Adaptations book series in reading order

by Stephen R. Lawhead

Rick Riordan

82 books• 19 series

Rick Riordan, born Richard Russell Riordan Jr. on June 5, 1964, is an American author. Riordan is best known for the Camp Half-Blood Chronicles, which take in Percy Jackson & the Olympians, The Heroes of Olympus, The Trials of Apollo and The Nico di Angelo Adventures. The catalogue holds 82 books from 1997 to 2026, opening with Big Red Tequila (1997) and reaching The Lightning Thief in 2005; the Tres Navarre and Kane Chronicles lines also feature. Riordan's books have been translated into 42 languages and have sold more than 30 million copies in the United States. 20th Century Fox filmed the first two Percy Jackson books, a project Riordan had no part in.

Stephen R. Lawhead, born 1950, is an American writer of fantasy, science fiction and historical fiction, with Celtic historical fiction the strand the name is most attached to. In the Hall of the Dragon King (1982) opens the Dragon King books and a catalogue of 44 titles that reaches Aurelia (2025). The Pendragon Cycle and King Raven take up Arthurian material and knighthood; the Song of Albion, Celtic Crusades, Eirlandia, Empyrion and Bright Empires follow. Children's books, among them the Howard and Riverbank Stories, sit alongside the novels.

Toni Morrison

46 books• 11 series

Toni Morrison, born Chloe Ardelia Wofford (1931-2019), was an American novelist and editor and the 1993 Nobel laureate in Literature. The Bluest Eye (1970) was Morrison's first novel. Song of Solomon (1977) won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Beloved (1987) won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. Sula (1973) and Recitatif (1983) are further works. Morrison grew up in Lorain, Ohio, and earned a B.A. in English at Howard University in 1953. The catalogue lists 46 books, including non-fiction, plays and short fiction, with Language as Liberation dated 2026.

Mary Stewart wrote romantic suspense and, later, Arthurian historical fiction. The suspense novels begin in 1954 and continue through Wildfire at Midnight (1956), Thunder on the Right (1957), Nine Coaches Waiting (1958), My Brother Michael (1959) and The Ivy Tree (1961). The Arthurian Saga retells the legend of Merlin and the kings around him. 25 titles are catalogued in all, including children's books, short stories and poetry, the last being The Wind Off the Small Isles and The Lost One.

Jack Whyte

17 books• 4 series

Jack Whyte (15 March 1940 - 22 February 2021) was a Scottish-Canadian novelist of historical fiction who left Scotland for Canada in 1967 and settled in Kelowna, British Columbia. The catalogue holds 17 books published between 1992 and 2018, opening with The Skystone (1992) and closing with The Burning Stone (2018). Subject tags cover Arthurian romances, Britons, Romans, Scotland, kings and rulers, and the Crusades, with fantasy and adventure alongside the historical filing. The headings are the Camulod Chronicles, the Templar Trilogy and a non-fiction list; Forty Years in Canada: A Memoir dates from 2006. The Jack Whyte run is listed as likely complete.

Gregory Maguire

44 books• 4 series

Gregory Maguire writes fantasy built on adaptations of existing stories. The Wicked Years take on Oz and its witches; the Hamlet Chronicles and Another Day sequences follow, and a graphic novel version of Wicked sits alongside. Maguire started in children's fiction with The Lightning Time (1978), and the 44-title catalogue reaches Galinda in 2026. Witches, magic and humorous stories are the recurring subjects.

Bruce Coville

132 books• 20 series

Bruce Coville has 132 books catalogued from The Foolish Giant (1978) to Aliens, Underwear, and Monsters (2022). Sarah's Unicorn (1979), Operation Sherlock (1986) and The Ghost in the Third Row (1987) are among the early titles. Series include My Teacher Is an Alien, Magic Shop, Unicorn Chronicles, I Was a 6th Grade Alien, Space Brat, Moongobble and Me, Nina Tanleven and A.I. Gang. Extraterrestrials, unicorns, monsters and humour fill the subjects. Coville, born May 16, 1950, writes young adult fiction and first published in 1977.

Sarah Mlynowski

57 books• 8 series

Sarah Mlynowski is a Canadian and American writer of middle-grade, young adult and adult fiction, living in Los Angeles. The catalogue opens with adult novels, Milkrun (2001), Fishbowl (2002) and As Seen On TV (2003), then turns to children's fantasy: Bras & Broomsticks (2005) and its sequels, Whatever After, Upside-Down Magic, Best Wishes and the Luckies. Fifty-eight books are catalogued through Rumor Has It (2026), with Two Truths and a Lie scheduled for 2027. Magic, fairy tales, siblings and school are the recurring subjects.

