Authors, biography book series in reading order

by Spike Milligan

Isaac Asimov

553 books• 31 series

Isaac Asimov (c. January 2, 1920 – April 6, 1992) was an American writer who also taught biochemistry at Boston University. Hard science fiction is the core of Asimov's reputation, and the Foundation series about a fallen space empire is the most famous work; Asimov ranked with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke as one of the "Big Three" of the genre. The output also covers mysteries, fantasy and popular science, with non-fiction lines such as How Did We Find Out and the Library of the Universe. Asimov wrote or edited more than 500 books. This catalogue opens with the story Marooned Off Vesta (1939) and names Asimov on 400 of the listed books.

Anne Lamott

23 books

Faith, family and the writing life are Anne Lamott's recurring subjects. Hard Laughter (1979) is the earliest of 23 catalogued titles, which include Operating Instructions (1993), Bird by Bird (1994) and Traveling Mercies (1999) and reach Good Writing in 2026. Christian biography, spirituality and mothers and sons fill the subject tags.

D.H. Lawrence

146 books• 3 series

David Herbert Lawrence, 11 September 1885 to 2 March 1930, was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, travel writer, literary critic and painter. Lawrence's modernist writing examines modernity, social alienation and industrialisation while arguing for sexuality, vitality and instinct. Four novels went through censorship trials over their treatment of sex and their explicit language: The Rainbow (1915), Sons and Lovers (1913), Women in Love (1920) and Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928). The catalogue lists 146 entries, among them The White Peacock (1911), The Trespasser (1912) and the story collection The Prussian Officer (1914), and groups some of them under Sons and Lovers and the Brangwen Family.

Paul Auster

45 books• 1 series

Paul Auster, born in 1947 and died in 2024, was an American novelist, memoirist, poet and filmmaker whose fiction keeps returning to New York, authorship and the shape of a life. The New York Trilogy, City of Glass, Ghosts and The Locked Room, is the best known work, alongside Moon Palace (1989), The Music of Chance (1990), The Book of Illusions (2002), The Brooklyn Follies (2005), Invisible (2009), Sunset Park (2010), Winter Journal (2012) and 4 3 2 1 (2017). Auster's books have been translated into more than 40 languages. Forty-five titles are catalogued, from White Spaces (1980) to Bloodbath Nation (2023).

Christopher Isherwood (26 August 1904 to 4 January 1986), born Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood, was an English and American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, diarist and autobiographer. Goodbye to Berlin (1939), a semi-autobiographical novel, became the basis for Cabaret (1966). Tom Ford directed a 2009 film of A Single Man (1964), and the memoir Christopher and His Kind (1976) placed Isherwood within the Gay Liberation movement. The catalogue lists 41 books from All the Conspirators (1928), including Mr Norris Changes Trains (1935), Prater Violet (1945) and Vedanta for Modern Man (1951). Berlin Stories is the listed series.

Mark Twain

71 books• 5 series

Mark Twain was the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), an American writer, humorist and essayist whom William Faulkner called the father of American literature. Twain's novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), its sequel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894); The Gilded Age (1873) was a collaboration with Charles Dudley Warner. The catalogue begins with The Jumping Frog (1865) and The Innocents Abroad (1869), and humorous stories are among its subjects. Series on the listing include Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn and Diaries Of Adam and Eve.

Pat Conroy

13 books• 2 series

Pat Conroy wrote fiction and memoir about fathers and sons, families and the American South. 13 catalogued books run from The Boo (1970) to A Lowcountry Heart, including The Water is Wide (1972), an account of teaching at Yamacraw Elementary School, and the novels The Great Santini (1976), The Lords of Discipline (1980), The Prince of Tides (1986) and Beach Music (1995). Conroy published standalone novels and non-fiction rather than a series. The catalogue is likely complete.

L.M. Montgomery

57 books• 9 series

Lucy Maud Montgomery (November 30, 1874 to April 24, 1942) was a Canadian author who published as L. M. Montgomery. Anne of Green Gables (1908) began the body of work Montgomery is known for, and the orphan Anne Shirley brought Montgomery fame and an international readership. The career produced 20 novels plus more than a thousand short stories and poems, alongside essays. The catalogue lists 57 books, from Anne of Green Gables to editions dated 2025, and holds the Anne Shirley, Emily and Silver Bush series and the published journals.

