Clergy book series in reading order

by William X. Kienzle

by Warren W. Wiersbe

by G.K. Chesterton

by James Runcie

by Jan Karon

by Marilynne Robinson

by Ray Keating

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 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.

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.

Phil Rickman wrote supernatural and mystery novels, publishing under the pen names Will Kingdom and Thom Madley as well as his own. Merrily Watkins, a woman priest in England, is the recurring figure, and exorcism, ghosts and the occult run through those books. 30 catalogued titles span Candlenight (1991) to The Echo of Crows (2026), among them The Wine of Angels (1998), Midwinter of the Spirit (1999) and A Crown of Lights (2001). The John Dee Papers and the Grayle Underhill and Bobby Maiden novels sit alongside. Rickman, born in 1950, died in 2024.

Warren W. Wiersbe (1929-2019) was an American clergyman and Bible teacher whose writing covers commentary, sermons and Christian living. The Be Commentary titles, including Be Real, Be Joyful, Be Free and Be Rich, form the core of a catalogue of 282 books. Publication spans Thoughts for Men on the Move (1970) to Becoming New: 100 Days of Transformation through God's Word (2024). Wiersbe pastored Moody Church in Chicago from 1971 to 1978 and later directed the Back to the Bible radio ministry.

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.

Philip Gulley writes about Quaker life in Indiana, in essays and in fiction. Front Porch Tales (1997) opens a catalogue of 24 books, and the Harmony novels, Home to Harmony (2000), Just Shy of Harmony (2001), Christmas in Harmony (2002), build a small town around a Quaker congregation. Christian life, clergy and universalism run through the subjects, and nothing later than 2018 is catalogued.

Paul Doherty writes historical mysteries set largely in England, with 127 books catalogued from The Death of a King (1985) to The Meadows of Murder (2026). Recurring detectives include Hugh Corbett, Brother Athelstan, Kathryn Swinbrooke and Amerotke. Other series cover the Canterbury Tales Mysteries, Ancient Rome, Egyptian Mysteries, Nicholas Segalla, Mathilde of Westminster, Margaret Beaufort and Vlad Drakulya. Satan in St Mary's (1986) and Spy in Chancery (1988) are among the early titles.

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.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

93 books• 1 series

Nathaniel Hawthorne (born Hathorne, July 4, 1804 to May 19, 1864) was an American novelist and short story writer from Salem, Massachusetts, where the family had deep roots. History, morality and religion are frequent concerns. Hawthorne graduated from Bowdoin College in 1825 and published the novel Fanshawe (1828), later trying to suppress it. Magazine stories were gathered as Twice-Told Tales (1837). The catalogue lists 93 titles, including Young Goodman Brown (1835) and The Minister's Black Veil (1836), and subjects include Puritans and the supernatural.

James Runcie, born 7 May 1959, is a British novelist, documentary filmmaker, television producer and playwright, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a visiting professor at Bath Spa University. From 2016 to 2020 Runcie served as Commissioning Editor for Arts on BBC Radio 4. The catalogue holds 14 books, from The Colour of Heaven (2000) and The Discovery of Chocolate (2001) through Canvey Island (2006) and East Fortune (2009) to The Great Passion (2022). Sidney Chambers titles run from Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death (2012) to Sidney Chambers and the Persistence of Love (2017), and Grantchester Mysteries is the listed series. Clergy, murder, England and the 1950s appear in the subjects.

Family sagas are Susan Howatch's signature: novels that trace related characters across long stretches of time. The British author published 20 books between 1965 and 2003, from The Dark Shore (1965) to The Heartbreaker (2003). Religious and philosophical themes mark the later work, and clergy, cathedrals and the Church of England recur across the catalogue. Three sequences divide it, the Starbridge novels, St. Benet's and Van Zale, and nothing has been added since 2003.

Eugene H. Peterson

105 books• 14 series

Eugene H. Peterson (November 6, 1932 to October 22, 2018) was an American Mainline Protestant minister, Presbyterian theologian, scholar, poet and author. The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language (NavPress, 2002), a paraphrase and translation of the Bible into modern American English, won a Gold Medallion Book Award. The catalogue holds 105 books from Foundations for Faith (1973) to Lights a Lovely Mile: Collected Sermons of the Church Year (2023), including A Long Obedience in the Same Direction (1980) and Run with the Horses (1983). Subjects include the Bible, prayer, meditations, devotional calendars, spiritual life and pastoral theology.

