Emigration and immigration book series in reading order

by Eve Bunting

Edwidge Danticat

23 books• 2 series

Edwidge Danticat, born 19 January 1969, is a Haitian American novelist and short story writer. The first novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory, appeared in 1994 and was chosen for Oprah's Book Club; national identity, mother-daughter relationships and diasporic politics are the themes the work has taken up, and many awards and honours have followed. In 2023 Danticat was named Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University, in African American and African Diaspora Studies. The catalogue holds 23 books reaching Dèy (2026), among them Krik? Krak! (1996), The Farming of Bones (1998), The Dew Breaker (2004) and Brother, I'm Dying (2007).

Avi is the pen name of Edward Irving Wortis, an American author of children's and young adult books born December 23, 1937. Avi won the 2003 Newbery Medal for Crispin: The Cross of Lead and was a Newbery runner-up in 1991 and 1992. The catalogue records 87 books from Things That Sometimes Happen (1970) to The Road From Nowhere (2026), and Rat Race is set for 2027. Series include Crispin, Dimwood Forest and Beyond the Western Sea. Ghosts, animals, adventure and mysteries appear among the subjects.

Anna Jacobs writes historical sagas and romance set in England and Australia. Persons of Rank (1992) opens a catalogue of 114 books that reaches Hope Comes to Eastby End (2026), with Salem Street (1994), Ridge Hill (1996) and Our Lizzie (1999) among the early run. Family sagas name most of the series: the Gibson Family, the Kershaw Sisters, the Preston Family, the Michaels Family, the Blake Sisters and Swan River Saga, the Traders, Peppercorn Street, Rivenshaw, the Ellindale Saga, Larch Tree Lane and the Wiltshire Girls. Widows, inheritance and family life recur as subjects.

Leon Uris

18 books• 1 series

Leon Uris wrote historical fiction about war and about Jewish history. Battle Cry (1953) opens a catalogue of 18 books that holds Exodus (1958), Mila 18 (1961), Armageddon (1964), Topaz (1967), QB VII (1970) and Trinity (1976). The Marine Corps, the Second World War, emigration and Ireland run through the subjects, and the novels are long at a median 494 pages.

Dave Eggers

60 books• 10 series

Dave Eggers, born March 12, 1970, is an American writer, editor and publisher of fiction, non-fiction and children's books. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, a 2000 memoir, became a bestseller and a Pulitzer Prize finalist for General Nonfiction. Eggers founded Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, the 826 Valencia literacy project, Voice of Witness and ScholarMatch. The catalogue lists 61 books, including What Is the What (2006) and Contrapposto (2026), with The Minister of Color and Light due in 2027.

Guardians of Ga'Hoole is one of the series by Kathryn Lasky, an American children's writer born June 24, 1944, who writes for adults as Kathryn Lasky Knight and E. L. Swann. Lasky's children's work also includes Dear America and The Royal Diaries books, Wolves of the Beyond, Sugaring Time and The Night Journey, and honours include a Newbery Honor, the National Jewish Book Award and the Anne V. Zarrow Award for Young Readers' Literature. The catalogue holds 159 books from I Have Four Names for My Grandfather (1976) to Sacred Light (2026), including Tugboats Never Sleep (1977), The Weaver's Gift (1980) and Beyond the Divide (1983). Horses Of The Dawn, Bears Of The Ice and Camp Princess are further series, and subjects name owls, wolves, diaries and Jews.

Sir William Golding (1911-1993) was a British novelist, playwright and poet. Lord of the Flies (1954), his debut, is the book he is known for, and twelve further volumes of fiction appeared in his lifetime. Rites of Passage took the Booker Prize in 1980 and opened the sea trilogy To the Ends of the Earth; the Nobel Prize in Literature followed in 1983 and a knighthood in 1988. Golding was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and The Times placed him third among the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. Eighteen catalogued titles close with The Double Tongue (1995).

