Most Read Historical Romance Books

To fend off suitors and matchmaking mothers, Daphne Bridgerton and the guarded Duke of Hastings stage a fake courtship—then struggle to keep it fake. The first book in Julia Quinn's Bridgerton series and the basis for the Netflix show: a witty, sensual Regency romance.

• fake dating

Viscount Anthony Bridgerton means to marry the season's diamond for practical reasons—but her fiercely protective older sister Kate stands in his way, and the more they clash, the harder he falls for the wrong sister. Book two of the Bridgerton series: a sparkling enemies-to-lovers Regency romance.

• enemies to lovers

In the closing days of World War II, a British nurse named Claire Beauchamp stumbles through a mysterious stone circle in Scotland and is thrown back into the year 1743. There she meets Jamie Fraser, a rugged Highlander with a complicated past, and together they become swept up in the Jacobite Rising against King George's forces — an adventure that will span centuries.

• time loop
• marriage of convenience

Eight years ago, Anne Elliot was persuaded by family and friends to break off her engagement to Frederick Wentworth, a naval officer with no fortune and uncertain prospects. She has regretted it ever since. Now twenty-seven and quietly overlooked in her vain, spendthrift family, Anne watches as their debts force them to let out the ancestral estate and economize in Bath. Fate returns Wentworth to her circle, now a wealthy and admired captain, seemingly indifferent to the woman who once refused him and openly courted by younger, livelier girls. Anne, steady and self-effacing, must endure his coolness and her own undimmed feelings while navigating the small humiliations of a family that undervalues her. Persuasion was the last novel Jane Austen completed, published after her death in 1817. Quieter and more autumnal than her earlier work, it is a story of constancy, second chances, and the slow vindication of a woman who feels deeply but says little, widely loved as Austen's most tender romance.

A Cinderella retelling: Sophie, an earl's illegitimate daughter turned servant, shares one anonymous night with Benedict Bridgerton at a masquerade, then disappears. Years later he meets a housemaid who stirs the same longing—never guessing she's the same woman. Book three of the Bridgerton series.

• secret identity
• forbidden love
• family saga
• slow burn

Wallflower Penelope Featherington has loved Colin Bridgerton for years—and hides an explosive secret: she is Lady Whistledown, London's anonymous gossip columnist. When Colin finally sees her clearly, her double life threatens everything. Book four of the Bridgerton series: a beloved friends-to-lovers Regency romance.

• friends to lovers
• secret identity

In a quiet nursing home, an elderly man sits beside a woman with failing memory and reads to her from a worn notebook. The story he tells is of Noah Calhoun and Allie Nelson, who fell in love one summer in the early 1930s in the coastal town of New Bern, North Carolina — a mill worker and a wealthy young woman kept apart by class, distance, and the years that followed. Fourteen years later, Noah has returned from the war and is restoring an old plantation house, still unable to forget Allie. When she reappears in his life on the eve of her marriage to another man, both are forced to weigh the safe future they have planned against the love they never stopped feeling. Around this central romance, the framing story quietly reveals why the notebook matters so much, and to whom. Nicholas Sparks's debut novel became one of the most beloved love stories of its era, later adapted into a hugely popular film. The Notebook is a straightforward, sentimental tale of first love, second chances, and devotion that endures into old age and illness — an unabashed romance about the promises people keep across a lifetime.

• second chance
• dual timeline

After a correspondence with widowed botanist Sir Phillip Crane, outspoken Eloise Bridgerton impulsively runs off to meet the man who proposed by letter—only to find a gruff father of two unruly children, nothing like she imagined. Book five of the Bridgerton series: a tender marriage-of-convenience Regency romance.

• marriage of convenience
• epistolary
• grumpy sunshine

Michael Stirling has been in love with Francesca Bridgerton since the moment he met her—which is a problem, because that moment was at the dinner where she announced her engagement to his cousin and best friend, the Earl of Kilmartin. For years Michael has hidden his feelings, playing the charming rake while quietly loving a woman he could never have. When John dies suddenly and young, both Michael and Francesca are shattered, bound together by grief and by a secret Michael can never confess. He flees to India to escape it; she stays behind, a widow far too young. But grief does not last forever, and when the two are finally in the same room again, the feelings Michael buried and the guilt they both carry rise to the surface. The sixth book in Julia Quinn's Bridgerton series, When He Was Wicked is one of its most emotional entries—a Regency romance about mourning, longing, and daring to love again after loss.

• forbidden love
• friends to lovers

On a hot day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis misreads a charged moment between her sister Cecilia and Robbie Turner, the housekeeper's son. When a crime is committed on the estate that night, Briony's mistaken certainty leads to an accusation that shatters three lives. Ian McEwan's novel follows the fallout across the Second World War and into old age — a devastating story of guilt, love, and the power of fiction to distort and console.

