Best Modern Novels

Justine abandoned her career as a top trauma surgeon to marry Congressman Carl McConnell. She did it to fulfill her dying sister's last wish: to protect her son, Leo, from this ruthless political family. But the seven-year-old boy she swore to protect shoved her into a freezing koi pond, then cried to his father that Justine tried to drown him. Carl didn't even check the security cameras. He hugged his precious heir and looked at his freezing wife with pure disgust. "Are you out of your mind? Trying to hurt the heir to the McConnell family!" He locked Justine in a 55-degree wine cellar while she was burning with a 102-degree fever. When she finally told him the truth, Carl flew into a rage and hurled a heavy brass-cornered book at her face, slicing her cheekbone wide open. His mother even ordered the staff to starve her for seven days to reflect on her sins. Justine stood in the dark, blood dripping down her face, her heart completely dead. She had sacrificed her brilliant future and her pride for this family, only to be tortured and discarded like garbage. How could they be so utterly devoid of humanity? She pulled out her old medical kit and stitched up her own face. Then, she signed the legal documents to permanently relinquish her stepparent rights, threw them at the housekeeper, and calmly looked at her abusive husband. "I am divorcing you, Carl."

Grace's engagement to Dillan Hayes was nothing but a cold business transaction to secure funding for her family's company. But when Dillan violently shoved her into a marble bar over his ex-girlfriend, leaving her bleeding, Grace didn't hesitate. She called 911, had her fiancé arrested on the spot, and broke off the engagement. Returning to the Albert estate, she expected chaos, but not absolute betrayal. Her family didn't care that she had just been physically assaulted. They were in a sheer panic because her cousin Ashly had just fled the country, abandoning a terrifying arranged marriage. The groom was Hudson Turner, a man known across Manhattan as a disgraced, violent psychopath, paralyzed from the waist down in a severe crash. To save themselves from the Turner family's wrath and financial ruin, Grace's aunt and father ordered her to take Ashly's place. "You eat from this family, you live in this house! It is time you paid us back!" Her father even threatened to freeze her bank accounts and faked a heart attack to force her compliance. For three years, Grace had single-handedly kept the family business afloat while they squandered the profits. Now, they were throwing her to a monster without a second thought, expecting her to rot as a crippled man's miserable nursemaid. But they picked the wrong sacrifice. Grace ruthlessly extorted a legal severance from her family, taking her shares and cutting all ties forever. She walked straight into Hudson Turner's private gallery to propose a mutually beneficial, cutthroat business marriage. However, when the prenuptial was signed, the "paralyzed" billionaire placed his hands on his wheelchair. Slowly, deliberately, Hudson stood up to his full, imposing height of six-foot-three. "The wheelchair is a necessary illusion for my enemies," Hudson stated calmly. "But it will never be an illusion between you and me."

Everyone knew Caroline loved Jacob, the frail man in a wheelchair, even giving up her chance at marrying into wealth for him. She devoted everything to his recovery, enduring hardship and humiliation to help him stand again. When he finally recovered, they were praised as perfect together-until danger came. Faced with saving her or her sister, Jacob chose the latter without hesitation. Only in her final moments did Caroline realize his heart was never hers. Reborn, she made a different choice, choosing power over love. When Jacob later begged, she looked down coldly. "I have no interest in men who can't stand on their own."

My husband, Kahlil, despised me, while his "sister" Cassandra lived in our home, playing the role of a fragile, wheelchair-bound victim. To get rid of me, she orchestrated a trap, taking a misleading photo to frame me for having an affair. When Kahlil saw the photo, he didn't even give me a chance to explain. He believed Cassandra's fake tears instantly and violently shoved me away. I crashed hard into a heavy glass table, the impact sending agonizing spasms through my stomach that dropped me to the floor in a cold sweat. While I writhed in excruciating pain, he stood there shielding the very woman who was destroying my life. "Stop playing the victim," he roared, looking at me with pure disgust. "You are my wife in name, and you will not make a fool of me!" My heart completely shattered as I lay on the cold hardwood floor. I had never been unfaithful, yet he treated me like property, blindly protecting a snake who wore sheer tops to seduce him at midnight. Why was I enduring this suffocating farce of a marriage just to be trampled on? But when Cassandra pushed her luck and hired a sleazy playboy to assault me in the dark garden, her perfect mask finally shattered. As Kahlil rushed in to save me, a terrified Cassandra forgot her own lie and stood up from her wheelchair on two perfectly healthy legs. Looking at their shocked faces, I realized it was finally time to crush the snake and walk away for good.

Sapphyra used to have it all: a super-genius husband, a superhero career, and a dragon side she actually got along with. Then everything went to hell. When the world faced a threat she couldn't punch, Sapphyra tried to sacrifice herself so everyone she loved could escape. But Wyatt, her husband with backup plans for his backup plans, refused to let her die. He trapped her inside a digital coma, planning to wake her when the world settled down. That was 100 years ago. Now Sapphyra has ripped herself free and woken to a ruined city, a broken world, and a body she barely recognizes. Her powers are locked away. Her dragon side is caged. And the Class System controlling it all? Wyatt put it inside her. Because of course he did. It only gets messier. Guy, the charming golden retriever-energy hero she met inside the coma, is real-and so are his feelings for her. Meanwhile, Wyatt separated his mind from his body, so now his consciousness follows Sapphyra around like a brilliant, possessive bad hangover. And then there's Rupert Domingo, the madman who escaped her digital nightmare and now rules the ruined city like his personal kingdom. He knows what happened while Sapphyra slept, and he'll give her answers... If she survives his game first. To win, Sapphyra has to rebuild her city, untangle her powers, face Wyatt's sins, and decide what scares her more: losing herself to grief, or becoming the dragon Rupert is desperate to wake up.

I was the untouchable Mafia Queen, but my reign ended in the blood-soaked depths of a damp dungeon. My half-sister, Kelsey, drove a rusted, sharpened spoon into my chest, screaming about the unfairness of fate. In my past life, my father sold me to the ruthless Don Dante Blackwell as collateral to pay off his debts. To survive, I took a black-market fertility drug, birthed his heir, and clawed my way to the throne through sheer ruthlessness. But in the mafia world, a pregnant woman isn't a queen; she's a walking target. I survived countless bombings and poisonings, only to be betrayed and slaughtered by my own family. Until my last breath, I couldn't understand. I had sacrificed everything to secure our survival in the empire. Why did my blood and tears only earn me a rusted spoon to the heart? Opening my eyes again, I am seventeen, sitting in my father's drawing room. Two black velvet boxes sit on the mahogany table. Kelsey greedily snatches the box containing the fertility drug, her eyes gleaming with feverish triumph. "I'll take this one, Papa." She thinks she is stealing my golden ticket to the crown, completely unaware that she just chose a death sentence. I lower my gaze, letting my eyelashes mask the cold, lethal amusement pooling in my eyes as I take the remaining box. Inside is the detailed psychological profile of the Don's dead fiancée. This time, I won't be a breeding mare fighting off assassins. I will dissect the devil himself.