Nightbirds is the third book in Ms. Aiken’s Wolves Chronicles series. Many readers are familiar with the first book in the series, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, but not so many are aware of the eleven sequels to that well-loved story.

• The Wolves of Willoughby Chase 
• Black Hearts in Battersea  (1964)
• Nightbirds on Nantucket  (1966)
• The Stolen Lake (1981)
• Limbo Lodge (U.S. title: Dangerous Games) (1999)
• The Cuckoo Tree  (1971)
• Dido and Pa (1986)
• Is (U.S. title: Is Underground) (1992)
• Cold Shoulder Road (1995)
• Midwinter Nightingale (2003)
• The Witch of Clatteringshaws (2005)
• The Whispering Mountain (1968) a prequel to the series.

I’ve now read the first three books in the series, and I also own Dido and Pa and Is Underground. So, I’ll either look for reasonably priced copies of The Stolen Lake and Limbo Lodge and The Cuckoo Tree, or I’ll just skip over those and read the ones I have.

Anyway, back to Nightbirds on Nantucket. It takes place, not in an alternate history England, but rather on a Yankee whaling ship and on the island of Nantucket. Dido Twite is back, and in addition we have a pink whale, a frightened girl named Dutiful Penitence, and a very big gun. The Hanoverians, who want to depose King James III in favor of George of Hanover, are still the villains of the story, but they are now operating out the island of Nantucket. And only the doughty Dido can stop them.

This was a great story, just as good as the first two books in the series. Dido Twite is just as brash and fierce as ever, and the rest of the cast of characters are quite as eccentric and fantastic as Simon the Goose Boy and Miss Slighcarp in the first books.