These are basically the books I turn to when I remember all the high-rotation Heyers too clearly. None of them are bad books, and some of them are very highly regarded by other Heyer fans, they’re just not my absolute personal favorites.

The Masqueraders 

Why Do I like It? It’s a complicated story of two siblings cross-dressing in opposite directions, both very good at it but ultimately not identifying with their disguises, with a side order of adventure and a smaller side order of political intrigue. It’s funny when it wants to be, tense when it wants to be, and has some interesting things to say about how exhausting it is to roleplay all the time in order to live up to people’s expectations of you. Also, the dad of the family is a hoot, especially if you like DS9’s Cardassians. 

Words of Warning: The heroine’s love interest is one of Heyer’s paradoxical meatheads, a big beefy guy who’s a lot smarter than he looks but also kind of smug and patronizing in a way that I sometimes roll with and sometimes don’t. This was a low-rotation Heyer for me for a while, but I don’t really remember why now. Maybe Paradoxical Meathead was to blame.

Charity Girl 

Why Do I Like It? This is the second-best of the Sensible Guy Babysitting Runaway stories, with a nicer, more fragile runaway than the one in Sprig Muslin. Sensible Guy and his love interest are pleasant, somewhat generic people but the plot keeps moving and the supporting cast are very amusing, especially the runaway’s late-arriving dad, who really ought to have been played by Vincent Price a year or two after the book released. 

Words of Warning: characters misinterpreting the situation get a bit cringe at times and the leads are not the most exciting characters Heyer ever wrote. I kind of liked the bait and switch with Runaway’s love interests, but I have the impression some people don’t. 

The Talisman Ring 

Why Do I Like It? Smugglers, a cold case murder mystery of sorts, wacky hijinks galore. 

Words of Warning: it has a slow start, a crazy Frenchwoman (one half of the beta couple) who’s not nearly as entertaining as the one in These Old Shades, and some people just don’t like the way Heyer handles this type of tongue-in-cheek adventure. 

Faro’s Daughter 

Why Do I Like It? There’s some fun supporting characters, notably a smarter, posher Lydia Bennet analogue and an Irish soldier of fortune who’s basically a less weaselly Wickham, possibly an inspiration for Lost in Austen’s version of him. There’s a lot of crazy plot stuff, and the main romance ends on a high note. 

Words of Warning: The leads may be the least annoying male autocrat/female termagent pair Heyer ever wrote, but they’re still annoying at times. 

The Foundling 

Why Do I Like It? This is primarily a coming of age story about a young and unassuming but resourceful Duke, who runs away from his entourage and has adventures, including babysitting, you guessed it, a really good-looking but dumb teenaged girl who is not his love interest but is a Young Runaway. 

Words of Warning: I find the baddies more annoying than funny, ditto the hero’s more butch cousin: a generic sarcastic Heyer macho man with a heart of gold. The Young Runaway seems to be an obnoxious flanderization of Harriet Smith from Emma, to the point where you feel really bad for the Robert Martin analogue. 

Friday’s Child 

Why Do I Like It? This is a broad farce about two idiots who marry far too young and their circle of mostly idiotish friends. All’s well that ends well, but there’s a lot of silliness along the way. Also, a Romanian war refugee kept herself and the people around her sane by retelling all the novels she could remember, and one of their favorites was Friday’s Child. With that in mind, who could hate Friday’s Child? A lot of authors aspire to write a book with that kind of positive effect on people’s lives, and this time Heyer succeeded, without even trying. 

Words of Warning: If you are not a war refugee dealing with the worst life has to offer, you may find this too farcical to deal with. I often do. There is also an early scene where the male lead horses around kind of roughly with the female lead, mostly because they grew up together and are used to playing rough, or something. 

The Corinthian 

Why Do I Like It? This was one of the first Heyers I read, probably the first Heyer Regency I read. It’s the original of the Sensible Gentleman Babysitting Young Female Runaway stories, and only one where Sensible Guy and Runaway are well-matched and are each other’s love interests. Also, a pretty good crime thriller subplot involving a stolen jewel. 

Words of Warning: Has a slow, awkward start and Young Runaway kind of wears out her welcome for me towards the end. 

The Reluctant Widow 

Why Do I Like It? This has some of Heyer’s funniest dialogue, a Spooky Old House, and a mixture of gothic and spy-type adventure elements. Also, a big funny dog. 

Words of Warning: The premise is really kind of a reach. The heroine Elinor is a whiny, self-pitying bish who, unlike her namesake from Sense and Sensibility, can’t keep her grievances to herself. Her love interest is kind of a George Knightley type, complete with a brother who seems to be John Knightley with a government job. The love interest has some funny lines and inspires a lot more funny lines from other people (a lot of humor in the book turns on the fact that nearly everyone but the heroine thinks he’s basically infallible), but in person he mostly comes off as kind of bland. The weaselly, dog-hating twerp who turns out to (theoretically) be on the side of the angels leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The suggestion I saw somewhere that this character might have been based on Kim Philby or someone in his circle leaves an even worst taste in my mouth.

Arabella 

Why Do I Like It? A lot of the same tropes as Frederica, although the heroine is younger and more idealistic and has a less interesting family. Also, no steampunk adjacent bits. There is a dog though. 

