Hell's Belles in Order

The Belles are a vigilante organisation before they are a friendship group, and MacLean writes them accordingly: each book pairs one member with a man who discovers what she does and has to decide whether he can live with it.

The Hell's Belles books in order

1. Bombshell (2021) — Sesily Talbot, who has spent years being scandalous in public as cover for what she does at night, and Caleb Calhoun, who has been in love with her for years and thinks she needs protecting. Establishes the Belles.
2. Heartbreaker (2022) — Adelaide Frampton, the Belles' invisible one, and Henry, Duke of Clayborne, whose carriage she steals. A road romance and the sweetest book of the three.
3. Knockout (2023) — Imogen Loveless, who makes things explode, and Thomas Peck, a Scotland Yard detective assigned to keep her out of trouble. The funniest and the most chaotic.

Three novels. A fourth, Mastermind, has been announced and repeatedly rescheduled; retailer listings currently point at 2027 and no confirmed date exists. Anything claiming it is already out is wrong.

How it connects to the Bareknuckle Bastards

Same world, adjacent cast. Sesily Talbot appears in the Bareknuckle Bastards, and characters cross between the two series — which is why Bombshell lands harder if you have read the earlier trilogy.

It is not required. The Belles are introduced properly here and nothing in the plot depends on the earlier books. But readers who have done both consistently report the crossover as one of the pleasures of MacLean's later work.

Does the order matter?

Moderately. Each romance stands on its own, but the Belles' organisation and its running conflict with the men in their lives develop across the three books, and Knockout in particular assumes you know how the group works.

Start with Bombshell. It does the setup and it is also the most representative of what the series is trying to do.

Where MacLean's series sit relative to each other

Rules of Scoundrels is the gambling-hell quartet with a four-book mystery running through it. The Bareknuckle Bastards are the Covent Garden trilogy. Hell's Belles is the most overtly political of the three and the most modern in voice.

Chronologically and tonally, the sensible route through MacLean is Rules of Scoundrels, then Bareknuckle Bastards, then Hell's Belles — but any of them works cold. The complete list is in the Sarah MacLean reading order.

A note on where to start with MacLean generally. Her series have grown more interconnected over time, so a reader beginning here will pick up references to earlier books without being lost by them. Nothing in this run depends on having read the others first. If you would rather begin at the beginning, the Sarah MacLean reading order lays out every series in sequence and flags which ones genuinely need to be read in order.