Immigrants book series in reading order

by Kelly Yang

Kelly Yang, born August 29, 1984, is an Asian American writer known mainly for novels for children. Yang's first novel, Front Desk (2018), won the 2018 Parents' Choice Gold Medal for Fiction and the 2019 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, and Yang has since written fiction for young adults and adults as well. The catalogue holds 14 books from Front Desk to The Take (2026), including Parachutes (2020), Three Keys (2020), New from Here (2022) and Finally Seen (2023). Front Desk and Finally Seen are the two series listed, and subjects include immigrant families, motels and self-confidence.

Guardians of Ga'Hoole is one of the series by Kathryn Lasky, an American children's writer born June 24, 1944, who writes for adults as Kathryn Lasky Knight and E. L. Swann. Lasky's children's work also includes Dear America and The Royal Diaries books, Wolves of the Beyond, Sugaring Time and The Night Journey, and honours include a Newbery Honor, the National Jewish Book Award and the Anne V. Zarrow Award for Young Readers' Literature. The catalogue holds 159 books from I Have Four Names for My Grandfather (1976) to Sacred Light (2026), including Tugboats Never Sleep (1977), The Weaver's Gift (1980) and Beyond the Divide (1983). Horses Of The Dawn, Bears Of The Ice and Camp Princess are further series, and subjects name owls, wolves, diaries and Jews.

Sir William Golding (1911-1993) was a British novelist, playwright and poet. Lord of the Flies (1954), his debut, is the book he is known for, and twelve further volumes of fiction appeared in his lifetime. Rites of Passage took the Booker Prize in 1980 and opened the sea trilogy To the Ends of the Earth; the Nobel Prize in Literature followed in 1983 and a knighthood in 1988. Golding was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and The Times placed him third among the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. Eighteen catalogued titles close with The Double Tongue (1995).

Deborah Hopkinson, born February 4, 1952, is an American children's author of more than seventy books, chiefly historical fiction, nonfiction and picture books. The catalogue lists 72 Hopkinson titles from Pearl Harbor (1991) to World War II Close Up (2024), with a median of 64 pages. Birdie's Lighthouse (1996), Maria's Comet (1999), Fannie in the Kitchen (2001) and Girl Wonder (2003) come from the earlier run. Subject tags include frontier and pioneer life, African Americans, immigrants and lighthouses, and series include Prairie Skies, Klondike Kid and Deadliest.

Kansas, Swedish Americans and women pioneers appear among the subjects for Linda K. Hubalek, whose 52 catalogued books run from Butter in the Well (1992) to Honor My Word (2021). Other subjects include frontier and pioneer life, immigrants, diary fiction and cooking. Titles include Egg Gravy (1993), Planting Dreams (1997), Cultivating Hope (1998), Harvesting Faith (1999) and Trail of Thread (2012). Hubalek's series are Brides with Grit, Grooms with Honor, Mismatched Mail-Order Brides, Planting Dreams, Rancher's Word, Butter in the Well, Trail of Thread and Kansas Quilter. The median book runs to 136 pages.

Vladimir Nabokov

41 books

Vladimir Nabokov, born 22 April 1899 and died 2 July 1977, was a Russian and American novelist, poet, translator and entomologist who also published as Vladimir Sirin. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian between 1926 and 1938 while living in Berlin, where he married Véra Slonim, and switched to English after moving to the United States. The catalogue runs to 41 titles, from Mary (1926), King, Queen, Knave (1928) and The Luzhin Defense (1929) through Invitation to a Beheading and The Gift, both 1938, to the collection Think, Write, Speak in 2019, long after Nabokov's death.

George P. Pelecanos

27 books• 8 series

Washington, D.C. is the home ground of George P. Pelecanos, an American crime novelist who also works in television as a writer and producer. The 27 catalogued Pelecanos books run from A Firing Offense (1992) to The Blue Flame (2026). The Nick Stefanos, Derek Strange & Terry Quinn and Spero Lucas series sit beside the D.C. Quartet and standalone novels. For television, Pelecanos wrote episodes of The Wire and Treme with David Simon, and the two co-created The Deuce and We Own This City for HBO. Pelecanos was born in 1957.

Pablo Medina is a Cuban American poet and novelist. Medina is a professor at Emerson College, in its Department of Writing, Literature, and Publishing, and directs the MFA program there. The catalogue lists 11 books from Exiled Memories (1990) to The Cuban Comedy (2019), including Arching Into the Afterlife (1991), The Marks of Birth (1994), The Cigar Roller (2005) and Cubop City Blues (2012). Subject headings cover Cuban Americans, immigrants, New York City, childhood and youth, and poetry by one author.

