11 Books Like Evie Dunmore to Read Next
You finished The Gentleman's Gambit, closed the book on Oxford's suffragists, and now nothing on your shelf feels smart enough. We get it. Dunmore ruined a lot of us for ordinary historical romance. Here are eleven books that deliver the same thing she does: brilliant, ambitious heroines, men who have to earn them, and slow-burn tension you could power a mill with.
What makes a book feel like Evie Dunmore? Three things. A heroine with a cause or a career — suffrage, science, art, commerce — that matters as much to her as the hero does. A love interest whose power is precisely the problem, so falling in love means renegotiating the world. And history that actually behaves like history: real stakes, real laws, real consequences for women who step out of line. Every pick below hits at least two of the three. We have grouped them by flavour.
If you want the suffragists and the fight
1. The Brothers Sinister series — Courtney Milan
If Dunmore has a spiritual sibling, it is Courtney Milan. Her Brothers Sinister novels are packed with scientist heroines, radical pamphleteers, and heroes who fall for women society keeps telling them to overlook. Start with The Duchess War — a quiet wallflower with a scandalous secret and a duke trying to give away his fortune.
2. The Suffragette Scandal — Courtney Milan
Yes, Milan gets two entries, because this is the single most Dunmore-coded book not written by Dunmore. Frederica Marshall runs a newspaper by and for women; a disgraced forger offers to be her scoundrel. Razor-sharp, furious, and deeply romantic.
3. Hell's Belles — Sarah MacLean
A covert network of women righting society's wrongs from the shadows of Mayfair. Bombshell kicks off the series with Sesily Talbot — scandalous by reputation, lethal by night — and it scratches the same itch as Dunmore's league of co-conspirators, with the heat dialled up.
4. One Kiss to Compromise a Marquess — Margot St. James
Sabine Laurent built a marquess's industrial empire from the shadows — then shattered his reputation with one orchestrated kiss to save him from a lethal alliance. A heroine whose weapon is her mind, a cold tycoon forced to reckon with the woman behind his fortune, and a betrayal that bleeds into obsession. For readers who loved the strategist energy of Portrait of a Scotsman.
If you want heroines with a vocation
5. The Siren of Sussex — Mimi Matthews
The first of the Belles of London: an equestrienne heroine, a half-Indian tailor hero, and a romance built on mutual ambition in a society that underestimates them both. Matthews writes closed-door, but the yearning is enormous, and her historical detail rivals anyone's.
6. The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics — Olivia Waite
An astronomer denied credit for her work meets a widowed countess with an eye for embroidery and an underestimated mind of her own. A tender, quietly furious f/f historical about women's work being taken seriously — very much in conversation with Dunmore's themes.
7. The Duke Undone — Joanna Lowell
A painter at the Royal Academy finds a duke unconscious in an alley and paints him from memory — scandal ensues. Lowell writes lush, painterly Victorian romance with heroines whose art is never just a hobby.
8. Hello Stranger — Lisa Kleypas
Dr. Garrett Gibson, the only female doctor in England, versus a charming government agent who keeps turning up wounded. Kleypas brings more sweep and steam than Dunmore, but Garrett is exactly the kind of heroine League readers fall for: competent first, swoony second.
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If you want the class divide and the tension
9. The Duke Who Didn't — Courtney Milan
Chloe Fong has plans. Jeremy Wentworth, secret duke, has been in love with her for years. Set in a village founded by Chinese-British families, it is the warmest thing Milan has written — a low-angst palate cleanser that still takes women's ambition seriously.
10. The Girl Meets Duke series — Tessa Dare
Dressmakers, geologists, and animal-rescuing spinsters who refuse to shrink themselves for the ton. Dare is funnier and frothier than Dunmore, but her heroines have the same spine. The Wallflower Wager is the fan favourite.
11. A Reckless Wager for Her Virtue — Margot St. James
Wagered by her father to a depraved baron, mathematical prodigy Louisa Carmichael walks into a tide-locked gaming citadel intending to bankrupt her fiancé before the wedding. The untouchable kingpin who rules it has other plans. Darker than Dunmore, but the engine is the same: a woman's brilliance meeting a man's power head-on. Part of the ten-book collection →
How to pick your next read
If you loved the politics and the cause, go straight to Courtney Milan. If you loved the historical texture and the yearning, go Mimi Matthews or Joanna Lowell. If you loved brilliant women outmanoeuvring powerful men, go Sarah MacLean or the Margot St. James collection. And if you want a whole stack of Regency romance waiting on your e-reader without picking one at a time, a curated bundle solves that in a single click.
Frequently asked questions
What should I read after Bringing Down the Duke?
Finish Dunmore's A League of Extraordinary Women series first, then move to Courtney Milan's Brothers Sinister books — especially The Suffragette Scandal — and Mimi Matthews' Belles of London. All three deliver brilliant heroines, real historical texture, and serious slow-burn tension.
Is Evie Dunmore's series finished?
A League of Extraordinary Women runs four books: Bringing Down the Duke, A Rogue of One's Own, Portrait of a Scotsman, and The Gentleman's Gambit — one romance for each of the four Oxford suffragists.
Are books like Evie Dunmore's spicy?
Most feminist historical romance sits in the open-door, slow-burn range — the tension builds for hundreds of pages before it pays off. Courtney Milan and Evie Dunmore are open-door; Mimi Matthews is closed-door and sweeter.