The Mila Novels
From Soviet Moscow to the Adriatic coast —
literary fiction with an explicit register.
I am looking for a serious man who believes in God and family.
Mila Ivanovna was fourteen years old when she watched a borrowed VHS tape of a French film in a Moscow apartment and felt something shift inside her — not a crush, but a frequency. A way of being desired that had no name in the Soviet world around her. The frequency lodged in her nervous system and never left.
The Mila Novels track her across forty years: through two marriages, three countries, a faith kept and tested, a son raised through the ruble crash, and the long education of a woman learning the difference between what she wants and what she needs.
Six books. Each stands alone. Together they form a single argument about desire, faith, and the architecture of a life chosen deliberately.
Six novels, numbered in story order. Read them in any sequence — each stands alone.
New here? Start with Book One
A Novel of Desire, Faith, and the Woman She Became
Twenty-two years, three cities, one education — the whole series begins at a kitchen table in Moscow, with thirteen words typed in careful English. Start for less than a coffee.
Also free on Kindle Unlimited
A Novel of Desire, Faith, and the Woman She Became
Before the gold heart necklace. Before the man with blue eyes who flew five hours to stand in front of her. There was the woman who became the woman he found. Three cities, three lovers, one education — and, finally, thirteen words typed in careful English on a kitchen table in Moscow.
A Summer Affair on the Island of Hydra
In the summer of 2001, Mila flies alone to a small Greek island. On the third afternoon she meets a man who builds boats and knows the difference between an evening and a future. The affair is the most important of her life. She leaves anyway.
A Winter Affair in Alexandria
Alexandria, December 2005. Mila is thirty-four, in Egypt for two weeks of work she could have done from anywhere. The man she meets on the second night speaks four languages well enough to mean what he says in any of them. On the seventh night he asks her a question she didn't realise she was waiting to be asked.
A Moscow Love Story
A year of video calls between Abu Dhabi and Moscow. A year of careful English typed slowly on a Russian keyboard. A year of the daily question neither of them asked aloud: what is this we are building, and is it real enough to leave a chair for in the actual world? November 2008. Sheremetyevo airport. The answer.
A Marriage Discovers How Much It Can Hold
Two couples on a beach in Sri Lanka. Four faithful people. One door none of them knew was there. And one image, offered over wine on the third night, that none of them will ever take back: a second candle, lit from the first, makes the room twice as bright — and takes nothing from the first flame.
A Long Marriage, an Albanian Coast, and the Third Act
Eighteen years ago, Mack flew to Moscow for a weekend that became a marriage. Now they are on a ferry from Bari, an Italian sunset behind them, an Albanian coast ahead. They have come looking for the next chapter. Albania is not a destination. It is a mirror.
“Desire and faith in the same book, finally — and neither one apologizes to the other. I read all six in nine days.”
“Mila is the most alive woman I’ve met on a page in years. I finished Mila Before at two in the morning and bought the next book before I turned off the light.”
“Explicit, yes. But what stayed with me was the marriage — two people choosing each other, eyes open, for forty years.”
“I am looking for a serious man who believes in God and family.”
Forrest Maddox is the pen name of a writer of literary fiction. The Mila Novels are the author’s first published series.
Maddox writes about desire as a serious subject — the way it educates, the way it collides with faith, family, and the slow architecture of a life. The novels are drawn to displacement: the idea that people often become most themselves when they are furthest from home.
Maddox prefers to let the books speak and the author stay out of frame. Readers who’d like to know when the next Mila novel ships can join the reader list.
Join the Reader ListNo. Each novel stands alone. If you want the best door in, start with Mila Before — it is $0.99 and it begins everything. The story order (1–6) rewards those who follow it, but every book was written to be someone’s first.
Explicit. Open door, nothing faded to black — and always in service of the story. These are literary novels about desire, faith, and a long marriage, written for adult readers. 18+.
No. Not once, in six books. Everything that happens in this marriage happens together — decided together, with eyes open, inside rules the two of them build with care. That promise holds from the first page to the last.
All six Mila novels are now available. Join the reader list and get the first three chapters of Mila in Greece free — plus first word on whatever Forrest Maddox writes next.
Mila Before — Book One of six
Start the Series — $0.99