Dark romance: Mzansi love stories with teeth

Dark romance is not a love story that happens to end badly. It is a love story where the danger is the point — where the man is not safe, the situation is not fair, and she wants him anyway. Nobody in these stories is rescued. A woman's car dies on a gravel road in the Waterberg with no signal and one weathered sign pointing eight kilometres down a farm track, and the farm is not what the board says it is. A student six weeks behind on rent is invited to dinner by her landlords, and discovers she is the menu. A man picks a flat, plants the advertisement and waits seven months for the right person to answer it. A reporter two months into the job is the only person a condemned man will talk to, with ninety-three days left before they fly him to the gallows. You already know the trick of this genre, and it is worth saying out loud: the reader is the one in control. You are holding the book. You can shut it. That is exactly what makes it safe to want something on the page that you would run from in a parking lot — and it is why these stories can go where they go without anybody getting hurt. What they are not is careless. The men are written as men, not monsters with good jawlines, and the women are never stupid — they see it coming, and they walk in anyway, for reasons the story makes you understand. Every one is set somewhere real: a Waterberg farm road, a Durban block of flats, a Johannesburg high-rise after hours. Black South African characters, South African authors, illustrated throughout. If you want the wanting without the teeth, the slow burn shelf is next door. If you want the teeth, start here. Chapter one of every story is free.