Cooking book series in reading order

by Katherine Hall Page

by Ina Garten

by Ellen Hart

by Carolyn Keene

Mary Berry is an English food writer, chef, baker and television presenter, born on 24 March 1935. Berry trained in catering at college and went to France at 22 to attend Le Cordon Bleu. The Hamlyn All Colour Cookbook (1970) was the first Mary Berry book, and the Baking Bible followed in 2009 among more than 75 cookery titles. Berry has presented television series for the BBC and Thames Television. The catalogue opens with Mary Berry's Cookbook (1970) and covers baking, cakes, desserts, freezer cooking and make-ahead cooking, with titles such as Popular Freezer Cookery (1972) and Family Cooking (1978).

Faith Fairchild, a caterer who solves murders, is the detective Katherine Hall Page wrote 36 catalogued books around. Food and cooking run through the titles themselves: The Body in the Belfry (1990), The Body in the Kelp (1990), The Body in the Bouillon (1991), The Body in the Vestibule (1992) and The Body in the Cast (1993). Christie & Company, standalone novels, short stories and non-fiction fill out the catalogue, which closes at The Body in the Web in 2023.

Jamie Oliver

40 books• 1 series

Jamie Oliver is an English chef and restaurateur whose 40 catalogued books are mostly cookbooks. The Naked Chef (1999) accompanied the BBC Two series of the same name that ran to 2001, and Jamie's Kitchen, Jamie's Dinners and Jamie's Italy extend a run reaching Eat Yourself Healthy (2025). Oliver started the Feed Me Better campaign in 2005 to put healthier food into schools, and the government later backed it; the first Jamie's Italian restaurant opened in 2008. Oliver has also written the children's series Billy and the Giant Adventure.

Ina Garten

17 books• 1 series

Ina Garten writes cookbooks under the Barefoot Contessa name, on American and French home cooking, entertaining, menus and make-ahead meals. The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook (1999) opens the run, followed by Barefoot Contessa Parties! (2001), Barefoot in Paris (2004), Back to Basics (2008) and Make It Ahead (2014). Seventeen catalogued titles reach Simply Ina in 2026.

Prue Leith, born Prudence Margaret Leith on 18 February 1940, is a South African and British restaurateur, chef, cookery writer, novelist and broadcaster. Leith judged BBC Two's Great British Menu from 2005 to 2016, then replaced Mary Berry as a judge on The Great British Bake Off in 2017 after the show moved to Channel 4, staying until 2025. Leith was also Chancellor of Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, from 2016 to 2024. The catalogue lists 42 books from Leith's All Party Cookbook (1972) to Being Old...and learning to love it! (2026), including Leith's Cookery Bible and the Angelotti Chronicles novels. Paul Hollywood shares credit on 2 of the books.

Catering and murder run together in Diane Mott Davidson's mysteries, which put the caterer Goldy Bear Schulz into criminal investigations. The run opens with Catering to Nobody (1990) and the catalogue reaches 19 titles, among them Dying for Chocolate, The Cereal Murders, Killer Pancake and a Goldy's Kitchen Cookbook. Cooking sits beside detection throughout, and the catalogue is listed as likely complete.

Cozy mystery is Tamar Myers's form, and 49 catalogued books carry her name across three series: Pennsylvania Dutch Mystery, Den of Antiquity and Amanda Brown. Too Many Crooks Spoil the Broth (1993) opens the catalogue and Cousins From a Distant Sun (2026) is the newest entry. The recurring sleuths are Magdalena Yoder and Abigail Timberlake, and the books' subjects take in Mennonites, hotelkeepers, antique dealers, women detectives and cooking.

Gordon Ramsay

27 books• 1 series

Gordon Ramsay, born 8 November 1966, is a British chef, restaurateur, television presenter and writer. Gordon Ramsay Restaurants, founded in 1997, has earned 17 Michelin stars in total and holds eight. Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in Chelsea, London, has kept three stars since 2001 and is run by chef Matt Abé. Ramsay first became famous through the 1999 British miniseries Boiling Point. The catalogue lists 27 books from 2000 to 2023, starting with Passion for Flavour, A Chef for All Seasons and Passion for Seafood (2000). Humble Pie (2006) and Playing with Fire (2007) are listed, and Gordon Ramsay's Uncharted (2023) is the newest. Quick and easy cooking and British cookery appear in the subject tags.

