Catholic Church book series in reading order

by William X. Kienzle

Scott Hahn

86 books• 8 series

Scott Walker Hahn, born October 28, 1957, is an American Roman Catholic author, theologian and apologist who was a Presbyterian minister before converting. Hahn has written over 50 books on Catholic theology, Church history and Bible study, and teaches at the Franciscan University of Steubenville. Rome Sweet Home and The Lamb's Supper are among Hahn's works. The catalogue lists 86 books from The Acts of the Apostles (1991) to Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: Old and New Testaments (2024). Series include Ignatius Catholic Study Bible, Catholic for a Reason and Didache.

Andrew M. Greeley's catalogue spans fiction, non-fiction and poetry, and runs to 82 books published between 1967 and 2010. Subjects settle on the Catholic Church, its clergy, Irish Americans and Chicago. Blackie Ryan and Nuala Anne McGrail are the recurring detectives; other groupings include the O'Malley's family saga, Time Between The Stars, Passover and the World Of Maggie Ward. The listing opens with Letters to Nancy (1967) and ends with Chicago Catholics and the Struggles Within Their Church (2010).

Father Robert Koesler, a Catholic priest in Detroit, Michigan, is the detective in the mystery series by William X. Kienzle. The catalogue lists 24 books from The Rosary Murders (1979) to The Gathering (2002), and the Father Koesler series makes up the whole run. Death Wears a Red Hat (1980) and Mind Over Murder (1981) came next. Clergy and the Catholic Church are the dominant subjects. The Kienzle catalogue is listed as likely complete.

Ralph McInerny (February 24, 1929 to January 29, 2010) was an American novelist and a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. Father Dowling is the priest at the centre of the most popular McInerny mysteries, which were adapted as the Father Dowling Mysteries television series from 1987 to 1991. The catalogue holds 110 books from Jolly Rogerson (1967) to A Student's Guide to Philosophy (2014), including philosophy titles such as Thomism in an Age of Renewal (1968). Other series include Sister Mary Teresa, Andrew Broom and Notre Dame. McInerny also used the pen names Monica Quill, Harry Austin, Matthew FitzRalph, Ernan Mackey and Edward Mackin.

The books published under Mother Teresa's name collect meditations, prayers and spiritual counsel. Thirty-eight titles are catalogued between 1975 and 2019, from Gift for God to Do Something Beautiful for God, at a median of 144 pages. Subjects centre on Christian life, the Catholic Church, the Missionaries of Charity and church work with the poor. The Love of Christ: Spiritual Counsels (1982), My Life for the Poor (1985) and Meditations On The Way Of The Cross (1986) come from the earlier part of the run. Mother Teresa lived from 1910 to 1997.

Richard Rohr

37 books

Richard Rohr writes on Christian spirituality from within the Catholic tradition, on contemplation, scripture and the inner life of men. 37 catalogued titles run from The Wild Mans Journey (1986) through The Enneagram (1989), Simplicity: The Art of Living (1991), Near Occasions of Grace (1993), Radical Grace (1993) and Quest for the Grail (1994). The newest is The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage.

Matthew Kelly, born 12 July 1973 in Sydney, is an Australian motivational speaker, business consultant and founding partner of the management consulting firm Floyd Consulting. The catalogue lists 48 Kelly books from Our Father (1995) to Nothing Is Random (2025). Subjects include the Catholic Church, spirituality, self-help, happiness, parenting and business. Titles include The Rhythm of Life (1999), Rediscover Catholicism (2002) and The Dream Manager (2007).

Graham Greene

80 books• 3 series

Graham Greene (Henry Graham Greene, 2 October 1904 to 3 April 1991) was an English novelist and journalist. Greene gained an early reputation for two kinds of book: serious Catholic novels and thrillers, which Greene called entertainments. Across 67 years of writing, including more than 25 novels, the work examined the conflicting moral and political questions of the modern world. The catalogue begins with Babbling April (1925), then The Man Within (1929), Stamboul Train (1932), It's a Battlefield (1934) and A Gun for Sale (1936). Greene was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times. Subjects include travel, drama, England and Catholics.

A former Catholic priest, James Carroll (born January 22, 1943) is an American novelist, historian and journalist. Carroll writes about efforts to reform the Catholic Church, and his books cover religion and history as well as fiction. He holds nine honorary doctorates and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His 23 catalogued books run from Madonna Red (1976) to The Truth at the Heart of the Lie (2021), including An American Requiem (1996).

