Grimstone Books in Order

The Grimstone series trades mafia families for a haunted seaside town, but the danger level stays high. Each book is a stand-alone romantic thriller set in Grimstone, a moody beach community where the cliffs feel a little too steep, the storms roll in fast, and everyone has something to hide.

The first book, Grimstone, follows Remi Hayes. She arrives in town already bruised: her fiancé cheated on her, her brother Jude is a constant headache, and the only thing she has going for her is the rotting mansion she inherited from an uncle. Blackleaf Manor is supposed to be her fresh start. If she can renovate and sell it, she might finally get ahead.

Instead, the house seems determined to destroy her. Strange noises, sabotaged projects, and a creeping sense of being watched blur the line between haunting and human malice. At the same time, Remi gets entangled with Dane Covett, the doctor-next-door who also happens to be Grimstone’s most notorious resident. Everyone in town whispers that he killed his wife. He blackmails Remi into a deal that keeps them far too close for comfort, even as he patches her wounds and claims he’s trying to protect her from something worse.

The second book, Monarch, widens the lens on Grimstone. Elena Zelenska is a bookish young woman who signs up as a kind of mail-order bride in a bid to escape her stagnant life. Her new fiancé, Benjamin Wittacker, is a handsome single father and published author who seems to offer a fairy-tale do-over. He even starts building her a castle in the woods. By the time Elena arrives in Grimstone, the castle feels more like a trap than a dream, a labyrinth of hidden rooms and creeping dread.

Elena’s one refuge is the Monarch hotel, run by Atlas Covett. Massive, intimidating, and as secretive as the town itself, Atlas becomes her unlikely ally as Ben’s behavior grows more controlling and menacing. The romance here is tangled up with questions of trust, autonomy, and how far someone will go to rescue themselves when no rescue seems to be coming.

Across the series, Grimstone itself becomes a kind of character: a place where bad things have happened for a very long time, and where people with damaged pasts either find a home or disappear into the fog. Expect gothic atmosphere, morally gray men, prickly, determined heroines, and slow-building romances threaded through with real danger. You can read the books in any order, but starting with Grimstone then Monarch will give you the deepest sense of the town’s secrets.