The Guardian Books in Order

The Guardian series moves Karen Robards into international thriller territory. Instead of a traditional romantic-suspense heroine, the series follows Bianca St. Ives, a thief, con artist, security expert, and master of disguise who lives by nerve, training, and improvisation.

Bianca did not have a normal childhood. Her father, Richard St. Ives, raised her for the family business, which means martial arts, explosives, high-end scams, and the kind of problem-solving that can get you arrested or killed. As an adult, she works through Guardian Consulting, a multinational firm that targets criminals and takes back money they stole.

Then a job goes very wrong.

In The Ultimatum, Bianca's latest operation ends with two hundred million dollars and top secret government documents missing. Her father is reported dead, but the U.S. government is not convinced. Bianca becomes bait in a larger hunt, and the truth about her family starts to look much less stable than she believed.

The next books keep widening the danger. The Moscow Deception sends Bianca into a high-risk mission involving stolen artifacts, Russian interests, assassins, and her father's long shadow. The Fifth Doctrine corners her with an offer she can hardly refuse: run an undercover intelligence mission connected to North Korea, or lose any chance of getting back to a normal life.

Normal is a flexible word in this series.

These books are built around movement: chases, cons, disguises, betrayals, escapes, and sudden shifts in who can be trusted. Bianca is capable and funny, but she is not invulnerable. Part of the tension comes from watching her use every trick she has while realizing that some of the people hunting her may know exactly how she was trained.

There is romance in the mix, but the series is more spy thriller and heist story than classic romance. The central relationship is really between Bianca and the dangerous identity she inherited from her father. She wants freedom, answers, and control over her own life, but every book makes those things harder to reach.

Read in order: The Ultimatum, The Moscow Deception, then The Fifth Doctrine. The plot builds from book to book, and Bianca's family secrets matter more with every mission.