Art book series in reading order

by Estelle Ryan

Umberto Eco

53 books• 4 series

Umberto Eco, who lived from 5 January 1932 to 19 February 2016, was an Italian novelist, philosopher, medievalist, semiotician and cultural critic. In English, Eco is best known for two novels. The Name of the Rose is a historical mystery that folds semiotics, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory into its plot. Foucault's Pendulum (1988) takes up the history of occultism and how the new age movement reinterprets it. The catalogue lists 53 books, opening with Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages (1959) and including The Open Work (1962), A Theory of Semiotics (1978) and The Role of the Reader (1979). Subjects include semiotics, aesthetics, philosophy of language and Italian essays.

Michael Innes was the pen name of John Innes Mackintosh Stewart, a Scottish novelist and academic born in 1906 and died in 1994, equally known for the literary criticism and contemporary novels he published under his own name. As Innes he wrote traditional English detective fiction, chiefly the Sir John Appleby series, which begins with Death at the President's Lodging (1936) and runs through Hamlet, Revenge!, Lament for a Maker and Appleby's End. Charles Honeybath heads a second series. Eighty-nine catalogued titles date from 1936 to 2021.

Who HQ is the credit on 429 children's nonfiction biographies in the catalogue, published from 2002 to 2026. The run opens with Who Was Albert Einstein?, Who Was Amelia Earhart? and Who Was Ben Franklin? (all 2002) and reaches Who Is Vera Wang (2026). Subjects include biography, history and juvenile nonfiction for readers aged 8 to 12. Other names credited on some of the books include Megan Stine (7), John Hinderliter (7) and Nico Medina (4).

Dr. Thorndyke, a medico-legal forensic investigator, carries most of R. Austin Freeman's fiction. Freeman (1862-1943) was a British writer of detective stories who invented the inverted detective story, in which the crime and the culprit are shown at the start and the narrative then follows the detective's work to solve it; that form is counted his largest contribution to the genre. His 36 catalogued titles run from The Golden Pool (1905) to The Missing Mortgagee, dated 2021, taking in The Red Thumb Mark (1907), John Thorndyke's Cases (1909), The Eye of Osiris (1911), The Singing Bone (1912) and A Silent Witness (1914). Freeman drew on his early work as a colonial surgeon. London, physicians and anthropologists recur as subjects.

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.

Donna Leon

42 books• 4 series

Venice is where Donna Leon sets her police procedurals, and Guido Brunetti is the character the books return to, in cases of murder and criminal investigation. Leon's 42 catalogued titles open with Death at La Fenice (1992) and reach Backstage: Stories of a Writing Life in 2025, with a Brunetti companion volume and non-fiction beside the novels. Leon remains actively publishing.

Kay Hooper, born in 1957, is a New York Times bestselling American author credited with more than 60 books. The catalogue counts 86 Hooper books between Lady Thief (1981) and Curse of Salem (2021), several early titles appearing under the name Kay Robbins. Subjects include romance, suspense, the Loveswept imprint, psychics, serial murders and the fictional investigator Noah Bishop. Series include the Bishop Files, Hagan, Shamrock Trinity and Once Upon A Time..., and no new title has been listed since 2021.

Amy Tan

14 books• 5 series

Chinese American families, and mothers and daughters in particular, are Amy Tan's subject. The Joy Luck Club (1989) opens a catalogue of 14 titles, followed by The Kitchen God's Wife (1991), The Hundred Secret Senses (1995) and The Bonesetter's Daughter (2001). Tan also writes for children, among them The Moon Lady (1992) and Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat (1994), alongside non-fiction and short stories. The Backyard Bird Chronicles is the newest title.

Genevieve Lenard, an autistic insurance investigator who reads people through body language, carries Estelle Ryan's mystery series. Art forgery, theft and murder supply the cases. The Gauguin Connection (2012) opens the run, followed by The Braque Connection (2013), The Dante Connection (2013), The Courbet Connection (2014), The Flinck Connection (2014) and The Leger Connection (2015). 36 titles are catalogued, including the Duchess Report books, and the newest is The Van Mieris Connection.

