Hell's Acre Books in Order

Hell's Acre is a gaslamp fantasy duet set in an alternate New Rome where the Roman Empire never fell. The city runs on soot, industry, hierarchy, and old violence. Along the Thamis River, a district called Hell's Acre shelters thieves, laborers, criminals, and people the respectable city prefers not to see. The Priory, a powerful institution devoted to a criminal Dead God, casts a long shadow over them all.

Revenge brings the main characters together.

In Hell's Acre, Gemma Dove wants answers and payment for the deaths of her parents and aunt. She has skills that do not fit her public position and a past that makes attention dangerous. Avery Black, known as the Rook, is a Hellion with his own reason to hate the Priory. Their aims overlap, but neither can afford careless trust.

The Acre matters because it is more than a backdrop for intrigue. Its narrow streets, criminal networks, hidden rooms, and river traffic create opportunities the official city cannot control. Hellions survive through reputation and mutual obligation, while the wealthy rely on law and institutions tilted in their favor. Gemma and Avery move between those worlds, using disguise, information, and violence when necessary.

Rook's Rose brings their paths and identities into sharper conflict. Gemma's true place in the city's power structure becomes more dangerous to conceal, while Avery's reputation and loyalties are tested. Their revenge against the Priory cannot stay separate from the question of what follows. Destroying an enemy is one thing. Surviving the attention of New Rome is another.

The romance grows through shared risk rather than easy confession. Gemma is determined and guarded. Avery is charming, capable, and connected to a district with rules of its own. Attraction gives them something to lose, but it also creates a reason to stop treating every plan as a solo mission. The books balance that relationship with heists, pursuit, secret histories, and institutional corruption.

Read Hell's Acre before Rook's Rose. The second book continues the revenge plot, the mystery around Gemma, and the bond between her and Avery. Expect alternate history, gaslamp machinery, thieves, dark religion, and two people trying to cut a future out of a city designed to keep them in assigned places. The alternate empire gives the familiar Victorian shape a harder political edge. Law, religion, and class work together, so a private revenge plot can quickly become a challenge to the order of the whole city.