Paranormal Romance Books

Black Dagger Brotherhood by J.R. Ward (24 book series)

This series started publishing in 2011, so it set the stage for a lot of other paranormal & vampire romance that came after it.

Zsadist’s book specifically is the one to start with if you want the Monster with a Heart done at full intensity: a brother too damaged and too dangerous even among his own kind, whose entire arc is whether he’s capable of receiving love. Monster with a Heart.

Bride by Ali Hazelwood

An arranged marriage between a vampire raised in secret among humans and the alpha werewolf she’s given to as collateral in a fragile truce. Plus you get a rare sighting of a female vampire!

Grounded in real neuroscience instead of hand-wavy magic — this is the vampire romance for readers who want their world-building to actually hold up. Eternal Protector / Sensual Predator blend.

Listen to our whole episode about Bride.

AJ Sherwood’s Fated Mates series (When to Keep Them, How to Woo Them, Where to Find Them)

Vampires with human mates, built on a bureaucracy that formalizes consent: not everyone can be a vampire’s mate, and the system exists specifically so no one can be claimed without agreeing to it first.

Jocelynn Drake’s Lords of Discord series (and the Kings of Chaos spinoff)

Vampires who are genuinely dangerous and don’t apologize for it, living full lives as scientists, nightclub owners, and musicians who happen to also be assassins.

Sensual Predator.

Kate Daniels by Ilona Andrews

Not a shifter herself, but she spends the whole series surrounded by them in a dystopian, magic-flooded Atlanta. Meg’s pick for the series she’d most want to reread for the first time: a snarky, self-sufficient merc who becomes a wife and mother without ever losing the edge that made her interesting in book one.

Mercy Thompson by Patricia Briggs

A coyote shifter surrounded by wolf packs and vampires, fighting to hold her own in a world that wasn’t built for her kind.

The Five Packs series by Cate C. Wells

One of the draws of paranormal (and often werewolves in particular) is the lore around fated mates — how sometimes you can just smell your mate and it changes your life.

Cate C. Wells (who is always a little gritty in her contemporary romance too, often dipping into motorcycle club & mafia) explores an entire series of rejected mates. What happens when biology tells you one thing, and you choose something else?

Muscle & Bone and Mist & Marrow by Mary Calmes

Nikki personally often avoids omegaverse because she doesn’t love mpreg set-ups. Shifters with an A/B/O caste structure, but Nikki still loves it because it’s a societal-structure take on Omegaverse, not an Mpreg one, which is why it’s one of the only Omegaverse-adjacent series she actually recommends.

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness (All Souls Trilogy)

A Discovery of Witches and its sequels: a witch and a vampire fall for each other in a world where interspecies relationships are banned outright. Nikki’s read: Diana is a great example of the “powerful person who doesn’t know it yet” fantasy — she starts out unable to control her magic and ends the series able to defeat her enemies by snapping her fingers.

Nikki says the TV series adaptation is great. Meg has no opinion on that because she is on the record as being Bad At TV.

The Beacon Hill Sorcerer series by Sheena Jolie

Necromancers, fire mages, and vampires orbiting a single supernatural family trying to hold itself together under the weight of its own power. Vampires are one thread in a much bigger magical tapestry here rather than the main event, which makes it a good pick if you want vampire romance without an all-vampire cast.

Covens of Eaton Falls by Mia Monroe

Two covens, kept apart by a centuries-old war: one of vampires, one of witches, coexisting in an uneasy truce in a fictional Massachusetts town until they’re forced to team up against a common enemy. Each book follows a different fated-mates pairing across the six-book series.

Sons of the Fallen by Jaclyn Osborn

Seven Nephilim brothers, each cursed with one of the deadly sins, living in a seaside mansion and fighting demons while trying not to kill each other. Low-angst, high-banter MM urban fantasy — book one pairs the Wrath brother with a human antique-shop owner who accidentally acquires a haunted, demon-attracting box.

The Reckless Damned, Damned Connections, and Hopeless Blessed by Lark Taylor

A connected universe of demon/angel romances, starting with a demon and the human he falls for despite Hell’s rules, and expanding into angel/demon enemies-to-lovers pairings in the spinoff series. Fated mates and forbidden-love tropes throughout, with recurring characters crossing between the sub-series.

John’s Mysteries by AJ Sherwood

Psychics and mediums, built on a system of “psychic-ness” Nikki says is unlike anything else she’s read. She’s reread the entire series a dozen times.

Mack’s Marvelous Manifestations by AJ Sherwood

A spinoff of the John’s Mysteries universe following Mack, a psychic medium, and his boyfriend Brandon as FBI Paranormal Activity Division agents who travel the country exorcising ghosts — Scottish Highland inns, haunted ghost towns, and one very memorable Christmas case among them.

The Crawshanks Guide to the Recently Departed by Vawn Cassidy

A pathologist who can see ghosts teams up with a sassy dead drag queen to solve her own murder, with a Scotland Yard detective providing the romance. Funny, dark-comedy-leaning paranormal mystery rather than straight romance, but the central relationship carries real weight.

Hidden Species by Louisa Masters

We love an interspecies paranormal universe, and this is one of our favorites. (How could it not be? Nikki loves both paranormal romance and a well-oiled operations mechanism.)

A “community species government” staffed by demons, vampires, hellhounds, and sorcerers who investigate crimes against paranormal-human relations — glitter fights, interoffice enemies-to-lovers, and a genuinely well-plotted overarching mystery across four books.

Listen to our whole episode about the Hidden Species series.

Immortals After Dark by Kresley Cole

The genre-defining cross-species series (vampires, weres, witches, demons, valkyrie) and the gateway drug for Meg into paranormal romance.

And if you want a podcast readalong, Fated Mates does a sixteen-episode series that can’t be beat for this series.

Darkest London by Kristen Callihan

If you want your paranormal to also scratch your historical romance itch, look no further than this steampunk Victorian series.

It combines werewolves, ghosts, demons & witches. First book: Firelight

Charm City Chronicles by Meghan Maslow

Baltimore, but every neighborhood is claimed by a different supernatural faction: demons, cat shifters, raven shifters, wolf shifters, all carving out their own turf. Dark comedy with a body count, and a setting so specific (real Baltimore streets, real Baltimore weirdness) that it reads like the author genuinely loves the city.