Indians of North America book series in reading order

by Noel B. Gerson

by Robert J. Conley

by Anton Treuer

by Thomas Perry

by James D. Doss

by Lynne Reid Banks

by James Fenimore Cooper

by Sallie Bissell

by William Kent Krueger

by Loree Lough

Cassie Edwards wrote historical romance set on the American frontier. Her 117 catalogued titles open with four books in 1982, Rapture's Rendezvous among them, and are organised into long runs: Savage, Savage Secrets, Wild Tribes, Wild Arizona, Chippewa and the Dreamcatcher Indian novels. Native American subjects, Ojibwa settings and women pioneers recur throughout. Edwards published with Dorchester, Signet, Kensington and Harlequin, and her output stopped after it emerged that she had extensively plagiarised other writers. The catalogue records titles through 2015.

Don Coldsmith (February 28, 1926 - June 25, 2009) was an American writer mainly of Westerns and a past president of Western Writers of America. Coldsmith produced more than 40 books and hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles. The Spanish Bit Saga, a sequence of related novels, reshaped the Western by telling events from the Native American point of view. The catalogue lists 41 books from Horsin' Around (1975) to Moon of Madness (2013), including Trail of the Spanish Bit (1980), Buffalo Medicine (1981) and Pale Star (1986). The Great Plains and horses recur in the subjects.

Subject records for Kathleen O’Neal Gear cite Native Americans, Pueblo Indians, prehistoric peoples and archaeologists, along with historical fiction, science fiction and thrillers. The catalogue lists 60 books from 1990 to 2025. People of the Wolf and People of the Fire (both 1990) come early, and Buffalo Justice (2025) is the newest. Series include First North Americans, Anasazi Mysteries, Black Falcon, Contact: The Battle For America and Rewilding Reports. Gear, born 1954, is an American archaeologist, historian and author whose novels have appeared in 29 languages.

Sherman Alexie

26 books

Sherman Alexie is a Spokane novelist, short story writer, poet, screenwriter and filmmaker whose work draws on his life as an Indigenous American with ancestry in several tribes. Alexie grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation and lives in Seattle, Washington. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007) is his best known book: it took the National Book Award for Young People's Literature in 2007, and the Odyssey Award for best audiobook for young people in 2008, read by Alexie himself. Twenty-six titles are catalogued, from The Business of Fancydancing (1991) to You Don't Have to Say You Love Me (2017).

Louise Erdrich

37 books• 3 series

Louise Erdrich (Karen Louise Erdrich, born June 7, 1954) is an American writer of novels, short stories, poetry and children's books with Native American characters and settings. Erdrich is an enrolled citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians of North Dakota. The Plague of Doves was a 2009 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The catalogue lists 37 books from Imagination (1982) to Python's Kiss (2026), with the Love Medicine and Birchbark House series among them. Ojibwa life, Indian reservations and poetry feature in the subjects.

Noel Bertram Gerson (1914-1988) wrote about the people and events of American history, in fiction and in biographies of Sam Houston, Kit Carson, Andrew Jackson and Theodore Roosevelt. Gerson published 325 books under Gerson's own name and pseudonyms that include Samuel Edwards, Anne Marie Burgess, Leon Phillips, Donald Clayton Porter and Dana Fuller Ross. As Dana Fuller Ross, Gerson wrote the Wagons West series, and as Donald Clayton Porter the White Indian series. The novels 55 Days at Peking and The Naked Maja were both filmed. The catalogue holds 188 books, starting in 1951, with the 1960s as the peak decade.

Cherokee Indians and the Indians of North America appear among Robert J. Conley's subjects, along with westerns, outlaws and sheriffs. The catalogue lists 59 books from The Rattlesnake Band & Other Poems (1984) to Plastic Indian (2018). Series include Real People, Sheriff Go-Ahead Rider, Texas Outlaw and Native American Library. The Saga of Henry Starr (1989) and Go-Ahead Rider (1990) are among the earlier titles.

William Sarabande is the pen name of Joan Lesley Hamilton Cline, who started writing at 17 and first appeared in print in 1979. The First Americans series carries the Sarabande name across 12 catalogued books, from Beyond the Sea of Ice (1987) through Corridor of Storms (1988), Walkers of the Wind (1990) and Thunder in the Sky (1992) to Spirit Moon (2000). Subjects cover prehistoric peoples, Native Americans and historical fiction. The catalogue opens with Wolves of the Dawn (1986), filed with Celts and the Bronze Age.

