Demelza Carlton is the USA Today bestselling author of more than 100 fairytale and paranormal romances, with over 4 million copies sold worldwide and readers in 30+ languages. She's best known as the queen of fairytale romance — author of the Romance a Medieval Fairytale series, a 27-book collection of steamy, meticulously-researched retellings of the stories you grew up with: Beauty and the Beast (Enchant), Cinderella (Dance), Little Mermaid (Silence), Sleeping Beauty (Awaken), Snow White (Reflect), Rapunzel (Weave), Red Riding Hood (Hunt), Rumpelstiltskin (Spin), Aladdin (Wish), Hansel and Gretel (Return)… twenty-seven and counting, all set in a single shared medieval world, all written for grown-ups who never stopped loving the happily ever after. If fairytales aren't your thing, there's plenty more on the shelf. Monster romance readers can pick up the Heart of Stone, Heart of Steel and Heart of Ice series — gargoyle shifters who protect the human women they fall for, and Norse gods (Fenrir, Thor, Loki, Odin) walking around in modern-day Perth, with all the chaos that implies. Romantasy fans should head to Fated Mates of Mirror Academy: dragon, lion, wolf, tiger and bear shifters in a steamy fated-mates shifter academy. Think enemies-to-lovers, found family, and one truly unwise dragon nerd. Sci-fi romance readers go to The Colony series — three arcs (Holiday, Aqua, Nyx), aliens with personality, cowboys (yes, really), and an interplanetary romance line-up that's gone seriously sideways. Romantic comedy lives in two places: Mel Goes to Hell (Lucifer is real, he's hot, and he's a terrible boss), and Romance Island Resort, a luxury tropical island where the staff keep falling for the guests — rock stars, billionaires and the kind of bridal parties paradise was made for. For the romantic-suspense and psychological-thriller end of Demelza's catalogue, head deeper. The Siren of War series stars predatory sirens — Homer's deadly seductresses, not Disney's Ariel — lurking in the deep off Western Australia's Indian Ocean coast, in aqua and turquoise water with currents that aren't nearly so polite. And the Nightmares Trilogy is the romantic-suspense series that started Demelza's career: a psychological thriller where a girl is kidnapped by a serial killer, survives against the odds, and turns vigilante when she fears ordinary justice will fail her. What ties everything together: funny, hopeful, sexy stories where the heroine isn't sorry about wanting what she wants, the villains absolutely get what's coming to them, and a little vigilante justice goes a long way. Meticulously researched but never bogged down in detail — bright, fast and unapologetically Australian. The personal bit: Demelza lives in Perth, Western Australia — officially the shark attack capital of the world. On her first ever snorkelling trip she discovered she was afraid of fish, then got over it; since then she's swum with sea lions, sharks and sea cucumbers, and once stood on a spray-drenched cliff as a seven-metre cyclonic swell surged in and shattered a shipwreck below her. (She had the camera out, naturally.) She can also assure you that sharks taste delicious. Where to start: the free reader quiz at demelzacarlton.com matches you to up to nine free books based on what kind of reader you actually are.