Jen Lancaster writes comic memoir and fiction about her own life and manners. Bitter Is the New Black (2006) opens a catalogue of 19 titles, followed by Bright Lights, Big Ass (2007), Such a Pretty Fat (2008), Pretty in Plaid (2009), My Fair Lazy (2010) and the novel If You Were Here (2011). Peter Pulaski Must Pay is the newest title, and Lancaster remains actively publishing.

Ann Hood is an American novelist, short story writer and memoirist. Her work counts fourteen novels, four memoirs, a short story collection, one young adult novel and the ten-book Treasure Chest series for middle readers, inside a catalogue of 35 titles running from Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine in 1987 to The Stolen Child in 2024. Family life, mothers and daughters, twins and friendship recur across the fiction. Hood's essays have appeared in The Paris Review, Ploughshares and Tin House, Hood contributes the Home Economics column to The New York Times Op-Ed page, and Hood teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing programme at The New School in New York City.

Annie Ernaux

26 books

Annie Ernaux, born in 1940, is a French writer whose books are largely autobiographical and closely tied to sociology. The 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature recognised the precision with which Ernaux traces personal memory and the social constraints around it. Her books are short, at a median of 95 pages, and the catalogue of 26 titles runs from Cleaned Out (1974) through A Man's Place (1983), Simple Passion (1991) and I Remain in Darkness (1996) to Writing, the Other Life in 2026.

Brian Aldiss

100 books• 4 series

Brian Aldiss (18 August 1925 to 19 August 2017) was an English author, artist and anthology editor whose reputation rests chiefly on science fiction, both novels and short stories. The Science Fiction Writers of America named Aldiss a Grand Master in 1999, and the Science Fiction Hall of Fame inducted Aldiss in 2004; awards include two Hugos and one Nebula. Aldiss was a vice-president of the H. G. Wells Society. The catalogue lists 100 titles from Starswarm (1954) onward, including Non-Stop, Hothouse and the Helliconia, Squire Quartet and Horatio Stubbs series.

Dennis Wheatley

71 books• 7 series

Dennis Wheatley was an English writer of thrillers and occult novels, and among the world's best-selling authors from the 1930s to the 1960s. Series in the catalogue are Black Magic, Roger Brook, Gregory Sallust, Julian Day, Lost World and Molly Fountain, with Roger Brook and the Duke de Richleau as recurring characters. Titles include The Forbidden Territory (1933), The Devil Rides Out (1934), The Eunuch of Stamboul (1935) and They Found Atlantis (1936). The catalogue holds 71 books, from Such Power Is Dangerous (1933) to The Deception Planners (1980).

Edmund White

35 books• 4 series

Edmund Valentine White III (1940-2025) was an American novelist, memoirist, playwright, biographer and essayist, and a pioneering figure in gay literature after the Stonewall riots. White wrote with rare candour about gay identity, relationships and sex, at a time when coming out still carried real danger. The semi-autobiographical trilogy runs from A Boy's Own Story (1982) through The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988) to The Farewell Symphony (1997). This catalogue holds 35 titles from Forgetting Elena (1973) to The Loves of My Life (2025), among them States of Desire (1980), Caracole (1985), Genet (1993) and Our Paris: Sketches from Memory (1994). Subjects cover gay men and gay authors, biography, AIDS, coming of age and intellectual life.

Novelist, critic and biographer D.J. Taylor was born in 1960 and grew up in Norwich. Taylor studied modern history at St John's College, Oxford, and has written for The Guardian, the New Statesman, The Spectator and Private Eye. The 26 catalogued books run from Great Eastern Land (1986) to On 1984 (2019). Taylor's Orwell (2003) won the Whitbread Award, and the novel Derby Day made the 2011 Man Booker Prize longlist. Other titles include Thackeray (1999) and The Comedy Man (2002).

Dame Hermione Lee, born 29 February 1948, is a British biographer, literary critic and academic. She was Goldsmiths' Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford, a professorial fellow of New College and president of Wolfson College, Oxford. Lee is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Literature. The Novels of Virginia Woolf (1977) is her earliest listed book, followed by Elizabeth Bowen (1981), Philip Roth (1982) and Willa Cather (1989). Later titles include Edith Wharton (2007), Penelope Fitzgerald (2013), Tom Stoppard: A Life (2020) and Anita Brookner: Art and Life (2026).