Madeline Baker writes historical romance, much of it set among Native American peoples. Fifty-seven books are catalogued, with Reckless Heart (1985) and Love in the Wind (1986) early in the run and Bohannon dated 2023. Apache and Cheyenne subjects recur, along with westerns, mixed descent and time travel. Reckless Love (1987), Reckless Desire (1988), Renegade Heart (1989) and Lacey's Way (1990) sit in the stretch around the 1990s, the decade the list peaks. Lightning and Apache Runaway are the series named here.

N. Scott Momaday

31 books• 2 series

Navarre Scott Momaday was a Kiowa and American poet, essayist, short story writer and novelist, born February 27, 1934 and dead on January 24, 2024. The novel House Made of Dawn took the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and is held to be the first major work of the Native American Renaissance; Joy Harjo (Mvskoke), the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States, wrote on Momaday's death that the book moved between oral storytelling and the written English novel. The catalogue holds 31 titles, from The Journey of Tai-me (1967) to Dream Drawings (2022), taking in The Way to Rainy Mountain (1969), The Colors of Night (1976) and The Gourd Dancer (1976). Kiowa people, Indigenous peoples of North America, folklore and poetry lead the subjects.

Anton Treuer's catalogue documents the Ojibwe language and Ojibwe history. Recorded subjects include the Ojibwa language, Ojibwa Indians, American literature by Indian authors, Minnesota history, government relations, folklore and biography. The listing holds 20 titles dated between 1990 and 2024, among them Ojibwe in Minnesota (2010) and Where Wolves Don't Die (2024). Numbered issues of the Oshkaabewis Native Journal make up much of the early run. Treuer remains actively publishing.

Charles G. West writes westerns and historical frontier fiction. The catalogue holds 54 books published between 1996 and 2023, opening with The Tenant (1996) and closing with The First Day of Eternity (2023). Outlaws, revenge, ranchers, criminals and frontier and pioneer life run through the recorded subjects, along with Indians of North America. Series in the listing include Matt Slaughter, Trace McCall, Jason Coles, Little Wolf, Jordan Gray, Culver and John Hawk. Nothing has been catalogued since 2023.

Lynne Reid Banks (31 July 1929 to 4 April 2024) was a British author who wrote for both children and adults. The Indian in the Cupboard sold more than 15 million copies and became a film. The L-Shaped Room, the 1960 debut novel, was a best seller, was filmed, and gained two sequels, The Backward Shadow and Two is Lonely. Banks also wrote Dark Quartet, about the Brontë family, and Path to the Silent Country, about Charlotte Brontë. The catalogue lists 50 books from 1960 to The Red Red Dragon (2022), including the Harry the Poisonous Centipede series.

Allan W. Eckert wrote historical novels for adults and children, natural history and plays. The Narratives of America sequence takes up the frontier, Shawnee history and the wars that came with European settlement. Incident at Hawk's Hill (1971) was a Newbery Medal runner-up, went into Reader's Digest Condensed Books, and Disney adapted it as the 1975 television film The Boy Who Talked to Badgers. Eckert, a naturalist, also wrote more than 225 episodes of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom and took an Emmy Award for that work. The catalogue holds 39 titles, from The Last Great Auk in 1963 to The Infinite Dream in 2011.

David Robbins is a Western writer, according to subject records that name Skye Fargo and Canyon O'Grady as fictitious characters and cite frontier and pioneer life, Colorado and Texas. Series listed under the name include Wilderness, Canyon O'Grady, White Apache, Mountain Majesty, Davy Crockett, Preacher's Law and Blood Feud, alongside Omega Sub and Battlefield Mars. Endworld is also among the linked names. Stalked (2020) is the most recent title in the listing.

Will Hobbs

24 books• 5 series

Will Hobbs (22 August 1947 - 31 March 2025) was an American author of twenty novels for upper elementary, middle school and young adult readers, plus two picture book stories. Fourteen years of teaching reading and English in southwest Colorado gave Hobbs a sense of audience, and the stories are set mostly in wild places known at first hand. Bearstone, the second novel, drew national attention on replacing Where the Red Fern Grows as the unabridged novel in a Prentice-Hall seventh grade literature anthology. The catalogue holds 24 books from Changes in Latitudes (1988) to City of Gold (2020), with Bearstone and Jason's Gold as series headings. Subject tags name survival, wildlife conservation, Ute Indians and canoeing.

