Kings and rulers book series in reading order

by Kathryn Lasky

by Marissa Meyer

by Stephen R. Lawhead

by Shannon Hale

Victoria Holt's catalogue runs to 185 books published between 1940 and 1995, covering historical fiction, historical romance and mystery. Daughter of Anna (1940) is the earliest title, and Daughters of England (1995) the latest. The listing gathers several credits under other names, including titles marked as Jean Plaidy. Series include Tudor Saga, Plantagenet Saga, Georgian Saga, Stuart Saga, Norman Trilogy, Queen Victoria and Lucrezia Borgia. Kings, queens, England and France are frequent subjects.

Antonia Fraser

40 books• 3 series

Antonia Fraser, born Antonia Pakenham on 27 August 1932, is a British writer of history, biography, novels and detective fiction. Fraser is the widow of Harold Pinter, the 2005 Nobel laureate in literature, and was known as Lady Antonia Pinter until his death in 2008. The catalogue runs to 40 books between 1954 and 2023, setting biographies and histories such as Mary Queen of Scots (1969), Cromwell (1973) and The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England (1975) beside the Jemima Shore detective novels. Subjects record kings and rulers, queens, England and women detectives.

Alison Weir is a British historian and author who writes about English royalty, and about royal women in particular. Weir's first book, Britain's Royal Families (1989), set out a genealogy of the British royal family; biographies of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella of France, Katherine Swynford and Elizabeth of York followed, alongside studies of Henry VIII and his court and of the Princes in the Tower. Weir writes historical fiction as well, including the Six Tudor Queens and Tudor Rose novels. The catalogue holds 59 titles between 1989 and 2026, the most recent being The Boleyn Secret.

Marissa Meyer

26 books• 8 series

Marissa Meyer writes young adult science fiction and fantasy, with cyborgs, extraterrestrial rulers and teenage protagonists at the centre. The Lunar Chronicles run from Cinder (2012) through Scarlet (2013), Cress (2014) and Fairest (2015), and the Wires and Nerve graphic novels extend them. Thirty-two catalogued titles reach The Escape Game, and The Traitor Game is scheduled for 2027.

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.

Fiona McIntosh

42 books• 10 series

Betrayal (2001) opens Fiona McIntosh's catalogue of 42 books, which reaches 2026 at a median 498 pages. McIntosh writes epic fantasy in the Quickening, Percheron and Valisar sequences, crime in the DCI Jack Hawksworth series, and historical fiction and romance in Luc & Lisette and the standalone novels. Kings and rulers, succession, exile, harems and Paris recur across the work. McIntosh, born in 1960, is an English-born Australian author of books for adults and children, and has also published as Lauren Crow.

William Shakespeare

49 books• 5 series

William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet and actor, born around 23 April 1564 and died on 23 April 1616. Shakespeare is widely ranked as the greatest writer in English and the leading dramatist in the world, and is called England's national poet and the Bard of Avon. The surviving works, collaborations included, number about 39 plays, 154 sonnets and 3 long narrative poems. The plays exist in every major living language and are staged more often than those of any other playwright. The catalogue sorts the plays into Comedy Plays, Tragedy Plays and History Plays, with titles such as King John, Richard II, Henry V, The Tempest and The Comedy of Errors.

Bernard Cornwell

67 books• 10 series

Bernard Cornwell is an English historical novelist, born on 23 February 1944, who has also written a history of the Waterloo campaign. The Richard Sharpe novels, about a rifleman in the Napoleonic Wars, are Cornwell's best-known work. The Saxon Stories run to thirteen novels about how England was unified. Cornwell's historical fiction draws mainly on English history across five series, alongside one series of contemporary thrillers, and the historical novels carry an end note comparing the story to the historical record. The catalogue lists 67 books from 1981, when Sharpe's Gold appeared, to Sharpe's Storm (2025).

Lynn Austin writes Christian historical fiction. Biblical history, kings and rulers, Israel, the Second World War and Christian life recur across the subject tags. Her series include Chronicles of the Kings, Refiner's Fire, Restoration Chronicles, Waves of Mercy and If I Were You, and the catalogue holds 35 titles from Gods and Kings / The Lord is My Strength (1995) to The Lumber Baron's Wife (2026). Austin is still publishing.

