Fantasy, contemporary book series in reading order

by Charlaine Harris

by Laurell K. Hamilton

by Charlaine Harris

by Benedict Jacka

by Charles Stross

by Lev Grossman

by Douglas Adams

Charlaine Harris

78 books• 14 series

Charlaine Harris, born Jean Charlaine Harris Schulz on November 25, 1951, in Tunica, Mississippi, is an American author specialising in mysteries. The Southern Vampire Mysteries, Harris's best-known series, became HBO's True Blood, which ran for seven seasons from 2008 to 2014. The catalogue starts with Sweet and Deadly (1981) and A Secret Rage (1984) and reaches The Last Wizards' Ball (2025). Sookie Stackhouse, Aurora Teagarden, Lily Bard, Gunnie Rose and Midnight, Texas are among the series. Vampires, werewolves and women librarians appear in the subjects, and Harris lives in Texas.

Terry Brooks

59 books• 20 series

Terry Brooks, born Terence Dean Brooks on January 8, 1944, is an American writer of epic fantasy. The catalogue opens with The Sword of Shannara (1977) and counts 59 books through Brona (2026). Series lines include the Original Shannara, Heritage of Shannara, Genesis of Shannara, Defenders of Shannara and Dark Legacy of Shannara, alongside Word & Void and Viridian Deep, while the Magic Kingdom of Landover is a recurring setting. Two film novelizations belong to the output. Brooks has had 23 New York Times bestsellers and more than 25 million copies in print, and announced a semi-retirement from writing in March 2025.

Laurell K. Hamilton

60 books• 11 series

Laurell K. Hamilton is an American writer of fantasy and romance, born February 19, 1963, and the author of two main series. Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter, a New York Times bestseller, features Anita Blake, a zombie raiser, vampire executioner and supernatural consultant to the police; the series spans novels, story collections and comics, with six million copies in print. The Merry Gentry series follows Meredith Gentry, a princess of the Unseelie court of Faerie who works as a private detective and faces repeated assassination attempts. The catalogue holds 60 titles from Nightseer (1992) to A Glimmer of Death (2026), with Guilty Pleasures dated 1993. The Zaniel Havelock series is also listed.

Piers Anthony is the publishing name of Piers Anthony Dillingham Jacob, born August 6, 1934, an American science fiction and fantasy writer. The long-running Xanth novels, set in the imaginary realm of Xanth, are his best-known work. Anthony has counted among his chief achievements the publication of a book beginning with every letter of the alphabet, from Anthonology to Zombie Lover, and a number of his books have reached The New York Times Best Seller list. This catalogue lists 195 titles from Chthon (1967) to Knicklepede Knight (2026), including the Apprentice Adept, Cluster, Battle Circle, Mode and Incarnations of Immortality sequences.

Carrie Vaughn

84 books• 16 series

Carrie Vaughn, born on 28 January 1973, is an American writer and the creator of the urban fantasy Kitty Norville series. Vaughn has published more than 60 short stories in science fiction and fantasy magazines, anthologies and online magazines, writes for the Wild Cards books, won the 2018 Philip K. Dick Award for Bannerless and has been a Hugo Award nominee. The catalogue opens with Kitty and the Midnight Hour (2005), then Kitty Goes to Washington (2006) and Kitty Takes a Holiday (2007), and Blade Through the Heart (2026) is the newest title. Other series include Bannerless Saga, Cormac and Amelia, Graff and Naturalist Society. Subjects include werewolves, radio talk show hosts and Las Vegas.

Mark Z. Danielewski

11 books• 1 series

American novelist Mark Z. Danielewski was born on March 5, 1966. House of Leaves (2000), the first Danielewski novel, won the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award, and Only Revolutions (2006) was a National Book Award nominee. The Familiar was planned at 27 volumes; Danielewski stopped the project in 2017 after 5. Danielewski's work uses intricate, layered page layouts, a typographic approach Danielewski calls signiconic. The catalogue lists 11 books, from House of Leaves to Tom's Crossing (2025).

Jim Butcher

48 books• 7 series

Jim Butcher, born October 26, 1971, is an American author of the contemporary fantasy series The Dresden Files, as well as Codex Alera and Cinder Spires. Storm Front (2000) opens the catalogue, which includes Fool Moon (2001), Grave Peril (2001), Summer Knight (2002) and Furies of Calderon (2004), and runs to Out Law: A Dresden Files Novella (2026). Harry Dresden, wizards, private investigators and Chicago appear among the subjects. Butcher is still publishing.

