Miranda Neville Books in Order

If you want rare books and Regency intrigue: The Wild Marquis → The Dangerous Viscount → The Amorous Education of Celia Seaton → Confessions from an Arranged Marriage
If you want a stronger series arc with art and old scandals: The Second Seduction of a Lady → The Importance of Being Wicked → The Ruin of a Rogue → Lady Windermere's Lover → The Duke of Dark Desires
If you want disguises, kitchens, and a lively standalone: Never Resist Temptation
If you want second-chance drama with music and gossip: Secrets of a Soprano
If you want a quick novella sample: P.S. I Love You

Miranda Neville was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, and grew up nearby in Wardour. She once described her childhood home as a Georgian folly turned farmhouse, set between the ruins of Old Wardour Castle and the grander New Wardour Castle. It sounds almost too perfect a beginning for a writer of historical romance, but in her case it was true.

History was not just scenery in that household. Neville was one of five children, and she grew up exploring the countryside, climbing the old castle, and absorbing a family life steeped in books, art, music, and opera. Her father was a historian of the French Revolution, and she later said that both her surroundings and her family made the past feel vivid, local, and personal.

She was bookish early, and happily so.

Neville studied history at Oxford, then took jobs that later fed straight into her fiction. She catalogued autograph letters and manuscripts in the rare book department at Christie's in London, and later worked with rare books and manuscripts at Sotheby's in New York. She also spent time in Special Collections at Dartmouth College, so when her novels talk about collectors, old libraries, or the thrill of finding the right volume, they feel grounded rather than decorative.

Life did not move neatly from Oxford to publication. She married, moved to Vermont, had a daughter, worked as a journalist on a small-town newspaper, and started a business. For a long stretch, most of what she wrote was nonfiction, while romance stayed in the background as something she loved to read.

Then romance caught up with her again.

Neville had loved Georgette Heyer since she was young, and later she found more modern historical romance that pushed her toward writing her own books. She said fiction felt liberating after years of nonfiction, because at last she was allowed to invent. It still took about five years from writing a first chapter to seeing her first published novel on a bookstore table in 2009.

That first novel was Never Resist Temptation, and she quickly built a body of work that felt a little different from the standard ballroom Regency. The Burgundy Club books, starting with The Wild Marquis, use the world of rare books and collectors as a real story engine, not just backdrop. The Wild Quartet, launched with The Importance of Being Wicked, leans into late Georgian art collecting, debt, damaged friendships, and the long shadow of youthful mistakes. She could also shift into a more emotional register, as in Lady Windermere's Lover, or draw on her lifelong love of music and opera, as she did in Secrets of a Soprano.

Readers who click with Neville usually respond to the same things: unusual settings, smart but messy people, sensuality with humor, and a strong sense that books, paintings, houses, and history matter to the people falling in love. She lived in Vermont with her daughter and, by her own telling, an immensely talented cat. Miranda Neville died on October 26, 2017, after cancer. Her list is not huge, which is good news for new readers, you can follow the whole run, and a little sad too, because it ends sooner than you want it to.