Sex role book series in reading order

by L.A. Meyer

by Chris Colfer

by Shannon Hale

Louisa May Alcott

103 books• 4 series

Alcott wrote novels, short stories and children's fiction, and the catalogue runs to 103 titles, with Little Women, Eight Cousins and Aunt Jo's Scrap Bag among the named sequences. The list starts with The Inheritance (1849) and Flower Fables (1854) and takes in Hospital Sketches (1863), Moods (1864) and Behind a Mask, or a Woman's Power (1866). Young women, social custom and gender roles are the recurring subjects, and the Alcott catalogue is listed as likely complete.

Tamora Pierce

34 books• 12 series

Tamora Pierce writes fantasy for younger readers, much of it set in Tortall. Song of the Lioness opens the catalogue with Alanna: The First Adventure (1983), and The Immortals, Protector of the Small, Beka Cooper, Daughter of the Lioness and the Numair Chronicles extend the same world, with knighthood, magic and gender roles among the subjects. Circle of Magic, The Circle Opens and Circle Reforged form a separate sequence. Pierce's 34 catalogued books reach 2025.

Kathleen Karr (April 21, 1946 - December 6, 2017), born Kathleen Csere, wrote historical novels for children and young adults, and won the Golden Kite Award for The Boxer. The catalogue holds 31 books between Light of My Heart (1984) and Fortune's Fool (2008), with the Petticoat Party, Skullduggery and Destiny's Dreamers series among them. Frontier and pioneer life, overland journeys to the Pacific, orphans, sex roles and farm life run through the recorded subjects. One title carries a joint credit with Thomas F. Yezerski.

L.A. Meyer was the pen name of Louis A. Meyer (January 1, 1942 to July 29, 2014), an author from Maine. Meyer is best known for the young-adult historical Jacky Faber Adventures, also called the Bloody Jack series. Meyer also wrote two picture books for children, painted, and co-owned the Clair de Loon art gallery in Bar Harbor. The catalogue lists 12 books from Bloody Jack (2002) to Wild Rover No More (2014), with subjects including pirates and seafaring life.

Esther M. Friesner

51 books• 16 series

Esther M. Friesner, born July 16, 1951, is an American science fiction and fantasy author, poet and playwright known for humour in both titles and stories, which the work uses to address gender equality and social justice. The catalogue holds 51 books from Mustapha and His Wise Dog (1985) to Chicks and Balances (2015). Series include Chicks In Chainmail, Majyk, Demons, Tim Desmond, Nobody's Princess and Sphinx's Princess. Elf Defense and Here Be Demons both appeared in 1988.

Gordon Korman

119 books• 22 series

Gordon Korman is a Canadian writer of children's and young adult fiction whose books have sold more than 30 million copies worldwide and reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list. The catalogue holds 119 titles, from This Can't Be Happening at MacDonald Hall! (1977) to Sleepless (2026). Subject tags cover schools, friendship, humorous stories, adventure, mystery and detective stories, and shipwrecks. Series headings include Swindle Mysteries, Masterminds, Everest, Dive, Titanic, Ungifted and the Monday Night Football Club. Gordon Korman remains actively publishing.

Nancy Krulik writes for children, and the catalogue lists Grades 1-3 as the reading level. Series credited to Krulik include Katie Kazoo, Switcheroo, How I Survived Middle School, Magic Bone, Princess Pulverizer and Project Droid, and George Brown, Class Clown appears among the characters. Subjects range across magic, schools, friendship, dogs, robots and humorous stories. The most recent listed book is Fangs for Having Us! (2021), and the catalogue marks the output as dormant.

Tracy Banghart's catalogue lists four series: Rebel Wing, By Blood, Grace and Fury and Diatous Wars. The 11 books run from What the Sea Wants (2006) to Perfect Girl (2024), with By Blood (2013), Moon Child (2013), Rebel Wing (2014), Storm Fall (2014), Grace and Fury (2018), Queen of Ruin (2019) and A Season of Sinister Dreams (2021) among them. Subject headings include sisters, women's rights, military air pilots, imaginary wars and battles, and the ocean, and the books are filed under children's fiction and war stories. Banghart is marked as still publishing.

V.C. Andrews was the name used by Cleo Virginia Andrews (June 6, 1923 to December 19, 1986), an American novelist best known for Flowers in the Attic (1979). That novel led to four sequels and two film adaptations. The publisher never classed the books as Young Adult, yet their young protagonists have drawn teenage readers for decades. After Andrews died in 1986, a ghostwriter first hired to finish two incomplete manuscripts went on publishing new books under the V.C. Andrews name. The catalogue carries 108 books under that name from 1979 to 2025, across series such as Dollanganger, Casteel, Cutler, Landry, Logan and De Beers.

Chris Colfer

20 books• 6 series

The Land of Stories is Chris Colfer's main series, with fairy tales, twins and the characters of literature among its subject tags. The Wishing Spell (2012) and Struck by Lightning (2012) are the earliest of 20 catalogued titles, which reach Roswell Johnson Saves the Galaxy! (2025). A Tale of Magic, the Land of Stories picture books and the graphic novels extend the work. Magic, fairies, secrets and books and reading recur.

Louis Sachar

30 books• 4 series

Louis Sachar writes for children, chiefly school stories with a humorous streak. Wayside School and the novel Holes are the best known of Sachar's work, alongside the Marvin Redpost and Someday Angeline books; Holes took the 1998 National Book Award for Young People's Literature and the 1999 Newbery Medal. Thirty books are catalogued between Sideways Stories from Wayside School (1978) and The Magician of Tiger Castle (2025). Schools, boys, popularity and friendship recur as subjects.

