The Wild Wynchesters in Order

Each sibling has a specialism — disguise, forgery, information, brute logistics — and each novel is a job with a romance inside it. It is the most purely fun premise on the Regency shelf, and the books know it.

The Wynchester reading order

Novels and novellas together, using Ridley's own numbering:

1. The Governess Gambit (2020) — A prequel novella. How the six became a family, and the job that made them one. Short, and the cleanest introduction to the premise.
2. The Duke Heist (2021) — Chloe Wynchester, who is so unmemorable she is effectively invisible, accidentally abducts a duke while stealing a painting. The book that launched the series.
3. The Rake Mistake (2021) — A novella, also numbered as the first Heist Club story.
4. The Perks of Loving a Wallflower (2021) — Thomasina Wynchester, master of disguise, and Philippa York. A sapphic Regency romance and the most acclaimed book in the series.
5. The Modiste Mishap (2022) — The second novella. Numbered 2.5, though it was released to the public after the next novel because it first appeared as a preorder bonus — read it here anyway.
6. Nobody's Princess (2022) — Graham Wynchester, who runs the family's intelligence network, and Kunigunde de Heusch, a princess with a mission of her own.
7. My Rogue to Ruin (2023) — Tommy's brother Jacob and a smuggling plot, with the family business under threat.
8. Hot Earl Summer (2024) — Elizabeth Wynchester, who carries a sword in her walking stick, and an earl with a scandal to outrun.
9. A Waltz on the Wild Side (2025) — The most recent instalment, and currently the last.

Six novels and three novellas. No further book has been announced.

Can you skip the novellas?

Yes. All three are short caper stories that do not carry the family's arc, and skipping them costs you nothing structural. The Governess Gambit is the exception worth making time for, purely because it explains the adoption premise in forty pages rather than having you assemble it from asides.

The Modiste Mishap numbering is the confusing one. It is book 2.5 by the author's own count but reached general release after Nobody's Princess, because it was originally a preorder bonus. Read it at 2.5 regardless; nothing in it spoils anything.

Why the series works

Because the heists give every romance an external plot to hang on, which is exactly what a lot of Regency series lack. The couples are not simply attending balls and misunderstanding each other; they are casing a house, forging a document or extracting a child from a bad situation, and the courtship happens around the job.

The family is also unusually inclusive by the standards of the subgenre — disabled, queer and non-white siblings are central rather than decorative, and the series treats their competence as the point. The Perks of Loving a Wallflower is the book most often handed to readers who want to know whether Regency romance has anything for them.

Where to go next

Ridley's earlier series are set out in the Erica Ridley reading order. For the same found-family energy with a Victorian orphanage rather than a Regency townhouse, Maiden Lane; for capers with more menace, Rules of Scoundrels.