period drama novels

Browse serialized novels tagged “period drama”. The first half of each series is free to read online.

See the full shelf: Historical & Period Romance Novels

• He Chose the Girl Who Tried to Kill Him
  

  On her wedding day, a maid aims a pistol at Adaline's groom. He sends everyone home and keeps the girl.

  female lead · revenge · romance

  24 chapters published

  Completed · Every chapter free

• He Lost His Family in the Snow, He Returned to Save Them
  

  After losing his husband and child to a plot that could ignite a war between two kingdoms, Seo Min-jun dies begging the moon goddess for another chance. Reborn one month before the tragedy, he must save Han Seo-jun while hiding a divine condition that will make him carry their children and risk his husband's love all over again.

  marriage of convenience · redemption arc · inheritance war

  24 chapters published

  Completed · Every chapter free

• Scorned By Him, Cherished By His Brother
  

  Her husband sets her aside at his brother's memorial supper, so a merchant's daughter with a healer's hands finds the dead brother alive and marries him to burn her husband's rise to the ground.

  forbidden love · female lead · marriage of convenience

  24 chapters published

  Completed · Every chapter free

• After Three Years of Slavery, the Entire Mansion Begged Me for Forgiveness
  

  Three years a bond servant in the Marquis's mansion, Shen Wanning is sold as a bride to the comatose War God Prince, and she cures him in secret, never knowing he hears every word.

  dramatic · chongxi marriage · female lead

  24 chapters published

  Completed · Every chapter free

• Fake Daughter Is the Real Legend
  

  When a stranger arrives claiming to be the Marquis's lost daughter, a rigged blood test turns Qiao Ruyun into the fake one and sends her to a frontier camp for three years. Her only ally is the Grand Princess who raised her, and her dowry is the one thing the family wants.

  military-base · dramatic · secret parentage

  24 chapters published

  Completed · Every chapter free

• They Jilted the Broken Scholar, So I Married Him
  

  The fiancee breaks the engagement in front of the whole lane, because the best scholar in Qinghe fell from his horse and now thinks like a six-year-old. Shen Lanxi, the noodle seller who has fed him for three years, steps out of the crowd and says she will marry him.

  amnesia · female lead · marriage of convenience

  24 chapters published

  Completed · Every chapter free

• He Bought My Father's Name to Make Me Kneel, but I Was the One Who Cut His Chains
  

  In her father's Shetland store in 1884, the biggest curer on the Ness lays down the bank's ledger and says he now owns every debt her father wrote. He will take her labour for a year and a day, and he flinches from her touch like a man struck.

  female lead · dark romance · forced proximity

  24 chapters published

• They Came to Buy My Sister, So I Went in Her Place as a Boy
  

  When two riders come to the sheepfold to collect her sixteen-year-old sister for a debt, Itziar Etxeberria puts on her dead brother's coat and rides into the Bear's mountain fortress as a boy.

  female lead · dark romance · revenge

  24 chapters published

• The Tyrant's Sickly Consort Refuses to Die
  

  The cup of welcome killed three consorts before him. Su Ming drinks it, names the poison, and the tyrant who has not slept in nine years tells him to stay. 架空历史 · 暴君攻 x 病弱受 · 双洁 · 1v1 · HE. Content notes: 受视角 mostly, 攻视角 in four chapters; poison, court intrigue, no cheating, no coming-out.

  dramatic · male lead · royal palace

  24 chapters published

• Married to the Emperor's Fiercest General, Who Is Terrified of Me
  

  The emperor marries the sharpest-tongued top scholar in the empire to its fiercest general as a joke, and the wedding night ends with the general knocking his head on the door frame and fleeing to the stable. The scholar soon finds out why: seven years of his own poems, copied out in the general's clumsy hand. 先婚后爱 · 攻受 · 双洁 · 1v1 · HE · Wenxuan's POV with four chapters from the general.

  romantic comedy · male lead · royal palace

  24 chapters published

• Rebirth: Choosing a College Husband
  

  Narcisa was beaten to death alongside her daughters by the community leader's son. Upon rebirth, when he chooses her sister, she points to the poor student in the corner and declares she will marry him.

  female lead · rags to riches · rebirth

  12 chapters published

  Completed · Every chapter free

• Beyond the Spring Breeze
  

  At seventy-one, Thea learns the fiancé she mourned for fifty years lived and built a family with her half-sister. She wakes at eighteen with one chance to take the Naval Academy future she gave up for him.

  military-base · secret parentage · female lead

  24 chapters published

• The Calligrapher and the Widowed General
  

  A stall copyist is hired to copy a dead commander's letters for the Hall of Merit, and the widowed general watches every stroke. Then the copyist notices that the general's hand is the husband's hand.

  military-base · femme x femme · female lead

  24 chapters published

  Completed · Every chapter free

• The Poison Taster Who Outlived the Princess's Dinners
  

  Ruoxi has tasted every dish the princess eats for six years and never found a poisoner. When the princess starts ordering the same dishes just to watch her eat, the danger begins to look like an excuse.

