Legends book series in reading order

by Bill Willingham

by Bill Willingham

by Kathryn Lasky

Bill Willingham, born William Willingham in 1956, is an American comics writer and artist known for work on Elementals and Fables. The catalogue lists 69 books from Ironwood, Vol. 1 (1993) to Fables: No More Happily Ever After (2026). Other titles include Legends in Exile (2002), Animal Farm (2003), Storybook Love (2004) and March of the Wooden Soldiers (2004). Willingham's other series include Fables: The Deluxe Edition, Shadowpact, Ironwood, Bill Willingham's Pantheon, Warriors Three and Batman vs. Bigby! A Wolf in Gotham. Subjects include fantasy comics, fairy tales and legends. Down the Mysterly River (2001) also appears in the catalogue.

Geraldine McCaughrean

155 books• 14 series

Geraldine McCaughrean, born 6 June 1951, is a British children's novelist with more than 170 books to that name. Peter Pan in Scarlet (2004) is the official sequel to Peter Pan, commissioned by Great Ormond Street Hospital. McCaughrean has won the Carnegie Medal twice and the Michael L. Printz Award. Myths, legends, folklore and Bible stories appear among the subjects, and series include Myths and Legends of the World, Roman Myths and Brambledown Tales. The catalogue holds 155 books from One Thousand and One Arabian Nights (1982) to Under a Fire-Red Sky (2025).

Michael Morpurgo

171 books• 5 series

Sir Michael Morpurgo, born 5 October 1943, is an English author, poet, playwright and librettist best known for children's novels such as War Horse (1982). Morpurgo served as the third Children's Laureate from 2003 to 2005 and is President of BookTrust, a children's reading charity. Recurring themes include outsiders who triumph, survival and bonds with nature, set in places such as the Cornish coast and the First World War trenches. The catalogue holds 171 books from It Never Rained (1974) to Down Burrow Lane (2026), including the Mudpuddle Farm series.

Steven Kellogg is an American author and illustrator of children's books, born in Norwalk, Connecticut in 1941. The catalogue lists 94 titles, including the Pinkerton books, the Jimmy's Boa series and A Tall Tale, at a median 32 pages each. Animals, friendship, folklore, dogs and fairy tales supply the recurring subjects. The University of Findlay in Ohio gave Kellogg an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters in 2011, and his original illustrations went to the Mazza Museum there.

Elie Wiesel

47 books• 3 series

Elie Wiesel (September 30, 1928 – July 2, 2016), born Eliezer Wiesel in Romania, was an American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor. Night (1956), the first title in the catalogue, draws on Wiesel's imprisonment as a Jew at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Wiesel wrote 57 books, mainly in French and English, and the catalogue lists 47 books, including Dawn (1960), Day (1961), The Town Beyond the Wall (1962) and A Beggar in Jerusalem (1968). Filled with Fire and Light (2021) is the latest. The Holocaust, Judaism and Hasidism are recurring subjects.

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.

Ashley Bryan

26 books• 1 series

Ashley Frederick Bryan (1923-2022) wrote and illustrated children's books, drawing subjects largely from the African-American experience. Bryan was a United States nominee for the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2006 and took the Children's Literature Legacy Award in 2009. The picture book Freedom Over Me reached the 2016 Kirkus Prize shortlist and earned a Newbery Honor. The catalogue holds 26 titles, from The Ox of the Wonderful Horns and Other African Folktales (1971) to Infinite Hope (2019), among them The Dancing Granny (1977), Beat the Story-Drum, Pum-Pum (1980) and The Cat's Purr (1985). Folklore, African tales, legends, Anansi and spirituals run through the subjects.

Anthony Horowitz

106 books• 23 series

Anthony Horowitz is an English novelist and screenwriter, born 5 April 1955, who specialises in mystery and suspense. For children and young adults Horowitz created Alex Rider, a 14-year-old British boy who spies for MI6, along with The Power of Five (titled The Gatekeepers in the US) and The Diamond Brothers. The catalogue holds 106 Horowitz books from Enter Frederick K. Bower (1978) to A Deadly Episode (2026). Other listed series include Detective Daniel Hawthorne, Susan Ryeland, Groosham Grange and the Pentagram Chronicles. Horowitz is still publishing.

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).

Stephen Fry

29 books• 2 series

Stephen Fry is an English actor, comedian, writer and broadcaster, born in 1957. His 29 catalogued books run from A Bit of Fry & Laurie (1990) to Odyssey (2024), taking in The Liar (1991), The Hippopotamus (1994), Making History (1996) and Moab Is My Washpot (1997). Humour, English wit, comedians, diaries and travel are the recurring subjects. Two series are catalogued: A Bit of Fry and Laurie, drawn from the sketch show Fry made with Hugh Laurie, and Mythos. Fry continues to publish.

Michael Scott is catalogued with 68 books published between 1983 and 2023, filed for readers in grades 6 to 8. Series listed include Secrets Of The Immortal Nicholas Flamel, together with its graphic novels and Lost Stories, plus Tales From The Land Of Erin, De Danann Tales, Tales Of The Bard and Thirteen Hallows. The earliest titles are The Song of the Children of Lir (1983) and a 1985 group that takes in A Bright Enchantment, A Golden Dream and A Silver Wish. Subjects include magic, fantasy, legends, twins, the supernatural and children's fiction. The newest entry is The Alchemyst: The Graphic Novel (2023), and the run is marked dormant.

Stephen R. Lawhead, born 1950, is an American writer of fantasy, science fiction and historical fiction, with Celtic historical fiction the strand the name is most attached to. In the Hall of the Dragon King (1982) opens the Dragon King books and a catalogue of 44 titles that reaches Aurelia (2025). The Pendragon Cycle and King Raven take up Arthurian material and knighthood; the Song of Albion, Celtic Crusades, Eirlandia, Empyrion and Bright Empires follow. Children's books, among them the Howard and Riverbank Stories, sit alongside the novels.

Susan Cooper, born on 23 May 1935, is an English children's author best known for The Dark Is Rising, a contemporary fantasy sequence set in England and Wales that draws on Arthurian legend and Welsh folk heroes. That work earned Cooper the American Library Association's Margaret A. Edwards Award in 2012 for writing for teens, and in the 1970s the Welsh Books Council named two of its five novels best English-language book of the year with an authentic Welsh background. Catalogued titles include Over Sea, Under Stone (1965), Mandrake (1966), The Dark is Rising (1973), Greenwitch (1974), The Grey King (1975) and The Shortest Day (2019). Boggart is another Cooper series.

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.

Alan Garner

30 books• 3 series

Alan Garner, born 1934, writes children's fantasy and retellings of traditional British folk tales. Cheshire supplies the ground for most of it: Garner was born in Congleton, grew up in Alderley Edge, and set much of the work in that landscape, using the local dialect. The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (1960) opens the catalogue and the Tales of Alderley, with The Moon of Gomrath (1963), Elidor (1965) and The Owl Service (1967) after it, and the Stone Book Quartet starting in 1976. 30 titles are catalogued, the last of them Treacle Walker (2021).

Lauren Beukes

17 books• 3 series

Lauren Beukes is a South African novelist and journalist, born in 1976, who also writes short stories and television scripts. The catalogue credits Beukes on 17 books between 2004 and 2023, from Maverick (2004) to Bridge (2023), taking in Moxyland (2008), Zoo City (2010), The Shining Girls (2013) and Broken Monsters (2014). Catalogue subjects record thrillers, suspense, murder and investigation alongside fairy tales, legends and comics. Fairest Graphic Novels is the series recorded under this name.