Best Modern Novels

I was the long-lost Donovan heiress, finally brought home after a childhood in foster care. My parents adored me, my husband cherished me, and the woman who tried to ruin my life, Kiera Reese, was locked away in a mental facility. I was safe. I was loved. On my birthday, I decided to surprise my husband, Ivan, at his office. But he wasn't there. I found him at a private art gallery across town. He was with Kiera. She wasn't in a facility. She was radiant, laughing as she stood beside my husband and their five-year-old son. I watched through the glass as Ivan kissed her, a familiar, loving gesture he’d used with me just that morning. I crept closer and overheard them. My birthday wish to go to the amusement park had been denied because he’d already promised the entire park to their son—whose birthday was the same day as mine. "She’s so grateful to have a family, she’d believe anything we tell her," Ivan said, his voice laced with a cruelty that stole my breath. "It's almost sad." My entire reality—my loving parents who funded this secret life, my devoted husband—was a five-year lie. I was just the fool they kept on stage. My phone buzzed. It was a text from Ivan, sent while he stood with his real family. "Just got out of the meeting. So exhausting. I miss you." The casual lie was the final blow. They thought I was a pathetic, grateful orphan they could control. They were about to find out just how wrong they were.

Minutes before announcing her grand engagement, Darla caught her fiancé sleeping with her stepsister. She publicly exposed them and canceled the wedding on the spot. Furious, her adoptive mother demanded Darla marry a fifty-five-year-old predator to save their broken business deal. "If you don't do exactly what I say, I'll let your father rot in prison for the rest of his life." Desperate to escape her family's control, Darla grabbed a massive, intimidating hotel security guard she bumped into in the hallway. She shoved all the cash in her purse at him—eight hundred dollars—and begged him to fake-marry her. They signed the papers at City Hall that same day. But the nightmare didn't end. That evening, Darla received a cold phone call from the state penitentiary. Her father had been found dead in his cell, and her company, owned by her ex-fiancé's family, fired her immediately. They had taken everything from her, leaving her completely broken and sobbing on the floor of her tiny apartment. She thought she had nothing left but a broke, fake husband to keep her company. She had no idea that the "poor security guard" holding her in his arms was actually Anson Prince, a ruthless billionaire CEO. And he was already making the calls to tear her abusers' empires to the ground.

He was powerful. He was terrifying. Said to be cruel and unjust...

I was an intern nurse working exhausting shifts, yet my mother constantly forced me into blind dates with wealthy, arrogant men to secure our family's social standing. During a terrifying hospital lockdown, an assassin disguised as a doctor held a scalpel to my throat. I was almost killed, but a high-ranking military colonel threw his own body down a flight of concrete stairs to shield me. I survived with cuts and bruises, but when I went home, my mother didn't care about my near-death experience. She was only furious that I had rushed out on my blind date with Preston, a rich financial analyst. She forced me to meet him to apologize. When Preston grabbed my arm, bruised me, and mocked my attack as a pathetic lie, my mother still took his side. "Men get angry," she told me coldly. "It's your job not to provoke them. You will beg for his forgiveness, or you are no longer welcome in this house." I had narrowly escaped an assassin, yet my own family was willing to feed me to a monster just for a fat paycheck and neighborhood gossip. My heart went completely dead. So, when the intimidating Colonel appeared, offering me maximum military protection through a sudden marriage, I didn't hesitate. I walked back into my parents' house and calmly slapped a crisp marriage certificate onto the coffee table. "I won't be apologizing to Preston. I got married today."

Eileen woke up in a trashed hotel room, her head pounding with the pathetic memories of a despised Hollywood actress. Outside the window, paparazzi were already screaming about her manufactured cheating scandal, but the real nightmare was waiting at her door. Her paralyzed, billionaire husband, Carlisle Vinson, looked at her with pure disgust while his butler shoved a divorce settlement at her chest. "Mr. Vinson is offering a severance package of fifty million dollars, provided you sign immediately and vacate the premises." The original owner had left her an absolute mess. Her trusted assistant had sold her room number to the press to frame her, and a playboy had scammed her out of her entire two million dollar life savings. If she signed those papers and lost the Vinson family's protection, the breach of contract fees and her enemies in the industry would swallow her alive in days. Eileen felt a cold fury override the original owner's lingering panic. Why should she take the fall and be thrown out on the streets while the parasites who set her up lived out their wealthy fantasies? She had died once, and she wasn't about to waste her second chance playing the victim. Eileen slammed the heavy divorce folder shut right against the butler's chest. "I'm not signing," she said with a terrifying, absolute calm. She stepped behind her husband's wheelchair, ready to shield him from the cameras, secretly cure his dead legs, and make everyone who betrayed her bleed.

Everyone in high society knew Jillian was a doormat-silent, obedient, endlessly tolerant, even as her husband favored another woman. Her home was taken, her wedding ruined, and still she said nothing. Until the day her hard-earned patent was stolen. That was when she finally had enough. "I will take back what's mine. And we should get a divorce." He only laughed, certain she wouldn't dare. But she did. She reclaimed everything and disappeared. Years later, she returned as a world-renowned tech queen. When he begged, "Come back to me..." She held another man's hand. "Step aside. My husband and I are going home."