Napoleonic Wars, 1800-1815 book series in reading order

by Naomi Novik

by C.S. Forester

by Douglas Reeman / Alexander Kent

by Patrick O’Brian

Dudley Pope wrote nautical fiction and naval history. Pope lived from 1925 to 1997 and published 37 catalogued books between Flag 4 (1954) and Ramage & the Dido (1989). The Nicholas Ramage novels are the best known work, set in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, and Ramage (1964) and Ramage and the Drum Beat (1968) sit early in that sequence. Buccaneer Ned Yorke is the second series. Histories of naval actions stand beside the novels, among them The Battle of the River Plate (1956) and 73 North: The Battle of the Barents Sea 1942 (1958). C.S. Forester was the acknowledged influence, and Pope's work is often set beside Patrick O'Brian's.

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).

Naomi Novik

20 books• 3 series

Naomi Novik is an American author of speculative fiction. The Temeraire series (2006–2016) is an alternate history of the Napoleonic Wars with dragons, and the Scholomance trilogy ran from 2020 to 2022. The standalone novels Uprooted (2015) and Spinning Silver (2018) draw on Polish folklore and the Rumpelstiltskin tale. Novik helped create the Organization for Transformative Works and co-founded the organisation's Archive of Our Own project. Awards include the Nebula, Locus and Mythopoeic. The catalogue lists 20 titles from His Majesty's Dragon (2006) to The Summer War (2025), with Liberty Vocational as a third series.

C.S. Forester

53 books• 6 series

C. S. Forester was the pen name of Cecil Louis Troughton Smith (1899-1966), an English novelist known for tales of naval warfare. The Horatio Hornblower novels, twelve in all, follow a Royal Navy officer through the Napoleonic Wars; two of them, A Ship of the Line and Flying Colours, shared the 1938 James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Forester also wrote The African Queen and The Good Shepherd, both later filmed, and worked for the British Ministry of Information after moving to the United States during the Second World War. The catalogue holds 53 books dated 1924 to 2020, spanning novels, non-fiction, plays, short stories and children's writing.

Captain Richard Woodman (1944-2024) was an English merchant navy officer, novelist and naval historian who served mainly with Trinity House and retired in 1997 after a 37-year career at sea to write full time. Nathaniel Drinkwater carries the Napoleonic naval fiction, opening with An Eye of the Fleet (1981) and running through A King's Cutter (1982), A Brig of War (1983), The Bomb Vessel (1985) and Baltic Mission (1986). William Kite, Kit Faulkner, James Dunbar and Sword of the State follow, with A History of the British Merchant Navy and Keepers of the Sea on the nonfiction side. The catalogue holds 74 books through 2023, at a median 250 pages.

Douglas Reeman wrote naval fiction under his own name and as Alexander Kent. Richard Bolitho heads one series and the Blackwood Family books form a second. The catalogue lists 69 titles published between 1958 and 2011, from A Prayer for the Ship (1958) to In the King's Name (2011). Sea stories, the Royal Navy, the Second World War and the Napoleonic wars run through the subjects. The books are long, at a median 320 pages, and output peaked in the 1970s.

Historical romance set in the Regency and the wider Georgian period is Mary Balogh's territory. Born Mary Jenkins in Swansea on 24 March 1944, Balogh moved to Canada in 1967, taught in Kipling, Saskatchewan, and became a school principal there before the first novel appeared in 1985. The catalogue runs to 106 books, from A Chance Encounter (1985) to A Waltz to Remember (2026). Series headings include Westcott, Bedwyn Family, Survivor's Club, Huxtable Quintet, Simply Quartet, Dark Angel and Ravenswood. Mary Balogh is still publishing.

Lauren Willig, an American novelist, specialises in historical fiction. The Pink Carnation series is Willig's best-known work, following British spies of the Napoleonic era in the Scarlet Pimpernel mould as they fight for Britain and fall in love. Willig's 26 catalogued books open with The Secret History of the Pink Carnation (2004) and reach What Happens at Nightfall (2026), taking in espionage, women spies, England and historical suspense. Willig continues to publish.

William Dietrich writes historical adventure novels and natural-history non-fiction. The Ethan Gage series, set during the Napoleonic Wars, has been translated into 28 languages and includes Napoleon's Pyramids (2007) and The Rosetta Key (2008). Dietrich has also set novels in the Roman Empire, Antarctica and Australia, while his non-fiction covers the natural and environmental history of the Pacific Northwest, where he grew up and worked as a newspaper journalist. The catalogue holds 20 titles, from The Final Forest (1992) to The Trojan Icon (2016).

