HD Carlton Books in Order

If you want the Cat and Mouse duet in order: Satan's Affair → Haunting Adeline → Hunting Adeline.
If you prefer intense contemporary standalones: Shallow River → Does It Hurt?.
If you want her early dystopian sci fi: Hollow → Untainted.

H. D. Carlton grew up in a small town in Ohio, where the weather could cycle through all four seasons in a week. That restless, unpredictable backdrop shaped the off-kilter worlds she would later write about.

Before dark romance and viral book trends entered the picture, she wrote poetry and small pieces on the side while juggling what she calls boring adult jobs.

Over time those poems stretched into stories that leaned darker, stranger, and more emotionally raw. Her first published novels, the Zero Saga books Hollow and Untainted, blended dystopian science fiction, horror, and romance. Even there you can see the seeds of what comes later, with high-stakes survival, morally gray choices, and characters who fall in love while the world burns around them.

Everything changed when she turned fully toward contemporary dark romance. Shallow River pulls from her own experience as a survivor of an abusive relationship, turning that pain into a small-town psychological thriller about control, gaslighting, and a woman who refuses to stay a victim. Readers connected with how unflinching the book felt while still giving its heroine real agency.

The breakout, though, was the Cat and Mouse universe. With Haunting Adeline and its sequel Hunting Adeline, Carlton pushed into a gothic, hyper-violent love story between a stalked author and the vigilante who tears apart trafficking networks in her name. The duet ignited a huge online following and put her at the center of ongoing conversations about consent, fantasy, and what readers look for in the darkest corners of romance.

She followed that success with standalones like Does It Hurt?, which strands an identity thief and a shark-obsessed researcher on a haunted-feeling island, and with spin offs set around the Cat and Mouse world. Across all of them, she gravitates toward isolated settings, obsessive relationships, and villains who double as love interests. Her books often mix the pacing of a thriller with horror-adjacent imagery and emotionally charged steam.

Carlton has been open that she writes for readers who do not mind checking their sanity at the door.

Content warnings are a regular part of her work because she is comfortable letting stories go as dark as they need to, as long as the characters feel honest about what they are surviving or choosing.

Now living in Oregon with her husband, two dogs, a cat, and a long running in joke about Bigfoot, she splits her days between ordinary life and the intense fictional worlds she builds at night. When she is not drafting, she is likely watching paranormal shows, listening to music, or talking with readers in her devoted online community. Whether the book is set under Area 51, in a decrepit lighthouse, or inside a haunted manor, the constants in her work are high emotion, sharp edges, and characters whose darkness is part of the appeal.

As her backlist grows with new standalones and spin offs, she remains closely involved with her readership, often teasing works in progress long before they are finished. That ongoing conversation is part of why her stories feel like a shared, slightly unhinged universe rather than isolated books.