Food book series in reading order

by Giada De Laurentiis

by Jory John

by Laura Joffe Numeroff

Giada De Laurentiis

19 books• 1 series

Italian cooking dominates the subject tags for Giada De Laurentiis, whose catalogue begins with Everyday Italian: 125 Simple and Delicious Recipes (2005) and runs to Super-Italian (2025). Giada De Laurentiis, born Giada Pamela De Benedetti on August 22, 1970, is an Italian-American chef, entrepreneur, writer and television personality. Giada De Laurentiis hosted Giada at Home on Food Network, appears on NBC's Today as a contributor and guest co-host, and founded the catering company GDL Foods. Awards include a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Lifestyle Host and a Gracie Award. The listing also includes the Recipe for Adventure series, and its subjects extend to children's fiction, magic, and space and time.

Anthony Bourdain

23 books• 3 series

Anthony Bourdain (June 25, 1956 – June 8, 2018) was an American celebrity chef, author and travel documentarian. A 1978 graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, Bourdain spent several years as executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles in Manhattan, and an essay in The New Yorker in the late 1990s launched the writing career. The catalogue opens with Bone in the Throat (1995) and Gone Bamboo (1997), then Kitchen Confidential (2000), A Cook's Tour (2001) and Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook (2004). The Anthony Bourdain Reader (2025) is the newest title, and Hungry Ghosts and Get Jiro Graphic Novels are the listed series. Cooking, restaurants and food share the subjects with mystery and detective fiction.

Jory John is an American author of children's books, known for dark humour and for taking on difficult topics. Jory John titles have reached the New York Times bestseller list, with The Good Egg at number one and The Bad Seed at number two, and John has twice received an E.B. White Read-Aloud Honor. The catalogue lists 40 books from Thanks and Have Fun Running the Country (2009) to This Is Not a Christmas Book (2026). Series include Food Group, Bear & Duck and Animal Problems, and bears, ducks, friendship and kindness appear among the subjects.

Laura Joffe Numeroff

60 books• 3 series

Laura Joffe Numeroff is an American children's author and illustrator, born in 1953, known above all as the author of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. The If You Give... books form her main series, with ...Do Best and Jellybeans beside them. The catalogue records 60 Numeroff titles between Amy for Short (1976) and Ponyella (2021). Animals, friendship and stories in rhyme recur as subjects, and the median book runs 32 pages.

Michael Hicks has 25 catalogued books, published between 2008 and 2026 and all credited to Hicks alone. Recorded subjects include genetically modified foods, biotechnology, food, ecoterrorism, murder, the end of the world and survival. In Her Name is the one series recorded under Hicks's name. The listing opens with Publish Your Book On The Amazon Kindle (2008) and runs through Confederation (2009), Legend of the Sword (2010), Season Of The Harvest (2011) and The Journal of Avery Moore (2011) to Clíodhna's Refuge (2026).

Alexander McCall Smith

165 books• 25 series

Sir Alexander McCall Smith, born 24 August 1948, is a Scottish legal scholar and novelist who created The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. Born and raised in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), McCall Smith was Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh and worked on medical law and bioethics committees. English-language sales passed 40 million by 2010, with translations into 46 languages. The catalogue lists 165 books from White Hippo (1980) to 2026, including 44 Scotland Street, Isabel Dalhousie, Detective Varg and children's titles.

Michael Pollan

12 books

Michael Pollan writes non-fiction about plants, food and what people do with both. The catalogue holds 12 titles: Second Nature (1991), A Place of My Own (1997), The Botany of Desire (2001), The Omnivore's Dilemma (2006), In Defense of Food and Food Rules (2008), Cooked (2013), How to Change Your Mind (2018), Caffeine (2020) and This Is Your Mind on Plants (2021). Gardening, ethnobotany and food habits are the recurring subjects, and A World Appears is the most recent title.

Eric Carle

165 books• 6 series

Eric Carle (25 June 1929 to 23 May 2021) was an American author, designer and illustrator of children's books. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, a picture book first published in 1969, has sold more than 55 million copies in over 70 languages. Carle illustrated more than 70 children's books and wrote most of them, and sales across the Carle books exceed 170 million copies. Catalogued titles begin with 1, 2, 3 to the Zoo (1968), followed by The Very Hungry Caterpillar (1969), Pancakes, Pancakes! (1970), The Tiny Seed (1970) and Do You Want to Be My Friend? (1971). Subjects include board books, counting, color, animals and caterpillars.

Mary Berry is an English food writer, chef, baker and television presenter, born on 24 March 1935. Berry trained in catering at college and went to France at 22 to attend Le Cordon Bleu. The Hamlyn All Colour Cookbook (1970) was the first Mary Berry book, and the Baking Bible followed in 2009 among more than 75 cookery titles. Berry has presented television series for the BBC and Thames Television. The catalogue opens with Mary Berry's Cookbook (1970) and covers baking, cakes, desserts, freezer cooking and make-ahead cooking, with titles such as Popular Freezer Cookery (1972) and Family Cooking (1978).

Nigella Lawson, born 6 January 1960, is an English food writer and television cook. After Oxford, Lawson became deputy literary editor of The Sunday Times in 1986 and later worked as a freelance journalist. How to Eat (1998), the first cookbook, sold 300,000 copies, and How to Be a Domestic Goddess won the British Book Award for Author of the Year. The Channel 4 series Nigella Bites began in 1999 and won Lawson a Guild of Food Writers Award. The catalogue lists 14 books through Cook, Eat, Repeat (2021), including Feast (2004) and Nigella Express (2007).

Fly Guy, a pet fly, is Tedd Arnold's best-known creation. Arnold is an American children's writer and illustrator, born 20 January 1949 in Elmira, New York, and the Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor went to three of his books: Hi! Fly Guy! (2006), I Spy Fly Guy (2010) and Noodleheads See the Future (2018). Huggly, Noodleheads, Parts and Fly Guy Presents make up the other series, written for early readers at a median of 32 pages. The listing holds 76 titles dated 1987 to 2022.

James Preller writes for readers in grades 1 to 3, and the Jigsaw Jones Mysteries are the core of the list: most titles begin The Case of, from The Case of Hermie the Missing Hamster (1998) to The Case of the Hat Burglar (2019). Preller worked as a copywriter at Scholastic before publishing his first book in 1986, and has used the pen names Mitzy Kafka, James Patrick and Izzy Bonkers. Bystander and Six Innings sit outside the mystery series. The 38 catalogued books run to a median of 74 pages.

Hugh Lofting

25 books• 1 series

Doctor Dolittle, the physician who talks to animals, is the creation of Hugh Lofting (1886-1947). Lofting trained as a civil engineer and was English-American. The character began in illustrated letters Lofting wrote to his children from the trenches of the First World War, and Lofting moved to the United States before the first book appeared. The Story of Doctor Dolittle (1920) opens a series that includes Doctor Dolittle's Post Office, Circus, Zoo and Caravan. The catalogue holds 25 books.