Fathers book series in reading order

by Gabrielle Lord

Gabrielle Lord is an Australian writer of psychological thrillers, described as Australia's first lady of crime. Fortress (1980) opens a catalogue of 35 books that holds the Gemma Lincoln and Jack McCain crime series alongside Conspiracy 365, written for younger readers around the character Callum Ormond. Kidnapping, family secrets and death recur through the subjects. Shattered (2021) is Lord's most recent catalogued title.

Espionage, terrorism and the Second World War supply Jack Higgins with his material. Higgins published the earliest of 76 catalogued books as Harry Patterson, among them Sad Wind from the Sea (1959), Cry of the Hunter (1960) and Hell Is Too Crowded (1962). Sean Dillon, Paul Chavasse, Liam Devlin and Martin Fallon head series of their own, alongside standalone thrillers. The Midnight Bell, published in 2016, closes the catalogue.

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.

Neil Gaiman

199 books• 41 series

Neil Gaiman, born Neil Richard Gaiman on 10 November 1960, is an English writer of short fiction, novels, comic books, audio theatre and screenplays. The Sandman comic series ran from 1989 to 1996, and the novels include Stardust (1999), American Gods (2001), Coraline (2002), Anansi Boys (2005) and The Graveyard Book (2008). The Graveyard Book made Gaiman the first author to win both the Newbery and Carnegie medals for one work, and other awards include the Hugo, Nebula and Bram Stoker. Gaiman co-created the television adaptations of Good Omens and The Sandman. The catalogue runs from Duran Duran (1984) to The Silver Age (2024) and includes Sandman and Death graphic novels and children's books.

Catherine Fisher, born 1957, writes fantasy for children and young adults, plus poetry. Seven series appear under the Fisher name, Incarceron and the Chronoptika Quartet among them, and Sapphique follows Incarceron. The 46 catalogued books span 1988 to 2021, from Immrama to The Red Gloves and Other Stories, and five volumes of poetry sit alongside the novels. Fisher worked as an archaeologist and taught in schools and universities, and lives in Wales.

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.

Lucinda Riley

33 books• 3 series

Family secrets, sisters and houses with histories are Lucinda Riley's material, set across the twentieth century and into wartime. Riley published first as Lucinda Edmonds, from Lovers and Players (1992) through Hidden Beauty, Enchanted and Aria. The Seven Sisters novels are the best known later work, and the Guardian Angels books sit alongside the standalones. Thirty-three titles make up the catalogue, long ones at a median of 472 pages, running to The Last Love Song in 2025.

Mike Lawson writes political thrillers built around government investigators. The catalogue lists 25 books, from The Inside Ring (2005) to The Asset (2026), in two named series: Joe DeMarco and Agent Kay Hamilton. Joe DeMarco is the recurring character. House Rules / Dead on Arrival (2008), House Secrets (2009) and House Justice (2010) appear early in the run, alongside the standalone title Rosarito Beach (2013). Undercover operations, drug trafficking and the US Drug Enforcement Administration appear among the subject headings.

Julia London

68 books• 18 series

Julia London writes historical romance, Regency England, the Scottish highlands, nobility and marriage plots, with a contemporary strand beside it. The Rogues of Regent Street, the Highland Grooms, Desperate Debutantes, the Cabot Sisters, Secrets of Hadley Green, Lake Haven and Pine River are among her series. Sixty-seven catalogued books run from The Devil's Love (1998) to Rules for Aging and Larceny in 2026.

Madeline Hunter was the pen name of an American romance novelist who lived from June 8, 1952 to April 15, 2025 and twice won the Romance Writers of America RITA award. The Hunter catalogue holds 35 historical romances published between 2000 and 2023, opening with By Arrangement, By Design and By Possession, all from 2000, and ending with The Heiress Bride (2023). Series include the Seducers, the Rothwell Brothers, the Rarest Blooms, the Fairbourne Quartet, the Decadent Dukes Society and 14th Century London. Nobility and English social customs recur among the recorded subjects.

Phyllis A. Whitney

77 books• 2 series

Phyllis A. Whitney published across five decades: 77 catalogued books, from A Place for Ann (1941) to Amethyst Dreams (1997), with the 1960s the busiest decade. The work splits between mystery, suspense and romance for adults and fiction written for younger readers, so early titles such as A Star for Ginny (1942) and The Mystery of the Gulls (1949) sit beside later romantic suspense. Whitney also wrote on craft, including Writing Juvenile Fiction (1947). Murder, detection, families and fathers and daughters are the recurring subjects.

Nikki Turner is an American writer of urban fiction whom Trendsetter Magazine called the Queen of Hip Hop Lit. A Hustler's Wife and A Project Chick, both from 2003, were the first two books and had sold about 150,000 copies by 2005. Turner, born in Richmond, Virginia, holds a degree from North Carolina Central University and left work as a travel agent to write full time, aiming to show the dark side of street life. The catalogue lists 28 books through Mamma (2024), including The Glamorous Life (2005), Riding Dirty on I-95 (2006), Forever a Hustler's Wife (2007) and Black Widow (2008). Unique, A Hustler's Wife, Project Chick and Glamorous Life are the series.

Michael Chabon

22 books• 2 series

Michael Chabon published The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (1988), a first novel, at the age of 24. Chabon is an American novelist, screenwriter, columnist and short story writer, born on May 24, 1963, in Washington, D.C. After a year at Carnegie Mellon University, Chabon moved to the University of Pittsburgh, graduated in 1984, and later took a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing at the University of California, Irvine. The catalogue lists 22 books to The Mystery Intruder (2020), including Wonder Boys (1995), Werewolves in Their Youth (1999), The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000), Summerland (2002) and The Final Solution (2004). Series are Amazing Adventures Of The Escapist and Awesome Man.

