Slumber in the Scythe's Shadow
By @john1208
The Grevka Commune in 1978 is a paranoid, grueling meat grinder. At her father’s rain-soaked funeral, Velsia Drenka makes a cheeky, shameless announcement: she is officially retiring at nineteen. Refusing to earn a single work point in the muddy fields, she marries Bramen Vost, the commune's feared gravedigger, simply because his isolated cabin is quiet. While her reborn sister Miksa exhausts herself scheming to marry the region's future oligarch, Velsia buys a barren, toxic-looking plot on Slagfall Hill solely to string up her hammock. As Velsia naps through the oppressive days, Bramen meticulously cooks and cleans, harboring a bittersweet, unspoken love while silently disposing of the regime's spies to keep her safe. When Slagfall Hill unexpectedly cracks open to reveal a massive vein of luminescent ignis-quartz - a literal goldmine - Velsia's lazy days draw dangerous attention. Told in alternating third-person perspectives between Velsia and Bramen, the dark truth slowly surfaces: Velsia’s past self orchestrated this entire scenario, erasing her own memories to ensure her survival. Will Velsia uncover the bloody lengths she went to, or will Bramen's devotion keep her safely in the dark?
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The Getaway Groom's Deception
By @john1208
Maren Helle only wants two things: to manage a championship Cryo-Siege e-sports team, and to take a nap. Instead, she’s running for her life in a wedding dress. Escaping a forced marriage to her traitorous ex, Henrik, Maren throws herself into a speeding getaway car driven by a stoic stranger named Stellan. To evade a police blockade, they forge a marriage certificate at a border checkpoint. Maren thinks she has snagged a bizarrely doting, unemployed mechanic who cooks her meals while she starts a grueling internship at Korsar Industries. She doesn’t know Stellan is Korsar’s phantom CEO, secretly pulling strings to bankrupt Henrik and hand Maren her dream roster on a silver platter. But this is no romance. Stellan’s obsessive coddling masks a dark, violent agenda to use Maren's tactical genius for a real-world corporate war. When Henrik's empire falls, he crawls back, revealing the tragic, coerced truth behind his original betrayal. With her best friend hiding a deadly syndicate secret and her 'husband' controlling her every move, can Maren outsmart the billionaire predator in her own home before she becomes a permanent pawn?
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