Dublin (Ireland) book series in reading order

by John Banville Books / Benjamin Black

by Tana French

by John Brady

John Banville Books / Benjamin Black is the combined catalogue entry for 41 books dated 1970 to 2025. The list opens with Long Lankin (1970), Nightspawn (1971) and Birchwood (1973), then Doctor Copernicus (1976), Kepler (1981) and The Newton Letter (1982). The Book of Evidence (1989) and Ghosts (1993) follow. Subject tags include historical and psychological fiction, mystery, pathologists, scientists, Dublin and Ireland. Series include Quirke, Revolutions Trilogy, Frames: The Freddie Montgomery Trilogy, Cleave Trilogy and St. John Strafford, and Venetian Vespers (2025) is the newest title.

Roddy Doyle

33 books• 4 series

Roddy Doyle is an Irish novelist, dramatist and screenwriter, born in 1958. Ireland, and working-class Dublin in particular, is where Doyle sets the work, written with dialogue in slang and Irish English. Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha took the Booker Prize in 1993. The catalogue holds 33 books, from The Commitments (1987), filmed in 1991, to The Women Behind the Door (2024), and takes in the Barrytown Trilogy, the Last Roundup and the Rover Adventures written for children. Friendship, families, brothers and humorous stories carry the subject tags.

Tana French is an Irish crime writer and stage actress, born in 1973 and living in Dublin. French's first novel, In the Woods (2007), is a psychological mystery that took the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity and Barry awards for best first novel. The catalogue lists 10 books from 2007 to 2026, including The Likeness, Faithful Place and Broken Harbour, grouped into the Dublin Murder Squad, the Cal Hooper books and standalone novels. The newest title is The Keeper (2026). The Independent has labelled French "the First Lady of Irish Crime".

Marian Keyes

26 books• 5 series

Marian Keyes, born 10 September 1963, is an Irish novelist and radio presenter known for popular fiction. Watermelon, Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married, Rachel's Holiday, Last Chance Saloon, Anybody Out There and This Charming Man take on alcoholism, depression, addiction, cancer, bereavement and domestic violence with humour. Keyes has sold more than 35 million copies in 33 languages. The catalogue lists 26 books, from Watermelon (1995) to My Favourite Mistake (2024), with the Walsh Family as the recurring series. Dublin, female friendship and single women are among the tagged subjects.

Sheila O’Flanagan, born 1958 in Dublin, is an Irish fiction writer and journalist who writes for The Irish Times. Maggie's Story (1999) opens a catalogue of 40 books that reaches The Honeymoon Affair in 2024, at a median 471 pages. Contemporary romance is the ground: single women, married people, mothers and daughters, families, Dublin and Ireland recur as subjects. Crystal Run is the one series in the list, and the 2010s were O’Flanagan's heaviest decade.

Patricia Scanlan is an Irish novelist born in 1956. The catalogue lists 26 Scanlan books from Apartment 3B (1991) to City Girls Forever (2025), with subject tags for female friendship, marriage, sisters, weddings, family life and Dublin. City Girl (1992) and City Woman (1999) appeared in the early run, and City Girls and Forgive and Forget are the named Scanlan series. Finishing Touches, Mirror, Mirror and Francesca's Party are other titles in the list.

Karen Perry writes psychological thrillers, most of them set in Dublin. 9 catalogued books run from 2014, when both The Boy That Never Was and The Innocent Sleep appeared, to The Worst Thing You Ever Did (2023). Only We Know (2015), Girl Unknown (2016), Can You Keep a Secret? (2017), Your Closest Friend (2018) and Come a Little Closer (2019) fill the years between, and The Stranger is listed as The Guest as well (2021). Missing children, family secrets, revenge and marriage run through the subjects. No new title has appeared since 2023.

Gene Kerrigan, an Irish journalist and novelist, grew up in Cabra, Dublin. Kerrigan has written political commentary on Ireland since the 1970s for Magill magazine and the Sunday Independent, and has covered Ireland for International Socialism magazine. The Rage (2011) received the 2012 Gold Dagger as the year's best crime novel. The catalogue holds 12 books from Round Up the Usual Suspects (1984) to The Scrap (2015), including Hard Cases (1995), Little Criminals (2005), The Midnight Choir (2006) and Dark Times in the City (2009). Recorded subjects include crime, Dublin and social conditions.

Maeve Binchy

47 books• 6 series

Irish writer Maeve Binchy was born on 28 May 1939 and died on 30 July 2012. Binchy worked as a novelist, playwright, columnist and speaker, and wrote short stories. Binchy's novels portray small-town Irish life with sympathy and humour, often closing on a surprise ending. Translations reached 37 languages and sales passed 40 million copies. In the US, Binchy's work was selected for Oprah's Book Club and reached The New York Times Best Seller list. The catalogue lists 47 titles from Central Line (1978) to Maeve Binchy's Treasury (2021), including Light a Penny Candle (1982) and Circle of Friends (1990).

Edward Rutherfurd writes historical sagas that follow one place across centuries, through the families living in it. Sarum (1987) opens a catalogue of 9 titles, followed by Russka (1991), London (1997), The Forest (2000) and the Dublin Saga, published as Dublin: Foundation (2003) and Ireland: Awakening (2004). China, published in 2020, is the last catalogued title.

