Lake Bluff Library Adult Reading Lists: Historical Romance

From the acclaimed author of Chef's Kiss, a groundbreaking trans Regency romance that's both delightfully witty and refreshingly iconoclastic.
(Description from NoveList)

The Dowager Countess of Stratton, Clarissa Ware, née Greenfield, has just presented her younger daughter to the ton, and the rest of her life belongs only to herself. She returns to Ravenswood, intending to spend the summer alone there. But the summer has other plans for her.
(Description from catalog)

When Lady Rosalind Kinwood asks Ned Wentworth to find her missing lady's maid, she falls for this man with a questionable past, despite her family's disdain, and as their investigation becomes more dangerous, they risk everything, including their hearts, to find the truth.
(Description from catalog)

Abandoned by his father, Gareth Inglis grew up lonely, prickly, and well-used to disappointment. Still,he longs for a connection. When he meets a charming man in a London molly house, he falls head over heels--until everything goes wrong and he's left alone again. Then Gareth's father dies, turning the shabby London clerk into Sir Gareth, with a grand house on the remote Romney Marsh and a family he doesn't know.
(Description from catalog)

A marriage of convenience between a Mexican heiress and a shrewd London politician makes for a scandalous Victorian bargain--and a love that will eclipse the burdens of ambition and duty. Ana Maraia Luna Valdaes has strived to be the perfect daughter, the perfect niece, and the perfect representative of the powerful Luna familia. So, when Ana Maraia is secretly sent to London with her sisters to seek refuge during the French occupation of Mexico, she experiences her first taste of freedom far from the judgmental eyes of her domineering father.
(Description from catalog)

Lady Violet Hughes is keeping secrets. First, she founded London's first social club for ladies to provide sanctuary for England's most brilliant female scientists. Second, she is using her genius on a clandestine mission for the Crown. But the biggest secret of all? Her feelings for protection officer Arthur Kneland.
(Description from catalog)

When shy Miss Eliza Balfour married the austere Earl of Somerset, twenty years her senior, it was the match of the season--no matter that he was not the husband Eliza wanted. Now, ten years later, Eliza is widowed. Suddenly, she is left titled, rich, and, for the first time in her life, utterly in control of her own future. She's always lived by society's conventions, but now, Eliza has resolved to do as she wants.
(Description from catalog)

In the wake of spectacular failure, Clara Vetry disguises herself as a housekeeper and ends up at Castle CaerLaven, where Laird Caelan proposes marriage to the spirited bookworm, only to face an uphill battle to win her heart after circumstances force them together.
(Description from NoveList)

Harriet Lockhart never planned to marry. She has spent her life defying expectation and doing what she pleases. When Harry is contacted by her hitherto anonymous father, she finds herself at risk of losing the trust fund that's subsidized her lifestyle--unless she finds a husband.
(Description from NoveList)

When Lord Dominic Kirke meets Catherine Keating, a blue-eyed country girl with a cracking wit, he offers to help her find a husband during the London season, but soon realizes he wants her for himself, but loving her means setting her free for the life-and the man-she deserves.

Lady Henrietta pursues one last night of passion before starting her life as a spinster, finding herself in the arms a king known as Beast in the second novel of the series following Wicked and the Wallflower. (Description from NoveList.)

Scarlett Wilcox is willing to live out her life as a spinster if it means being able to continue her medical research to help a friend in need. After all, few husbands would tolerate her dressing as a man to attend lectures at the Royal Academy of Science. If the Duke of Torrance finds her such a specimen, she'll agree to a marriage in name only.
(Description from NoveList)

Ordered by the team's owner to give a bunch of interviews to reporter Mark Bailey, baseball shortstop, Eddie O'Leary, during the 1960 season, slowly gives in to the attraction between them, and when it's just them against the world, they must decide if that's enough.
(Description from catalog)

In honor of her 250th birthday, eight authors have come together with wildly imaginative reboots of the lives of several of Jane Austen’s minor characters. Written with plenty of love and wit, these clever stories star everyone from Pride and Prejudice’s snobbish Caroline Bingley to the modern descendant of Sense and Sensibility’s Eliza Williams and much more.
(Description from NoveList)