The Best Vanessa Riley Romance Books

Dorothy Kirwan Thomas was born into slavery on the tiny Caribbean island of Montserrat. After purchasing her own freedom, she spent years working to free her entire family, and eventually became a successful businesswoman selling equipment to the very plantations she was once trapped in. 

She later became one of the few Black women to receive compensation from the British government the loss of her laborers when Britain abolished slavery. In Island Queen, Riley dramatizes Doll's life and her rise to power amid the cruelties of slavery and colonialism.

When headstrong West Indian heiress Patience Jordan questioned her English husband's mysterious suicide, she lost everything, including her newborn son Lionel and her fortune. Falsely imprisoned, she's lost years of her life and is determined to get back what is rightly hers. 

She discovers that Lionel has been adopted by Busick Strathmore, Duke of Repington. A wounded military hero, Busick is determined to resolve his dead cousin’s dangerous financial dealings for Lionel’s sake. Figuring out the truth puts him up against Patience, the beautiful and forthright widow of his cousin. She's breaking down all of his defenses and asking for an alliance. They share a lot of enemies and getting their lives back will require unveiling a lot of scandal.

Widow Theodosia Cecil needs a husband to help protect her son. The former flower seller turned estate owner posts an ad in the newspaper, and no one is more surprised than she when it is answered by Ewan Fitzwilliam, her first love, and the man she long thought to be dead. 

Ewan has been at war for six years. Now, the second son of a powerful earl is back and is determined to win Theo's heart back. But she's terrified he'll hurt her once more, so she pushes him away. Their love was once ruined by lies and vengeance. How can Ewan prove that things are different this time round?

In the brutal aftermath of the Haitian Revolution, Henri Christophe became the first and only King of Haiti. His wife Marie-Louise Christophe is crowned alongside him and they begin their reign over the first free Black nation in the Western Hemisphere. But despite their newfound freedom, Haitians still struggle under mountains of debt to France and indifference from former allies in Britain and the new United States. 

As King Henry struggles with mental illness and the wavering support of his public, Louise steps up to redefine what it means to be a Queen. After Henry is overthrown and dies by his own hand, Louise and her daughters manage to flee to Europe and live in exile in Paris. She must reinvent herself once more and find ways to keep her family, her legacy, and her dignity intact in a world where Black women are despised and derided.

Gaia Telfair always wondered why her father treated her a little differently from her siblings. As a mixed-race woman passing for white, the result of an illicit affair, she cannot let anyone know her secrets lest she be rejected from society or even worse. 

William St. Landon, the Duke of Cheshire, will do anything to protect his mute daughter from his late wife's scandals. With a blackmailer at large, hiding in a small village near the cliffs of Devonshire seems the best option. Miss Telfair, a kind caregiver, has been a blessing for his family and is helping to teach his daughter to speak. It's not long before he finds himself enraptured by her beauty and generosity. But to be the paramour of a Duke would be to risk her greatest secret becoming public.

Coming to London has given Precious Jewell a taste of freedom, and she will do anything, bear anything, to keep it. Working as a lady's maid is hard, but it gives her freedom she could only previously have dreamed of. 

Gareth Conroy, the third Baron Welling, can neither abandon his upcoming duty to lead the fledgling colony of Port Elizabeth, South Africa, nor find the strength to be a good father to his heir. Every time he looks at his son, he thinks about the wife he lost, and the guilt is crushing him. His late wife's maid has stepped up to help with raising the boy, and now he cannot get her off his mind. When he returns to London, he wonders if Precious will become more than his aid in this darkest of times.

Barrington Norton had to scrape and claw his way to the top as a mixed race lawyer in London. He's as determined to vanquish his foes in the court as he was on the battlefield. But all of that is nothing compared to his ultimate mission: winning the fight to restore his wife's love. 

Amora Norton has long been troubled by her mental anguish, which has pushed her to society’s margins and isolated her from her beloved husband. Barrington has returned, but so have the shadows that plague her mind. Can she trust that Barrington's new found care is about saving their marriage rather than winning the trial of the century?

Isadel Armijo wants revenge for the murders of her entire family, and she plans to do it deliciously. Using her position as cook to the famed inventor, Lord Hartland, she learns that one of the butchers responsible for slaughtering her family will sup at Hartland Abbey, where she works. She plans to serve the brute his final meal, one with a cake possessing a controlled detonation so she can watch him die. But only person can teach her how to whip eggs with gunpowder and that's Hugh Bannerman, the infamous explosives expert of the Duke of Wellington. 

Overwhelmed by the guilt and trauma of war, Hugh struggles with leprosy, which he cannot help but view as the physical manifestation of his tortured soul. Left with lesions all over his face and body, he has remained in hiding since the end of the war. Isadel's plan for her own form of justice is intriguing enough to wake him from his stupor. Can two very different people find the recipe to right the wrongs of the past? And will love blossom amid the explosions?