City and town life book series in reading order

by Elizabeth J. Duncan

by Ed McBain

by Arnold Bennett

by Robyn Carr

by Susan Wittig Albert

by Simon R. Green

by Jamie M. Blair

by Elizabeth Strout

by Fredrik Backman

by Patrick Lee

Robyn Carr is the American author of the Virgin River books, and an executive producer on the television versions of Virgin River and Sullivan's Crossing. The catalogue records 70 Carr books, from Chelynne (1980) to The Friendship Club (2024). Thunder Point, Sullivan's Crossing and the Grace Valley Trilogy are Carr's other series. Several novels, The Hero among them, reached The New York Times Best Seller list. Subject tags on the books include contemporary romance, California, single mothers, veterans and city and town life.

Ed McBain

127 books• 7 series

Ed McBain is the pen name under which Evan Hunter, born Salvatore Albert Lombino (October 15, 1926 – July 6, 2005), published the 87th Precinct police procedurals. Cop Hater, The Mugger and The Pusher, all dated 1956, are early entries in the listing, and Steve Carella and the imaginary city of Isola appear among the subjects. Matthew Hope is a second series character. Under the Evan Hunter name, the author wrote The Blackboard Jungle, a semi-autobiographical novel filmed in 1955, and the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963).

Katherine Spencer has 37 catalogued books from The Goofy Gamble (1989) to Death on the Argyle (2022). Several early titles, including Ghosts, UFOs and Sam Walton: The Giant of Wal-Mart, are listed under the name Anne Canadeo. Spencer series include Cape Light, Black Sheep & Co. Mystery, Fifth Grade S.T.A.R.S. and Haven Harbor. Subject tags cover knitting, murder investigation, New England and the imaginary place Cape Light, and Home Song (2002) and The Gathering Place (2003) are among the later titles.

Debbie Macomber

245 books• 35 series

Debbie Macomber, born October 22, 1948, is an American author of romance novels and contemporary women's fiction. Six Macomber novels became made-for-TV movies, and the Cedar Cove novels became a television series of the same name, with Macomber serving as executive producer on the adaptations. Macomber won the first fan-voted Quill Award for romance in 2005 and holds a RITA Award and a lifetime achievement award from the Romance Writers of America. The catalogue counts 245 books between Starlight (1983) and A Date with Santa (2026). Series include Heart of Texas, Midnight Sons, Navy, Those Manning Men, Orchard Valley and Angels Everywhere.

Elizabeth J. Duncan

14 books• 2 series

Elizabeth J. Duncan is a Canadian writer of cozy mysteries. Penny Brannigan, the series set in North Wales, is her main work: its opening book, The Cold Light of Mourning (2009), drew nominations for both the Agatha Award and the Arthur Ellis Award; A Small Hill to Die On took the Bony Blithe Award in 2013; and Never Laugh As a Hearse Goes By was shortlisted for that award in 2014. Shakespeare in the Catskills is the second series, and 14 books are catalogued through On Deadly Tides (2020).

The Mitford novels are the core of Jan Karon's work: New York Times bestsellers set in the fictional village of Mitford and featuring Father Timothy Kavanagh, an Episcopal priest. Karon, an American novelist born March 14, 1937, writes for adults and young readers. My Beloved, the most recent Mitford novel, came out in October 2025. Karon was named a lay Canon for the Arts in the Episcopal Diocese of Quincy, Illinois, and in May 2000 received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Nashotah House, a seminary in Wisconsin. The catalogue records 30 books from Miss Fannie's Hat (1993) onward, with At Home in Mitford (1994) as the second.

Beverly Jenkins

60 books• 11 series

Beverly Jenkins writes historical and contemporary romance with a focus on 19th-century African American life. Born in Detroit in 1951, Jenkins was nominated for an NAACP Image Award in 2013, and in 1999 the African American Literature Book Club named her among the top 50 favourite African American writers of the 20th century. The catalogue holds 60 books from Night Song (1994) to Calling All Blessings (2025), including the Blessings, Old West, Le Veq Family and Grayson Family series. Recorded subjects include mail order brides, Kansas, and city and town life.