Legal thrillers about women lawyers form the core of Lisa Scottoline's work. Rosato & Associates, later listed as Rosato & DiNunzio, names the recurring law firm series, and the catalogue runs to 51 titles from Everywhere That Mary Went (1993) to This Changes Everything (2026). Scottoline also writes standalone suspense, non-fiction, and the Amazing Adventures of an Ordinary Woman books, which the subject tags mark as humour. Publication is ongoing.

Fredrik Backman

13 books• 5 series

Swedish author Fredrik Backman, born in 1981, also works as a blogger and columnist. A Man Called Ove (2012) opens his catalogue of 13 books, which runs to My Friends (2025). Other titles include My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, Britt-Marie Was Here, Beartown, Us Against You, Anxious People and The Winners. His books were number one bestsellers in Sweden and have been published in more than twenty-five languages. Subjects include hockey teams, neighbours, friendship, and fathers and sons.

David Sedaris

22 books• 2 series

David Sedaris writes humorous essays and diaries, filed as American wit and non-fiction rather than as any kind of novel. The catalogue holds 22 books from 1992 to 2026, among them Barrel Fever (1994), Naked (1997), Holidays on Ice and Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000). The Diaries are a separate strand. Collections median 264 pages, and Sedaris publishes on, most recently with The Land and its People.

Susan Wittig Albert

67 books• 7 series

Susan Wittig Albert is an American mystery writer from Vermilion County, Illinois, who has also published as Robin Paige and Carolyn Keene. Before writing full time, Albert worked in academia and became the first female vice president of Southwest Texas State University. The catalogue lists 67 titles from 1992 to 2024. Thyme of Death (1992) comes first, then Witches' Bane (1993), Hangman's Root (1994) and Rosemary Remembered (1995), and Forget Me Never (2024) is the newest. Series include China Bayles, Darling Dahlias, Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter, Crystal Cave and the Pecan Springs Enterprise Trilogy. Herbalists, Texas and the 1930s feature in the subject tags.

Kurt Vonnegut

66 books• 11 series

Kurt Vonnegut (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American novelist known for satire and dark humour. Over fifty years Vonnegut published fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays and five nonfiction works, and more writing appeared after 2007. The catalogue begins with the story Report on the Barnhouse Effect (1950) and includes Player Piano (1952), The Sirens of Titan (1959) and Cat's Cradle (1960), running to Love, Kurt: The Vonnegut Love Letters, 1941-1945 (2020). Raised in Indianapolis, Vonnegut left Cornell University in January 1943 to join the U.S. Army, and Army training included mechanical engineering studies at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and the University of Tennessee.

Anna Quindlen

26 books

Anna Quindlen writes novels and non-fiction in equal measure: domestic fiction about family life and mothers and sons, set beside essays and short books of reflection. Living Out Loud (1988) opens the catalogue, with Object Lessons (1991), One True Thing (1994), Black and Blue (1998) and A Short Guide to a Happy Life (2000) following. Twenty-six catalogued titles reach More Than Enough in 2026.

Wendell Berry (August 5, 1934 - August 31, 2026) was an American novelist, poet, essayist, farmer, environmental activist and cultural critic closely tied to rural Kentucky. Berry set out agrarian themes in The Unsettling of America (1977) and The Gift of Good Land (1981). The Port William novels and stories, including A Place on Earth, Jayber Crow and That Distant Land, examine rural community life. Berry received the National Humanities Medal, delivered the 2012 Jefferson Lecture and belonged to the Fellowship of Southern Writers. The catalogue lists 104 books from Nathan Coulter (1960) to Marce Catlett (2025).

Joan Didion

30 books

Joan Didion wrote essays and novels about American social conditions, politics and the places she reported from. Run River (1963) is the earliest catalogued title, followed by Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968), Play It As It Lays (1970), The White Album (1979), Salvador (1983) and Miami (1987). Thirty books are listed, the newest Notes to John in 2025, at 238 pages on median.