Anne Rice

50 books• 14 series

Born Howard Allen Frances O'Brien in New Orleans on October 4, 1941, Anne Rice was an American author of Gothic fiction, erotic literature and Bible fiction who died on December 11, 2021. The Vampire Chronicles are Rice's best-known work, and the first volume became the 1994 film Interview with the Vampire, adapted by Rice. Interview with the Vampire (1976) opens a catalogue of 50 books that closes with The Reign of Osiris in 2022. Other series include Lives of the Mayfair Witches, Sleeping Beauty, Ramses the Damned, Wolf Gift Chronicles and Life of Christ. Exit to Eden (1985) and Belinda (1986) carry the name Anne Rampling.

Medieval settings and fairy-tale retellings define Melanie Dickerson's Christian romance. The Healer's Apprentice (2010) opens a catalogue of 30 books that takes in The Merchant's Daughter, The Fairest Beauty, The Captive Maiden and The Golden Braid. Regency Spies of London, A Dericott Tale, Imperiled Young Widows and Southern Seasons follow, and A Mismatch Made in London arrives in 2026.

Neil Gaiman

199 books• 41 series

Neil Gaiman, born Neil Richard Gaiman on 10 November 1960, is an English writer of short fiction, novels, comic books, audio theatre and screenplays. The Sandman comic series ran from 1989 to 1996, and the novels include Stardust (1999), American Gods (2001), Coraline (2002), Anansi Boys (2005) and The Graveyard Book (2008). The Graveyard Book made Gaiman the first author to win both the Newbery and Carnegie medals for one work, and other awards include the Hugo, Nebula and Bram Stoker. Gaiman co-created the television adaptations of Good Omens and The Sandman. The catalogue runs from Duran Duran (1984) to The Silver Age (2024) and includes Sandman and Death graphic novels and children's books.

Ray Bradbury

132 books• 13 series

Fahrenheit 451 (1953) is the novel Ray Bradbury is best known for, alongside the short-story collections The Martian Chronicles (1950), The Illustrated Man (1951) and The October Country (1955). Bradbury (22 August 1920 – 5 June 2012) was an American author and screenwriter whose work covered fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery and realistic fiction. Dandelion Wine (1957) is a coming-of-age novel, Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) a dark fantasy, and Green Shadows, White Whale (1992) a fictionalized memoir. The catalogue reaches back to Kaleidoscope (1940) and Dark Carnival (1947), and Green Town and Crumley Mysteries are among the series.

Jane Yolen

237 books• 22 series

Jane Yolen (Jane Hyatt Yolen, February 11, 1939 to June 11, 2026) was an American author of fantasy, science fiction and children's books. The Devil's Arithmetic, a Holocaust novella, is the best-known Yolen work, and Owl Moon and The Emperor and the Kite are among the others. The short works Sister Emily's Lightship and Lost Girls both won Nebula Awards. The catalogue counts 237 books from The Witch Who Wasn't (1964) to Daddy Plays a Mean Guitar (2026). Series include Commander Toad, How Do Dinosaurs...?, Pit Dragons, the Young Merlin Trilogy, Books of the Great Alta and Tartan Magic. Yolen worked as an editor, collaborated most often with Adam Stemple, and in 2012 became the first woman to give the Andrew Lang lecture.

Mary Pope Osborne

166 books• 9 series

Mary Pope Osborne, born May 20, 1949, is an American children's author and audiobook narrator best known for the Magic Tree House series, which had sold more than 134 million copies worldwide by 2017. Awards have gone to both the series and Osborne, including recognition for work promoting children's literacy. Osborne attended the University of North Carolina and published a first book in 1982. The catalogue counts 166 Osborne books, from Run, Run, As Fast As You Can (1982) to Sea Otter Sunrise (2025). Time travel, tree houses, history, folklore and Greek mythology appear among the subjects.

Michael Morpurgo

171 books• 5 series

Sir Michael Morpurgo, born 5 October 1943, is an English author, poet, playwright and librettist best known for children's novels such as War Horse (1982). Morpurgo served as the third Children's Laureate from 2003 to 2005 and is President of BookTrust, a children's reading charity. Recurring themes include outsiders who triumph, survival and bonds with nature, set in places such as the Cornish coast and the First World War trenches. The catalogue holds 171 books from It Never Rained (1974) to Down Burrow Lane (2026), including the Mudpuddle Farm series.

James Patterson

510 books• 73 series

James Patterson, born on March 22, 1947, is an American writer whose catalogue here holds 514 books published from 1976 to 2027. The run opens with The Thomas Berryman Number (1976), and Along Came a Spider (1992) and Kiss the Girls (1995) follow later. Alex Cross, Michael Bennett, Maximum Ride, Daniel X, Witch & Wizard, NYPD Red, Private, Middle School and the Women's Murder Club are among the Patterson series, alongside standalone thrillers, non-fiction and romance. Marshall Karp shares the credit on 5 of the books. Patterson's sales exceed 425 million copies, and Patterson was the first person to sell one million e-books. Forbes ranked Patterson the highest-paid author in 2016, for a third year running, and the National Book Foundation gave Patterson the Literarian Award in November 2015. 27 Stars is scheduled for 2027.