Naomi Novik

20 books• 3 series

Naomi Novik is an American author of speculative fiction. The Temeraire series (2006–2016) is an alternate history of the Napoleonic Wars with dragons, and the Scholomance trilogy ran from 2020 to 2022. The standalone novels Uprooted (2015) and Spinning Silver (2018) draw on Polish folklore and the Rumpelstiltskin tale. Novik helped create the Organization for Transformative Works and co-founded the organisation's Archive of Our Own project. Awards include the Nebula, Locus and Mythopoeic. The catalogue lists 20 titles from His Majesty's Dragon (2006) to The Summer War (2025), with Liberty Vocational as a third series.

Tom Holt, born Thomas Charles Louis Holt on 13 September 1961, is a British novelist who also writes fantasy as K. J. Parker. The catalogue lists 57 books under the Holt name, from Lucia in Wartime (1985) and Lucia Triumphant (1986) to The Eight Reindeer of the Apocalypse (2023). Recorded subjects include humorous fantasy, and titles include Expecting Someone Taller (1987), Who's Afraid Of Beowulf? (1988), Goatsong (1989) and Flying Dutch (1991). Series include J. W. Wells & Co., YouSpace and Walled Orchard.

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, born 23 March 1947, is an American science fiction and fantasy writer and a Registered Nurse living in Port Townsend, Washington. Scarborough has published more than 40 novels and has collaborated with Anne McCaffrey on several series. The catalogue lists 42 books from Song of Sorcery (1982) to Extended Family (2022), including The Unicorn Creed (1983) and The Healer's War (1988). Series include Songs from the Seashell Archives, Petaybee/Powers Trilogy, Songkiller, Godmother and Spam the Cat Purranormal Mysteries. Subjects include witches, the Vietnam War, Petaybee as an imaginary place, and humour.

Anne Bishop writes dark fantasy. The Black Jewels series begins with Daughter of the Blood (1998) and runs on witches and the imagined realm of Terreille; The Others and the World of the Others turn to shapeshifters, werewolves and vampires. Ephemera, Tir Alainn and An Isle of Wyrd fill out 32 catalogued titles, with Storms of Fate scheduled for 2027. Books run 430 pages at the median.

Benedict Jacka, born 25 September 1980, is a British author best known for the Alex Verus series. Urban and contemporary fantasy describe the catalogue, whose subjects also cover magic, psychics, apprentices, good and evil, ninja and runaway children. Nineteen books run from The Beginning (2005) to A Judgement of Powers (2025), with Fated, Cursed and Taken all published in 2012. Alex Verus and Inheritance of Magic are the two series credited to Jacka.

Stephen R. Lawhead, born 1950, is an American writer of fantasy, science fiction and historical fiction, with Celtic historical fiction the strand the name is most attached to. In the Hall of the Dragon King (1982) opens the Dragon King books and a catalogue of 44 titles that reaches Aurelia (2025). The Pendragon Cycle and King Raven take up Arthurian material and knighthood; the Song of Albion, Celtic Crusades, Eirlandia, Empyrion and Bright Empires follow. Children's books, among them the Howard and Riverbank Stories, sit alongside the novels.

Jonathan Carroll

28 books• 3 series

Jonathan Carroll, born 1949, is an American novelist whose work gets filed as magic realism, slipstream or contemporary fantasy, and has lived in Austria since 1974. The Land of Laughs (1980) opens the catalogue, followed by Voice of Our Shadow (1983), Bones of the Moon (1987), Sleeping in Flame (1988) and After Silence (1992). Rondua / Answered Prayers and Crane's View are the named sequences. Reincarnation, death and dogs recur among the subjects. The list holds 28 books reaching Ceffo (2023), at a median of 244 pages.

Amanda Carlson writes urban fantasy and paranormal fiction; the subject headings name werewolves, vampires, demonology, magicians and goddesses. Twenty-five books are catalogued between 2012 and 2021, with Jessica McClain recurring as a character and heading a series list that also holds Holly Danger, Mina Kane and Phoebe Meadows. Blooded and Full Blooded appeared in 2012, Cold Blooded and Hot Blooded in 2013, and Red Blooded and Struck in 2014. The books run to a median of 300 pages, and the catalogue marks the run dormant.

