The Intimate Laws
Cover Work
Every intimacy writes itself on the skin. Rue's trade is covering what people cannot live with being read.
In development
A series by L.P.H. Nordhaven
The Intimate Laws
41 books shown
Desire has laws. So do touch, consent, hunger, absence, and truth.
What if every boundary left a line on the landscape? What if intimacy built a room only two people could enter, or unspoken truths grew in a shared garden? The Intimate Laws is a series of standalone literary speculative novels in which one impossible law makes the hidden terms of closeness visible.
These are adult, relationship-centered stories about lovers, partners, bodies, bargains, and the distance between wanting and choosing. Each novel treats its premise as both physical reality and ethical pressure: who carries the cost, who gets to say yes, and what remains when private rules become impossible to ignore?
For readers of emotionally exact speculative fiction about desire, consent, grief, devotion, and the difficult work of knowing another person.
Each book is a complete story and may be read in any order.
Every title is a complete standalone novel and may be read in any order.
Books in this series
The Intimate Laws
The Goat-Mother's Chart
Every goat in the herd lives twice: once on the steppe, and once in the stitches inside Altynai's coat.
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The Intimate Laws
The Grace Period
Desire stops time. Their pauses used to last whole afternoons. Now the hours outside them are asking to be counted.
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The Intimate Laws
The Half-Life of Yes
Every yes leaves warmth beneath the skin, and every warmth eventually cools.
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The Intimate Laws
The Lamplighter's Second-Skin
The women choose whether to enter the light. The light chooses what it remembers.
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The Intimate Laws
Borrowed Hurt
Rana took her partner’s pain until a stranger offered to carry hers.
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The Intimate Laws
Dream Tax
Every night together built their world; every night apart makes it crumble.
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The Intimate Laws
Grief Crystal
The largest grief-crystal ever recorded is growing inside Altan's chest. A mining company has come to claim it.
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The Intimate Laws
How We Learned to Hold Each Other
The cold between Yuki and her husband is not a feeling. It has a temperature, a shape, and a tear she cannot mend alone.
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The Intimate Laws
Jointly Held
Every lock opens for Ada. The first boundary Noor trusts is the one Ada chooses not to cross.
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The Intimate Laws
Joy Contagion
Patient Zero is seven. The incubation period is three hours. Lagos has twenty-four million hosts.
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The Intimate Laws
One of Us Seen
They built one career from two lives. Only one of them is allowed to be seen.
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The Intimate Laws
Other Body
After twenty-five years of marriage, Adriana wakes with her husband’s hands.
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The Intimate Laws
Our Weather
After intimacy, every couple makes weather; this storm flooded an entire block.
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The Intimate Laws
Private Animals
The marriage ended. Its creatures still needed feeding.
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The Intimate Laws
Pulse Debt
Rose hears two heartbeats in his chest; one belongs to the dead.
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The Intimate Laws
Room of One
Elina can testify to the shape of anyone's intimacy. She has never had an inner room of her own.
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The Intimate Laws
Second Touch
The first touch belongs to the living. The second brings back everyone her body has loved.
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The Intimate Laws
Sell the Feeling
He sold his joy to save his wife. She died anyway. The market kept the rest.
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The Intimate Laws
Silence Bed
The Muratas have not lied to each other. They have simply let the truth take root.
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The Intimate Laws
Silence Sculptor
After forty-four years together, Aino and Mikko’s silence has blocked the front door.
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The Intimate Laws
The Distance We Keep
Their offices share a wall on paper; by Friday, the walk takes hours.
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The Intimate Laws
The Divorce of Echoes
Their marriage is ending, but the kitchen remembers a tenderness neither spouse does.
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The Intimate Laws
The Envy in Her Throat
He loves her work enough to see exactly how good it is. That is the problem.
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The Intimate Laws
The Furnished Dark
Every couple builds a room only the two of them can enter. Theirs has grown into a house, and its corridor is full of locked doors.
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The Intimate Laws
The Hours We Never Used
Every beautiful memory Gia relives spends time Leo needs to care for her.
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The Intimate Laws
The Last Time We Were Hungry for Each Other
A marriage can survive without desire. Can desire survive being measured?
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The Intimate Laws
The Long Fast
He has not fed in nine years. He calls it principle. His body calls it starving.
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The Intimate Laws
The Lost Language of the Skin
One person can read the word on Ingrid’s body, and she refuses.
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The Intimate Laws
The Shape of Us Before We Met
The door was not in the blueprint. Neither was the life behind it.
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The Intimate Laws
The Shared Sleep
Before a marriage can be spoken, the blanket must tell the truth.
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The Intimate Laws
The Shell Bride's Tongue
The shell is small enough to rest on her tongue. The decision it carries can divide a life.
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The Intimate Laws
The Sound of Wanting
Lyra hears desire as music, and the most beautiful chord was never for her.
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The Intimate Laws
The Taste of Someone Else
Sorel turns emotion into dessert, but the sweetness in her mouth is not hers.
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The Intimate Laws
The Threshold We Cross
Every intimate boundary marks the city, and one refusal divides it completely.
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The Intimate Laws
The Weight of a Settled Argument
The marriage was quiet. The floor was carrying the argument.
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The Intimate Laws
The Weight We Carry
She carries her dead husband’s gravity, and the physicist measuring it is falling.
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The Intimate Laws
The Woman Who Couldn't Blush
Everyone’s skin speaks emotion fluently, except the woman who writes intimacy contracts.
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The Intimate Laws
Touch Archaeologist
Every touch leaves a residue. Valentina Rossi has built her life on knowing how to read it.
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The Intimate Laws
Your Turn to Be Afraid
His tea trembles before her helicopter leaves the ground.
In development