The Short Answer
The best historical romance series to read in 2026 share three things: an active author still producing new books, a complete or near-complete arc that rewards binge-reading, and a clear position on the heat spectrum so readers know what they are getting before they start. Across the Regency and Victorian eras, four series in particular reward the time investment: Jennifer Monroe’s The Riddle Sisters (clean Regency, six books, complete), Martha Keyes’s Regency-set series work (clean Regency), Kasey Stockton’s Regency catalog (clean Regency), and Mimi Matthews’s interconnected Victorian and late-Regency work.
This is not an exhaustive list. It is a curated starting point for readers who want quality series with momentum behind them, not a survey of every author writing in the genre.
How This List Was Built
Historical romance is too large a category to rank by raw popularity. A “best” list that mixes Medieval steamy romance with clean Regency and Edwardian women’s historical fiction is useful to nobody, because no reader is shopping across that whole range at once. The four series below are selected on a more practical basis.
The criteria:
- Active author. New books in the last 18 months, or a confirmed forthcoming release. Series go cold, and a reader investing in a six-book arc deserves to know the author is still working.
- Defined heat level. The series sits clearly at clean, sweet, warm, sensual, steamy, or spicy. No ambiguity. Heat-level mismatch is the most common reason readers bounce, and the heat levels in historical romance breakdown covers what each tier means.
- Series structure that rewards binge-reading. Connected characters, recurring settings, or an overarching plot that pays off across multiple books. Standalone-with-callbacks works. So does the interconnected family saga model.
- Either complete or progressing predictably. Readers do not need every series to be finished, but they do need to know the author is shipping books on a schedule, not abandoning the world.
The four series below all clear those bars. There are dozens of other series that would qualify under different criteria, particularly in the steamy Regency and Highlander Medieval spaces. This list focuses on the clean and sweet end of historical romance, with notes where the era differs.
The Series
The Riddle Sisters by Jennifer Monroe — Clean Regency
The Riddle Sisters is the strongest entry point in Jennifer Monroe’s catalog and the series most often recommended to readers new to clean Regency romance. Six sisters, six interconnected books, one Regency world. The arc is complete, which means a reader can binge from book one through book six without waiting on releases. The box set bundles all six in a single purchase.
The heat level is Sweet & Swoony: passionate kisses, slow-burn tension, strong chemistry, and no explicit content. The conventions are Regency by every measure: London Seasons, country house parties, the ton, marriage marts, and the strict social codes that drive the tension in every book. Start with Lady Eva’s Fallen Rogue, book one.
Monroe is a USA Today bestselling author with 40+ books across multiple Regency series. The Riddle Sisters is the most accessible of those for a new reader because the arc is complete, the family structure is clear, and the slow burn pays off across the six books rather than being compressed into a single novel. For Monroe’s wider catalog, jennifermonroeromance.com lists every series and reading order.
Martha Keyes’s Regency Series — Clean Regency
Martha Keyes writes clean Regency romance with a slightly lighter tone than the deeper slow-burns of the era. Her series work sits clearly in the clean tier, and the books reward readers who want Regency convention done with warmth and wit rather than gothic atmosphere or high-stakes melodrama. The characters carry the books, the settings are familiar Regency territory, and the romances earn their endings without manufactured conflict.
Keyes is a strong choice for a reader who has read the bigger names in clean Regency and is looking for the next author at the same tier. The pacing is steady, the catalog is substantial, and the voice is consistent across the series.
Kasey Stockton’s Regency Catalog — Clean Regency
Kasey Stockton writes clean Regency with an interconnected approach, where characters from one series turn up in another and the wider world feels lived-in across the catalog. For readers who like to feel they are inside a real Regency neighborhood rather than visiting a different one every book, Stockton’s approach is rewarding.
The heat level is clean throughout. The pacing varies by series, with some skewing toward lighter Regency convention and others sitting closer to the gothic-tinged end of the clean spectrum.
Mimi Matthews’s Interconnected Work — Late-Regency to Victorian
Mimi Matthews is one of the few authors in clean historical romance writing across the Regency-to-Victorian transition, and her interconnected series are the strongest current entry point for readers who want to step outside the Regency window without leaving the clean tier. Her late-Regency and Victorian-set books carry the same craft and slow-burn structure that defines the cool end of historical romance, but the era opens up the settings to industrialization, the rise of the middle class, and women’s expanding roles outside the aristocracy.
For a reader who has worked through clean Regency and wants the next era, Matthews is the bridge. The heat level varies slightly across her catalog but generally sits in the closed-door to warm range, with the romance carried more by emotional intensity than physical content.
What This List Does Not Cover
This list is deliberately narrow. A few categories that would be major in a wider survey but are not represented here:
Steamy and spicy Regency. Trade-published steamy Regency is a huge category with multiple long-running series, but it is not the focus of this list. Readers wanting that end of the spectrum should filter on heat level first.
Highlander Medieval. The Scottish Medieval space has multiple bestselling long-running series across both clean and steamy tiers. It is large enough to merit its own dedicated guide rather than a single entry on a cross-era list.
Western historical romance. Still active, smaller than its 1990s peak, with several solid clean and sweet series. Worth its own list rather than a single mention here.
Gilded Age, WWI, and WWII romance. All three eras have active authors and series but at smaller scale than Regency and Victorian. These are growing rather than dominant, and readers wanting them should search by era rather than by general historical romance.
For the wider era taxonomy and how each fits into historical romance overall, see what is historical romance. For readers brand new to the genre, historical romance for beginners is a better starting point than this list, which assumes a reader knows what tier and era they want.
How to Use This List
Pick the series that matches the era and tier you already know you want. The four above all sit at the clean-to-sweet end. If a reader wants Regency specifically, The Riddle Sisters is the strongest entry point in that era for clean. If a reader wants to step outside Regency without going steamy, Mimi Matthews is the bridge. If a reader has read both and wants more clean Regency at the same tier, Martha Keyes and Kasey Stockton both deliver.
The other path is to start broad and narrow. Read book one of each of the four series above, identify which voice pulls hardest, and binge the rest of that author’s catalog before moving on. Historical romance rewards author loyalty more than genre-hopping, because the conventions are tight enough that the difference between books is mostly about voice and pacing rather than premise. Once a reader trusts a voice, the rest of that catalog is generally a safe bet, and a historical romance series worth binge-reading lays out which series structures reward that approach best.
For Regency-specific series and authority, regencyromancebooks.com covers the era in full and includes deeper recommendation work than a single cross-era article can.
The Short Answer, Restated
The best historical romance series to read in 2026 at the clean-to-sweet end are Jennifer Monroe’s The Riddle Sisters (clean Regency, complete six-book arc), Martha Keyes’s Regency series work (clean Regency), Kasey Stockton’s interconnected Regency catalog (clean Regency), and Mimi Matthews’s late-Regency to Victorian work (clean to warm, bridges two eras). All four are from active authors, all four sit at defined heat levels, and all four reward binge-reading. Readers wanting steamier tiers, Highlander Medieval, Western, or the smaller eras should filter on heat level and era separately rather than working from a single cross-spectrum list.