After Dark
Welcome to Harmony--where the rules are a little different.
Life is tough these days for Lydia Smith, licensed para-archaeologist. Seriously stressed-out from a nasty incident in an alien tomb, she is obliged to work part-time in Shrimpton's House of Ancient Horrors, a very low-budget museum. She has a plan to get her career back on track, but it isn't going well. Stuff keeps happening.
Take the dead body that she discovered in one of the sarcophagus exhibits. Who needed that? Finding out that her new client, Emmett London, is one of the most dangerous men in the city isn't helping matters either. And that's just today's list of setbacks. Here in the shadows of the Dead City of Old Cadence, things don't really heat up until After Dark.
• Ships in 2 to 3 days.
About DRM
DRM stands for Digital Rights Management and is the term for the anti-piracy protections most publishers require to be applied to their ebooks.
DRM-Free titles can be downloaded and transferred to your reader app or device of choice.
DRM-Protected titles must be read on either Bookshop.org’s Apple or Android app, or via a web browser.
After Dark
Why It Passed
No author paid to be here. The shelf is not sponsored. Every book is read in full before it ever reaches you, then weighed against four things we refuse to bend on. Here is how this one held up.
writing
The prose does the work without showing off. You forget you're reading and just fall in.
characters
Nobody here is only a love interest. Even the side characters have a pulse and reason to exist.
pacing
The slow burn is genuinely slow. It earns every inch of tension instead of stalling for length.
payoff
The ending lands. No cheap cliff just to sell you the next one. (Okay. Maybe a small one. You'll survive!)
Know Before You Start
The Book
The Tropes
The Spice
A few things worth knowing before you start. We would rather you choose with eyes open than get blindsided forty pages in.
The Content Warnings
The Criteria Score
The Reviews
Finished it? We want to know what you think
We vetted this one. Here's what happened when readers got their hands on it.
What to Read After This
4 shared tropes
Heart of the Fae
by Emma Hamm
3 shared tropes
The Never List (Deluxe Limited Edition) (The Never List Series — Book 1)
by Jade Presley
3 shared tropes
My Thorns For Your Roses (The Cairnwood Reel Series — Book 1)
by Kristen Argyres
3 shared tropes
Empire of Shadows (Raiders of the Arcana Series — Book 1)
by Jacquelyn Benson
3 shared tropes
Throne of Nightmares (Prince of Sin Series — Book 3)
by Kerri Maniscalco
3 shared tropes
Song of Blood & Stone (Earthsinger Chronicles — Book 1)
by L. Penelope
3 shared tropes
Cry Wolf (Alpha & Omega Series — Book 1)
by Patricia Briggs
3 shared tropes
Tattoo of Crimson (Blood of the Fae Series — Book 1)
by Sarah Chislon
The Corner Membership
The shelf you've been looking for.
Members get the shelf before anyone else, a seat in every discussion, and the quarterly magazine. No algorithm. No noise. Just books that passed, and people who actually finish them.
- Store credit toward your next read, every year.
- Free annual gift sent straight to your door.
- The Corner quarterly magazine, included.