H. D. Carlton

H. D. Carlton writes unapologetically extreme dark romance, and became one of BookTok's defining success stories doing it: she self-published Haunting Adeline in August 2021, a home-invasion-turned-obsessive-romance about a woman who discovers a masked stalker living inside the walls of her new house, and watched it become an instant bestseller through reader-driven social media buzz rather than a traditional publishing push. Its direct sequel, Hunting Adeline, completes what's really one continuous story, and the pair anchor a wider Cat and Mouse universe that now includes a prequel novella, a spin-off following a survivor character, and a tonally linked historical standalone. Carlton, who keeps her personal background largely private, started years earlier with The Zero Saga, a post-apocalyptic alien-invasion duet published in 2018-2019 that shows a grittier sci-fi side unlike anything in her later catalog, and has also written standalone dark romances Shallow River and Does It Hurt?. Her newest series, the Hollow Graves Duet, returns to obsessive contemporary dark romance with the story of a serial killer's daughter and her victim's son, concluding in August 2026. New readers should start with Haunting Adeline — it's the book that built her audience, and the clearest introduction to the stalking, dubious-consent, high-heat style her fans return for. It is not a gentle place to start reading romance.