Fathers and sons book series in reading order

by Greg Iles

by Michael McGarrity

by Marilynne Robinson

by Loree Lough

by James Grippando

by James W. Hall

by Eve Bunting

Ellery Queen is both the detective and the name on the books, an American mystery catalogue of 148 titles. The Roman Hat Mystery (1929) opens a run of titles built to the same pattern, among them The French Powder Mystery, The Dutch Shoe Mystery and The Greek Coffin Mystery. The Drury Lane novels published as Barnaby Ross, the Tim Corrigan and Mike McCall series and a junior line sit beside them, with New York, police work and fathers and sons recurring as subjects. The catalogue has been dormant since 2022.

Sport is Tim Green's subject on both sides of his catalogue: football and baseball novels for young readers, and suspense novels for adults. Ruffians (1993) opens the list, followed by Titans, Outlaws and The Red Zone, with the non-fiction The Dark Side of the Game alongside. Football Genius, Baseball Great and Baseball Genius are the children's series, and Casey Jordan heads a legal one. Forty-five titles run to Rocket Arm in 2025.

Mike Lupica, born May 11, 1952, is an American author and former newspaper columnist known for sports commentary in the New York Daily News and for appearances on ESPN. The catalogue lists 64 books, from Reggie (1985) to Framed (2026). Children's fiction about basketball, football and baseball fills much of the subject list, along with twins, friendship and fathers and sons. Series include Zach & Zoe Mysteries, Comeback Kids, Home Team, Peter Finley and Danny Walker/Travel Team.

Wendy Mass, born 22 April 1967, is an American author of children's books and young adult novels. A Mango-Shaped Space (2003) received the ALA Schneider Family Book Award for Middle School in 2004, and Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life was adapted into a feature film in 2011. 11 Birthdays and Every Soul a Star are other noted titles. The catalogue holds 46 books from 1997 to 2023, beginning with Teen Drug Abuse (1997) and ending with Lo and Behold (2023). Willow Falls, Candymakers, Space Taxi and Time Jumpers are among the series.

Jonathan London has 141 catalogued books dating from 1992 to 2022, the Froggy series among them. Froggy Gets Dressed (1992) is the earliest title, alongside The Lion Who Had Asthma and Thirteen Moons on Turtle's Back from the same year. Other series include Duck and Hippo, Aaron's Wilderness, Shawn and Keeper and Brown Bear. Subjects include picture books, stories in rhyme, children's poetry, animals, wolves and imagination. Here Comes Truck Driver Hippo (2022) is the most recent title.

Greg Iles

19 books• 4 series

Suspense set largely in Mississippi is Greg Iles's territory, above all in the Penn Cage novels, which take a lawyer through buried family secrets and murder. Iles's 19 catalogued books open with Spandau Phoenix (1993) and close with Cemetery Road (2019), taking in the Penn Cage and Mississippi sequences and a set of standalone thrillers. The catalogue is listed as likely complete.

William Wallace Johnstone, October 28, 1938 to February 8, 2004, was an American author of westerns, horror and survivalist fiction. The Devil's Kiss opened the run in 1981, followed by The Last of the Dog Team (1981), Out of the Ashes (1983) and Anarchy in the Ashes (1984). Series filed under the name include Ashes, First Mountain Man, Smoke Jensen, Last Gunfighter, Blood Bond and Duff MacCallister, and subjects include outlaws, frontier and pioneer life, revenge and Texas. The catalogue carries 544 titles under the Johnstone name dated 1981 to 2026, well past the 2004 death date, and 400 of them carry a William W. Johnstone credit.

Rick Riordan

82 books• 19 series

Rick Riordan, born Richard Russell Riordan Jr. on June 5, 1964, is an American author. Riordan is best known for the Camp Half-Blood Chronicles, which take in Percy Jackson & the Olympians, The Heroes of Olympus, The Trials of Apollo and The Nico di Angelo Adventures. The catalogue holds 82 books from 1997 to 2026, opening with Big Red Tequila (1997) and reaching The Lightning Thief in 2005; the Tres Navarre and Kane Chronicles lines also feature. Riordan's books have been translated into 42 languages and have sold more than 30 million copies in the United States. 20th Century Fox filmed the first two Percy Jackson books, a project Riordan had no part in.

