Readers book series in reading order

by Jane O’Connor

by James Herriot

by Alyssa Satin Capucilli

by Daisy Meadows

by Beverly Cleary

Julia Donaldson

349 books• 14 series

Dame Julia Donaldson, born Julia Catherine Shields on 16 September 1948, is a British writer and playwright who served as Children's Laureate from 2011 to 2013. Rhyming stories for children made Donaldson's name, above all those illustrated by Axel Scheffler, such as The Gruffalo, Room on the Broom, Stick Man and Superworm. Donaldson first wrote songs for children's television; the lyrics of A Squash and a Squeeze became a picture book in 1993, and books have been the focus since. The catalogue carries 349 entries, from Tim's Bad Mood and Other Stories (1970) to The Tooth Fairy and the Crocodile (2026), including Tales from Acorn Wood, Princess Mirror-Belle and Zog.

Daisy Meadows is the name on the Rainbow Magic children's books, a fantasy line whose subjects include fairies, goblins, Jack Frost and two girls, Kirsty Tate and Rachel Walker. The catalogue opens in 2003 with colour-fairy titles such as Ruby the Red Fairy, Amber the Orange Fairy and Fern the Green Fairy, and runs to Nur the Vlogger Fairy (2023). Sub-series include the Weather, Jewel, Party, Pet Keeper, Dance, Ocean and Showtime Fairies. Magic Animal Friends appears under the same name.

Enid Blyton

957 books• 42 series

Enid Blyton (11 August 1897 to 28 November 1968) was an English children's writer and one of the best-selling authors of children's literature, with more than 600 million copies sold and translations into ninety languages. Blyton wrote on education, natural history, fantasy, mystery and biblical stories. Noddy, the Famous Five, the Secret Seven, the Five Find-Outers and Malory Towers are the best-remembered Blyton books, and St Clare's, Mary Mouse and Toyland Stories are also listed. The catalogue opens with The Enid Blyton Book of Fairies (1924), and The Naughtiest Girl in the School (1930) and The Adventures of the Wishing-Chair (1937) follow. Titles dated after Blyton's death also appear, up to Stories of Wonders and Wishes (2023).

Dan Gutman

198 books• 23 series

Dan Gutman is an American writer of mainly children's fiction, born in 1955. The best-known lines are the My Weird School books, The Genius Files and the Baseball Card Adventures, which began with Honus & Me. The catalogue holds 198 books from It Ain't Cheating If You Don't Get Caught (1990) to Mrs. Towne Is a Clown! (2026), including early baseball titles such as Baseball Babylon (1992). Subjects include schools, teachers, baseball, time travel and humorous stories.

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.

Georges Simenon

187 books• 5 series

Inspector Maigret, a policeman in Paris, is the centre of Georges Simenon's crime fiction. The catalogue holds 187 books, beginning in 1931 with Pietr the Latvian. Short novels are the form, at a median 169 pages, and the 1950s were the densest decade. Standalone novels, short stories and non-fiction sit beside the Maigret run, most of it translated from the French.

Dr. Seuss

95 books• 4 series

Dr. Seuss is the pen name of Theodor Seuss Geisel (1904–1991), an American children's author, illustrator, animator and cartoonist who adopted it as a Dartmouth College undergraduate. Geisel wrote and illustrated more than 60 books as Dr. Seuss, and sales passed 600 million copies by 1991. The catalogue lists 95 Dr. Seuss titles, beginning with And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street (1937) and including Horton Hatches the Egg (1940) and Bartholomew and the Oobleck (1949); releases continue after Geisel's death, through 2026. Stories in rhyme, nonsense verse and picture books dominate the subjects, and Cat in the Hat and Horton the Elephant are among the series.