Armistead Maupin

17 books• 2 series

Armistead Maupin, an American writer born May 13, 1944, is noted for Tales of the City, a series of novels set in San Francisco. The catalogue lists 17 Maupin books from 1978 to 2024. Tales of the City and More Tales of the City are both dated 1978, followed by Further Tales of the City (1982), Babycakes (1984), Significant Others (1987) and Sure of You (1989). Maybe the Moon (1992) and The Night Listener (2000) are also listed. Subjects include gay men, lesbians and city life in San Francisco. Mona of the Manor (2024) is the newest title.

Richard Russo

21 books• 1 series

Small towns in upstate New York, and the families and friendships inside them, are Richard Russo's subject. 21 catalogued books run from Mohawk (1986) to Under the Falls, including The Risk Pool (1988), Nobody's Fool (1993), Straight Man (1997), Empire Falls (2001) and the story collection The Whore's Child and Other Stories (2002). Nobody's Fool heads the one series in the catalogue. Russo remains actively publishing.

Stephen King

223 books• 25 series

Horror fiction is the field most closely tied to Stephen King, an American author born on September 21, 1947, and nicknamed the "King of Horror". King's work also reaches into suspense, crime, science fiction, fantasy and mystery, and includes roughly 200 short stories, most later gathered in collections. Carrie (1974) was the debut that set King in horror; Different Seasons (1982), four novellas in one volume, marked the first major step outside it. The catalogue lists 223 books from 1971 to 2026, starting with The Blue Air Compressor, a short story, and reaching Other Worlds Than These (2026). Series on file include Holly Gibney, the Bill Hodges Trilogy, Green Mile, Shining and Talisman.

Lisa Wingate

32 books• 10 series

Lisa Wingate has 32 books in this catalogue, from Tending Roses (2001) to The Last Father-Daughter Dance (2026). Texas is among the subjects, and the Wingate series include Texas Hill Country, Moses Lake, Daily, Texas, Carolina Chronicles and Blue Sky Hill, alongside standalone novels and non-fiction. The subjects also cover Christian fiction, Christian romance, historical fiction, farm life, sisters and town life. Good Hope Road and Texas Cooking both appeared in 2003.

Larry McMurtry

48 books• 10 series

Larry McMurtry (Larry Jeff McMurtry, June 3, 1936 to March 25, 2021) was an American novelist, essayist and screenwriter. Most of McMurtry's fiction takes place in the Old West or in contemporary Texas, and the early novels Horseman, Pass By (1961), The Last Picture Show (1966) and Terms of Endearment (1975) trace the decline of small-town Texas life. Screen adaptations of McMurtry's work received 34 Oscar nominations and 13 wins. The catalogue lists 48 books from 1961 to Thalia (2017), including the Lonesome Dove and Berrybender Narratives series and non-fiction.

Sherryl Woods is an American writer of romance and mystery, born July 23, 1944, in Arlington, Virginia, who has also used the pen names Alexandra Kirk and Suzanne Sherrill. The Chesapeake Shores novels became a six-season Hallmark Channel series, and Netflix's Sweet Magnolias is based on Woods' books, with Woods as an executive producer. The catalogue lists 157 titles from Restoring Love (1982) to Starlit Secrets (2024). Other named series include Calamity Janes, Devaney Brothers and the Amanda Roberts and Molly DeWitt mysteries.

Charles de Lint, a Canadian writer born December 22, 1951, works mainly in fantasy, covering urban fantasy, contemporary magical realism and mythic fiction. During the 1980s de Lint, together with Terri Windling, Emma Bull and John Crowley, helped establish urban fantasy as a subgenre. The output includes novels, novellas, short stories, poetry and song lyrics. The catalogue records 95 books from Moonheart (1984) to Juniper Wiles Does Not Want to Be Queen (2025), with Mulengro (1985), Yarrow (1986), Greenmantle (1988) and Wolf Moon (1988) among the early titles. Newford, an imaginary place in the subject headings, names a series, alongside Moonheart, Cerin Songweaver, Jack of Kinrowan and Juniper Wiles.

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).

Arnold Bennett

100 books• 3 series

Enoch Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) was an English novelist who completed 34 novels, seven volumes of short stories and 13 plays, plus a daily journal running past a million words. The Five Towns and Clayhanger Family books take the pottery district as their ground, with town life, manners and conduct as the material. Bennett wrote for more than 100 newspapers and periodicals, briefly ran the Ministry of Information during the First World War, and wrote for the cinema in the 1920s. The listing holds 100 titles from A Man from the North (1898) onward.