Margaret Coel's series include Wind River Reservation, Arapaho Ten Commandments and Catherine McLeod, alongside non-fiction and short stories. Subjects name Vicky Holden and John O'Malley as characters and cover Arapaho Indians, women lawyers, clergy and Wyoming. The 34 catalogued books run from Chief Left Hand (1981) to Man Found Dead in Park (2017). The Eagle Catcher (1995), The Ghost Walker (1996) and The Dream Stalker (1997) are among the titles. The catalogue is listed as likely complete.

G.K. Chesterton

114 books• 6 series

G.K. Chesterton (Gilbert Keith Chesterton, 29 May 1874 to 14 June 1936) was an English writer of Christian apologetics, noted for wit, paradox and a defence of tradition. Chesterton created the priest-detective Father Brown and wrote the apologetic works Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man. Chesterton converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism. The catalogue lists 114 books, opening with The Defendant (1901) and Robert Louis Stevenson and Thomas Carlyle (1902), and including The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904), Heretics (1905) and The Club of Queer Trades (1905). Biographers place Chesterton as a successor to Matthew Arnold, Thomas Carlyle, John Henry Newman and John Ruskin.

Thomas Keneally

66 books• 4 series

Thomas Keneally, born 7 October 1935, is an Australian novelist, playwright, essayist and actor. Schindler's Ark, a historical novel about Oskar Schindler's rescue of Jews during the Holocaust, won the 1982 Booker Prize and became the basis for Steven Spielberg's 1993 film Schindler's List. The catalogue holds 66 titles, including Bring Larks And Heroes (1967), The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1972) and Gossip from the Forest (1975), plus the Monsarrat Mystery series. Subjects include Australia, Aboriginal Australians, penal colonies and both world wars.

David Lodge (28 January 1935 – 1 January 2025) was an English novelist and literary critic who taught literature at the University of Birmingham until 1987. Several Lodge novels satirise academic life, above all the Campus Trilogy of Changing Places (1975), Small World (1984) and Nice Work (1988); the last two reached the Booker Prize shortlist. Roman Catholicism is another recurring theme, present from the debut novel The Picturegoers (1960). Lodge also wrote television screenplays and three stage plays, and went on publishing criticism after retiring. The catalogue lists 40 books from 1960 to 2021.

Brian Moore was a Northern Irish and Canadian writer who lived from 1921 to 1999, recognised for novels of life in Northern Ireland during and after the Second World War and for writing about the divisions of The Troubles. The James Tait Black Memorial Prize came in 1975 and the first Sunday Express Book of the Year award in 1987, with Booker Prize shortlistings in 1976, 1987 and 1990. Moore wrote screenplays as well, and several of the novels were filmed. Of the 28 titles listed, Wreath for a Redhead (1951) and The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1955) head the run, early crime novels appear as Michael Bryan, and a 2025 title, One of The Unguided, sits at the far end.

Brother Andrew

22 books

Brother Andrew is the English-language name of Andrew van der Bijl (1928-2022), a Dutch Christian missionary who founded the organization Open Doors. During the Cold War, van der Bijl carried Bibles and Christian literature into communist countries, which earned the nickname God's Smuggler. God's Smuggler (1964) is also the first of 22 catalogued books. Later titles include The Ethics of Smuggling (1974), God's Secret Agent (1983) and Prayer Works (1990). Fearless by Faith (2023) is the most recent.

Serhii Plokhy writes history, with 18 books catalogued between 2001 and 2023. The Cossacks and Religion in Early Modern Ukraine (2001) is the earliest, and The Russo-Ukrainian War (2023) is the most recent. Recorded subjects include Cossacks, church history, the Catholic and Orthodox Eastern churches, Ukrainian Byzantine rite and nationalism. Titles in between include Tsars and Cossacks (2003), Unmaking Imperial Russia (2005), The Origins of the Slavic Nations (2006), Yalta: The Price of Peace (2009), The Last Empire (2014) and The Gates of Europe (2015).

Two books make up Ian Caldwell's catalogue. The Rule of Four, co-authored and published in 2004, sets college students and a male friendship against the Renaissance text Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. The Fifth Gospel followed in 2015, turning on the Catholic Church, its clergy, relics and the apocryphal gospels. Caldwell is an American novelist born in 1976, and no third book is recorded.