D.H. Lawrence

146 books• 3 series

David Herbert Lawrence, 11 September 1885 to 2 March 1930, was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, travel writer, literary critic and painter. Lawrence's modernist writing examines modernity, social alienation and industrialisation while arguing for sexuality, vitality and instinct. Four novels went through censorship trials over their treatment of sex and their explicit language: The Rainbow (1915), Sons and Lovers (1913), Women in Love (1920) and Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928). The catalogue lists 146 entries, among them The White Peacock (1911), The Trespasser (1912) and the story collection The Prussian Officer (1914), and groups some of them under Sons and Lovers and the Brangwen Family.

Across 194 catalogued books, Danielle Steel writes contemporary romance and family drama: love stories, marriages, widowhood and the turns that reshape a life. The run starts with Going Home (1973) and continues through Celebration, with 24 Hours scheduled for 2027. Steel's catalogue also holds children's picture books, short stories and non-fiction beside the standalone novels that make up most of it.

James Herriot wrote about veterinary practice in the English countryside, mixing memoir, anecdote and animal stories. The catalogue holds 39 titles published between 1970 and 2023, among them All Creatures Great and Small (1972), All Things Bright and Beautiful (1974) and the 2023 collection The Wonderful World of James Herriot. All Creatures Great and Small is the best known sequence, and Herriot also wrote children's books such as Bonny's Big Day. The books are short at a median of 180 pages, and the catalogue is closed.

Lois Lenski

75 books• 8 series

Lois Lenski (1893-1974) wrote and illustrated books for children and won the Newbery Medal. Lenski published 98 books, several of them posthumously: picture books, illustrated chapter books, songbooks, poetry, short stories, essays on children's literature and the 1972 autobiography Journey into Childhood. The Mr. Small picture books, the American Regional novels and the Roundabout America, Davy and Debbie series carry most of the work. Seventy-seven titles are catalogued here, starting in 1928.

Jacqueline Wilson

178 books• 15 series

Jacqueline Wilson, born Jacqueline Aitken on 17 December 1945, is an English novelist who writes for children. Adoption, abuse and divorce are among the realistic topics the novels take on. Wilson made a debut in 1969 and has passed 100 books; this catalogue lists 178, the earliest dated entry being Hide And Seek (1972) and the latest The Seaside Sleepover (2025). Tracy Beaker, Hetty Feather, Girls, Sleepovers and Stevie Day are among the series. Friendship, sisters, family life and schools appear in the subject records.

Beverly Cleary

49 books• 12 series

Beverly Cleary (born Beverly Atlee Bunn; April 12, 1916 to March 25, 2021) was an American author of children's and young adult fiction. Henry Huggins (1950) was the first book, and Ramona Quimby, Beezus Quimby, Henry Huggins with the dog Ribsy, and Ralph S. Mouse became the recurring characters. Cleary's books have sold 91 million copies worldwide. The catalogue records 49 books through 2013, grouped into series such as Henry Huggins, Ralph S. Mouse and Ellen & Otis, with humour, family life, school and pets among the subjects.

Roald Dahl

89 books• 2 series

Roald Dahl (13 September 1916 – 23 November 1990) was a British writer of children's books and short stories, and also a poet, screenwriter and wartime fighter ace. Born in Wales to Norwegian immigrant parents, Dahl lived mostly in England and served in the Royal Air Force in the Second World War, first as a fighter pilot and then as an intelligence officer. The catalogue lists 89 titles from The Gremlins (1943) to Marvelously Revolting Recipes (2024), among them Over to You: Ten Stories of Flyers and Flying (1946), Kiss Kiss (1959), James and the Giant Peach (1961) and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964). Dahl's books have sold more than 300 million copies.

Charles Dickens

69 books• 3 series

Charles John Huffam Dickens (7 February 1812 to 9 June 1870) was an English novelist and journalist born in Portsmouth. At 12, Dickens left school to work in a boot-blacking factory while John Dickens, the writer's father, was held in a debtors' prison; three years later came a return to school, and then a start in journalism. The catalogue lists 69 Dickens titles, opening with Sketches by Boz (1836) and including The Pickwick Papers (1837), The Adventures of Oliver Twist (1838) and Barnaby Rudge (1841), with collected editions reaching The Complete Works of Charles Dickens (2026). Subjects include social conditions, classic literature and English Christmas stories.