• unreliable narrator
• forbidden love

Hyacinth Bridgerton, the youngest and sharpest of the eight siblings, is used to speaking her mind and scaring off suitors who cannot keep up with her. Gareth St. Clair is at odds with his cruel father and adored by the grandmother whose Italian diary he cannot read. When Hyacinth offers to translate the diary—rumored to hint at a hidden family treasure—the two are thrown together in a search that has them climbing through windows and trading barbs at every turn. As their treasure hunt draws them closer, Hyacinth discovers there is more to the roguish Gareth than his reputation suggests, and Gareth finds that the one woman who can match him is also the one he cannot stop thinking about. But Gareth's father guards secrets of his own, and the truth threatens both the treasure and their future. The seventh book in Julia Quinn's Bridgerton series, It's in His Kiss is a playful, banter-filled Regency romance about wit, family, and finding your equal.

Gregory Bridgerton believes in true love, and he's sure he's found it. There's just one small problem: the woman he's fallen for is in love with someone else. His friend, Lady Lucinda Abernathy, tries to help him win her over, but ends up falling for Gregory herself. The catch? Lucy is already engaged, and her uncle won't let her break it off. Now, on the way to the wedding, Gregory must race against time to claim the bride he truly loves.

• love triangle
• forbidden love
• friends to lovers

After a fortune hunter tries to force her hand in marriage by kidnapping her, Georgiana Bridgerton's reputation is left in ruins, leaving her the choice between marrying her captor or a life as a social outcast. Instead, her childhood friend and neighbor Nicholas Rokesby steps in with a marriage of convenience that could save them both, if neither of them falls for the other first.

• friends to lovers
• marriage of convenience

A Victorian London botanist who poisons unsavory men discovers her newest target is not the ordinary man he seems, in the first book of I.V. Ophelia's Gothic Poisoner trilogy.

• enemies to lovers
• morally grey
• anti hero
• secret identity

After a painful divorce, Georgia Stanton returns to her late great-grandmother Scarlett Stanton's Colorado estate and finds Scarlett's final, unfinished manuscript. Enlisting bestselling novelist Noah Harrison to help complete it, Georgia uncovers the true wartime romance behind the story — and learns why Scarlett never wrote its ending.

• dual timeline
• slow burn

Everyone knows Billie Bridgerton. She's smart, independent, and always getting into scrapes. But there's one person she can't stand: George Rokesby, her neighbor's insufferable older brother. When a twist of fate leaves Billie in a precarious situation, George is the only one who can help, forcing them to see each other in a new light.

• enemies to lovers

Wealthy and ruthless, Gabriel Duke clawed his way from the lowliest slums to the pinnacle of high society — and now he wants to buy the house next door. To an undaunted wallflower, he's just the beast next door. Lady Penelope Campion is a woman who loves everything and everyone, but her animal-filled home is about to be sold to the formidable Duke of Ruin. Can she find a way to save her beloved menagerie and maybe even soften his cold heart?

• grumpy sunshine
• forced proximity

A retelling of the story of Hosea set in 1850s Gold Rush California. Sold into prostitution as a child, Angel expects only cruelty from men — until Michael Hosea, a God-fearing farmer, marries her and loves her without condition. As his steadfastness collides with her shame and fear, Angel begins a painful journey toward healing. Francine Rivers's beloved, sweeping historical romance about redemption.

• redemption arc
• marriage of convenience

Billie Bridgerton always thought she'd marry one of the Rokesby boys, her neighbors. But it's George Rokesby, the one she can't stand, who she keeps ending up with. Their mutual dislike is legendary, but when circumstances force them together, unexpected sparks fly. Can these sworn enemies find affection beneath their animosity?

• enemies to lovers
• rivals
• forced proximity

London, 1920. Will Darling came home from the Great War with scars, medals and no plan, and the inheritance of his uncle's cluttered second-hand bookshop turns out to be less of a blessing than it looked: a criminal gang and then the War Office both arrive demanding information Will does not have. Help comes from Kim Secretan — charming, cultured and not remotely what he claims to be. A 1920s pulp adventure with a queer romance at its centre, and the first of the Will Darling Adventures.

• secret identity
• betrayal
• morally grey

Honoria Smythe-Smith, nicknamed "Bug," is a violinist who believes she's terrible at it and certainly not in love with her brother's best friend. Earl of Chatteris, Marcus Holroyd, has his own doubts about his feelings for his best friend's younger sister. Despite their initial hesitations and a shared fondness for chocolate cake, they must navigate a dangerous fever and a disastrous musical performance, all while falling deeply in love.

