The Lady Emily Capers Books in Order

The Lady Emily Capers is where Regina Scott lets her love of Regency romance lean hard into mystery, mischief, and female friendship. The series follows Lady Emily Southwell and her close circle, especially Priscilla Tate and sisters Ariadne and Daphne Courdebas, as they make their way through society while repeatedly stumbling into secrets other people would much prefer stayed hidden.

The books begin with Secrets and Sensibilities, where art instructor Hannah Alexander and the new Earl of Brentfield find romance at a country house already packed with danger. From there the focus shifts more firmly onto Emily and her friends. Art and Artifice follows Emily as she tries to pursue painting instead of the marriage expected of her, only to be tangled up with a suspicious betrothal and a Bow Street Runner. Ballrooms and Blackmail gives glamorous Priscilla a nasty threat to outwit. Eloquence and Espionage turns Ariadne’s literary imagination toward actual spy work. Love and Larceny sends Daphne back to Brentfield to investigate strange happenings and theft.

These are very social books.

By that, I mean the London Season and the country house world are not just scenery. Balls, assemblies, planned matches, family expectations, and who may call on whom all shape the mysteries as much as the romances do. Scott gets a lot of mileage out of putting clever young women inside a rule bound society and then letting them poke holes in it with curiosity, loyalty, and sheer nerve.

The tone is lighter than in a straight suspense series. There is danger, sometimes quite a lot of it, but the books stay witty and brisk. The heroines are funny together. Their friendships matter. So does the delight each one takes in proving she is more useful, and often more perceptive, than the men around her assume.

A good way to think about the series is as connected Regency adventures with a romantic mystery engine. Readers can expect art, blackmail, espionage, theft, and one scheme after another, all filtered through a group of young women who refuse to be decorative. If you want Scott at her most playful and conspiratorial, this is an easy recommendation.