Alexandre Dumas

82 books• 12 series

Historical fiction set in France is what Alexandre Dumas is catalogued for. The Three Musketeers and d'Artagnan Romances, the Monte Cristo books, the Marie Antoinette Romances, the Last Valois and the Sainte-Hermine Cycle are the series, with Celebrated Crimes and travel writing among the non-fiction. Eighty-three entries are dated from Antony (1831) onward, several of them in English translation.

Max Allan Collins

199 books• 34 series

Max Allan Collins, born March 3, 1948, is an American mystery writer who also works in comics, graphic novels and screenplays. Collins created the Ms. Tree and Road to Perdition comics, the second of which became a film, and the series characters Quarry, a hitman, Nolan, a thief, and private investigator Nate Heller. Collins wrote the Dick Tracy newspaper strip for years, and the Mystery Writers of America named Collins a Grand Master in 2017. Catalogue entries run from Bait Money (1973) to Quarry's Reunion (2026), with Eliot Ness, Mallory and Disaster among the other series.

Jim Eldridge, born November 1944, is an English screenwriter for radio, film and television with hundreds of scripts broadcast over a career of more than 30 years. Radio shows created by Eldridge include King Street Junior, The Demon Headmaster, Shut UP and Parsley Sidings, and television creations include Powers, Time of My Life and Uncle Jack. The catalogue holds 117 books from Down Payment On Death (1972) to The Museum Detectives' Christmas Mystery (2026), with Murder at the Vatican due in 2027. Bogeys, Boils And Bellybuttons (1986), Bad Boyes (1987) and Uncle Jack and Operation Green (1990) are early titles, and series include Museum Mysteries, Hotel Mysteries, Cathedral Mysteries, DCI Paul Stark, SAS and Disgusting Dave.

Cora Harrison is an Irish author of historical detective fiction and of books for children. The Burren Mysteries, set in 16th-century west Ireland, and the Reverend Mother Mystery series, set in 1920s Cork during the Irish Civil War, are two of Harrison's crime sequences; a third puts Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins to work as amateur detectives in 19th-century London. The catalogue holds 67 books from Nuala and Her Secret Wolf (1997) to Murder in the Mist (2023), including the Drumshee Timeline and Drumshee Chronicles, Willowgrove Village Mysteries and Hugh Mac Egan Mysteries.

Kiersten White

32 books• 9 series

Kiersten White is an American author of fiction for children, young adults and adults. HarperCollins published Paranormalcy, the first White book, in 2010. The catalogue lists 32 White books; Supernaturally (2011), Endlessly (2012), The Chaos of Stars (2013), Illusions of Fate (2014) and And I Darken (2016) followed Paranormalcy, and The Fox and the Devil (2026) is the newest. Series include Paranormalcy, Conqueror's Saga, Camelot Rising and Sinister Summer. Subjects include sisters, princesses, fairies, prophecies, monsters and good and evil.

Alice Hemming writes children's books, from early readers to picture books. Fifty-four titles are catalogued between 2013 and 2027, including the Leaf Thief, Squirrel and Bird, Dark Unicorns, Rose Gold and Friends and Class X series. The run opens with The Black And White Club (2013) and A Gold Star For George (2015). Zoo animals, friendship, penguins and giraffes recur as subjects, and The Egg Thief is scheduled for 2027.

Philip Reeve

48 books• 12 series

Philip Reeve, born on 28 February 1966, is an English author and illustrator of children's books, known above all for Mortal Engines (2001) and its sequels, the Mortal Engines Quartet published between 2001 and 2006. Here Lies Arthur (2007), Reeve's novel drawn from the Arthurian legend, won the Carnegie Medal. Forty-eight catalogued titles reach Bridge of Storms: A Mortal Engines Novel (2026), across Fever Crumb, Larklight, Railhead, Goblins, Buster Bayliss, Utterly Dark, Adventuremice and the Not-So-Impossible Tales, written largely for readers in grades 6 to 8.