Fool Me Once Saga Vol. 1: Prequel and Books 1-3: Hades & Persephone Retelling: A Dark Romantic Suspense Collection

The fate of the underworld rests with one woman, and she isn’t bowing to its king.

Clara Presley is the queen of autonomy, a self-help phenomenon who built an empire on the philosophy of independence. She survived the wreckage of love once and walked away from Philadelphia Detective Mark Kennedy to fortify her heart’s perimeter. But even the strongest walls have structural flaws, and John Carrington is a specialist in finding them.

A world-renowned psychologist with a debonair British veneer, Carrington doesn’t just study human behavior; he deconstructs it. What begins as a singular lapse in judgment under the neon haze of Las Vegas spirals into a lifelong sentence: a marriage bound by a vow Clara can’t remember and a physical magnetism she can’t escape.

Trapped in a union that’s more of a psychological siege, Clara matches Carrington move for move in an explosive game of cerebral chess. But as his control tightens, she flees from London to the familiar streets of Philadelphia, where she finds a chaotic, unshakeable ally in superstar footballer Alex Campbell. Yet even across an ocean, Clara confronts a terrifying truth: she is addicted to the predatory darkness of the husband she left behind.

When Clara returns to Carrington, the games expand from the bedroom to bloodlines. Marked by the criminal underground, Clara is forced into hiding on the west coast of Ireland, thrust into the crosshairs of the County Mayo Clan and caught between her husband’s buried past and his estranged father—Nicholas Smith—the calculating Don of a rival syndicate.

In this underworld, truth is a liability, and lies are the only currency of survival. To outmaneuver the men who seek to control her, Clara must surrender her illusions, navigate a labyrinth of shifting loyalties, and step into the power she was destined to wield.

This collection includes the pulse-pounding first arc of the Fool Me Once Saga:

• WHAT IN THE WORLD WAS THAT? (Prequel Short Story)
• DID I LIE? (Book 1)
• WOULD I LIE TO YOU? (Book 2)
• WAS THAT A LIE? (Book 3)

Get ready for over 1,000 pages of high-stakes romantic suspense, mafia syndicate warfare, and an all-consuming obsession.

Author’s note to readers:

This collection contains the prequel short story and the first three books of the seven-book Fool Me Once Saga—a modern-day gothic psychological reimagining of the Hades and Persephone myth. This collection features an obsessive British tycoon, an unreliable narrator navigating undiagnosed Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), and a forced marriage that spirals into an international criminal underground power struggle.

Told in first-person POV, the series explores the thin line between love and control. For fans of genre-blended romantic suspense, psychological realism, dark literary fiction, and dark romance featuring a Victorian/Gothic antihero in a contemporary setting. Reader discretion is advised.

Note for existing readers: If you have purchased the prequel and the first three books in the series, this collection contains the same content.