Hades and Persephone Love Stories Like A Touch of Darkness

The first in a trilogy, Receiver of Many presents a nuanced version of the relationships between Hades, Persephone, and Demeter. Here, Persephone teeters on the edge of womanhood. After spending a childhood protected by her mother’s power, she’s eager to embrace the freedom of adulthood. 

But when Hades comes to claim his promised bride, Demeter refuses to let her daughter go. While the conflict seems familiar, Alexander’s depiction portrays Demeter as a woman impacted by trauma who inadvertently perpetuates the cycle. It breathes fresh life into a goddess often painted an evil caricature in modern retellings.

For readers wanting a more modern take on the Hades and Persephone myth, Rose and Rune follow St. Clair’s example and delivers that contemporary setting. Greek gods live among, yet separate from, humans. Unfortunately, financing this unique lifestyle falls upon Hades. He may not like this arrangement, but he’ll do it if his fellow gods follow a few rules. 

On the other hand, Persephone has enjoyed the past two years of hard-won freedom from her mother’s suffocating love. If she’s bending the rules laid down by Demeter, no one is the wiser. That is, until her mother comes for her semiannual visit.

This one’s for readers who want something like Persephone’s struggle with situations unfamiliar and alien to her.

Earth has become a literal battleground. Thirty-nine other realms have sent champions to fight to the death until one warrior emerges the victor. Knox has won this interdimensional battle royale five times before and he intends to win it again—and then kill his king. Vale is a human woman who stumbles across the battle royale fought by godlike warriors and gets drawn into the conflict—a situation further complicated by her crackling chemistry with Knox. 

One of the key points of the Hades and Persephone myth is when the god kidnaps his bride and takes her to the underworld. That striking image launches the first book of Linsey Hall’s Shadow Guild trilogy. Seraphia is a librarian who lives and works in a secret city hidden within London. 

But this librarian has powers she barely understands and has been told to hide them, and for good reason. When she does use her plant-based abilities, she attracts the attention of Hades, who believes she is Persephone, his promised queen and the key to ruling both the underworld and earth.

Kore’s future has been mapped out by her mother, Demeter. To keep her safe from Olympus, Kore lives a life of chastity and hiding her powers. But while she’s escaped the notice of Olympus, Hades has long watched her from afar and fallen in love. Unable to bear how miserable her current existence makes her, he decides to take Kore away. 

Despite his good intentions however, Kore reacts how any woman would when a strange man kidnaps her: She fights him tooth and nail. The push and pull between Kore and Hades, as well as the way her attraction to him chips away at her resistance, will appeal to fans of A Touch of Darkness.

Cast’s Goddess Summoning series revolve around mortal women who, through various circumstances, come to embody various goddesses. The second installment of the series opens with a bakery in financial trouble. Lina, the owner, is willing to give anything a try and ends up summoning a Greek goddess. 

Demeter, the goddess of agriculture and harvest, makes Lina an offer to exchange souls with her daughter, Persephone. Persephone will revive Lina’s faltering bakery, and Lina will bring spring to the underworld. A straightforward task, right? It would be except, like in St. Clair’s version, Hades is proving to be a major distraction.

Aimee Carter’s Goddess Test books center on Kate Winters, a young woman who agrees to take seven tests in exchange for saving her dying mother. The tests are meant to find a candidate to assume the role of Hades’s wife and queen. There’s only one problem. Kate isn’t the first girl to take this test, and every single one before her has died. God of Darkness is a companion novella to the original series and tells the story of Henry, aka Hades, and the girls who took the test before Kate. 

Take the story of Hades and Persephone, mix it with its narrative descendent Beauty and the Beast, dip it in Nordic mythology, and you get Halle’s dark fantasy novel. When her father dies, Hanna travels from the sunny skies of Los Angeles to the chilly climes of Finland for his funeral. But then she discovers her father’s body is missing and uncovers a shocking truth. 

Her father was a shaman who travelled to the Realm of the Dead and is now being held captive by the God of Death. Now she must journey into the underworld to rescue him.

Originally written in Italian before being translated to English, Calligola sets the classic tale of Hades and Persephone in the current day. A child of the modern age, this version of Persephone attends college and, in a situation similar to St. Clair’s rendition, has no mortal worshippers … not that she minds. She has an uneasy relationship with her divine heritage, as well as with her fellow gods. Then, she meets Hades, the ancient god of the dead, and finds common ground in their shared interest in law.