Books like 'Mistress of the Art of Death'

Readers who enjoyed Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.

historical  dark romance  suspense  medieval  mystery  independent heroine  heroine sleuth  competent heroine  strong heroine

  • The Fabric of our Souls by K.M. Moronova

    The Fabric of our Souls by K.M. Moronova

    Rated: 4.37 of 5 stars
    · 15 ratings
    I’m twenty-six years old, and I want to die.So when I wake up at the hospital with my brother weeping over me, I know my life is about to change. What I didn’t expect was to get a nurse with cruel eyes and a morbid sense of humor that surpasses my own...
  • Fade Out by Marshall Thornton

    Fade Out by Marshall Thornton

    Rated: 4.57 of 5 stars
    · Steam rating: 5 of 5
    Explicit and plentiful [?] · 7 ratings
    The Lambda Award-winning Boystown Mystery series comes to a close with Boystown 13: Fade Out. When a box containing a woman’s corpse shows up at his doorstep, Private Investigator Nick Nowak finds himself accused of murder. The police are convinced it’s Rita Lindquist—a woman who once shot Nick. Their case is thin, but they and the state’s attorney are determined to prosecute him...
  • Sponsored links
  • The Cursed Heir: A chilling, gripping historical mystery from bestseller Heather Atkinson by Heather Atkinson

    The Cursed Heir: A chilling, gripping historical mystery from bestseller Heather Atkinson by Heather Atkinson

    Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars
    · 8 ratings
    'I have read ALL Heather Atkinson's books. They are all fantastic.'Edinburgh 1896. At Alardyce House, the family are gathered to celebrate the engagement of the heir to the estate, Robert, to his childhood sweetheart. But what should be a precious memory for his mother Amy, is marred by darkness...
    Categorized as:
    mystery  suspense  historical  highlander  dark
  • The Captive Duke by Grace Burrowes

    The Captive Duke by Grace Burrowes

    Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars
    · Steam rating: 4 of 5
    Explicit open door [?] · 19 ratings
    New York Times bestselling author Grace Burrowes dazzles in this sexy Regency romance, featuring:* A tortured duke desperate to find peace* A secret only his quiet young daughter knows* A fearless lady who would do anything for the ones she loves* And of course* Happily ever after!Christian Severn, Duke of Mercia, nearly lost his will to live after the brutal fighting in France...
  • The Direction of the Wind by Mansi Shah

    The Direction of the Wind by Mansi Shah

    Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars
    · 25 ratings
    A heartfelt story that spans continents and generations, about a young woman who searches for answers about a mother she barely remembers.Sophie Shah was six when she learned her mother, Nita, had died. For twenty-two years, she shouldered the burden of that loss. But when her father passes away, Sophie discovers a cache of hidden letters revealing a shattering truth: her mother didn’t die...
    Categorized as:
    mystery  contemporary  dark  historical
  • Anger by Lily White

    Anger by Lily White

    Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars
    · 6 ratings
    Fifth CircleAngerAlso Known as Damon CrossThere is darkness that surrounds this man.One fueled by his past and ignited by his presentHe knows what it means to lose, but he never stops fightingHe wears his heart on his sleeveBut exists within nightmaresHe is shrouded in the name the Inferno gave him.Angry.Feral.Wild and CarelessDamon is an unpredictable storm without rhyme or reason...
  • Perfect Mistake Book Two by Amber Nicole

    Perfect Mistake Book Two by Amber Nicole

    Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars
    · 8 ratings
    Trapped on an island, you would think that's the worst thing to find out... Wrong. Now I'm carrying a psychopaths baby. One I dreamed of having before, now I pray the same thing from my past comes to fruition again. Rexley is not meant to be a father. He may be the monster of my nightmares, but the only way to survive is to let my demons out to play, too...
  • Cash by Mackenzy Fox

    Cash by Mackenzy Fox

    Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars
    · 8 ratings
    From best selling author Mackenzy Fox comes the highly anticipated MC spin-off series from the Bracken Ridge NOLA Rebels MC - (New Orleans Series Book 1) Cash is a gritty, age-gap, dad’s best friend MC romance with all the feels...
  • Only Time Will Tell by Jeffrey Archer

    Only Time Will Tell by Jeffrey Archer

    Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars
    · 30 ratings
    From the internationally bestselling author of Kane and Abel and A Prisoner of Birth comes Only Time Will Tell, the first in an ambitious new series that tells the story of one family across generations, across oceans, from heartbreak to triumph. The epic tale of Harry Clifton’s life begins in 1920, with the words “I was told that my father was killed in the war...
  • Viking Wolf by Emmanuelle de Maupassant