Adrian Goldsworthy

32 books• 6 series

Adrian Goldsworthy is a British historian and novelist, born in 1969, who specialises in the history of ancient Rome. The catalogue holds 32 books from The Roman Army At War (1996) to Athens and Sparta (2026). Titles include The Punic Wars (2000), Caesar's Civil War (2002), Caesar (2006) and Cannae (2007). Series listed for Goldsworthy are Napoleonic Wars, Vindolanda and City Of Victory, and subjects cover the Roman army, the Punic Wars and the Peninsular War of 1807 to 1814.

Cathy Maxwell writes historical romance, with 46 books in the catalogue from All Things Beautiful (1994) to Curves for the Rakish Duke (2026). Why people fall in love is the question Maxwell spends hours pondering, according to the author bio, and Maxwell lives in Virginia. Early titles include Treasured Vows (1996), Because of You (1999) and Married in Haste (1999). Series include Cameron Sisters, Scandals and Seductions, Marrying the Duke, Chattan Curse, Brides of Wishmore, Spinster Heiresses and A Logical Man's Guide to Dangerous Women. Subjects include Regency romance, nobility, arranged marriage and Scotland.

Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, a ship's captain and a ship's physician, carry Patrick O'Brian's sea novels from Master and Commander (1969). The catalogue holds 41 books reaching back to Caesar (1930), with standalone novels, short stories and non-fiction beside the Aubrey/Maturin run. Naval history and sea adventure supply the material, and the 1990s were the densest decade.

Arthur Conan Doyle

164 books• 18 series

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 to 7 July 1930) was a British writer and physician. Doyle wrote four novels and fifty-six short stories about the consulting detective Sherlock Holmes and his assistant Dr. Watson. A Study in Scarlet (1887), The Sign of Four (1890) and A Scandal in Bohemia (1891) are among the catalogued titles. The Lost World (1912) introduced Professor Challenger and gave its name to a subgenre of speculative fiction. Doyle also produced over 200 stories and articles, four volumes of poetry and stage works, and was knighted in the 1902 Coronation Honours. The Captain of the Polestar (1883) is the earliest catalogued title.

Barbara Cartland

702 books• 3 series

Barbara Cartland, born Mary Barbara Hamilton Cartland on 9 July 1901 and died on 21 May 2000, was an English romance novelist and socialite. This directory catalogues 702 titles under Cartland's name, from His Hour (1910) through to A Heart in the Highlands (2024), with the 1980s the heaviest decade. The Eternal Collection, the Pink Collection and the Camfield Novels Of Love group the bulk of that output. Cartland wrote contemporary as well as historical romance, the historical novels set mainly in the Victorian and Edwardian periods, and ranks fifth among the most translated authors worldwide.

R.F. Delderfield wrote English family sagas and popular history. The catalogue holds 55 titles published between 1946 and 1973, gathered into the Swann Family Saga, Horseman Riding By, Avenue and Diana. England, family life across generations, soldiers, the Napoleonic Wars and the Second World War supply the material, and Delderfield wrote history and biography alongside the novels. The 1950s were the busiest decade, and the run closes with Give Us This Day in 1973.

Dennis Wheatley

71 books• 7 series

Dennis Wheatley was an English writer of thrillers and occult novels, and among the world's best-selling authors from the 1930s to the 1960s. Series in the catalogue are Black Magic, Roger Brook, Gregory Sallust, Julian Day, Lost World and Molly Fountain, with Roger Brook and the Duke de Richleau as recurring characters. Titles include The Forbidden Territory (1933), The Devil Rides Out (1934), The Eunuch of Stamboul (1935) and They Found Atlantis (1936). The catalogue holds 71 books, from Such Power Is Dangerous (1933) to The Deception Planners (1980).

Matthew Hervey, an officer of the fictional British 6th Light Dragoons, carries Allan Mallinson's fiction from the late Napoleonic Wars into colonial campaigns in India, North America and South Africa. A Close Run Thing (1999) opens the sequence, followed by The Nizam's Daughters (2000), A Regimental Affair (2001), A Call to Arms (2002), The Sabre's Edge (2003) and Company of Spears (2006). Mallinson, born in 1949, is an English author and a retired British Army brigadier, and also writes military history, reaching the First World War. The catalogue holds 19 books through 2020, at a median 448 pages.

Andrew Roberts

30 books• 1 series

Andrew Roberts, Baron Roberts of Belgravia, born 13 January 1963, is an English popular historian and journalist whose research concentrates on English-speaking nations, particularly those socially tied to the United Kingdom. Roberts holds the Bonnie and Tom McCloskey Visiting Research Fellowship at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a Lehrman Institute Distinguished Lectureship at the New York Historical Society, and was a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery in London from 2013 to 2021. The catalogue lists 30 titles, from 'The Holy Fox': The Life of Lord Halifax (1991) through Salisbury: Victorian Titan (2000), Napoleon and Wellington: The Long Duel (2001) and Waterloo: June 18, 1815 (2005) to Napoleon and His Marshals in 2026. Subjects name biography, military history, Winston Churchill, the Second World War and the Napoleonic wars.