Homes and haunts book series in reading order

Carol Drinkwater is a British actress, writer and filmmaker born on 22 April 1948 and based in France. Drinkwater played Helen Herriot in the television adaptation of All Creatures Great and Small, which brought the 1985 Variety Club Television Personality of the Year award. The catalogue lists 30 books from The Haunted School (1985) to An Act of Love (2022). Molly and Molly on the Run appeared in 1996 and The Olive Farm in 2001. Olive and Molly are the named Drinkwater series, and subject tags include Provence, farm life, the olive trade and children's fiction.

Alice Taylor writes about Irish country life. To School Through the Fields (1988) and Quench The Lamp (1990) recall a rural childhood, and the Mossgrove novels, The Woman of the House (1997) among them, turn the same setting into fiction. Christmas books, poetry and country miscellanies fill out 30 titles published between 1988 and 2023, the last of them Ellie and The Fairy Door. Irish social life and customs are the constant subject.

Provence made Peter Mayle's name, in travel writing about French village life, food and neighbours. The earlier work is very different: illustrated guides for children and parents, starting with 'What's Happening to Me?' (1975) and 'Where Did I Come From?' (1977), plus the Wicked Willie cartoons. Sam Levitt heads a later crime series. Fifty-four titles make up the catalogue, which closes with My Twenty-Five Years in Provence in 2018.

Robert Penn Warren

69 books• 3 series

Robert Penn Warren is the only writer to have received Pulitzer Prizes in both fiction and poetry: the 1947 novel prize for All the King's Men (1946), and the poetry prize in 1958 and again in 1979. Born on April 24, 1905, and dying on September 15, 1989, Warren worked as a poet, novelist, critic and Yale professor. Warren was a founding figure of New Criticism and a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, and co-founded The Southern Review in 1935 alongside Cleanth Brooks. Yale gave Warren an honorary Doctor of Letters in 1973. Catalogued books number 69, among them John Brown (1929), Understanding Poetry (1938), Night Rider (1939) and At Heaven's Gate (1943).

Edmund White

35 books• 4 series

Edmund Valentine White III (1940-2025) was an American novelist, memoirist, playwright, biographer and essayist, and a pioneering figure in gay literature after the Stonewall riots. White wrote with rare candour about gay identity, relationships and sex, at a time when coming out still carried real danger. The semi-autobiographical trilogy runs from A Boy's Own Story (1982) through The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988) to The Farewell Symphony (1997). This catalogue holds 35 titles from Forgetting Elena (1973) to The Loves of My Life (2025), among them States of Desire (1980), Caracole (1985), Genet (1993) and Our Paris: Sketches from Memory (1994). Subjects cover gay men and gay authors, biography, AIDS, coming of age and intellectual life.

Homer Hickam

20 books• 2 series

Homer Hickam is an American author, a Vietnam War veteran and a former NASA engineer who trained the first Japanese astronauts. His memoir Rocket Boys (1998), also published as October Sky, reached the New York Times bestseller list and became the 1999 film October Sky; The Coalwood Way (2000) and Sky of Stone (2001) continue that autobiographical line. The Second World War, coal miners and aerospace engineers run through the subject headings, and Josh Thurlow is the one catalogued series. Twenty titles are catalogued, published between 1989 and 2021, from Torpedo Junction (1989) to Don't Blow Yourself Up (2021). Hickam was born in 1943.

Rick Bass

32 books

Rick Bass is an American writer and environmental activist who trained as a geologist and worked in oil and gas before turning to writing and teaching. Wilderness, Montana and wildlife conservation run through the catalogue, from The Deer Pasture (1985) and Wild To The Heart (1988) to The Lost Grizzlies (1995) and The New Wolves (1998), both on wildlife reintroduction. Bass also writes fiction and short stories, among them Platte River (1994) and Where the Sea Used to Be (1998), and dog books such as Colter (2000). His 32 catalogued titles reach Wrecking Ball (2025), and he teaches in the Stonecoast MFA programme in Maine.

James Herriot wrote about veterinary practice in the English countryside, mixing memoir, anecdote and animal stories. The catalogue holds 39 titles published between 1970 and 2023, among them All Creatures Great and Small (1972), All Things Bright and Beautiful (1974) and the 2023 collection The Wonderful World of James Herriot. All Creatures Great and Small is the best known sequence, and Herriot also wrote children's books such as Bonny's Big Day. The books are short at a median of 180 pages, and the catalogue is closed.