Kate Charles, born Carol Fosher in Cincinnati in 1950, is an American-born crime writer who holds British citizenship and lives in Ludlow, Shropshire. Charles studied library science at Illinois State University, graduating in 1972, and took an MA at Indiana University Bloomington. Charles has chaired both the Crime Writers' Association and the Barbara Pym Society. The Book Of Psalms Mysteries and Callie Anson series appear in the catalogue, with clergy, the Church of England and London among the subjects. A Drink of Deadly Wine (1991) is the first of 16 books, and Desolate Places (2021) the latest.

Between 1950 and 1961 Barbara Pym published a run of English social comedies, of which Excellent Women (1952) and A Glass of Blessings (1958) are the best known. Publishers then rejected her for years, until in 1977 the critic David Cecil and the poet Philip Larkin named her the most underrated writer of the previous 75 years. Quartet in Autumn (1977) went on to a Booker Prize nomination, and Pym was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She lived from 1913 to 1980, and her 14 catalogued titles close with Civil to Strangers and Other Writings (1988).

Tiffany Reisz is an American author of erotica and romance, best known for the Original Sinners series published by the Harlequin imprint Mira Books. Reisz has won a RITA Award and a Lambda Literary Award. NPR called the work "smart smut", and the books combine witty depictions of sex with heavy religious imagery and themes; Nora Sutherlin and clergy are among the recorded subjects. The catalogue counts 66 titles between 2010 and 2022, opening with The Auction / Daniel Part Two (2010) and ending with A Wolfe in Winter (2022). Reisz attended Asbury Theological Seminary and Centre College and lives in Louisville, Kentucky.

Robert Barnard wrote traditional English detective fiction, and lectured and reviewed alongside it. The catalogue holds 64 titles published between 1974 and 2016, opening with Death of an Old Goat (1974). Charlie Peace and Perry Trethowan head two of the series; Idwal Meredith, John Sutcliffe and a sequence about Amadeus Mozart follow. Barnard also wrote criticism, including a study of Dickens (1974) and an appreciation of Agatha Christie (1980), and published four books as Bernard Bastable. Barnard lived from 1936 to 2013.

Kimberla Lawson Roby writes about African American families, marriage and the church. The Reverend Curtis Black series, opening with Casting the First Stone (2000), is the long-running sequence, and Behind Closed Doors (1996) came before it. Clergy, spouses of clergy and life in Illinois are recurring subjects. Twenty-nine books run to Sister Friends Forever in 2022, and nothing new has appeared since.

Anthony Trollope

81 books• 6 series

Anthony Trollope was an English novelist of the Victorian era who also served as a civil servant. The catalogue holds 81 Trollope titles, opening with The Macdermots of Ballycloran (1847) and closing at Malachi's Cove and Other Stories and Essays (1985). Trollope grouped much of the fiction into the Chronicles of Barsetshire and the Palliser novels, and wrote travel books, essays and short stories alongside them. English social life and customs, inheritance and succession, and manners recur across the subjects.

Amish settings run through Vannetta Chapman's catalogue: the recorded subjects name the Amish, Amish and Mennonite life, clergy, Christian romance, Christian suspense and mystery and detective fiction. 69 books are listed, from A Simple Amish Christmas (2010) to The Reimagined Life of Jade Morrow (2026). Indiana Amish Brides, Pebble Creek Amish, Shipshewana Amish Mystery, Amish Village Mystery and the Amish Bishop Mysteries are among the series under the Chapman name, and Chapman is still publishing.

Joanna Trollope

40 books• 3 series

Joanna Trollope (9 December 1943 to 11 December 2025) was an English writer who also published as Caroline Harvey. Parson Harding's Daughter, a Caroline Harvey novel, won the Romantic Novelists' Association's 1980 Romantic Novel of the Year Award. The catalogue lists 40 books from Eliza Stanhope (1978) to Mum & Dad (2020), including The Choir (1988). Subjects include history, romance, domestic fiction, family life, clergy and England. The Legacy Saga is Trollope's listed series.

Isabelle Holland was an American author who wrote for both children and adults, living from 1920 to 2002. Holland produced gothic novels, adult mysteries and romantic thrillers alongside many children's and young adult books, among them The Man Without a Face (1972). The Claire Aldington mysteries, built around a woman priest, are her main detective series, with Maggie and Annie Lavin beside them. The catalogue records 54 titles between 1967 and 2010, with a median length of 208 pages.

E.N. Joy writes Christian fiction with African American characters and church settings. Catalogue subjects name clergy, African American churches, Christian life, mothers and daughters, and Christian romance. The listing holds 22 books published between 2007 and 2017, from Even Sinners Have Souls (2007) to His Only Son, Her Only Regret (2017), across the New Day Diva, Still Divas, Always Divas and Forever Diva series. KaShamba Williams and Noire each share the credit on 1 title.