Henry James

131 books• 1 series

Henry James was an American-British author, placed between literary realism and literary modernism. Americans abroad, social life and manners, and the friction between Europe and the United States are the standing subjects of the fiction, and James's correspondence and travel writing are catalogued alongside it. The catalogue lists 131 titles with publication dates from 1866 to 2016, opening with Selected Tales and The Novels of George Eliot, both 1866. The 1870s were the heaviest decade, holding A Passionate Pilgrim, At Isella and Watch and Ward, all published in 1871.

John Updike

83 books• 8 series

John Updike, born March 18, 1932, was an American novelist, short-story writer, poet and critic of art and literature who died on January 27, 2009. Updike won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction twice, one of only four writers to do so, and the output spans over twenty novels and more than twelve short-story collections, plus poetry, children's books and criticism of art and literature. The New Yorker printed hundreds of Updike stories, reviews and poems from 1954 on, and Updike wrote regularly for The New York Review of Books. The catalogue lists 83 books from The Poorhouse Fair (1958) to Hoping for a Hoopoe (2020), including Rabbit, Run (1960) and The Centaur (1963). Series include Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, Henry Bech, Maples Stories and Eastwick.

Philosophy and fiction sit side by side in Iris Murdoch's catalogue of 43 titles. The run opens with Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (1953), a study rather than a novel, and Under the Net follows. Good and evil, morality and the unconscious recur across the novels. Murdoch lived from 1919 to 1999, and collections such as Poems from an Attic continue to appear.

Blue Balliett

10 books• 1 series

Art theft and the children who solve it made Blue Balliett's name. Chasing Vermeer (2004), illustrated by Brett Helquist, turns on the stolen painting of a 17th-century Dutch artist, won the 2005 Edgar Award for best juvenile mystery and a 2004 Agatha Award, and led to The Wright 3 (2006) and The Calder Game (2008). Balliett's 10 catalogued books span 1990 to 2018, opening with Nantucket ghost stories and closing with Out of the Wild Night (2018). Chicago, its Robie House and mobile sculpture anchor the mysteries, at a median of 282 pages.

Kingsley Amis

60 books• 5 series

Satirical comedies are the work Sir Kingsley Amis (1922–1995) is best known for, among them Lucky Jim (1954), One Fat Englishman, Ending Up, Jake's Thing and The Old Devils. Amis worked as a novelist, poet, critic and teacher, producing over 20 novels, six poetry collections, a memoir, short fiction, radio and TV scripts and criticism. The Times placed Amis ninth among the 50 greatest British writers since 1945 in 2008. Martin Amis, also a novelist, is Kingsley Amis's son. The catalogue lists 60 titles from Bright November (1947) to Raising a Smile (2019).

Andrea Beaty writes children's picture books, catalogued for grades 1 to 3, with subjects such as inventions, stories in rhyme, humorous stories, perseverance, architects and women inventors. The 21 books run from Iggy Peck, Architect (2007) to Billie Jean Peet, Athlete (2025). Other titles include Rosie Revere, Engineer (2013), Ada Twist, Scientist (2016), Sofia Valdez, Future Prez (2019) and Aaron Slater, Illustrator (2021). Andrea Beaty is still publishing.

Painters and paintings are Susan Vreeland's subject. Vreeland, an American author who lived from 1946 to 2017, wrote fiction about the relation between art and life: The Passion of Artemisia (2001) is a fictionalised investigation of Artemisia Gentileschi, Girl in Hyacinth Blue (1999) turns on an imaginary Vermeer, and The Forest Lover (2004) is a fictionalised account of the Canadian painter Emily Carr. 9 catalogued books span What Love Sees (1988) to Lisette's List (2014), taking in Luncheon of the Boating Party (2007) and Clara and Mr. Tiffany (2010). The catalogue is likely complete.