Regency Rogues Refuse Redemption Arcs
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- Suzanne Enoch's Notorious Gentlemen series launched in 2000 with After the Kiss, establishing the template for the unrepentant rake.
- Tessa Dare's Spindle Cove series (2011–2014) and standalone novellas like Lord Dashwood Missed Out (2015) centre on heroines who refuse to fix broken men.
- Cara Elliott's Hellions of High Street series (2010–2012) pairs bluestocking scientists with rakes who'd rather seduce than settle.
- Caroline Linden's Love and Other Scandals (2013) flips the formula — the heroine writes the scandalous advice book that ruins reputations.
- The mass-market paperback format dominated Regency romance publishing from the 1990s through the 2010s, with Avon and Pocket Books leading distribution.
After the Kiss — Suzanne Enoch
A rake who gambles on everything — including whether he can seduce a widow before she sees through him.
Sullivan Waring is danger in a cravat, the kind of scoundrel who treats marriage proposals like parlour bets. Lady Isabel Chalsey is a widow who's already survived one husband and has no intention of collecting another. Enoch writes chemistry that snaps — every ballroom scene crackles with the tension of two people who know exactly what they want and refuse to admit it. The 2000 Avon mass-market edition holds up because Enoch never softens Sullivan into husband material; he stays selfish, reckless, and entirely too fun to hate. Explore our current copy of After the Kiss. Browse more Romance books at Patina.
England's Perfect Hero — Suzanne Enoch
England's most eligible bachelor meets the one woman immune to his charm — naturally, he's obsessed.
Robert Carroway has spent years cultivating the perfect rake persona: wealthy, untouchable, utterly uninterested in anything resembling commitment. Lucinda Barrett has spent just as long perfecting her own armour — she's sharp, bookish, and not about to fall for a man who treats women like collectibles. Enoch's genius is letting them both stay exactly this brittle and complicated; the romance builds through proximity and mutual irritation, not through Robert becoming "better." The banter is vicious, the pacing tight, and the 2004 Avon edition still smells faintly of the airport bookstores where it thrived. Explore our current copy of England's Perfect Hero. Browse more Romance books at Patina.
Some Like it Scot — Suzanne Enoch
A Scottish lord dragged south for the Marriage Mart — spoiler: he's not going quietly.
Munro MacLawry has watched three brothers fall into matrimonial traps and he's determined to avoid the same fate, even if it means fighting off every matchmaking mama in London. Enter an English miss equally determined to stay single, a meddling family, and the kind of forced-proximity chaos that makes Regency Scotland-meets-England plots irresistible. Enoch leans hard into the culture-clash comedy — Munro's Highland bluntness vs. London's suffocating propriety — and the result is a romance that refuses to take itself seriously. As of June 2026, Patina's Romance collection includes a rotating selection of Enoch's Scottish-set Regency titles, all with the same unapologetic scoundrel energy. Explore our current copy of Some Like it Scot. Browse more Romance books at Patina.
To Sin With A Scoundrel — Cara Elliott
A bluestocking scientist and a notorious rake locked in a battle of wits — with literal explosions.
Lady Ciara Sheffield's latest chemistry experiment goes spectacularly wrong, and she needs a test subject who won't ask inconvenient questions. The Marquess of Haddan is a rake with time to kill and zero interest in being respectable, which makes him either the perfect candidate or a terrible idea — probably both. Elliott writes smart heroines who don't need saving and scoundrels who respect competence more than propriety. The first in The Hellions of High Street series (2010), this one sets the tone: science, scandal, and a hero who'd rather flirt with danger than settle down. Explore our current copy of To Sin With A Scoundrel. Browse more Romance books at Patina.
Love and Other Scandals — Caroline Linden
The spinster writes the scandal manual — and accidentally ruins her own reputation in the process.
Joan Bennet is twenty-six, broke, and firmly on the shelf, so she does what any sensible woman would: publishes a scandalous advice book under a pen name that becomes the talk of London. When the secret leaks and her life implodes, the only person who doesn't treat her like a pariah is the one rake who appreciates exactly how clever she is. Linden flips the formula — the heroine is the scoundrel here, the one breaking rules and courting disaster, while the hero is just trying to keep up. The 2013 Avon mass-market edition still carries the faint scent of airport bookshelves and guilty-pleasure summer reading. Explore our current copy of Love and Other Scandals. Browse more Romance books at Patina.
Lord Dashwood Missed Out — Tessa Dare
A quiet earl pining for his sister's best friend — who's just widowed, brilliant, and entirely out of his league.
George Travers, Earl of Ashbury, has spent years silently adoring Elinor Browning, now widowed and determinedly independent. She's always seen him as the safe, boring option — which is exactly why Dare's 2015 novella works. George isn't a rake; he's the decent man who's been overlooked his entire life, and Elinor is the bluestocking who's spent hers being underestimated. It's a gentler scoundrel story — the scandal is internal, the stakes emotional rather than social — but the refusal to let either character be simple keeps it sharp. Dare writes friendship-to-lovers like a slow burn that was always inevitable. Explore our current copy of Lord Dashwood Missed Out. Browse more Romance books at Patina.
Regency rogues work because they never pretend to be anything other than what they are — selfish, reckless, allergic to reform — and the heroines who fall for them are smart enough to know better and stubborn enough not to care. These are the paperbacks that defined the genre's golden age: creased spines, foxed pages, and the faint smell of every airport bookstore that kept them in stock. Shop all Romance books at Patina Paperbacks →
Where can I buy secondhand Regency romance novels in Sydney?
Patina Paperbacks stocks a rotating selection of preloved Regency romance titles, including mass-market paperbacks from authors like Suzanne Enoch, Tessa Dare, and Caroline Linden. We're Sydney-based and ship Australia-wide, so you can browse online and have them delivered. Check our current Romance collection here.
What's the difference between a rake and a scoundrel in Regency romance?
Honestly, not much — both terms describe charming, morally flexible aristocrats who seduce their way through society. "Rake" tends to imply a libertine with a gambling problem and a string of affairs, while "scoundrel" can stretch to include con artists, spies, and men one bad decision away from exile. In practice, authors use them interchangeably to signal "this duke will ruin your reputation and you'll let him."
Are Suzanne Enoch's Regency romances standalone or part of a series?
Both. Enoch's Notorious Gentlemen series (starting with After the Kiss in 2000) and her MacLawry family books (like Some Like it Scot) are loosely connected — each novel stands alone but features recurring characters and settings. You can jump in anywhere without feeling lost, though reading in order adds satisfying callbacks for fans who stick with the series.
What makes Tessa Dare's Regency romances different from other authors?
Dare writes heroines who refuse to fix broken men and heroes who aren't actually broken — just overlooked, underestimated, or quietly competent. Her Spindle Cove series (2011–2014) centres on a seaside village where bluestockings, spinsters, and misfits build their own community instead of waiting for society's approval. The stakes are lower, the humour sharper, and the friendships between women just as central as the romance.
Why were mass-market paperbacks so popular for Regency romance?
They were cheap, portable, and designed to be read once and passed along — perfect for a genre built on escapism and high turnover. Publishers like Avon, Pocket Books, and Zebra flooded airports, supermarkets, and bookstores with mass-market Regencies throughout the 1990s–2010s, making them the most accessible romance format before e-books took over. The yellowed pages and creased spines you see on secondhand copies today are proof they were actually read, not just collected.