    Viking Wolf by Emmanuelle de Maupassant

    Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars
    · Steam rating: 5 of 5
    Explicit and plentiful [?] · 5 ratings
    Enter a world of burning desire and brutal passion; a world threatened by ambition, jealousy and revenge. He is bound by duty… Eirik has shed his blood on the battlefield; now, he's commanded to marry a woman he's never met and forget his love for Elswyth. Will his sense of honour part them forever? She is as brave as any man… Elswyth is at the mercy of Jarl Gunnolf’s darkest seductions...
  • Her Wanton Wager by Grace Callaway

    Her Wanton Wager by Grace Callaway

    Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars
    · Steam rating: 5 of 5
    Explicit and plentiful [?] · 21 ratings
    An Heiress on a Mission… After two failed Seasons, Persephone Fines has vowed to reform her hoydenish ways. But when her beloved brother falls into the clutches of wicked gamester Gavin Hunt, she must take action. Hunt offers her a shocking proposition: he will release her brother… if she can resist six nights of seduction...
  • Decision at Delphi by Helen MacInnes

    Decision at Delphi by Helen MacInnes

    Rated: 4.01 of 5 stars
    · 13 ratings
    Kenneth Strang sets out for Sicily and Greece on a seemingly innocent, though fascinating, magazine assignment. But even before his ship sails from New York, the atmosphere becomes charged with sinister omens. In the course of the voyage one mysterious event follows another...
    Categorized as:
    mystery  suspense  20th century  war  dark  historical  military
  • The Laughing Cavalier (The Scarlet Pimpernel (chronological order) #0.4) by Emmuska Orczy

    The Laughing Cavalier (The Scarlet Pimpernel (chronological order) #0.4) by Emmuska Orczy

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 10 ratings
    This 1913 adventure tale, The Laughing Cavalier, centres on Percy Blakeney, a foreign adventurer and the progenitor of Baroness Orczy's well-known figure, the Scarlet Pimpernel. Frans Hals' artwork The Laughing Cavalier served as the model for a section of the story, which takes place in Holland between 1623 and 1624...
    Categorized as:
    mystery  suspense  historical  20th century  dark
  • Wreckage by Ripley Proserpina

    Wreckage by Ripley Proserpina

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 7 ratings
    I made a promise.Mom demanded only one thing from me before she died—go to her sister in Maine and find comfort with the only family I had left. But, from the moment I laid eyes on Paradise Inn and my terrified aunt, my mistake was undeniable.This place isn’t an inn, and it’s far from paradise...
  • On Good Authority by Briana Una McGuckin

    On Good Authority by Briana Una McGuckin

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 6 ratings
    Repressed desires, irresistible obsessions, and perception-twisting games.When lady’s maid Marian Osley and footman Valentine Hobbs assume their positions at the cliff-top estate of Valor Rise, they already share a history. Raised together as paupers in a London workhouse, they escaped through games of imaginary crimes and sublime punishment...
    Categorized as:
    suspense  mystery  historical  dark  rape  abuse  regency  bdsm
  • On Good Authority: A Novel of Suspense by Briana Una McGuckin

    On Good Authority: A Novel of Suspense by Briana Una McGuckin

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 6 ratings
    Repressed desires, irresistible obsessions, and perception-twisting games.When lady’s maid Marian Osley and footman Valentine Hobbs assume their positions at the cliff-top estate of Valor Rise, they already share a history. Raised together as paupers in a London workhouse, they escaped through games of imaginary crimes and sublime punishment...
    Categorized as:
    mystery  suspense  historical  abuse  bdsm  regency  dark  rape
  • Skin Lane by Neil Bartlett

    Skin Lane by Neil Bartlett

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 6 ratings
    At 47, Mr. F's working life on London's Skin Lane is one governed by calm, precision and routine. So when he starts to have frightening, recurring nightmares, he does his best to ignore them. The images that appear in his dream are disturbing, Mr. F can't for the life of him think where they have come from. After all, he's a perfectly ordinary middle-aged man...
    Categorized as:
    suspense  historical  dark  m-m  queer
  • It Came Upon a Midnight Clear by Suzanne Brockmann