Eve Bunting, born Eve Bolton, was a Northern Irish-born American writer of more than 250 books who lived from December 19, 1928, to October 1, 2023. Bunting wrote fiction and non-fiction, mainly novels for children and young adults, and also wrote the text of picture books. Many of the books are set in Northern Ireland, where Bunting grew up, while others range in subject from Thanksgiving to riots in Los Angeles. The Two Giants (1971) was Bunting's first book. Series in the catalogue include Frog and Friends, Horse Stories, Dinosaur Machines and Pirate Captain's Daughter, and subjects include animals, horses, stories in rhyme and mystery stories.

Emily Arnold McCully, born July 1, 1939, is an American writer and illustrator known chiefly for children's books. Mirette on the High Wire, which McCully both wrote and illustrated, won the 1993 Caldecott Medal for U.S. picture book illustration. The catalogue lists 88 books, from Maxie (1970) to 1, 2, 3, Pull! (2023), and the Mirette and Grandma series are among them. Subject tags include stories without words, mice, cats, bears, grandmothers, friendship, history and biography.

E.V. Thompson, also credited as Ernest Victor Thompson, wrote historical sagas set largely in Cornwall. The Retallick Saga follows the Retallick family, with the Jagos of Cornwall and Amos Hawke books beside it. The catalogue holds 52 titles dated 1977 to 2012, from Chase the Wind (1977) to The Bonds of Earth (2012), and takes in local guides such as Discovering Bodmin Moor. Novels are long, a median of 419 pages, and the 1990s were the peak decade.

Mikhail Bulgakov

27 books

Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940) was a Russian and Soviet novelist and playwright. The Master and Margarita, published only after Bulgakov's death, is ranked among the great novels of the twentieth century. The White Guard is another of his novels, and the plays Ivan Vasilievich, Flight and The Days of the Turbins belong to his stage work. The catalogue lists 27 books in English, from The Fatal Eggs (1923) and A Dog's Heart to A Country Doctor's Notebook and a Molière biography.

Luis Alberto Urrea

21 books• 2 series

Mexican-American writer Luis Alberto Urrea, born in Tijuana on August 20, 1955, works as a poet, novelist and essayist. Urrea's 21 catalogued books start with Across the Wire (1993) and include The Fever of Being (1994), By the Lake of Sleeping Children (1996), Ghost Sickness (1997), Nobody's Son (1998) and Six Kinds of Sky (2002). Subjects include the Mexican-American border region, immigration and Mexican Americans. Hummingbird's Daughter is Urrea's series, and Piedra (2023) is the newest title.

Christian life, frontier and pioneer history, and the American Revolution of 1775-1783 run through Wanda Luttrell's catalogue. The listing holds 19 books dated between 1971 and 2015, from The House of Elnora Garland (1971) to Straight on to Murder (2015), with Luttrell the sole credited writer throughout. Two series appear under the Luttrell name: Sarah's Journey and Immigrants Chronicles. Recorded subjects also take in slavery, emigration and immigration, spies, historical adventure and juvenile literature.

Kristiana Gregory and various others is a shared credit on 16 historical fiction books for Grades 3-5, dated 1996 to 2012. Subject tags include diaries, frontier and pioneer life, overland journeys to the Pacific, the Mayflower and the Pilgrims, emigration and African Americans. The Winter of Red Snow (1996) and A Journey to the New World (1996) are the earliest titles. Others include Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie (1997), Standing in the Light (1999), Seeds of Hope (2001) and A Coal Miner's Bride (2002), and Behind The Masks (2012) is the last.

Ruth Gruber (September 30, 1911 to November 17, 2016) was an American writer, journalist and photographer, a humanitarian, and an official of the United States government. Gruber was born in Brooklyn to Russian Jewish immigrants and earned a doctorate from the University of Cologne at age 20 with a dissertation on Virginia Woolf. During the 1930s Gruber reported on women under fascism and communism, travelling to the Soviet Arctic. Gruber also worked for two years in Alaska for the U.S. Department of the Interior, as a field representative. The catalogue lists 11 books from 1972 to 2018, among them Haven (1983), Exodus 1947: The Ship That Launched a Nation (1999) and Witness (2007).