Nigel Slater is an English food writer, journalist and broadcaster, born in 1956. Quick cooking is his signature subject: Real Fast Food (1992), Real Fast Desserts (1993), The 30-Minute Cook (1994) and 30-minute Suppers (1996) all work that ground, with Real Cooking (1997) and Real Good Food (1997) after them. Slater wrote for Marie Claire for five years before moving to The Observer Magazine, where his column has run for more than a decade, and he is the principal writer for Observer Food Monthly. His 27 catalogued books reach A Thousand Feasts (2024), at a median of 288 pages.

Alton Brown

13 books• 1 series

Alton Brown writes about cooking and the equipment and science behind it. Thirteen books are catalogued from 2002 to 2025, beginning with I'm Just Here for the Food (2002) and its later companions, then Alton Brown's Gear for Your Kitchen (2003), I'm Just Here for More Food (2004) on baking, the three Good Eats volumes of 2009, 2010 and 2011, EveryDayCook (2016) and Food for Thought: Essays and Ruminations (2025). Brown created and hosted the Food Network series Good Eats, which ran 16 seasons, presented the miniseries Feasting on Asphalt and Feasting on Waves, and commentated on Iron Chef America and Cutthroat Kitchen. Good Eats Reloaded recapped the show on Cooking Channel, and Good Eats: The Return ran from 2019 to 2021. Brown was born in 1962.

Nigella Lawson, born 6 January 1960, is an English food writer and television cook. After Oxford, Lawson became deputy literary editor of The Sunday Times in 1986 and later worked as a freelance journalist. How to Eat (1998), the first cookbook, sold 300,000 copies, and How to Be a Domestic Goddess won the British Book Award for Author of the Year. The Channel 4 series Nigella Bites began in 1999 and won Lawson a Guild of Food Writers Award. The catalogue lists 14 books through Cook, Eat, Repeat (2021), including Feast (2004) and Nigella Express (2007).

Anthony Bourdain

23 books• 3 series

Anthony Bourdain (June 25, 1956 – June 8, 2018) was an American celebrity chef, author and travel documentarian. A 1978 graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, Bourdain spent several years as executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles in Manhattan, and an essay in The New Yorker in the late 1990s launched the writing career. The catalogue opens with Bone in the Throat (1995) and Gone Bamboo (1997), then Kitchen Confidential (2000), A Cook's Tour (2001) and Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook (2004). The Anthony Bourdain Reader (2025) is the newest title, and Hungry Ghosts and Get Jiro Graphic Novels are the listed series. Cooking, restaurants and food share the subjects with mystery and detective fiction.

Ruth Reichl

14 books• 1 series

Ruth Reichl, born in 1948, is an American chef, food writer and editor who spent two decades as a food critic, mostly at the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times. Reichl edited Gourmet magazine as editor-in-chief, co-produced the PBS program Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie, hosted Gourmet's Adventures With Ruth and served as culinary editor for the Modern Library, and has won six James Beard Foundation Awards. The catalogue holds 14 Reichl books, including Tender at the Bone (1998), Comfort Me with Apples (2001), Garlic and Sapphires (2005) and The Paris Novel (2024). Subjects include cooking, memoir and New York restaurants.

Jane Yolen

237 books• 22 series

Jane Yolen (Jane Hyatt Yolen, February 11, 1939 to June 11, 2026) was an American author of fantasy, science fiction and children's books. The Devil's Arithmetic, a Holocaust novella, is the best-known Yolen work, and Owl Moon and The Emperor and the Kite are among the others. The short works Sister Emily's Lightship and Lost Girls both won Nebula Awards. The catalogue counts 237 books from The Witch Who Wasn't (1964) to Daddy Plays a Mean Guitar (2026). Series include Commander Toad, How Do Dinosaurs...?, Pit Dragons, the Young Merlin Trilogy, Books of the Great Alta and Tartan Magic. Yolen worked as an editor, collaborated most often with Adam Stemple, and in 2012 became the first woman to give the Andrew Lang lecture.

Ellen Hart writes mystery novels around two recurring sleuths, Jane Lawless and Sophie Greenway. Women detectives, Minneapolis, restaurateurs and lesbian characters are standing subjects, and culinary detail runs through the books: Hart worked as a professional chef for 14 years. The catalogue holds 35 titles published between 1989 and 2020, opening with Hallowed Murder (1989) and continuing through Vital Lies (1991), Stage Fright (1992), A Small Sacrifice (1994) and The Oldest Sin (1995). In a Midnight Wood (2020) is the last catalogued book.

