Authors book series in reading order

by L C Tyler

by Anthea Fraser

by Margaret Duffy

by Veronica Stallwood

by Craig McDonald

by Jane Haddam

by Edward Willett

by T.S. Eliot

by Spike Milligan

by Gill Hornby

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.

Donald Bain (March 6, 1935 - October 21, 2017) was an American author and ghostwriter credited with more than 115 books over a 40-year career. Murder, She Wrote is the series listed for Bain, and the subjects include Jessica Fletcher and the fictional Cabot Cove, Maine. The catalogue holds 59 books, from Coffee, Tea or Me? (1967) to A Time for Murder (2019), and also lists Veronica: The Autobiography of Veronica Lake (1969).

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).

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).

May Sarton was the pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton (1912-1995), a Belgian and American novelist, poet and memoirist. Sarton came out as a lesbian in the writing in 1965, at a time when that was rare. Poetry opens the catalogue with Encounter in April (1937) and Inner Landscape (1939); novels follow from The Bridge of Years (1946), and diaries make up a third strand. 54 titles are catalogued through 2024, averaging 214 pages, with the 1990s the busiest decade.

Charles Bukowski

75 books• 1 series

Charles Bukowski (1920-1994) was a German-American poet, novelist and short story writer whose work sits among the poor of Los Angeles. Alcohol, low-wage work, women and the act of writing are the recurring subjects. Bukowski also wrote the column Notes of a Dirty Old Man for the underground paper Open City. The catalogue holds 75 titles dated 1962 to 2019, from the poetry collection Run With the Hunted to later gatherings such as On Drinking. Poetry accounts for most of it, with the novel Post Office arriving in 1971.

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.

Virginia Woolf

74 books• 6 series

Modernist writing in English owes a great deal to Virginia Woolf, who lived from 1882 to 1941 and did more than most to establish stream-of-consciousness narration as a working technique. Woolf was born in South Kensington, the seventh child of Leslie Stephen and Julia Prinsep Jackson, and grew up among eight siblings, the painter Vanessa Bell among them. The catalogue collects her diaries, journals, letters and Collected Essays, together with biography and criticism of Woolf herself.

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.

Maya Angelou

51 books• 3 series

Maya Angelou (April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014), born Marguerite Annie Johnson, was an American memoirist, poet, essayist and civil rights activist. Angelou published seven autobiographies, three books of essays and several books of poetry. The first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), covers Angelou's life up to age 17. Other catalogued titles include Gather Together in My Name (1974), Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas (1976), The Heart of a Woman (1981) and All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986). The catalogue counts 51 books, including And Still I Rise (1978), and ends with Strategies of Abundance (2014). Angelou received more than 50 honorary degrees.

Samuel R. Delany

61 books• 4 series

Samuel R. Delany, born April 1, 1942, is an African American writer and literary critic whose output covers science fiction, memoir, criticism and essays on literature, sexuality and society. Babel-17 and The Einstein Intersection won the Nebula Award for 1966 and 1967. Delany holds four Nebula Awards and two Hugo Awards and entered the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2002. The catalogue counts 62 books from The Jewels of Aptor (1962), including Nova (1968) and the Return to Nevèrÿon series, with The Edge of Language set for 2027.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

79 books• 5 series

F. Scott Fitzgerald, born Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald on September 24, 1896, was an American novelist, essayist and short story writer who died on December 21, 1940. The Jazz Age is the era most tied to Fitzgerald, who spread the term through the story collection Tales of the Jazz Age. Fitzgerald's output came to four novels, four story collections and 164 short stories; fortune arrived in the 1920s, and critical recognition followed only after death. The catalogue holds 79 books dated 1914 to 2020, including Flappers and Philosophers (1920), Bernice Bobs Her Hair (1920) and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Stories (2020). Subjects name short stories, social customs and the nineteen twenties.

George Orwell

67 books• 3 series

George Orwell's catalogue divides between fiction and reportage: Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), Burmese Days (1934), The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), Homage to Catalonia (1938) and Animal Farm (1945) stand among the titles. Essays, diaries and correspondence account for much of the rest, gathered in the Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters. Sixty-six titles are catalogued, the earliest A Hanging (1931) and the latest an edition dated 2022.