  femme x femme · royal palace · forced proximity

  24 chapters published

  Completed · Every chapter free

• The Cold Minister and the Substitute Bride
  

  Han Zhiruo, 25, a maid, is sent veiled to marry Prime Minister Xue Biyan, 30, in a runaway noble's place. On the wedding night the minister lifts the formal hat and her hair falls: the husband is a woman.

  femme x femme · female lead · marriage of convenience

  24 chapters published

  Completed · Every chapter free

• My Sworn Sister's Cousin-by-Marriage Walked Into My Teahouse
  

  Wen Jinyu, 28, owns a teahouse in 1933 Shanghai. When her sworn sister's husband's cousin Lin Qiao, 24, turns up with a letter and a stolen ledger, a police raid pushes the two of them together among the tea barrels.

  femme x femme · forbidden love · female lead

  24 chapters published

  Completed · Every chapter free

• The Empress Dowager's Pulse Raced for the Palace Physician
  

  After three palace physicians die, Qinglan is summoned to the Empress Dowager's bedside, takes her pulse and says out loud that it is racing, and the most powerful woman in the empire wants a witness and a good deal more.

  femme x femme · forbidden love · royal palace

  24 chapters published

  Completed · Every chapter free

• The Sect Leader's New Daughter Has Her Hands on My Hips
  

  Lan Yuxi, 26, the perfect heir of the Qingming Sword Sect, is told to train her father's new stepdaughter, Su Wanning, 23, a sword prodigy with no manners. Wanning corrects Yuxi's stance with her hands on Yuxi's hips, and the adoption that made them sisters runs out in forty days unless it is renewed in blood.

  femme x femme · forbidden love · female lead

  24 chapters published

  Completed · Every chapter free

• To Be A Virtuous Wife
  

  A modern accountant wakes as a prince's contract wife and decides to serve her three years, outwit his poisoning relatives and leave rich, until the husband she plans to leave starts making it hard.

  female lead · royal palace · contract marriage

  24 chapters published

• Back to the 80s
  

  She woke in 1985 in a wedding dress meant for her sister, sold to a widower with two children to cover a bank that was already dead. She had read the books before. She meant to make them pay.

  dramatic · secret parentage · single parent

  24 chapters published

• The Painter and the Prince Who Cannot Be Painted
  

  A royal portrait painter is sent at night to an exile house to paint the prince whose face is forbidden, one sitting a night. The prince cannot hold still for the portrait, but for the painter he can hold still in every other way.

  exile · forbidden love · male lead

  24 chapters published

• The Dying King Asked for a Woman Physician
  

  The first woman royal physician is posted to the young king's deathbed and finds a healthy man, a bowl of someone else's blood, and a king who wants to be told what to do.

  medical · forbidden love · female lead

  24 chapters published

• To Be a Virtuous Wife, According to the Manual
  

  Dolores marries a veteran in 1958 Ohio and follows her mother's Good Wife's Guide to the letter, and finds the book forbids nothing about her pleasure.

  female lead · romantic comedy · small-town

  24 chapters published

• The Reason a Piano Tuner Ended Up at the Duke's Mansion
  

  A piano tuner is sent to the Duke of Ashvane's house to fix a grand piano that will not hold its pitch. The duke proposes in her first week, for practical reasons. She refuses six times while she finishes the work, and says yes when the last string is set.

  female lead · marriage of convenience · forced proximity

  24 chapters published

• My Vampire Husband Wants to Bite Me Every Night
  

  A seer on the run from the factor who owns her sees herself married to a silver-haired stranger in a storm, and the stranger is a starving vampire who has sworn never to marry a woman like her.

  female lead · dark romance · marriage of convenience

  24 chapters published

  Completed · Every chapter free

• High Society
  

  A Southwark laundress who tipped boiling lye at an earl's eviction men is hired by a duke to play his long-lost sister, so he can slip a marriage his dead father signed away. The lie works. The chemistry is the problem.

  female lead · fake relationship · rags to riches

  24 chapters published

• The Taster Who Caught the Regent's Poison
  

  The Emperor's food taster catches the Prince Regent putting sleepwort in the boy's soup, and the Regent does not deny it: he pins the taster against a pillar, inspects his tongue and tells him to go ahead and tell someone. Nobody will believe a kitchen boy, and both of them know it.

  redemption arc · male lead · royal palace

  24 chapters published

• Sent to Seduce the General Who Conquered My Clan
  

  A male gisaeng musician hides a knife in his zither and goes to play for the general who destroyed his clan. The general finds the knife, lays it on the table and asks him to finish the song.

  redemption arc · male lead · manhwa romance

  24 chapters published

• The Lost Son Returns as the Duke
  

  Kidnapped at six, Godric comes home to Thornwick as the Duke of Mercia, meaning to judge the parents who sold him, and finds a mother and sister shunned for it and the man who really sold him ruling the village in the Duke's own name.

  redemption arc · male lead · revenge

  24 chapters published

• I Proposed to London's Wickedest Duke, and He Said Yes
  

  When her uncle sells her to a sixty-one-year-old buyer, Mina Aldridge walks onto a terrace and proposes to the most notorious duke in London. He says yes, and the rake she chose for his experience turns out to know nothing but how to listen.

  female lead · marriage of convenience · romance

  24 chapters published

  Completed · Every chapter free