    It Came Upon a Midnight Clear by Suzanne Brockmann

    Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars
    · 15 ratings
    Something Worth Fighting For As Christmastime settled quietly over the countryside, Navy SEAL William "Crash" Hawken was faced with a deadly conspiracy. And he had only one person to turn to -- the caring passionate Nell Burns...
  • The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

    The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

    Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars
    · 35 ratings
    Sam Spade is hired by the fragrant Miss Wonderley to track down her sister, who has eloped with a louse called Floyd Thursby...
    Categorized as:
    suspense  mystery  historical  dark  20th century
  • Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier

    Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier

    Rated: 3.86 of 5 stars
    · 27 ratings
    Her mother's dying request takes Mary Yellan on a sad journey across the bleak moorland of Cornwall to reach Jamaica Inn, the home of her Aunt Patience. With the coachman's warning echoing in her memory, Mary arrives at a dismal place to find Patience a changed woman, cowering from her overbearing husband, Joss Merlyn...
    Categorized as:
    suspense  mystery  historical  dark  pirates
  • The Lioness by Chris Bohjalian

    The Lioness by Chris Bohjalian

    Rated: 3.81 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    A luxurious African safari turns deadly for a Hollywood starlet and her entourage in this riveting historical thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of The Flight Attendant Tanzania, 1964...
  • Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier

    Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier

    Rated: 3.84 of 5 stars
    · Steam rating: 1 of 5
    Glimpses and kisses [?] · 30 ratings
    The coachman tried to warn her away from the ruined, forbidding place on the rainswept Cornish coast. But young Mary Yellan chose instead to honor her mother's dying request that she join her frightened Aunt Patience and huge, hulking Uncle Joss Merlyn at Jamaica Inn. From her first glimpse on that raw November eve, she could sense the inn's dark power...
  • The Twin's Daughter by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

    The Twin's Daughter by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

    Rated: 3.76 of 5 stars
    · 16 ratings
    Lucy Sexton is stunned when a disheveled woman appears at the door one day…a woman who bears an uncanny resemblance to Lucy's own beautiful mother. It turns out the two women are identical twins, separated at birth, and raised in dramatically different circumstances. Lucy's mother quickly resolves to give her less fortunate sister the kind of life she has never known...
  • Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

    Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

    Rated: 3.84 of 5 stars
    · Steam rating: 2 of 5
    Behind closed doors [?] · 141 ratings
    A literary sensation and runaway bestseller, this brilliant debut novel presents with seamless authenticity and exquisite lyricism the true confessions of one of Japan's most celebrated geisha...
  • The Price Of Desire by Jo Goodman

    The Price Of Desire by Jo Goodman

    Rated: 3.73 of 5 stars
    · 14 ratings
    USA Today bestselling author Jo Goodman delivers a deliciously wicked tale of forbidden desire that knows no limits. Olivia Cole is devastated to learn that her ne'er-do-well brother has promised her to the operator of a London gaming hall as payment of his debts. Olivia accepts her fate-even if it means that her reputation will suffer from living among rogues and gamblers...
  • The Dark Lady by Maire Claremont

    The Dark Lady by Maire Claremont

    Rated: 3.57 of 5 stars
    · Steam rating: 3 of 5
    Open door [?] · 7 ratings
    The Victorian era was full of majestic beauty and scandalous secrets—a time when corsets were the least of a woman’s restrictions, and men could kill or be killed in the name of honor... Lord Ian Blake has returned from India a broken man. Years ago, he pledged to Lady Eva Carin—his childhood companion and first love—that he would bring her husband back alive. His failure haunts him...
  • Ritual Sins by Anne Stuart

    Ritual Sins by Anne Stuart

    Rated: 3.69 of 5 stars
    · Steam rating: 3 of 5
    Open door [?] · 13 ratings
    Rachel Connery is on a seek-and-destroy mission, out for revenge against the mysterious, charismatic man who enticed millions of dollars from her dying mother and cheated her out of her inheritance. She wants retribution and is willing to use every seductive trick at her disposal to obtain it...
  • Dragonwyck by Anya Seton

    Dragonwyck by Anya Seton

    Rated: 3.72 of 5 stars
    · 19 ratings
    A novel of seduction, mystery, and danger set in New York’s Hudson Valley in the nineteenth century, by the author of Foxfire. There was, on the Hudson, a way of life such as this, and there was a house not unlike Dragonwyck . . . In the spring of 1844, the Wells family receives a letter from a distant relative, the wealthy landowner Nicholas Van Ryn...
  • A Long Fatal Love Chase by Louisa May Alcott