Susan Branch is an American author, watercolourist and designer who illustrates her own books. Heart of the Home is the cookbook series Branch is known for, and the 44 catalogued titles also take in memoirs, guided journals, travel writing and keepsake books. The run opens with Heart of the Home (1986) and reaches Distilled Genius - A Collection of Life-Changing Quotations (2022), at a median 80 pages. Cooking, entertaining, home economics and Christmas recur as subjects. No new title has appeared since 2022.

Joanne Pence writes culinary mysteries. The amateur sleuth is Angie Amalfi, an underemployed food writer and gourmet chef in San Francisco, and Amalfi's romance with homicide inspector Paavo Smith runs alongside the cases; the flavour is humorous, screwball adventure. Born Joanne Lopez in San Francisco, Pence attended the University of California, Berkeley and managed operations analysis at the Social Security administration from 1970 to 1998. The catalogue lists 58 titles, opening with Dangerous Journey (1987) and Something's Cooking (1993) and reaching Deadly Ever After in 2025. Series include Cook and Inspector Mysteries, Inspector Rebecca Mayfield Mystery, Angie & Friends Food & Spirits Mysteries and Donnelly Cabin Inn.

James Martin writes cookery books. Eighteen catalogued titles run from The Deli Cookbook in 2000 to James Martin's French Adventure in 2017, covering British food, desserts, quick and easy cooking and delicatessen fare, with Saturday Kitchen Cookbook (2007) and James Every Day (2008) among them. Driven, published in 2008, turns to motoring, and a strand of autobiography sits beside the recipes.

Carolyn Keene is a Stratemeyer Syndicate pen name, the credit on the Nancy Drew mysteries. Mildred Wirt Benson, one of the writers behind the name, used it from 1929 to 1953 and contributed to 23 of the first 30 Nancy Drew books. The catalogue lists 647 Carolyn Keene books, beginning with The Secret of the Old Clock, The Hidden Staircase and The Bungalow Mystery (all 1930) and reaching Vans & Villains (2026). Series include Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, Nancy Drew Files, Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew, Nancy Drew Diaries, Nancy Drew: Girl Detective and Dana Girls Mystery Stories.

Roald Dahl

89 books• 2 series

Roald Dahl (13 September 1916 – 23 November 1990) was a British writer of children's books and short stories, and also a poet, screenwriter and wartime fighter ace. Born in Wales to Norwegian immigrant parents, Dahl lived mostly in England and served in the Royal Air Force in the Second World War, first as a fighter pilot and then as an intelligence officer. The catalogue lists 89 titles from The Gremlins (1943) to Marvelously Revolting Recipes (2024), among them Over to You: Ten Stories of Flyers and Flying (1946), Kiss Kiss (1959), James and the Giant Peach (1961) and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964). Dahl's books have sold more than 300 million copies.

Isis Crawford writes culinary cozy mysteries, with the catering sisters Bernie and Libby Simmons solving murders in the Mystery With Recipes series. An earlier run follows Robin Light in Syracuse, New York, opening the catalogue with Chutes and Adders (1994), Twister (1995), In Plain Sight (1996), The Scent of Murder (1997), Vanishing Act (1998) and Endangered Species (1999). 30 titles are catalogued, reaching A Catered PTA Murder.

Sarah Ferguson

65 books• 7 series

Sarah Ferguson, formerly Duchess of York, is a British author and television personality with 65 books catalogued between 1989 and 2023. The Budgie the Little Helicopter picture books opened the run in 1989 and lead a children's list that also holds Little Red, Genie Gems, Puddle Boots and the Helping Hand stories. Ferguson has written history as well, Victoria and Albert: A Family Life at Osborne House (1991) and Travels with Queen Victoria (1995), along with books on weight loss and exercise and the Buccleuch Family novels, the latest of them A Most Intriguing Lady (2023).

Camilla Trinchieri writes two mystery series: the Simona Griffo books, whose lead is a woman detective and cook, and the Tuscan Mysteries. The Trouble with a Small Raise (1991) is the earliest of 16 catalogued titles, followed by six more Trouble books through 1997, and Murder Returns to Gravigna (2026) is the most recent. Cooking, Italian Americans, Italy and Rome fill the subject tags.

26 catalogued books stand under Julie Hyzy's name, published between 2004 and 2018 and opening with Artistic License (2004). Hyzy is an American author of mystery fiction. The White House Chef Mysteries run through the middle of that list, with the cook Olivia Paras investigating murders in Washington, D.C. Manor of Murder Mysteries, the Alex St. James series and Riley Drake Mystery follow, and the catalogue closes with Virtual Sabotage (2018).