Football book series in reading order

by Rich Wallace

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.

Gordon Korman

119 books• 22 series

Gordon Korman is a Canadian writer of children's and young adult fiction whose books have sold more than 30 million copies worldwide and reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list. The catalogue holds 119 titles, from This Can't Be Happening at MacDonald Hall! (1977) to Sleepless (2026). Subject tags cover schools, friendship, humorous stories, adventure, mystery and detective stories, and shipwrecks. Series headings include Swindle Mysteries, Masterminds, Everest, Dive, Titanic, Ungifted and the Monday Night Football Club. Gordon Korman remains actively publishing.

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.

John Feinstein (1955-2025) was an American sportswriter and commentator, for many years a reporter at the Washington Post. A Season on the Brink (1986) is his best known book, an account of a season inside Bob Knight's Indiana Hoosiers basketball programme, and it opens a catalogue of 51 titles reaching The Ancient Eight (2024). Basketball, golf, football and college sport run through the nonfiction, and the Sports Beat, Benchwarmers and Bobby Kelleher series were written for younger readers.

Mark Schlabach writes sports nonfiction, on college football and the people around it. The 18 catalogued books span 2003 to 2019, from Destiny's Dogs: Georgia's Championship Season (2003) to Nothing Comes Easy (2019). Recorded subjects include football players, football coaches, college sports, biography, history and anecdotes, and the listing also reaches the television programme Duck Dynasty. Titles include What It Means to Be a Hokie (2006), Heisman: The Man Behind the Trophy (2012) and Happy, Happy, Happy (2013).

Jim Dent, born Harry James Dent in 1953, is an American author and sportswriter. The catalogue shows football books starting with King of the Cowboys: The Life and Times of Jerry Jones (1995). The Junction Boys (1999), Monster of the Midway (2003), Twelve Mighty Orphans (2007), Resurrection (2009), Courage Beyond the Game (2011) and The Kids Got It Right (2013) followed, along with Manziel Mania and The Mighty Mites in 2014. Subjects include football history, coaching, biography and the Dallas Cowboys.

Golf and football supplied Dan Jenkins with most of his material, handled as sports humour and sportswriting. Saturday's America (1970) opens the catalogue, Semi-Tough (1972) and Life its Ownself (1984) take up football, and Dead Solid Perfect (1974) and Fairways and Greens (1980) take up golf. The Bobby Joe Grooves series sits inside the run. Twenty-five books date from 1970 to 2018, at a median 272 pages, mixing novels with anecdote collections and sports history.

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.

Dan Gutman

198 books• 23 series

Dan Gutman is an American writer of mainly children's fiction, born in 1955. The best-known lines are the My Weird School books, The Genius Files and the Baseball Card Adventures, which began with Honus & Me. The catalogue holds 198 books from It Ain't Cheating If You Don't Get Caught (1990) to Mrs. Towne Is a Clown! (2026), including early baseball titles such as Baseball Babylon (1992). Subjects include schools, teachers, baseball, time travel and humorous stories.

Scott Sigler

36 books• 11 series

Scott Sigler is an American author of science fiction and horror, a podcaster and a No. 1 New York Times bestseller who lives in San Diego. Sigler co-founded Empty Set Entertainment, the publisher of the young adult Galactic Football League series. Earthcore (2001), Ancestor (2007), Infected (2008) and Contagious (2008) are among the listed novels, alongside The Rookie (2007), The Starter (2010) and Warpath (2026). Infected, Generations Trilogy and Crypt are further series, and parasites, survival, amnesia and football appear in the subjects.

Sigmund Brouwer, born in 1959, is a Canadian author writing for children, young adults and adults, with more than 100 titles and four million books in print. Dead Man's Switch won the 2015 Arthur Ellis Award for best Canadian young adult mystery, and Shock Wave won the same award in 2025. Thief of Glory, a novel for adults, was named Book of the Year at the Christy Awards and also won an Alberta Readers Choice Award. The Last Disciple, co-authored with Hank Hanegraaff, was featured in Time magazine. The catalogue holds 162 books from Lost Beneath Manhattan (1990) to A Dangerous Game (2026), across series such as Accidental Detectives, Mars Diaries, Winds of Light, Lightning on Ice, Cyberquest and Robot Wars.

Charles M. Schulz was an American cartoonist, born in Minneapolis in 1922 and working until his death in 2000. Schulz created the comic strip Peanuts, whose cast includes Charlie Brown and Snoopy, after developing an earlier strip called Li'l Folks from 1947. United Features Syndicate renamed the redeveloped strip Peanuts and began publishing it in October 1950. The book catalogue holds 781 titles, from More Peanuts in 1954 to Snoopy, the Story of My Life in 2025, gathered into collections such as The Complete Peanuts and Peanuts Every Sunday.

Franklin W. Dixon is the author name on the Hardy Boys books, and the catalogue lists 473 titles under the Dixon name from 1927 to 2023. The Tower Treasure, The House on the Cliff and The Secret of the Old Mill all date from 1927. Dixon series include Hardy Boys Casefiles, Hardy Boys Adventures, Hardy Boys: Undercover Brothers, Hardy Boys: Secret Files and Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys Super Mystery, plus the Ted Scott Flying Stories. Undercover Bookworms (2023) is the newest title.

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.

Allan Zullo, born on 23 November 1947, is an American non-fiction writer who has written or co-written more than 120 paperbacks for adults and younger readers. Zullo produced the Hall of Shame sports books with Bruce Nash, the Ten True Tales series for children and the Haunted Kids books, and he wrote A Boomer's Guide to Grandparenting with his wife Kathryn. He also created the newspaper comic strip The Ghost Story Club, which ran from 1995 to 1998. Raised in Rockford, Illinois, Zullo took a journalism degree from Northern Illinois University in 1969; the catalogue lists 104 titles between 1987 and 2019.

Stephanie Perry Moore's 66 catalogued books date from 2000 to 2023, beginning with Saved Race, Sober Faith and Staying Pure in 2000. Subjects include Christian life, African Americans, high schools, universities and colleges, dating, friendship, family problems and sisters, along with children's fiction. Series include Payton Skky, Laurel Shadrach, Carmen Browne, Perry Skky Jr., Beta Gamma Pi Novels, Yasmin Peace, Morgan Love and Sharp Sisters. Women of Color Devotional dates from 2002, and Circus Web (2023) is the most recent title.

Buzz Bissinger

9 books

Buzz Bissinger, born Harry Gerard Bissinger III on 1 November 1954, is an American journalist and author and a longtime contributing editor at Vanity Fair. Nine catalogued books open with Friday Night Lights (1988), credited as H.G. Bissinger, and close with The Mosquito Bowl (2022). Subject headings across the catalogue name football and its social aspects, school sports, Permian High School in Odessa, Texas, the Chicago Cubs, the St. Louis Cardinals and Philadelphia politics. HBO released a documentary about Bissinger, titled Buzz, in 2019.

Born in 1966, Catherine Gilbert Murdock is an American author of children's books, young adult novels and non-fiction. That range shows in a catalogue of nine titles: the study Domesticating Drink: Women, Men, and Alcohol in America, 1870-1940 (1998) at one end, and fiction from Dairy Queen (2006) to Da Vinci's Cat (2021) at the other. The Off Season (2007), Princess Ben (2008), Front and Center (2009), Wisdom's Kiss (2011), Heaven Is Paved with Oreos (2013) and The Book of Boy (2018) fill the span. Dairy Queen is the series recorded under the name, and subjects list football, farm life, princesses, time travel and pilgrimages.