    A Long Fatal Love Chase by Louisa May Alcott

    Rated: 3.67 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    "I'd gladly sell my soul to Satan for a year of freedom," shouts impulsive Rosamond Vivian to her heartless grandfather. Suddenly, on a dark night, a moody stranger shows up at Rosamond's isolated island home, ready to believe her when she says she will...
  • The Daydreams by Laura Hankin

    The Daydreams by Laura Hankin

    Rated: 3.68 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    A deliciously entertaining novel about the stars of a popular teen show from the early 2000s—and the reunion special, thirteen years after their scandalous flameout, that will either be their last chance at redemption, or destroy them all for good...
    Categorized as:
    suspense  contemporary  historical  dark
  • Walking on Glass by Iain Banks

    Walking on Glass by Iain Banks

    Rated: 3.70 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    'Her eyes were black, wide as though with some sustained surprise, the skin from their outer corners to her small ears taut. Her lips were pale, and nearly too full for her small mouth, like something bled but bruised. He had never seen anyone or anything quite so beautiful in his life.' Graham Park is in love. But Sara Fitch is an enigma to him, a creature of almost perverse mystery...
    Categorized as:
    suspense  mystery  dark  20th century  historical
  • A Long Fatal Love Chase by Louisa May Alcott

    A Long Fatal Love Chase by Louisa May Alcott

    Rated: 3.64 of 5 stars
    · 20 ratings
    "I'd gladly sell my soul to Satan for a year of freedom," cries Rosamond Vivian to her callous grandfather. A brooding stranger seduces her from the remote island onto his yacht. Trapped in a web of intrigue, cruelty, and deceit, she flees to Italy, France, Germany, from Paris garret to mental asylum, from convent to chateau - stalked by obsessed Phillip Tempest...
  • Villette by Charlotte Brontë

    Villette by Charlotte Brontë

    Rated: 3.73 of 5 stars
    · 46 ratings
    With her final novel, Villette , Charlotte Brontë reached the height of her artistic power. First published in 1853, Villette is Brontë's most accomplished and deeply felt work, eclipsing even Jane Eyre in critical acclaim. Her narrator, the autobiographical Lucy Snowe, flees England and a tragic past to become an instructor in a French boarding school in the town of Villette...
    Categorized as:
    mystery  victorian  historical  dark  high-school
  • In the Shadow of Lakecrest by Elizabeth Blackwell

    In the Shadow of Lakecrest by Elizabeth Blackwell

    Rated: 3.63 of 5 stars
    · 21 ratings
    The year is 1928. Kate Moore is looking for a way out of the poverty and violence of her childhood. When a chance encounter on a transatlantic ocean liner brings her face-to-face with the handsome heir to a Chicago fortune, she thinks she may have found her escape—as long as she can keep her past concealed...
    Categorized as:
    mystery  suspense  historical  20th century  dark
  • Wonderland by Stacey D'Erasmo

    Wonderland by Stacey D'Erasmo

    Rated: 3.09 of 5 stars
    · 10 ratings
    An NPR Best Book of 2014A Time Top Ten Fiction Book of 2014A New York Times Book Review Editors’ ChoiceA BBC Top Ten Book of 2014"Exquisite...As inspiring in its way as Patti Smith's memoir Just Kids ." — Los Angeles Times “Briskly addictive . . . Told in the voice of a female rock Ulysses.” — O, the Oprah Magazine “Marvelous . .
  • A Sicilian Romance by Ann Radcliffe

    A Sicilian Romance by Ann Radcliffe

    Rated: 3.29 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    In A Sicilian Romance (1790) Ann Radcliffe began to forge the unique mixture of the psychology of terror and poetic description that would make her the great exemplar of the Gothic novel, and the idol of the Romantics. This early novel explores the cavernous landscapes and labyrinthinepassages of Sicily's castles and convents to reveal the shameful secrets of its all-powerful aristocracy...
    Categorized as:
    mystery  historical  victorian  dark  horror
Fantastic book recommendations by romance book lovers for romance book lovers.
Find out more about romance.io.


Get recommendations by genres & tropes

Use the romance book finder to mix and match over 100 content keywords to find the books that match your preferences

romance book finder

Looking for more inspiration? Enter another book title to get more suggestions on what to read next.


Or - use our amazing romance book finder to get recommendations based on your favorite content tropes and themes. Mix and match at will.