team and steal their personal IPs.

The truth?

I funded it out of my own pocket.

Selected candidates would get a $50,000 no-strings-attached seed fund, plus full Ivy League tuition reimbursement. It was 100% voluntary, with zero penalties for opting out.

Since ...

Everyone at Harlow University knows Callum Voss. The starting point guard, the dean's favorite headache, the boy whose smile has cleared more disciplinary hearings than any lawyer on retainer. He is the kind of person the campus bends around without being asked.

Nobody knows Wren Aldae. That is entirely on purpose.

Wren has spent two years building a life at Harlow that no one can touch: one clo...

I was the "fake" heiress, kicked out half an hour before my engagement. They thought I’d rot in a poor countryside town. Little did they know, my biological family was a dynasty of hidden billionaires, and I was a master art restorer and martial artist.
My ex-fiancé, the arrogant billionaire Gavin, suddenly broke his new engagement just to chase me.
Pinned against his car door under the rain, his ...

For three years, I played the perfect, obedient girlfriend, only to hear Adam say I was just "bottled water" compared to his intoxicating ex. Fine. I packed my bags, dumped the scumbag, and returned to my true identity: the billionaire heiress of the Hart family.

I thought I was done with men, until my arranged marriage partner turned out to be Noah Stone—the cold, untouchable tycoon. In the dim...

His ex‑mate had come back.
The one he’d loved before our pack arranged this bond.
I was just the contract wife.
I knew my place. So I laid the divorce papers on his desk, calm and final.
“Sign it. You don’t need me anymore.”
He stared at me like I’d grown a second head.
Then his jaw tightened, that wolf dominance flaring in his eyes—raw, territorial, furious.
He stepped close, caging me against th...

For three years, Rachel lived in a marriage that almost no one knew existed.
To the outside world, Captain Jared Holland—the cold and powerful second son of the influential Holland family—was single.
Only a handful of people knew the truth: Rachel was his legal wife. Their marriage had begun because of a mistake and was bound by a prenuptial agreement that promised it would end quietly after three...

To Alpha Damien, Sophia was never a Luna—merely a breathing womb.
For years, she bore the weight of his cold indifference, trapped in a marriage where he only touched her on the "fertility days" his mother decreed.
While he flaunted his mistress Tiffany through the kingdom, Sophia was given a brutal ultimatum--
Return only when you carry a son.
She nearly lost her life giving birth to their daught...

After years of marriage, my husband and son never once treated me like I mattered.
In their eyes, there was only another woman.
When I heard them talking about abandoning me again, I finally hit my limit.
So I asked for a divorce.
From that day on, I lived for myself—and myself alone.

After three years of marriage, the first thing my husband did upon waking from his vegetative state was to humiliate me for my stepsister. I once thought that my three years of devoted care would earn me a shred of his affection, only to discover that he had always loved the woman who stole everything from me including my identity. For her sake, he forced me to leave with nothing and had me black...

Three years ago, on their way to attend my graduation art exhibition, the cruise ship carrying my fiancé and my family caught fire.

Over the past three years, I downed sleeping pills countless times, desperately wanting to follow them into the afterlife. Every single time, my adopted sister, Serena, saved me, crying hysterically as she shoved her fingers down my throat to make me throw up.

"...

One of my employees went online and dragged me, claiming I'm making them sacrifice their health for a paycheck and forcing everyone to work over Thanksgiving.

Here's what actually happened. My company gives nine days off for Thanksgiving. Volunteer to work overtime, get triple pay, with a $500 daily meal stipend and a $5,000 bonus. No one gets penalized for not working.

The whole internet's tear...

Landon Rhodes and I grew up together, both dreaming of becoming top chefs. But I knew he was the one with a palate kissed by God.

So when Rowan Stone, this street-rat punk, got her claws into him, I took the drinks, the smoke, the slaps for him. When he wanted to skip the National Young Chefs Competition to stay with her drunk ass, I dragged him back to the culinary lab.

He won the championship,...

Five years of marriage, and she was nothing but another woman's understudy.
Anniversaries. School events. Galas. In every public moment, it was always the other woman standing beside her husband and children—the perfect wife for all to see.
She only belonged to this family in the shadows, where no one was watching.
This marriage was beyond saving.
When fate extended its hand once more, she seized ...

She rushed home late at night to celebrate her husband's birthday — only to find him with another woman.
"Daddy, when are you and Mommy getting a divorce?" her son asked, innocent and cruel all at once. "I want Auntie to be my new mommy."
She thought of the divorce papers she'd found the day before. Without hesitation, she picked up her phone and dialed her boss.
"I'll join the OriginWorld researc...

Connor Mitchell and I are the golden couple of our industry. Everyone sees him as the devoted husband, always bringing me soup when I work late into the night.

On our fifth wedding anniversary, he gave me an expensive diamond necklace and posted something sweet on Instagram. The comments were all variations of the same thing: jealousy.

I used to believe it too.

Until I cut my trip to Europe sho...