Heidi Ashworth Books in Order

Heidi Ashworth is an American novelist who writes sweet Regency romance and historical mystery, usually with one foot in the drawing room and the other in trouble. Public author profiles place her in California with her husband and children, while her fiction keeps returning to England's country houses, winter parties, and very opinionated families.

Her fascination with the Regency started early, and she has said a seventh-grade report on Brighton's Royal Pavilion helped set it off.

That interest turned into writing fast. Ashworth wrote her first Regency novel at ten, kept experimenting with the period in her twenties, and later came back to fiction after years spent in other roles. When she was ready, she submitted Miss Delacourt Speaks Her Mind to Avalon and sold the book, a turning point that moved her from private enthusiasm to published author.

She had been circling this world for a long time before it finally became a career.

Miss Delacourt Speaks Her Mind, published in 2008, introduced readers to Ginny Delacourt and Sir Anthony Crenshaw, a pair thrown together by mishap, matchmaking, and their own sharp tongues. Ashworth followed it with Miss Delacourt Has Her Day, Lady Crenshaw's Christmas, Lord Haversham Takes Command, and Miss Armistead Makes Her Choice. Together, those books show what she does especially well: lively banter, social comedy, family pressure, and romance that feels earned rather than rushed.

She also likes building a wider family web instead of stopping at one couple. The Miss Delacourt books spill outward to cousins, children, friends, and holiday side stories, including The Lord Who Sneered and Other Tales. That gives her fictional world a lived-in feeling. People fall in love, yes, but they also inherit estates, host impossible house parties, carry old grudges, and try to survive awkward relatives.

Later, Ashworth shifted into darker territory with the Lord Trevelin books. The Devil in Beauty, followed by The Scandal in Honor and The Murder in Mirth, keeps the Regency setting but adds murder investigations, hidden vice, and a wounded hero trying to rebuild his life after public scandal. Even there, she does not lose her taste for emotional stakes. Julian, Lord Trevelin, has crimes to solve, but he is also wrestling with pride, shame, loyalty, and the wish to be seen clearly again.

She has also written comfortably inside shared worlds. O'er The River Liffey brings her into the Power of the Matchmaker project with an Irish-set romance shaped by folklore and class tension, while A Midwinter Ball lets her play in anthology form. That range suggests a writer who likes structure but not sameness. She can work with a continuing cast, a mystery arc, or a single seasonal premise and still sound like herself.

The things that keep showing up across her books are easy to spot. She likes proud or wounded heroes, frank heroines, meddling elders, winter gatherings, roses, and houses with too many bedrooms and too much history. She also has an eye for place. On her longtime blog she wrote fondly about travel in Britain and Ireland, as well as her love of roses, vintage charm, and old houses, and that affection carries straight into her fiction.

The result is a body of work that feels warm, orderly, and a little mischievous. If you like clean historical romance, or Regency mysteries with heart under the clues, Ashworth has made a comfortable corner for you.