Hangman's Daughters Books in Order

The Hangman's Daughters series begins with a painful fact that shapes every part of its heroines' lives: Maura and Emma Taggart are the daughters of a public hangman. In post-Civil War Texas, that association makes them targets for cruelty, gossip, and exclusion, even though neither sister chose her father's work. Broday uses that premise to build romances about women refusing to let other people define their future.

The sisters have each other.

After being driven from San Antonio, Maura and Emma create a refuge at an old mission outside the city. It becomes a home for children who have nowhere else to go and for people who need help when no one else will offer it. The mission is both sanctuary and responsibility, which means every threat to its land or residents has real consequences.

Winning Maura's Heart introduces the older sister, Maura, and the difficult world she and Emma inhabit. Maura is used to guarding her heart and expecting rejection. Her relationship with a U.S. marshal gives the story a law-and-order tension, but it is rooted in a more personal question: can someone raised under a hated name believe she can be loved for herself? The children and the mission make that answer matter beyond the couple alone.

Courting Miss Emma moves the focus to Emma, who has all but accepted that she will be a lonely spinster while she devotes herself to the children. She is compassionate, stubborn, and fiercely protective of the life the sisters have built. When a powerful rancher tries to take their land, Emma and the people around her are forced into a fight for the mission's future. Romance develops alongside the danger, but Emma never stops being a woman with a job to do.

This is a historical Western romance series with a strong found-family heart. There are marshals, land disputes, threats, and hard frontier conditions, yet the emotional center is the sisters' determination to offer children a safe place. The books also pay attention to the cost of public shame and the quiet strength required to keep choosing kindness after the world has not been kind.

The setting matters. San Antonio and its nearby mission country sit at a crossroads of changing Texas, where official authority can be unreliable and a small group of committed people may be all that stands between vulnerable children and disaster. The tone is warm but not weightless, with humor and hope sharing space with prejudice, danger, and loss.

Start with Winning Maura's Heart. It establishes the sisters' history, the mission, and the people who become part of their circle. Courting Miss Emma deepens that shared world while giving Emma her own love story and her own reasons to fight.