Max Lucado

278 books• 6 series

Max Lucado has 278 books in the catalogue, published between 1985 and 2026, and subject headings centre on Christian life, the Bible, Jesus Christ, meditations and biblical teaching. Lucado, born January 11, 1955, is an American author and minister at Oak Hills Church, formerly Oak Hills Church of Christ, in San Antonio, Texas. The earliest titles are No Wonder They Call Him the Savior and On the Anvil (both 1985), then God Came Near (1986), The Applause of Heaven (1990) and He Still Moves Stones (1992). Series include Life Lessons, Hermie & Friends, Max Lucado's Wemmicks and Just in Case, and children's fiction is also among the subjects. The newest listed title is Unbreakable Courage Bible Study Guide (2026).

Mary Stewart wrote romantic suspense and, later, Arthurian historical fiction. The suspense novels begin in 1954 and continue through Wildfire at Midnight (1956), Thunder on the Right (1957), Nine Coaches Waiting (1958), My Brother Michael (1959) and The Ivy Tree (1961). The Arthurian Saga retells the legend of Merlin and the kings around him. 25 titles are catalogued in all, including children's books, short stories and poetry, the last being The Wind Off the Small Isles and The Lost One.

Morgan Rice is an American author of fantasy and science fiction whose books have made the New York Times, USA Today and Apple Books bestseller lists. The catalogue lists 284 books under the name, starting in 2011 with Turned and reaching A Well of Power (2026), with Reborn announced for 2027. A Quest of Heroes opens The Sorcerer's Ring, a 17-book epic fantasy series. Other series include Vampire Journals, Kings and Sorcerers, Age of the Sorcerers, Thornhaven, Ironhold, Vowsworn, Deathborn, Bloodbound, Oathborne, Court of the Vanished and Stormwing Chronicles. Subjects include knights, kings, magic, coming of age and dystopian fiction.

Megan Whalen Turner

9 books• 1 series

Megan Whalen Turner writes fantasy for young adults. The Thief (1996) and its five sequels are her best-known work, and The Thief was named a Newbery Honor book in 1997. Her catalogue holds nine titles between 1995 and 2022: Instead of Three Wishes (1995), The Queen of Attolia (2000), The King of Attolia (2006), A Conspiracy of Kings (2010), Destruction (2011), Thick as Thieves (2017), Return of the Thief (2020) and Moira's Pen: A Queen's Thief Collection (2022). Kings and rulers, robbers and outlaws, and the supernatural recur as subjects. Turner was born in 1965.

Tracy Borman is an English historian who writes royal history alongside historical fiction. Elizabeth's Women (2009), a group portrait of the women around Elizabeth I, is her best known book, and Thomas Cromwell (2014), The Private Lives of the Tudors (2016) and Henry VIII and the Men Who Made Him (2018) follow. The Frances Gorges trilogy, opening with The King's Witch (2018), is her fiction. Borman became Chancellor of Bishop Grosseteste University in Lincoln in July 2022, and her catalogue runs to 16 titles, reaching The House of Boleyn (2026).

Who HQ is the credit on 429 children's nonfiction biographies in the catalogue, published from 2002 to 2026. The run opens with Who Was Albert Einstein?, Who Was Amelia Earhart? and Who Was Ben Franklin? (all 2002) and reaches Who Is Vera Wang (2026). Subjects include biography, history and juvenile nonfiction for readers aged 8 to 12. Other names credited on some of the books include Megan Stine (7), John Hinderliter (7) and Nico Medina (4).

Robert K. Massie (1929-2019) was an American journalist and historian who spent much of his career on the Romanovs, Russia's imperial family from 1613 to 1917. Nicholas and Alexandra (1967) opens his catalogue and became a British film in 1971 with Michael Jayston and Janet Suzman; Peter the Great: His Life and World (1980) won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1981; and Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman (2011) closes the run with awards of its own. Dreadnought (1991) and Castles of Steel (2003) turn to the naval rivalry between Britain and Germany around the First World War. Nine books in all, running long at a median of 634 pages.