Sally Rooney

7 books• 4 series

Sally Rooney is an Irish novelist, born 20 February 1991. The four novels are Conversations with Friends (2017), Normal People (2018), Beautiful World, Where Are You (2021) and Intermezzo (2024). Normal People became a television miniseries in 2020 and Conversations with Friends followed in 2022. Rooney's books have sold over 6 million copies in more than 47 languages, and Time named Rooney one of the 100 most influential people in 2022. The catalogue's 7 entries also include Mr Salary (2016) and Normal People: The Scripts (2021).

Emma Donoghue

31 books• 5 series

Emma Donoghue is an Irish Canadian novelist, playwright, screenwriter and literary historian, born in October 1969. Room (2010) became an international best-seller and a Booker Prize finalist, and Donoghue's screenplay of the film version earned an Academy Award nomination. Hood (1995) won the Stonewall Book Award, and Slammerkin took the Ferro-Grumley Award for Lesbian Fiction. In 2025 Donoghue received the Alice B Readers Award. The catalogue holds 31 books, from Passions Between Women (1993) to The Paris Express (2025), including the Lotterys Plus One series.

James Joyce

21 books

Chamber Music (1907) opens a James Joyce catalogue of 21 titles. Joyce (1882-1941) was an Irish novelist, poet and literary critic who contributed to the modernist movement. Dubliners (1914), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Ulysses (1922) follow, the last of them tracking the episodes of Homer's Odyssey through shifting literary styles. The listing reaches Finn's Hotel (2013) and takes in manuscript facsimiles and correspondence alongside the fiction.

Michael Russell writes historical crime fiction set in Ireland and wider Europe between the wars. Stefan Gillespie is the recurring detective across all 10 catalogued books, each of them titled for a city: The City of Shadows (2012), The City of Strangers (2013), The City in Darkness (2016), The City of Lies (2017), The City in Flames (2019), The City Under Siege (2020), The City Underground (2022), The City of God (2023), The Dead City (2025) and The City in Year Zero (2026). Dublin, murder investigation and twentieth-century European history supply the material.

Katie Flynn and Judith Saxton are both pen names of Judy Turner, whose books sold more than eight million copies before her death in January 2019 at the age of 82. The catalogue holds 98 titles from 1972 onward, the earliest carrying the Saxton name: Cousin to the Queen (1972), My Master Mariner (1974) and Princess In Waiting (1976). Family sagas set in wartime England and Liverpool dominate, through series such as Liverpool Sisters, the Neyler Quartet and the Rose Queen Trilogy. New titles keep appearing, with The Secret Child scheduled for 2027.

Anne Enright

16 books

Anne Enright is an Irish writer whose fiction takes up family, love, identity and motherhood. The Gathering, her fourth novel, won the Man Booker Prize in 2007, and Enright served as the first Laureate for Irish Fiction from 2015 to 2018. Alongside eight novels and several story collections sits Making Babies (2004), a nonfiction account of the birth of her two children. Her essays appear in the London Review of Books and the New York Review of Books, and she writes for the Irish Times and the Guardian. 16 books are catalogued, from The Portable Virgin (1992) to Attention (2025).

Anne Emery is a Canadian lawyer who writes murder mysteries. The Collins-Burke series pairs Monty Collins, a lawyer, with Father Brennan Burke, a Catholic priest and choirmaster, across twelve novels, and a standalone sits beside them. Emery won the Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel in 2007 and the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel in 2019, took a silver medal at the 2011 Independent Publisher Book Awards, and was shortlisted for the 2023 Whodunit Award for Fenian Street. Sign of the Cross (2006) opens the run.

Gemma Jackson writes historical fiction with Dublin, Ireland among the recorded subjects. The catalogue holds 19 books, beginning with Through Streets Broad and Narrow (2013) and reaching Krista's Struggle (2024). Jackson's series are Krista's War, Ivy Rose and Percy Place. Other titles include Ha'penny Chance (2014), The Ha'Penny Place (2015) and Her Revolution (2019). New books arrive at an average gap of well under a year, and Jackson is still publishing.

John Brady has 12 catalogued books from A Stone of the Heart (1988) to Crash (2018), across the Inspector Matt Minogue, Inspektor Kimmel and Sergeant Tommy Malone series. Subject tags name the fictitious character Matt Minogue and list Dublin, Ireland, police procedurals, drug traffic, cold cases and homeless men. Unholy Ground, Kaddish in Dublin, All Souls, A Carra King, Islandbridge and The Going Rate are among the titles. The catalogue marks Brady's output as likely complete.

Irish crime writer and reviewer Arlene Hunt has 11 books in the catalogue, from Vicious Circle (2004) to While She Sleeps (2022). The QuicK Investigations novels are set in Dublin and feature private investigators John Quigley and Sarah Kenny. Hunt also wrote stand-alone thrillers such as The Chosen, The Outsider and While She Sleeps, and Undertow was a nominee for Best Crime Novel at the 2009 Irish Book Awards. A second series, Detectives Eli Quinn and Roxy Malloy, also appears under Hunt's name.