Henning Mankell

35 books• 9 series

Kurt Wallander, a police detective in Sweden, is the figure Henning Mankell is known for. Mankell's catalogue holds 35 books, from A Bridge to the Stars (1990) to The Rock Blaster (2020), and takes in the Joel Gustafsson and Linda Wallander sequences, the Fredrik Welin novels, the Sofia Alface books, children's fiction and non-fiction. Faceless Killers (1991) and The Dogs of Riga (1992) are among the early titles.

Roland Smith, born November 30, 1951, is an American author of young adult fiction and of nonfiction for children. The catalogue lists 51 titles from Sea Otter Rescue (1990) to The Vaquita (2025), with early books on zoo animals, Primates in the Zoo, Snakes in the Zoo, Inside the Zoo Nursery, sitting beside later adventure fiction. Series include I, Q, Peak, Storm Runners, Zach's Lie, Jacob Lansa, Marty and Grace and the Alphabet Picture books; Marie Smith shares credit on 3 of the titles. Subjects name survival, adventure, spies, mountaineering and terrorism.

Sport drives Rich Wallace's fiction for young readers. Basketball and soccer supply most of the plots, with teamwork, sportsmanship, competition and self-confidence among the listed subjects, across the Winning Season, Kickers, Game Face and Up2u series. Wallace's 43 catalogued books start at Riding Time and Wrestling Sturbridge in 1996 and end with Race Against Time: The Untold Story of Scipio Jones and the Battle to Save Twelve Innocent Men (2021). Volumes are short, at a median of 117 pages.

Across 194 catalogued books, Danielle Steel writes contemporary romance and family drama: love stories, marriages, widowhood and the turns that reshape a life. The run starts with Going Home (1973) and continues through Celebration, with 24 Hours scheduled for 2027. Steel's catalogue also holds children's picture books, short stories and non-fiction beside the standalone novels that make up most of it.

Karen Kingsbury is an American Christian novelist, born in Fairfax, Virginia, on June 8, 1963. Kingsbury worked as a sports writer for the Los Angeles Times and later wrote for the Los Angeles Daily News. Missy's Murder (1991), Kingsbury's first book, grew out of a murder story covered as a reporter in Los Angeles. Kingsbury is a #1 New York Times and USA Today bestselling novelist. The catalogue holds 115 titles, running to The Christmas Ring (2025), and the series include Firstborn, Sunrise, Above the Line, Bailey Flanigan, Red Gloves and Forever Faithful. Christian fiction and family life recur among the subjects.

Sharon Sala has written under the Sharon Sala name and as Dinah McCall, with more than 85 books in print since a first publication in 1991. Sala is a seven-time RITA finalist and a Janet Dailey Award winner, and Romance Writers of America gave Sala its Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award. The catalogue holds 144 Sala titles, from Sara's Angel (1991) to Reckoning (2026). Series include Blessings, Georgia; Mossy Creek; Jubilee, Kentucky; Jigsaw Files; Justice Way; Cat Dupree; Storm Front and Rebel Ridge. Romantic suspense and contemporary romance appear among the subject tags.

Gary Paulsen

181 books• 17 series

Survival and outdoor adventure run through Gary Paulsen's writing for young readers. The catalogue holds 181 books, from Some Birds Don't Fly (1968) to Northwind (2022), at a median length of 105 pages. Brian Robeson, Francis Tucket, Duncan Culpepper, Murphy and the World of Adventure books head the series lines, with non-fiction and picture books alongside. No new Paulsen title has appeared since 2022.

Michael McGarrity

19 books• 3 series

New Mexico is the setting for Michael McGarrity's police procedurals, which follow Kevin Kerney from Santa Fe through the state's murder investigations. Tularosa (1996) opens the series, continuing through Mexican Hat, Serpent Gate, Hermit's Peak, The Judas Judge and The Big Gamble. The American West Trilogy and standalone novels bring the catalogue to 19 titles, reaching Night in the City in 2025.