Werewolves, vampires and shapeshifters populate Patricia Briggs's paranormal fantasy. Mercy Thompson, a shapeshifter who works as a car mechanic, leads the sequence that carries her name, and Alpha and Omega runs beside it, both with graphic novel adaptations. Briggs started with Masques (1993) and the Sianim and Hurog books before turning to the modern-day novels. The catalogue holds 54 titles and reaches Steel Rain in 2027.

Haruki Murakami

44 books• 2 series

Haruki Murakami writes Japanese literary fiction in novels and short stories, much of it translated into English and much of it psychological with a fantastic edge. The catalogue holds 44 titles, opening with Hear the Wind Sing (1979) and taking in Pinball, 1973 (1980), A Wild Sheep Chase (1982), Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985) and Norwegian Wood (1987). The Rat books and Kishidancho Goroshi are the named sequences, and Super-Frog Saves Tokyo is the most recent entry.

Gena Showalter is an American novelist, born in Oklahoma in 1975, who writes contemporary romance, paranormal romance and young adult fiction. Showalter sold a first book at age 27 and has reached the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists. The catalogue lists 116 books from The Stone Prince (2004) to The Kraken Bride (2026). Lords of the Underworld, Alien Huntress, Angels of the Dark and the White Rabbit Chronicles are among the linked series, and vampires and demonology recur in the subject headings.

Time travel and magic run through Lynn Kurland's romance. The de Piaget family novels and the Nine Kingdoms fantasy sequence are the two series, with the MacLeods among the recurring names. A Dance Through Time (1996) is the earliest of 44 catalogued titles, and As Time Goes By is the newest. Median length is 376 pages, and the 2010s were the busiest decade.

Keri Arthur

68 books• 16 series

Vampires and werewolves fill Keri Arthur's paranormal fantasy and romance, with serial murder and horror in the mix. Riley Jenson heads the Guardian series, and Dark Angels, Lizzie Grace, Souls of Fire, the Damask Circle, Nikki & Michael, Spook Squad and the Kingdoms of Earth & Air stand beside it. Sixty-eight catalogued books run from Hearts in Darkness (2000) to Geitha's Tears in 2026.

Kristen Painter writes paranormal fiction, with vampires, magic, immortality and murder investigations among the subjects and paranormal and fantasy romance among the categories. The catalogue lists 88 books from 2010 to 2027, starting with All Fired Up and Heart of Fire in 2010. Painter's series include House of Comarré, Crescent City, First Fangs Club, Shadowvale, A Midlife Fairy Tale, Crimson Code and the Nocturne Falls mysteries featuring Jayne Frost. The Ranger Courts the Celtic Witch (2026) is the newest title, and Heir to Stay is due in 2027.

Kevin Hearne

32 books• 8 series

Born on December 9, 1970, Kevin Hearne is a fantasy novelist from Arizona who moved to Ontario and became a Canadian citizen in 2022. The Iron Druid Chronicles is a New York Times bestselling series, and subjects include druids, Atticus O'Sullivan and Celtic, Norse and Greek mythology. Other series are Ink & Sigil, the Seven Kennings trilogy, and Tales of Pell, a collaboration with Delilah S. Dawson. Heir to the Jedi (2015) is a Star Wars novel by Hearne. The catalogue counts 32 books through 2026.

Charles Stross

74 books• 13 series

Charles Stross is a British science fiction and fantasy writer, born 18 October 1964, who specialises in hard science fiction and space opera. The Laundry Files, featuring Bob Howard, mixes intelligence work with demonology. Other series are Merchant Princes, Singularity Sky, Halting State, Empire Games and Freyaverse. The catalogue lists 74 entries from Deathwing (1980) to Apostle (2026), including A Colder War (2000), Antibodies (2000) and Lobsters (2001).

Richard Bach

25 books• 3 series

Richard Bach is an American author whose books circle flight. The catalogue holds 25 titles dated 1963 to 2018, opening with Stranger to the Ground (1963) and Biplane (1966), and grouped into an Aviation set, the Illusions books and the Ferret Chronicles. Jonathan Livingston Seagull, from 1970, ranked among the largest sellers of its decade, and so did Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, published in 1977. Air pilots, ferrets, space and time, and metaphysical fantasy are the catalogued subjects. Much of the work is semi-autobiographical, and Bach has flown as a hobby since the age of 17. Life with My Guardian Angel (2018) is the last catalogued title.