Alexander McCall Smith

165 books• 25 series

Sir Alexander McCall Smith, born 24 August 1948, is a Scottish legal scholar and novelist who created The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. Born and raised in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), McCall Smith was Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh and worked on medical law and bioethics committees. English-language sales passed 40 million by 2010, with translations into 46 languages. The catalogue lists 165 books from White Hippo (1980) to 2026, including 44 Scotland Street, Isabel Dalhousie, Detective Varg and children's titles.

Susan Wiggs has 75 books in the catalogue, published from 1987 to 2025, beginning with Texas Wildflower (1987) and reaching Wayward Girls (2025). Wiggs is an American author of historical and contemporary romance, born on 17 May 1958. Series include Lakeshore Chronicles, Bella Vista Chronicles, Calhoun Chronicles, Heart of the West and the Great Chicago Fire Trilogy. Early titles include Briar Rose (1987), Moonshadow (1989) and The Mistress of Normandy (1991). Catalogue subjects include family life, mothers and daughters and love stories.

Alice Hoffman

52 books• 10 series

Alice Hoffman, born March 16, 1952, is an American novelist who also writes for young adults and children. Practical Magic (1995) became a 1998 film of the same name and grew into a media franchise. Magic realism runs through much of the work, with elements of magic, irony and unconventional romances. The catalogue counts 52 books, starting with Property Of (1977) and The Drowning Season (1979) and reaching The Witches of Cambridge (2026). Series include Practical Magic, Once Upon a Time Bookshop Stories, Water Tales and Green Angel, plus picture books. Subjects include Massachusetts, mothers and daughters, friendship and family life.

Terri Blackstock's catalogue holds 78 books published between 1984 and 2021, beginning with Blue Fire (1984), issued under the name Terri Herrington. Recorded subjects place the work in Christian fiction, mystery and detective writing, romantic suspense, and stories of sisters and of mothers and daughters. Series in the listing include Newpointe 911, Sun Coast Chronicles, Cape Refuge and If I Run. Three titles also carry a credit for Tracy Hughes. No new book has been catalogued since Aftermath (2021).

Rita Mae Brown

76 books• 7 series

Rita Mae Brown's catalogue reaches 77 books and splits between literary fiction and mystery. Rubyfruit Jungle (1973) belongs to the early work, catalogued under lesbian fiction. The Mrs. Murphy mysteries pair Harry Haristeen with her cats, and the Sister Jane books follow Jane Arnold and fox hunting. Runnymede is a third sequence. Clawed and Dangerous is the newest title, and Pawsible Suspects is scheduled for 2027.

Paige Shelton's mysteries put amateur sleuths in bookshops, farmers' markets and small towns. The Scottish Bookshop Mysteries, the Farmers' Market Mysteries, the Alaska Wild Mysteries and the Country Cooking School Mysteries are the main series, with Broken Rope and the Dangerous Type Mysteries alongside. Chewy Moon (2007) is the earliest catalogued title, and The Bone Woman arrives in 2026. Thirty-six books in all, at 304 pages on median.

Knitting and murder meet in Sally Goldenbaum's Seaside Knitters Society Mysteries, set in a Massachusetts seaside town. Goldenbaum started in romance, with The Baron and Crescendo (1986) among the earliest titles, before turning to mystery. Thirty-five books are catalogued through Skating on a Thread in 2026, at 304 pages on median, and the 2010s were the busiest decade.

Melody Carlson, born March 2, 1956 in San Francisco, is an American author of more than 250 books for women, teens and children, including the Diary of a Teenage Girl series. The catalogue lists 298 books from 1995, when Contemplative Bible Reading and How to Start a Quality Childcare Business in Your Home appeared, to All Booked Up (2026). Series include Carter House Girls, On The Runway, TrueColors, 86 Bloomberg Place, Secret Life of Samantha McGregor, Beary Patch Bears and Fruit Troops. Subjects include Christian life, high schools, friendship, Bible stories and stories in rhyme. Carlson grew up in Springfield, Oregon, attended Lane Community College and lives in Sisters, Oregon.