Luanne Rice, born 25 September 1955, is an American novelist whose books frequently turn to nature, the sea, love and family. The catalogue lists 42 Rice titles, from Angels All Over Town (1985) to Until Midnight (2026), including Crazy in Love, Firefly Beach, The Lemon Orchard and Beach Girls. Subjects on file include sisters, mothers and daughters, Connecticut, suspense and missing persons. Series include Hubbard's Point/Black Hall, Newport, Rhode Island and Detective Conor Reid, and Rice's work has been translated into 26 languages.

Marilynne Robinson

14 books• 1 series

Marilynne Robinson writes novels and essays, the fiction concerned with clergy, fathers and sons, and the long arguments inside a family. Housekeeping (1980) opens the catalogue; Gilead (2004) begins the sequence continued in Home. The non-fiction runs from Mother Country through The Death of Adam, Puritans and Prigs, Absence of Mind and On Faith and Freedom of Thought. Fourteen titles make up the catalogue, published at long intervals.

Brent Weeks

12 books• 3 series

Brent Weeks writes epic fantasy. The Night Angel books put assassins at the front, with wetboy among the subject terms, opening with The Way of Shadows, Shadow's Edge and Beyond the Shadows (2008); the Lightbringer series follows with The Black Prism (2010), The Blinding Knife (2012), The Broken Eye (2014) and The Blood Mirror (2015). Twelve books are catalogued, Night Angel Nemesis is the most recent, and the catalogue has been dormant since 2023.

Neal Shusterman

59 books• 12 series

Neal Shusterman is an American writer of young adult fiction, born November 12, 1962. Challenger Deep won Shusterman the 2015 National Book Award for Young People's Literature, Scythe was a 2017 Michael L. Printz Honor book, and the 2024 Margaret Edwards Award recognised a lasting contribution to writing for teens. The catalogue lists 59 books from 1988 to Rising Thunder (2026). Series include the Unwind Dystology, Arc of a Scythe, Skinjacker, Accelerati Trilogy, Star Shards Chronicles and Antsy Bonano.

Nancy Springer, born July 5, 1948, is an American author of fantasy, young adult literature, mystery and science fiction. Larque on the Wing won the 1994 Tiptree Award, and the Mystery Writers of America gave Springer Edgar Awards for Toughing It in 1995 and Looking for Jamie Bridger in 1996. I am Mordred earned the Pennsylvania Library Association's Carolyn W. Field Award in 1999. The first Enola Holmes book appeared in 2006. The catalogue lists 90 Springer books from The White Hart (1979) to Enola Holmes and the Clanging Coffin (2026), with the Book of Isle, Rowan Hood and Tale of Camelot series alongside.

Wilkie Collins

88 books

Wilkie Collins, born William Wilkie Collins on 8 January 1824 and died on 23 September 1889, was an English novelist and playwright. The Woman in White (1860) is an early sensation novel; The Moonstone (1868) set out much of what the modern detective novel came to do, and stands as an early example of the police procedural. Collins was the son of the London painter William Collins and Harriet Geddes, spent two years in Italy and France from the age of twelve, learned Italian and French there, and worked at first as a tea merchant. The catalogue holds 88 titles, from Iolani; Or, Tahiti as It Was (1840) onward, with the 1850s the heaviest decade.

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.

Sharon Creech

22 books• 3 series

Sharon Creech, born in 1945, writes children's novels. Creech was the first American to win the Carnegie Medal for British children's books, and the first writer to hold that award and the American Newbery Medal together. Twenty-two books are catalogued, from Absolutely Normal Chaos (1990) through Walk Two Moons (1994), Chasing Redbird (1997), Love That Dog (2001) and Ruby Holler (2002) to One Time (2020). Friendship, school, family life and orphanhood recur, with picture books alongside the novels.