Stephen Graham Jones

52 books• 6 series

Stephen Graham Jones (born January 22, 1972) is an American writer of experimental, horror, crime and science fiction. The Only Good Indians, My Heart Is a Chainsaw and The Buffalo Hunter Hunter are horror novels. Jones has taught at the University of Colorado Boulder since 2008 and holds the Ineva Baldwin Professorship of English. The catalogue lists 52 books, from The Fast Red Road (2000) to Off the Reservation (2026). Lake Witch Trilogy is a series, and subjects include Native American life, short stories, westerns and Montana.

Terry C. Johnston wrote westerns about the American frontier: pioneer life, the wars of the West, and the Plains nations including the Dakota and Crow. His 31 novels appeared between 1982 and 2001, at a median of 469 pages, with the 1990s the densest decade. Titus Bass is his best known recurring character and gives one series its name; The Plainsmen, Son Of The Plains and Jonas Hook are the others. Carry the Wind (1982) opens the catalogue and Turn the Stars Upside Down (2001) closes it. Johnston lived from 1947 to 2001, and more than ten million of his books are in print.

Thomas King

28 books• 3 series

Thomas King, born April 24, 1943, is an American-born Canadian writer and broadcast presenter whose work most often concerns First Nations. King previously claimed partial Cherokee descent and in 2025 accepted genealogists' findings that King has no Indigenous ancestry. The catalogue lists 28 books from All My Relations (1988) to Aliens on the Moon (2025), including Medicine River (1990), Green Grass, Running Water (1993) and The Truth About Stories (2003). King's series include DreadfulWater and Minerva Chronicles, and Coyote (Legendary character) and children's fiction are among the subjects.

Drew Hayden Taylor, born 1 July 1962, is an Indigenous Canadian playwright, author and journalist. Drama makes up much of the catalogue, from Toronto at Dreamers Rock (1990) through Bootlegger Blues, Someday, Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth and alterNatives. Humour runs alongside it, in the Funny You Don't Look Like One essay series on being of mixed Ojibwe and white descent. 31 titles span 1990 to On Thin Ice in 2026.

Richard Van Camp, born September 8, 1971, is a Dogrib writer of the Dene nation, from Fort Smith in Canada's Northwest Territories. Van Camp's first catalogued book is the 1996 novel The Lesser Blessed, which director Anita Doron adapted into a film in 2012. The catalogue runs to 19 books through 2025, among them A Man Called Raven (1997), Welcome Song for Baby (2007), Little You (2013) and Three Feathers (2015), plus the Spirit of Denendeh series. Recorded subjects include Dogrib and Métis life, children's fiction, and comics and graphic novels.

Gary Paulsen

181 books• 17 series

Survival and outdoor adventure run through Gary Paulsen's writing for young readers. The catalogue holds 181 books, from Some Birds Don't Fly (1968) to Northwind (2022), at a median length of 105 pages. Brian Robeson, Francis Tucket, Duncan Culpepper, Murphy and the World of Adventure books head the series lines, with non-fiction and picture books alongside. No new Paulsen title has appeared since 2022.

Margaret Coel's series include Wind River Reservation, Arapaho Ten Commandments and Catherine McLeod, alongside non-fiction and short stories. Subjects name Vicky Holden and John O'Malley as characters and cover Arapaho Indians, women lawyers, clergy and Wyoming. The 34 catalogued books run from Chief Left Hand (1981) to Man Found Dead in Park (2017). The Eagle Catcher (1995), The Ghost Walker (1996) and The Dream Stalker (1997) are among the titles. The catalogue is listed as likely complete.

Historical western romance is Rosanne Bittner's field, set on the American frontier among pioneers, outlaws and the Indians of North America, the Dakota among them. Savage Destiny, Blue Hawk Saga, Westward America, Outlaw Trail and the Arizona Saga carry the longer stories. Sixty-eight books run from Sweet Prairie Passion (1983) to Shadow Trail (2023), several of the early ones published as F. Rosanne Bittner.