Jonathan Kellerman, born August 9, 1949, is both an American novelist and a psychologist. Kellerman has won Edgar and Anthony awards, and the character most associated with the name is Alex Delaware, a child psychologist who consults for the Los Angeles Police Department. The catalogue holds 67 Kellerman titles, beginning with the non-fiction Helping the Fearful Child (1981) and When the Bough Breaks (1985), and running to Jigsaw (2026). Beyond Alex Delaware there are the Clay Edison, Petra Connor and Detective Jacob Lev series. Milo Sturgis appears in the subject tags alongside Delaware.

Bernard Cornwell

67 books• 10 series

Bernard Cornwell is an English historical novelist, born on 23 February 1944, who has also written a history of the Waterloo campaign. The Richard Sharpe novels, about a rifleman in the Napoleonic Wars, are Cornwell's best-known work. The Saxon Stories run to thirteen novels about how England was unified. Cornwell's historical fiction draws mainly on English history across five series, alongside one series of contemporary thrillers, and the historical novels carry an end note comparing the story to the historical record. The catalogue lists 67 books from 1981, when Sharpe's Gold appeared, to Sharpe's Storm (2025).

Roald Dahl

89 books• 2 series

Roald Dahl (13 September 1916 – 23 November 1990) was a British writer of children's books and short stories, and also a poet, screenwriter and wartime fighter ace. Born in Wales to Norwegian immigrant parents, Dahl lived mostly in England and served in the Royal Air Force in the Second World War, first as a fighter pilot and then as an intelligence officer. The catalogue lists 89 titles from The Gremlins (1943) to Marvelously Revolting Recipes (2024), among them Over to You: Ten Stories of Flyers and Flying (1946), Kiss Kiss (1959), James and the Giant Peach (1961) and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964). Dahl's books have sold more than 300 million copies.

Serena Valentino works in comics and in fairy tale retellings. GloomCookie Volume 1 (2001) opens a catalogue of 28 titles that reaches Heartbroken (2025), and the Disney Villains books are among the series, with GloomCookie, Nightmares & Fairy Tales and a Villains graphic novel line beside them. Goth subculture, horror, monsters and good versus evil fill the subject tags.

Mercedes Lackey

230 books• 52 series

Valdemar, a country in the world of Velgarth, is the setting for many of Mercedes Lackey's interlinked fantasy novels and trilogies. Lackey, an American writer born on June 24, 1950, brings human and non-human protagonists from many cultures together in the Valdemar books. A second Lackey setting resembles Earth but hides populations of elves, mages, vampires and other mythical beings. Bedlam's Bard follows a young man who works magic through music, SERRAted Edge features elves who race cars, and the Diana Tregarde thrillers star a Wiccan fighting evil. Arrows of the Queen (1987), Arrow's Flight (1987) and Arrow's Fall (1988) are among the listed titles, and Elemental Masters and Five Hundred Kingdoms are further series.

R.L. Stine

589 books• 64 series

Robert Lawrence Stine, born October 8, 1943, is an American novelist who writes horror fiction for children. Goosebumps, the series Stine created, sold more than 400 million copies in 35 languages and grew into a franchise of two television series, video games, comics and two feature films. Fear Street, Stine's horror sequence for teenagers, passed 80 million copies and was adapted for film. Stine has been called the Stephen King of children's literature. The listing runs to 590 titles, from How to Be Funny (1978), published as Jovial Bob Stine, to How to Train Your Dummy, scheduled for 2027.

Philip Pullman

51 books• 10 series

Philip Pullman's catalogue covers fantasy and children's adventure, with detective stories, fairy tales and graphic novels alongside. His Dark Materials and The Book of Dust are the sequences it is built around, joined by the Sally Lockhart mysteries, the New Cut Gang, the Canongate Myths and The Adventures of John Blake. Sixty-five catalogued titles run from The Haunted Storm (1972) through The Ruby in the Smoke (1985) to The Rose Field in 2025.

Stephenie Meyer

16 books• 5 series

Stephenie Meyer, née Morgan and born December 24, 1973, is an American novelist and film producer who wrote the Twilight vampire romance series. Twilight has sold over 160 million copies in 37 languages, and Meyer was the top-selling US author of 2008 and 2009. Meyer earned an English literature degree at Brigham Young University in 1997 and conceived Twilight in a dream. Twilight (2005), New Moon (2006), Eclipse (2007) and Breaking Dawn (2008) appear in the catalogue with The Host (2008) and Midnight Sun (2020), alongside graphic novel and companion editions.