David Walliams

56 books• 6 series

Born David Edward Williams on 20 August 1971, David Walliams is an English actor, comedian, writer and television personality. Walliams rose to fame with Matt Lucas on the BBC sketch shows Little Britain (2003–2006) and Come Fly with Me (2010–2011), judged Britain's Got Talent from 2012 to 2022, and wrote and starred in the sitcom Big School. Walliams's children's books have sold more than 50 million copies. The catalogue lists 56 titles from Inside Little Britain (2006) to The World’s Worst Superheroes (2025), including The Boy in the Dress (2008), Mr Stink (2009), Billionaire Boy (2010), Gangsta Granny (2011) and Awful Auntie (2014).

Al Roker

15 books• 1 series

Al Roker, born in 1954, is an American weather presenter and journalist, the weather anchor on NBC's Today. His 15 books divide three ways: family humour and parenting in Don't Make Me Stop This Car! (2000) and Big Shoes (2005), cookbooks including Al Roker's Big Bad Book of Barbecue (2002), and the Billy Blessing mysteries, which put a celebrity chef into murder cases beginning with The Morning Show Murders (2009). Recipes to Live By followed in 2024.

Cynthia Voigt writes for young adults, on adventure, mystery, racism and child abuse. The Tillerman Cycle opens her catalogue with Homecoming (1981), which was adapted as a film in 1996, and Dicey's Song won the Newbery Medal in 1983. Other sequences include Tales of the Kingdom, Bad Girls, Davis Farm and Mister Max. The American author, born in 1942, received the American Library Association's Margaret Edwards Award in 1995 for her writing for teenagers. Thirty-seven titles are catalogued, published between 1981 and 2020 and reaching Little Bird (2020).

Ramsey Campbell

96 books• 6 series

Ramsey Campbell, born 4 January 1946, is an English horror writer, editor and critic with more than sixty years of published work behind him. Campbell has written over 30 novels and hundreds of short stories, many of them award winners, and three of the novels have been adapted into films. T.E.D. Klein placed Campbell at the head of the field, writing that Campbell reigns supreme in it today. The listing holds 96 titles from The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants (1964) to An Echo of Children (2025), and it includes anthology volumes Campbell edited as well as titles published under the name Carl Dreadstone.

Jan and Stan Berenstain wrote picture books about the Berenstain Bears. The run begins with The Big Honey Hunt (1962) and reaches 400 titles by The Berenstain Bears: Father's Day Blessings (2018). Family life, school, brothers and sisters, scouting, Christmas and Christian life supply the recurring subjects, and many of the books are told in rhyme. A median length of 32 pages places them with early readers. Publication peaked in the 1990s and the catalogue is likely complete.

Peter Lerangis

93 books• 27 series

Peter Lerangis, born Peter Duncan Lerangis in Brooklyn, New York, in 1955, is an American author of children's and young adult fiction. Lerangis is best known for the Seven Wonders series and for work on the 39 Clues series. Some catalogued titles, such as License to Drive (1988), appeared under the name A.L. Singer. Series include Abracadabra, Spy X, Drama Club, Max Tilt, Throwback, Antarctica and Cerulean. Subjects include adventure, fantasy, mystery, twins, dinosaurs, theater and Atlantis, and the newest title is Out of Time (2021).

Susan Richards Shreve is an American novelist, memoirist and children's author, with fifteen novels, thirty children's books and the memoir Warm Springs: Traces of a Childhood (2007) to the name. Shreve co-founded the MFA in Creative Writing programme at George Mason University in 1980 and teaches fiction writing there, and co-founded the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. Joshua T. Bates and Lucy Forever are the children's series; schools, family life and divorce recur as subjects. The listing holds 51 titles dated 1974 to 2021.

Jack Gantos is an American children's author, born in 1951, known for two creations. Rotten Ralph is a cat who starred in twenty picture books between 1976 and 2014, illustrated by Nicole Rubel; Joey Pigza is a boy with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, featured in five novels between 1998 and 2014. Gantos took the 2012 Newbery Medal for Dead End in Norvelt. The catalogue records 50 titles from Rotten Ralph (1975) onward, written for grades 3 to 5, with a median length of 48 pages.

Sarah Mayberry is an Australian author of contemporary romance and a television screenwriter. Mayberry has written novels for Harlequin Mills and Boon and scripts for the soap opera Neighbours, worked as a storyliner on the New Zealand medical drama Shortland Street, and co-created the teen series Karaoke High with Kirsty McKenzie. In 2015 Mayberry won Favourite Erotic Romance at the Australian Romance Readers Awards. The 48 catalogued books run from Can't Get Enough (2005) to Sweetheart (2021), and Neighbours Novellas and Carmody Brothers are among the series.

Jason Starr

28 books• 7 series

Jason Starr, born November 22, 1966, is an American novelist, comic book writer and screenwriter from New York City, working mainly in crime fiction and thrillers. Tough Luck (2003) took the Barry Award for Best Paperback Original and an Anthony Award nomination in the same category in 2004; Twisted City won that Anthony category in 2005; and The Chill won the first Anthony Award for Best Graphic Novel in 2011. The catalogue holds 28 books from Cold Caller (1997) to Vanessa's Men (2026), with Wolverine MAX and Gotham among the recorded series.

Deb Caletti, an American author born June 16, 1963, writes young adult and adult fiction set in the Pacific Northwest. Caletti was a National Book Award finalist and received a Michael L. Printz Honor, the Washington State Book Award and the Josette Frank Award. Random House published He's Gone (2013), the first Caletti novel for adults. The catalogue holds 23 books from The Queen of Everything (2002) to You, Me, and Infinity (2026), including The Nature of Jade (2007).