Gore Vidal

67 books• 6 series

Gore Vidal, born Eugene Louis Vidal on October 3, 1925, was an American writer and public intellectual noted for a cynical, epigrammatic wit, and died on July 31, 2012. Vidal's novels and essays attacked the social and sexual norms Vidal saw shaping American life. Born into an upper-class political family as grandson of U.S. Senator Thomas Gore, Vidal ran unsuccessfully as a Democrat for the House of Representatives in New York in 1960 and for the Senate in California in 1982. The catalogue lists 67 books from Williwaw (1946) to I Told You So (2012), including In a Yellow Wood (1947), The City and the Pillar (1948) and Death Before Bedtime (1953). Narratives of Empire and Myra and Myron are among the series.

Evelyn Waugh

47 books• 2 series

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) was an English novelist, biographer and travel writer who also worked as a journalist and book reviewer. The satires Decline and Fall (1928) and A Handful of Dust (1934) came early; Brideshead Revisited followed in 1945, and the Sword of Honour trilogy between 1952 and 1961. Waugh's catalogue holds 47 titles across fiction, travel and biography, with editions dated as late as 2005. Waugh was educated at Lancing College and at Hertford College, Oxford, and taught school briefly before writing full time.

Jack Kerouac

47 books

Jack Kerouac was an American novelist and poet, and a pioneer of the Beat Generation alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. The catalogue carries 47 books dated 1942 to 2018, a span that runs long past Kerouac's death in 1969 through posthumous publication. The Sea Is My Brother (1942) and And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks (1945) sit at one end, On the Road (1957) and The Dharma Bums (1958) in the middle, and Piers of the Homeless Night (2018) at the other. Poetry, letters and biography fill out the list beside the fiction.

Robert Penn Warren

69 books• 3 series

Robert Penn Warren is the only writer to have received Pulitzer Prizes in both fiction and poetry: the 1947 novel prize for All the King's Men (1946), and the poetry prize in 1958 and again in 1979. Born on April 24, 1905, and dying on September 15, 1989, Warren worked as a poet, novelist, critic and Yale professor. Warren was a founding figure of New Criticism and a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, and co-founded The Southern Review in 1935 alongside Cleanth Brooks. Yale gave Warren an honorary Doctor of Letters in 1973. Catalogued books number 69, among them John Brown (1929), Understanding Poetry (1938), Night Rider (1939) and At Heaven's Gate (1943).

Sherwood Anderson

48 books

Sherwood Anderson, an American short story writer and novelist, worked in a subjective, self-revealing register. Anderson ran a business in Ohio until a breakdown in 1912 sent him to Chicago and to writing. The short-story sequence Winesburg, Ohio (1919) launched that career and remains his most durable book. This catalogue lists 48 titles dated 1916 to 1997, beginning with Windy McPherson's Son (1916), and the 1920s were his heaviest decade, taking in novels, story collections, memoirs, essays and poetry.

Gary Paulsen

181 books• 17 series

Survival and outdoor adventure run through Gary Paulsen's writing for young readers. The catalogue holds 181 books, from Some Birds Don't Fly (1968) to Northwind (2022), at a median length of 105 pages. Brian Robeson, Francis Tucket, Duncan Culpepper, Murphy and the World of Adventure books head the series lines, with non-fiction and picture books alongside. No new Paulsen title has appeared since 2022.

Louisa May Alcott

103 books• 4 series

Alcott wrote novels, short stories and children's fiction, and the catalogue runs to 103 titles, with Little Women, Eight Cousins and Aunt Jo's Scrap Bag among the named sequences. The list starts with The Inheritance (1849) and Flower Fables (1854) and takes in Hospital Sketches (1863), Moods (1864) and Behind a Mask, or a Woman's Power (1866). Young women, social custom and gender roles are the recurring subjects, and the Alcott catalogue is listed as likely complete.

Alice Walker

50 books• 1 series

Alice Walker is an American novelist, poet, short story writer and social activist. Walker's 50 catalogued books run from The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970) to Sweet People Are Everywhere (2021). The Color Purple (1982) won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, making Walker the first African-American woman to take that award, and it heads a Color Purple sequence. Poetry such as Revolutionary Petunias (1973) and essays such as In Search of Our Mother's Garden (1983) sit beside the novels. African American women authors, biography and poetry recur as subject headings. No new title has appeared since 2021.

Anthony Burgess

63 books• 3 series

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) was an English novelist, screenwriter and composer. A Clockwork Orange (1962), a dystopian satire, is the novel he is known for, though Burgess wrote mainly comic fiction, the Enderby quartet and Earthly Powers among it, alongside the Malayan Trilogy that opens with Time for a Tiger (1956). Burgess also wrote librettos and screenplays, including the 1977 television mini-series Jesus of Nazareth, reviewed for The Observer and The Guardian, and published studies of James Joyce. The catalogue holds 63 titles, reaching One Man's Chorus (1998).