Words of Warning: I find the “fake heiress” subplot, which the heroine sets in motion almost by accident, kind of cringey and the whole business with her stupid brother is tiresome. Some people find the hero a bit overbearing at the end; I see it as one part him still having room to grow under Arabella’s influence, and one part him saving her some embarrassment after everything she’s been through. 

The Toll-Gate 

Why Do I Like It? Smugglers! With an actually clever crime plan based on real life stuff going on in the world of currency at the time of the story. Hero’s a good egg, probably the most likable and respectful of Heyer’s big clever meatheads. Heroine’s nice and plucky. Beta couple (her servant and his highwayman contact) is among Heyer’s most unique. Cute kid is actually cute. 

Words of Warning: This has a very tedious opening couple of chapters where the hero is stuck in High Society in the country and then rides away from that set of idiots into An Adventure operating…The Toll-Gate. It’s a very lengthy, awkward setup, and a lot of people just can’t power through it. I honestly don’t know what people who claim to have read the rest of the book and don’t like it object to, because once it becomes clear that something serious has happened to the normal toll-gate guy, I think this is a pretty entertaining story. 

Bath Tangle 

Why Do I Like It? A complicated and in some ways “gritty” farce in which an autocratic gentleman, described as looking like Vulcan, wins back his termegant Venus from…Mars, I guess. I mean, he’s former military, but he has the looks of an Apollo and the disposition of an Edmund Bertram with more opportunities to show his good traits. Don’t feel too sorry for him, though, his consolation prize is a ditzier version of Fanny Price (married to and widowed by what sounds like a non-Naval version of Admiral Crawford). Also, a particularly delightful Mrs. Jennings wannabe is hanging around in the background. This is also the one case where I personally can see a Regency writer other than Austen influencing Heyer, because Venus is basically a mashup of two supporting characters from Maria Edgworth’s Belinda: the emotionally volatile Lady Delacour and her tomboyish ex-BFF Harriet Freke.

Words of Warning: The most nuanced of Heyer’s autocrat/termegant pairings, but they’re still annoying, and for all the author’s insistence on how these two are always their authentic selves who care for nobody’s opinion, they often seem like a couple of manipulative bishes jerking other people around, which can be annoying if you take them too seriously. The Mrs. Jennings wannabe uses racial terms (“blackamoor” and “Choctaw Indian”) to describe the Vulcan lookalike when she meets him; this is played for laughs but not really endorsed by the narrator. Vulcan grabs Venus by the wrist(s) twice, once to stop her from slapping him and once to stop her from hurting Fanny Price. I’m not saying that’s okay, but I am saying the discourse around those scenes tends to omit the context and let Venus off the hook for abusive behavior while unequivocally condemning Vulcan, and that is also not okay.

Sylvester, Or The Wicked Uncle 

Why Do I Like It? Heyer wrote a lot of butch, rude upper-class men who are generally taken to be Mr. Darcy substitutes, or at least they were when I started reading them in the late 1990s, after Colin Firth portrayed Darcy as very butch and almost oafishly rude in the 1995 miniseries of Pride and Prejudice. Sylvester, by contrast, is the one time where Heyer sat down and thought hard about how a man like Darcy could be that darned rude to his love interest while still having the reputation of a fairly gracious man among his peers and servants. Sylvester also has Mr. Spock eyebrows, which amuses me. So does a lot of the plot, especially the part where the main characters are snowed in at an inn. 

Words of Warning: The heroine is no Elizabeth Bennet. She’s a weird mashup of tomboyishness and timidity, with a side-order of writer angst. I usually roll along with her as a character when I’m reading the book, and then I get done and find myself asking “what on earth was that chick about?” A lot of the subplot where her roman a clef novel blows up in her face is painful and cringey. 

The Unknown Ajax 

Why Do I like It? Autocratic patriarch in Smuggler Country meets his match, in the shape of the Yorkshire-born grandson (our hero) who trolls him by pretending to be a hick. Has a very fun supporting cast, a smuggling subplot, and one of Heyer’s greatest comedy setpieces, a sequence that cries out to be put on stage or screen. One supporting character appears to be Lady Middleton from S&S, expanded to three dimensions and given a more aristocratic pedigree. Heroine’s mother appears to be a responsible adult version of Mrs. Dashwood.

Words of Warning: some people can’t get past the “first cousins marrying” angle, or get annoyed about the hero putting his loyalty to family above his respect for the Government official who’s hunting smugglers. I personally find the heroine kind of bland. Hero is one of Heyer’s clever-playing-dumb meatheads, but he can be a bit on the patronizing side and I’m not always in the mood for it. I root harder for the foppish Claude and his valet than I do for the people I’m supposed to take seriously(ish) in this book.

False Colours 

What Do I Like About It? When the twin brother of a diplomat, goes AWOL, diplomat must impersonate him. Hilarity mostly ensues, with a lot of fun coming from their ditzy widowed mother and her rich, corpulent admirer. If you want to know what Mrs. Bennet is wasting her husband’s money on in Pride and Prejudice, the food and clothing purchases by the mom in this book offer an interesting hint, but the mom here is a nicer character than that, more of a high society Harriet Smith.

Words of Warning: This is one of those Heyers where the setup is a lot to swallow, and there’s some cringey/awkward bits. Also, for all its funny bits there’s an underlying sadness that I can’t put my finger on.