Brandon Sanderson

109 books• 28 series

Brandon Sanderson, born December 19, 1975, is an American writer of high fantasy, science fiction and young adult fiction. Mistborn and The Stormlight Archive both belong to the Cosmere, a shared fictional universe. Outside the Cosmere, Sanderson wrote the Reckoners, Skyward and Alcatraz series, and completed Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. White Sand and Dark One are Sanderson's two graphic novels. Sanderson's Laws of Magic, a framework for hard and soft magic systems, carry the author's name. The catalogue lists 109 titles, from Centrifugal (1994) through Elantris (2005) to King Lopen the First of Alethkar (2026).

Joe Abercrombie

20 books• 6 series

Joe Abercrombie, born 31 December 1974, is an English writer of epic fantasy who has also worked as a film editor. The First Law and Age of Madness trilogies share one setting with other Abercrombie novels, and Abercrombie has also written a young adult trilogy. Half a King took the 2015 Locus Award for best young adult book. The catalogue opens with The Blade Itself (2006), reaches The Devils (2025) and lists The Heretics for 2027. Series include First Law World, Age of Madness, Shattered Sea and Devils.

Mercedes Lackey

230 books• 52 series

Valdemar, a country in the world of Velgarth, is the setting for many of Mercedes Lackey's interlinked fantasy novels and trilogies. Lackey, an American writer born on June 24, 1950, brings human and non-human protagonists from many cultures together in the Valdemar books. A second Lackey setting resembles Earth but hides populations of elves, mages, vampires and other mythical beings. Bedlam's Bard follows a young man who works magic through music, SERRAted Edge features elves who race cars, and the Diana Tregarde thrillers star a Wiccan fighting evil. Arrows of the Queen (1987), Arrow's Flight (1987) and Arrow's Fall (1988) are among the listed titles, and Elemental Masters and Five Hundred Kingdoms are further series.

Shannon Hale

62 books• 11 series

Shannon Hale, born Shannon Bryner on January 26, 1974, is an American author mainly of young adult fantasy. Princess Academy (2005) earned a Newbery Honor, and The Goose Girl (2003) opens the catalogue. Austenland (2007), the first novel for adults, became a film in 2013. Hale graduated from the University of Utah and the University of Montana, and has co-written with husband Dean Hale. The catalogue lists 63 titles through The Princess in Black and the Trick-or-Treating Trouble (2026), across series including Princess In Black, Books of Bayern, Real Friends and Kitty-Corn.

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.

Jessica Day George

17 books• 5 series

Fairy tales, dragons and castles are Jessica Day George's stock in trade. Five series divide the 17 catalogued books: Dragon Slippers, Castle Glower, Princess of the Midnight Ball, Rose Legacy and Silver in the Blood. George, born in 1976 and based in Utah, took the 2007 Whitney Award for Best Book by a New Author for Dragon Slippers and has reached the New York Times list with her young adult fantasy. The run closes with The Rider's Reign in 2020.

Penny Jordan is one of the pen names of Penelope Halsall, born Penelope Jones, an English novelist who lived from 24 November 1946 to 31 December 2011. Halsall produced more than 200 romance novels: contemporary romance as Penny Jordan, Regency romance as Caroline Courtney and historical romance as Annie Groves, the maiden name of Halsall's mother. Melinda Wright and Lydia Hitchcock were two further pen names. Sales passed 70 million copies, with translations into many languages. The catalogue lists 210 books from 1979 to 2019, and the earliest entries, such as A Wager For Love (1979), carry the Caroline Courtney name. Series include Perfect Crightons, Jet Set Wives, Leopardi Brothers, Parenti Dynasty and Russian Rivals.

Gail Zehner Martin, born December 1, 1962, writes epic fantasy and urban fantasy, and is most known for The Chronicles of the Necromancer, published by Solaris Books and Double Dragon Publishing. The Summoner opened the run in 2007, and the catalogue reaches 115 titles by Dead of Winter in 2025. Series include Ascendant Kingdoms, Assassins of Landria, Darkhurst, Deadly Curiosities, Spells, Salt, & Steel and Jonmarc Vahanian Adventure. Nonfiction on book marketing sits in the same listing, among it The Thrifty Author's Guide to Launching Your Book without Losing Your Mind and 30 Days to Online PR & Marketing Success, and internet marketing duly appears in the subject list.