Rec · someone is still listening
The Evidence Trilogy · Book One
Evidence of Desire
She pressed record. He never stopped.
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Margot Dunn has a bet, a microcassette recorder, and nine weeks to win.
Seduce Matthias Valenti. Get him on tape at Winter Formal, in front of two hundred witnesses. Walk off the stage clean. Lose, and the next voice on record will be hers.
Matthias is barely older, a quiet spring transfer who lives off campus and reads like a ghost. He does not flinch when she points the recorder at him. He waits. He watches. He lets her think she is leading.
In a rain-soaked Pacific Northwest college town, 1998, two people are building the same kind of proof for very different reasons. By Winter Formal, someone will have to speak into the microphone. Not everyone will walk off the stage the way they planned.
Book One of The Evidence Trilogy · 475 pages · released 2026.
If you love
Beautiful Disaster meets Gone Girl.
For readers of H.D. Carlton and Navessa Allen, and anyone who wants the obsession without the apology.
Tropes
Heat & discretion
Spice 4.5 / 5 · explicit, open-door, control-focused.
Not a safe or redemptive love model. Reader discretion is the whole point.
Content warnings
Stalking and covert surveillance, psychological manipulation, engineered relationship sabotage, explicit sexual content, power and financial imbalance, public humiliation, betrayal by a close friend, parental emotional abuse and financial control, academic power abuse, class shame, and alcohol in college settings.
The Evidence Trilogy
Book Two · Pre-order · Jan 1, 2027
Evidence of Intent
His father built the cage. He walked back in for her.
Getting out was supposed to be the hard part.
Book Three · Pre-order · Jul 1, 2027
Evidence of Reckoning
She pressed stop. The past never did.
Some debts do not die with the men who owe them.
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The Regular at Table Seven
A story from the margins of Evidence of Desire: the couple at table seven, seen from behind the café counter. Yours free when you join the list, plus first word when Evidence of Intent lands.
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Join the reader team and get Evidence of Intent before release day. In return, all I ask is an honest review in release week. That's the whole deal.
About C.S. Straid
C.S. Straid writes the kind of love story that comes with a content warning.
Their books live in the dark corners of wanting: obsessive heroes, heroines who are nobody's victim, and the thin electric line between being watched and being chosen. No safe-love models. No apologies. Just two people building the same evidence for very different reasons, and the question of who is really in control.
They have a weakness for 1998, rain on glass, analog tape, and the small red light that means someone is still listening. They keep their own life offline and their characters' secrets on the page, which is exactly where both belong.
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