James A. Michener

50 books• 1 series

James A. Michener (February 3, 1907 – October 16, 1997) was an American writer of more than 40 books, most of them long family sagas tracing many generations in a single geographic setting, with detailed history woven in. Tales of the South Pacific and Return to Paradise, both from 1947, are the earliest listed titles, followed by The Fires of Spring (1949), Sayonara (1953), The Bridges at Toko-ri (1953) and Hawaii (1959). Many of Michener's books were bestsellers and Book of the Month Club picks, and the research behind them was noted for its thoroughness. Travel, civilization and the Korean War feature in the subjects.

Susan Meissner writes historical and psychological fiction about women: sisters, friendships, immigrants and single women. Twenty-five catalogued books run from Why the Sky Is Blue (2004) to A Map to Paradise (2025), with the Rachael Flynn mysteries and a children's line among them. The median book runs 315 pages, and Meissner remains actively publishing.

Mario Puzo

15 books• 1 series

Organised crime is Mario Puzo's subject. The Godfather (1969) sits in the middle of a catalogue of 15 books that starts with The Dark Arena (1955) and takes in The Fortunate Pilgrim (1965), Fools Die (1978), The Sicilian (1984) and The Fourth K (1990). Mafia families, Italian American immigrants and gambling run through the subjects, and nothing later than 2018 is catalogued.

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.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

16 books• 2 series

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (born 15 September 1977) is a Nigerian writer of fiction, nonfiction and lectures, recognised as a central figure in postcolonial feminist literature. Born into an Igbo family in Enugu, Adichie studied medicine at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, for a year and a half, then moved to the United States at 19 to attend Drexel University, later studying at Eastern Connecticut State, Johns Hopkins and Yale. Purple Hibiscus (2003), Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), Americanah (2013) and We Should All Be Feminists (2014) are listed works.

Thomas Keneally

66 books• 4 series

Thomas Keneally, born 7 October 1935, is an Australian novelist, playwright, essayist and actor. Schindler's Ark, a historical novel about Oskar Schindler's rescue of Jews during the Holocaust, won the 1982 Booker Prize and became the basis for Steven Spielberg's 1993 film Schindler's List. The catalogue holds 66 titles, including Bring Larks And Heroes (1967), The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1972) and Gossip from the Forest (1975), plus the Monsarrat Mystery series. Subjects include Australia, Aboriginal Australians, penal colonies and both world wars.

Elizabeth Massie has 49 books catalogued from Stephen (1990) to The Wages of Belief and Other Stories from the Dark Side (2025). Subjects range from American history, including the Revolution, fugitive slaves, immigrants and mill work, to vampires, time travel and media tie-ins. Titles include Sineater (1992), Southern Discomfort (1993), Virginia: Valley of Vampires (1995) and Patsy and the Declaration (1997). Massie's series are Young Founders, Tudors, Daughters of Liberty and American Chills. Massie lives outside Waynesboro, Virginia, with illustrator Cortney Skinner.

Jonathan Raban

18 books

Jonathan Raban was a British travel writer, novelist, playwright and critic, born on 14 June 1942 and died on 17 January 2023. The catalogue lists 18 books between 1968 and 2023, starting with two 1968 titles: Mark Twain: Huckleberry Finn and Technique of Modern Fiction. Soft City appeared in 1974 and Arabia in 1979. Subjects include travel in the United States and immigrants, and titles include Old Glory: A Voyage Down the Mississippi (1981) and Coasting: A Private Voyage (1986). Father and Son (2023) is the last book listed.

This catalogue entry, credited to Sharon Dennis Wyeth and various authors, gathers 17 children's historical fiction titles written as diaries, published from 2000 to 2004. Recorded subjects include the Underground Railroad, fugitive slaves, Jamestown, frontier and pioneer life, overland journeys to the Pacific and rural schools. My Brother's Keeper (2000) and Our Strange New Land (2000) are the earliest, and An American Spring (2004) is the newest. The Starving Time (2002) and Westward To Home (2001) are also on the list. The books are short, with a median of 108 pages.

Aleksandar Hemon

13 books

Aleksandar Hemon, born September 9, 1964, is a Bosnian-American author, essayist, critic, television writer and screenwriter. The novels Nowhere Man (2002) and The Lazarus Project (2008) are the works most tied to Hemon, along with a co-writing credit on The Matrix Resurrections (2021). Hemon publishes often in The New Yorker and records electronica as "Cielo Hemon". Thirteen books are catalogued, from The Question of Bruno (2000) to The World and All That It Holds (2023). Subject headings include immigrants, Bosnian Americans and Chicago.

Richard Blanco

12 books• 2 series

Richard Blanco, born in 1968, is an American poet, playwright, public speaker and civil engineer. Blanco read the poem One Today at Barack Obama's second inauguration, the fifth poet to read at a United States presidential inauguration and the first immigrant, first Latino and first openly gay person to do so. President Biden awarded Blanco the National Humanities Medal in 2022. The 12 catalogued books are mostly poetry collections, opening with City of a Hundred Fires (1998) and running through Looking for the Gulf Motel (2012), the memoir The Prince of Los Cocuyos (2014) and Homeland of My Body (2023).