Astoria Bane writes dark historical romance. The books are explicit, and they go to places some readers will want to know about first. This page lists them, book by book, without spoilers beyond the warnings themselves.
Heat level
Every book in The Wreckage Between Us is fully explicit. Love scenes are on the page, never faded to black, and they come after a long build of restraint. On a five-point scale, the series is a five.
The Devil’s Asking Price (prequel)
Show the content notes for the prequel
Dark romance with explicit scenes. It includes:
- Explicit sex on the page, including a first time with pain and blood
- One rough encounter in a semi-public place that leaves bruises, wanted on both sides
- The withdrawal method, and fear of pregnancy and social ruin
- The death of a parent on the page, which the hero chooses not to prevent
- Alcohol, and a parent who drinks
- Financial coercion and blackmail
- A hero who courts the heroine’s sister in public while secretly involved with the heroine (nobody is married yet)
- A father’s mistress, in backstory
- Family cruelty: a mother’s favoritism and public belittling
- An age gap: the hero is 31, the heroine 19
- An obsessive, possessive hero
- An opera described in some detail: sexual extortion, offstage torture, an execution and a suicide
- No redemption, and a cliffhanger ending
Books One to Three
Show the content notes for the trilogy
Across Books One, Two and Three, the series includes:
- Infidelity: the hero is married to the heroine’s sister
- Coercion and blackmail
- A scene of dubious consent shaped by the period
- Deaths the leads cause or allow
- A past suicide, referred to
- A parent who drinks
- Violence
- A maritime disaster
- Leads who are neither punished nor redeemed
Notes for each book will be posted here when it is released.
What you will not find on this site
This site carries no explicit excerpts. The heat lives in the books.
Is it for me?
If you like obsessive heroes, forbidden romance, period settings with real teeth, and endings nobody is forgiven into, probably yes. If any of the notes above is a hard limit for you, trust that, and skip this series without guilt. What Is Dark Historical Romance? explains the genre, and the reading order shows where to begin.