• friends to lovers

Evangeline Jenner, the shyest of wallflowers, needs to secure her inheritance and escape her grasping relatives. Her solution? A marriage of convenience to the notorious rake, Viscount St. Vincent. Sebastian's reputation precedes him, but Evie proposes a deal: marriage with no further intimacy after their wedding night. This forces Sebastian to reconsider his ways, and perhaps, for the first time, fall in love.

• enemies to lovers
• fake dating

In 1840s Mexico, Nena survives a terrifying attack by a blood-drinking creature, while her childhood sweetheart Néstor flees in grief, believing her dead. Nine years later, the United States invades Mexico, reuniting them on the brink of war—Nena as a healer and Néstor as a vaquero soldier. As they clash over past misunderstandings, they must unite to survive both the invading army and the return of the monstrous threat.

• friends to lovers
• second chance
• forbidden love
• survival

Isolde "Izzy" Goodnight grew up as the beloved inspiration for her father's famous serialized fairy tales; the whole nation adored the fictional Goodnight girl. The real Izzy, now twenty-six, orphaned, and penniless, has learned that fairy-tale fame does not pay the bills. Then a mysterious bequest hands her the deed to a castle, and with it, a chance at independence. There is only one problem: the crumbling Gostley Castle already has an occupant. Ransom Vane, the Duke of Rothbury, is furious, half-feral, and unwilling to surrender the ruin he has been hiding in since the accident that changed his life. Neither will leave, so they strike an uneasy truce, and as Izzy digs into the castle's secrets and the duke's guarded heart, the disillusioned romantic starts to believe in her own happy ending after all. The first book in Tessa Dare's Castles Ever After series is a swoony, playful historical romance about fandom, reinvention, and the difference between the stories we are given and the ones we choose. It pairs a warm-hearted heroine with a brooding, wounded duke for a slow burn inside a castle that needs as much saving as they do.

• forced proximity
• slow burn

Rhys Winterborne, a self-made tycoon, sets his sights on marrying the aristocratic Lady Helen Ravenel. Despite their vastly different backgrounds, Helen finds herself drawn to Rhys's intense charm and discovers a fiery passion she never knew she possessed. This historical romance explores the unexpected connection between a powerful man and a shy lady in 19th-century London.

• marriage of convenience

On the cusp of her first London season, painfully shy Madeline Gracechurch does the unthinkable: she invents a Scottish sweetheart. Her fictional Captain gives her cover from the marriage mart and a reason to stay home with her butterflies and sketchbooks. And when the fiction grows inconvenient, she simply writes him killed in battle. Problem solved. Or so she believes. Years later, the very real Captain Logan MacKenzie turns up on Maddie's doorstep — alive, gruff, and holding a stack of the love letters she never meant anyone to read. Wounded in body and spirit, Logan needs the respectability a wife can offer to secure a home for the men who served under him. Maddie's invented promises are suddenly a debt he intends to collect, as a marriage of convenience that neither of them expects to feel quite so real. The third book in Tessa Dare's Castles Ever After series is a warm, witty Highland romance about the stories we tell to protect ourselves and the people who see through them. Set against a crumbling Scottish castle and a ragtag band of veterans, it pairs a bookish introvert with a battle-scarred soldier for a slow thaw from pretense to genuine devotion.

• marriage of convenience
• enemies to lovers

Amelia Hathaway is struggling to keep her eccentric family together after an unexpected inheritance thrusts them into London's high society. She finds an unlikely ally in Cam Rohan, a wealthy man who feels trapped by the very aristocracy Amelia is trying to master. While they both try to maintain their independence, a powerful attraction threatens to change their lives forever.

• fish out of water
• family saga
• forbidden love
• court intrigue

The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels takes place in a magical alternate Victorian England where a small society of women has learned to fly their houses. Cecilia Bassingthwaite is one of them: outwardly a demure young lady, she is in fact a talented thief who flies around England drinking tea and stealing treasure for the Wisteria Society. Ned Lightbourne is a sometime assassin who is instantly smitten with Cecilia, an inconvenient problem since he has been sent to kill her. When Cecilia's pirate father, Captain Morvath, moves to destroy the Wisteria Society and its rebellious sisterhood in favor of a strict patriarchal order, Cecilia and Ned are forced into an uneasy alliance against him. India Holton's series opener is a whimsical, tongue-in-cheek romantic fantasy about flying houses, dangerous women, and a very reluctant assassin falling in love with his target.

• enemies to lovers
• heist

England's only female physician and a Scotland Yard detective with secrets share one reckless night, then find themselves bound together by a dangerous case neither can walk away from.

Most debutantes dream of finding husbands. Lady Pandora Ravenel would much rather stay home and plot out her new board game business than take part in the London Season. But one night at a society ball, she's ensnared in a scandal with Gabriel, Lord St. Vincent — a rake who has finally been caught by a rebellious girl who wants nothing to do with him, and who finds her irresistible anyway.

• marriage of convenience