Larry McMurtry

48 books• 10 series

Larry McMurtry (Larry Jeff McMurtry, June 3, 1936 to March 25, 2021) was an American novelist, essayist and screenwriter. Most of McMurtry's fiction takes place in the Old West or in contemporary Texas, and the early novels Horseman, Pass By (1961), The Last Picture Show (1966) and Terms of Endearment (1975) trace the decline of small-town Texas life. Screen adaptations of McMurtry's work received 34 Oscar nominations and 13 wins. The catalogue lists 48 books from 1961 to Thalia (2017), including the Lonesome Dove and Berrybender Narratives series and non-fiction.

Roald Dahl

89 books• 2 series

Roald Dahl (13 September 1916 – 23 November 1990) was a British writer of children's books and short stories, and also a poet, screenwriter and wartime fighter ace. Born in Wales to Norwegian immigrant parents, Dahl lived mostly in England and served in the Royal Air Force in the Second World War, first as a fighter pilot and then as an intelligence officer. The catalogue lists 89 titles from The Gremlins (1943) to Marvelously Revolting Recipes (2024), among them Over to You: Ten Stories of Flyers and Flying (1946), Kiss Kiss (1959), James and the Giant Peach (1961) and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964). Dahl's books have sold more than 300 million copies.

Isaac Asimov

553 books• 31 series

Isaac Asimov (c. January 2, 1920 – April 6, 1992) was an American writer who also taught biochemistry at Boston University. Hard science fiction is the core of Asimov's reputation, and the Foundation series about a fallen space empire is the most famous work; Asimov ranked with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke as one of the "Big Three" of the genre. The output also covers mysteries, fantasy and popular science, with non-fiction lines such as How Did We Find Out and the Library of the Universe. Asimov wrote or edited more than 500 books. This catalogue opens with the story Marooned Off Vesta (1939) and names Asimov on 400 of the listed books.

Maya Angelou

51 books• 3 series

Maya Angelou (April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014), born Marguerite Annie Johnson, was an American memoirist, poet, essayist and civil rights activist. Angelou published seven autobiographies, three books of essays and several books of poetry. The first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), covers Angelou's life up to age 17. Other catalogued titles include Gather Together in My Name (1974), Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas (1976), The Heart of a Woman (1981) and All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986). The catalogue counts 51 books, including And Still I Rise (1978), and ends with Strategies of Abundance (2014). Angelou received more than 50 honorary degrees.

Dame Susan Hill, Lady Wells, is an English writer of fiction and non-fiction born 5 February 1942. The Woman in Black has been adapted for stage and screen. I'm the King of the Castle (1970) won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1971, and The Bird of Night took the Whitbread Novel Award in 1972 and reached the Booker Prize shortlist. The catalogue counts 78 books from The Enclosure (1961) to A Change of Circumstance (2021), including the Simon Serrailler police procedurals, children's books and picture books. Hill became a CBE in 2012 and a DBE in 2020, both for services to literature.

Suspense in English settings runs through Daphne Du Maurier's fiction, alongside historical novels, horror and biography. Jamaica Inn (1936), Rebecca (1938) and Frenchman's Creek (1941) belong to the 1930s and 1940s, and the catalogue is densest in the 1950s. Forty-four titles are listed, from The Loving Spirit (1931) to editions dated 2025, short story collections and family biography included.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

93 books• 1 series

Nathaniel Hawthorne (born Hathorne, July 4, 1804 to May 19, 1864) was an American novelist and short story writer from Salem, Massachusetts, where the family had deep roots. History, morality and religion are frequent concerns. Hawthorne graduated from Bowdoin College in 1825 and published the novel Fanshawe (1828), later trying to suppress it. Magazine stories were gathered as Twice-Told Tales (1837). The catalogue lists 93 titles, including Young Goodman Brown (1835) and The Minister's Black Veil (1836), and subjects include Puritans and the supernatural.

Rebecca Solnit

30 books• 1 series

Rebecca Solnit is an American writer and activist, born in 1961, whose subjects include feminism, the environment, politics, place and art. River of Shadows won the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism. A Paradise Built in Hell (2009, revised 2020) examines how communities help one another after disasters, The Faraway Nearby (2013) is a memoir, and Men Explain Things to Me (2014) collects essays on feminism and women's writing. The catalogue lists 30 titles, beginning with Secret Exhibition (1991) and including Savage Dreams (1994), Wanderlust: A History of Walking (2001) and A Field Guide to Getting Lost (2005). The Beginning Comes After the End (2026) is the newest.

