Children of the Wald Books in Order

The Children of the Wald books are not cozy parlors with polite tension. They are swashbuckling historical adventures set in Western Europe around 1801, with courts, secret loyalties, masked missions, and enough danger to keep the romance on edge.

The series follows men tied to elite shadow networks whose names, Kestrel and Red Fox, sound more like codenames than surnames, and that is very much the feel. In Kestrel, Shey Healdan is driven by vengeance after the woman he loves is murdered. His search pulls him toward a secret society rooted in the deep forests of Europe and toward a political crisis that could tip a nation into civil war. The love story matters, but so do disguise, infiltration, and the question of what justice costs.

Red Fox keeps the setting dangerous and broadens the mood into spy work. Dain, once one of Europe's best mercenaries, failed to save a queen and has never recovered from it. When he is given the job of protecting another monarch, he enters court under false colors and starts hunting traitors while trying not to repeat the worst mistake of his life.

What links the books is a taste for motion. These are stories of escorts, ambushes, plots, divided loyalties, and people who can fight almost as well as they can flirt. The settings matter because power matters, and the characters are never very far from a throne, a border, or a conspiracy.

If you want a Regency adjacent world with more swords, more political pressure, and a stronger adventure pulse than a typical ballroom romance, this is where Hanford really lets loose.