Gladys Taber wrote about country life, cooking and cats. Stillmeadow is the series Taber is catalogued for, and Harvest at Stillmeadow (1940) is its earliest entry. 48 titles run from Lady of the Moon (1928) to The First Book of Cats (2020), with the 1940s the densest decade. American authors, autobiography, biography, cookery, flower arrangement and homes and haunts carry the subject tags.

Penelope Lively

65 books• 3 series

Penelope Lively, born in 1933, is a British writer of fiction for children and for adults, and holds the title Dame. Moon Tiger took the Booker Prize in 1987, and The Ghost of Thomas Kempe (1973) won the Carnegie Medal for British children's books. Her catalogue runs to 65 titles published between 1970 and 2021, from Astercote (1970) to Metamorphosis (2021), taking in The Whispering Knights (1971), The Driftway (1972), The House in Norham Gardens (1974) and A Stitch in Time (1976). Ghost stories, English social life, the Second World War, and space and time recur as subjects.

Paul Auster

45 books• 1 series

Paul Auster, born in 1947 and died in 2024, was an American novelist, memoirist, poet and filmmaker whose fiction keeps returning to New York, authorship and the shape of a life. The New York Trilogy, City of Glass, Ghosts and The Locked Room, is the best known work, alongside Moon Palace (1989), The Music of Chance (1990), The Book of Illusions (2002), The Brooklyn Follies (2005), Invisible (2009), Sunset Park (2010), Winter Journal (2012) and 4 3 2 1 (2017). Auster's books have been translated into more than 40 languages. Forty-five titles are catalogued, from White Spaces (1980) to Bloodbath Nation (2023).

Margaret Drabble

39 books• 3 series

Dame Margaret Drabble, Lady Holroyd (born 5 June 1939), is an English novelist, biographer and short story writer. The Millstone (1965) won the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize, and Jerusalem the Golden (1967) won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Drabble received the E. M. Forster Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1973 and an honour from the University of Cambridge in 2006. The catalogue counts 39 books from Summer Bird Cage (1963) to Margaret Drabble on the Romantics (2025), with Radiant Way a series.

Jane Langton (1922–2018) wrote children's literature and mystery novels, and illustrated her own books. Two sequences carry most of the work: the Homer Kelly mysteries, built on a recurring detective of that name, and the Hall Family Chronicles, which run to magic and fairy tale. Thirty-four books are catalogued, from The Majesty of Grace (1961) to The Dragon Tree (2008), with Massachusetts and Cambridge among the settings, at a median length of 252 pages.

Lucy Worsley is an English historian who writes about British royal history, palaces and domestic life. Twenty books are catalogued from 1998 to 2026, beginning with guides to Hardwick Old Hall (1998), Bolsover Castle (2001) and Hampton Court Palace (2005), then Cavalier (2007), Courtiers (2010) on the Georgian court at Kensington Palace, If Walls Could Talk (2011) and A Very British Murder (2013). Kings, queens, biography and social history run through the subjects, with children's titles among them, and Queens and Kings (2026) is the newest. Worsley was joint chief curator at Historic Royal Palaces from 2003 to 2024, presents history series for BBC Television and Channel 5, and was born in 1973.

Peter Ackroyd

70 books• 4 series

Peter Ackroyd is an English novelist, biographer and critic, born in 1949, whose standing subject is the history and culture of London. Seventy books are catalogued from London Lickpenny (1973) to Forgotten London (2025). Biography fills much of the list, in Chaucer (1980), Ezra Pound and His World (1980), T.S. Eliot (1984) and later lives of William Blake, Charles Dickens, Charlie Chaplin and Sir Thomas More; the novels include The Great Fire of London (1982), The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde (1983) and Hawksmoor (1985). Ackroyd's Brief Lives, Voyages Through Time, a History of England and Shakespeare: the Biography are the series. The Somerset Maugham Award and two Whitbread Awards followed.

Lawrence Durrell

45 books• 4 series

Lawrence Durrell (1912-1990) was an expatriate British novelist, poet, dramatist and travel writer, born in India, schooled in England from the age of 11, and resident in Corfu from 1935 and in many countries after that. The Alexandria Quartet, published between 1957 and 1960, is his best known work; the Avignon Quintet, the Revolt of Aphrodite and the comic Antrobus stories follow. Durrell's travel books include Prospero's Cell (1945) and Bitter Lemons of Cyprus (1957). He was the elder brother of the naturalist Gerald Durrell.