Avi is the pen name of Edward Irving Wortis, an American author of children's and young adult books born December 23, 1937. Avi won the 2003 Newbery Medal for Crispin: The Cross of Lead and was a Newbery runner-up in 1991 and 1992. The catalogue records 87 books from Things That Sometimes Happen (1970) to The Road From Nowhere (2026), and Rat Race is set for 2027. Series include Crispin, Dimwood Forest and Beyond the Western Sea. Ghosts, animals, adventure and mysteries appear among the subjects.

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.

Tanith Lee

132 books• 22 series

Tanith Lee was a British writer of science fiction and fantasy, born 19 September 1947, who died on 24 May 2015, leaving more than 90 novels and 300 short stories. Death's Master (1980) made Lee the first woman to take the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel, the August Derleth Award, and Lee also won several World Fantasy Awards plus lifetime achievement honours from the World Fantasy and Bram Stoker awards. Lee wrote the Blake's 7 episodes "Sand" and "Sarcophagus", poems, and the picture book Animal Castle (1972). The catalogue lists 132 books from The Betrothed (1968) to The Earth is Flat (2023), including The Birthgrave (1975) and Don't Bite the Sun (1976). Series include Tales from the Flat Earth, Secret Books of Paradys, Claidi Journals, Blood Opera and Piratica.

Jennifer L. Holm

66 books• 13 series

Jennifer L. Holm, born in 1968, writes for children in both prose and comics, and holds three Newbery Honors and an Eisner Award. Babymouse, an imaginative mouse at school, recurs across the Babymouse and BIG Adventures of Babymouse books, with Squish, Sunny, My First Comics and Evil Princess vs. the Brave Knight as the other graphic series. May Amelia, Boston Jane, Turtle in Paradise and The Fourteenth Goldfish sit alongside them in prose. Holm's 66 catalogued books run from Our Only May Amelia (1999) to Sunny Figures It Out (2025), at a median of 126 pages.

Ann Rinaldi was an American journalist and young adult novelist, known above all for historical fiction, who lived from August 27, 1934 to July 1, 2021. Rinaldi worked as a newspaper columnist before writing novels, eight of which the ALA named notable. In 2000, Wolf by the Ears (1991) was listed among the best young adult novels of the preceding twenty-five years. Rinaldi also contributed to the Dear America series. The catalogue holds 48 books from Term Paper (1980) to Leigh Ann's Civil War (2011), including The Last Silk Dress (1988) and A Break with Charity (1992).

Jan and Stan Berenstain wrote picture books about the Berenstain Bears. The run begins with The Big Honey Hunt (1962) and reaches 400 titles by The Berenstain Bears: Father's Day Blessings (2018). Family life, school, brothers and sisters, scouting, Christmas and Christian life supply the recurring subjects, and many of the books are told in rhyme. A median length of 32 pages places them with early readers. Publication peaked in the 1990s and the catalogue is likely complete.

John F. MacArthur Jr. is catalogued with 362 books published from 1972 to 2024, the first being Found: God's Will (1972). Subjects include the Bible, biblical interpretation, commentaries on the New Testament gospels and epistles, Bible study, prayer, Christian life and marriage. Series include MacArthur Bible Studies, MacArthur New Testament Commentary, MacArthur Old Testament Study Guide, Great Hymns of Our Faith and John MacArthur Pastor's Library. Early titles include Liberated for Life: Galatians (1976) and The Charismatics: A Doctrinal Perspective (1978), and the newest is The War On Children (2024).

Eve Bunting, born Eve Bolton, was a Northern Irish-born American writer of more than 250 books who lived from December 19, 1928, to October 1, 2023. Bunting wrote fiction and non-fiction, mainly novels for children and young adults, and also wrote the text of picture books. Many of the books are set in Northern Ireland, where Bunting grew up, while others range in subject from Thanksgiving to riots in Los Angeles. The Two Giants (1971) was Bunting's first book. Series in the catalogue include Frog and Friends, Horse Stories, Dinosaur Machines and Pirate Captain's Daughter, and subjects include animals, horses, stories in rhyme and mystery stories.

Deborah Hopkinson, born February 4, 1952, is an American children's author of more than seventy books, chiefly historical fiction, nonfiction and picture books. The catalogue lists 72 Hopkinson titles from Pearl Harbor (1991) to World War II Close Up (2024), with a median of 64 pages. Birdie's Lighthouse (1996), Maria's Comet (1999), Fannie in the Kitchen (2001) and Girl Wonder (2003) come from the earlier run. Subject tags include frontier and pioneer life, African Americans, immigrants and lighthouses, and series include Prairie Skies, Klondike Kid and Deadliest.

Margarita Engle

40 books• 1 series

Margarita Engle is a Cuban American poet who writes most of her books in verse, for children, young adults and adults alike. Cuban history and the natural world supply her subjects, from The Poet Slave of Cuba (2006) through The Surrender Tree (2008) and Tropical Secrets: Holocaust Refugees in Cuba (2009). The Surrender Tree made Engle the first Latino writer to receive a Newbery Honor, in 2009. Engle served as the sixth Young People's Poet Laureate from 2017 to 2019 and won the 2019 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children's Literature. Her catalogue runs to 40 books, beginning with Singing to Cuba (1993) and reaching Evamar (2026).

Renee Ahdieh

16 books• 3 series

Renee Ahdieh is an American-Korean author known best for The Wrath & the Dawn, a New York Times best-selling series. Ahdieh's books have been translated into many languages. The Wrath and the Dawn (2015) appears in the catalogue alongside The Rose and the Dagger, The Crown and the Arrow, The Mirror and the Maze and The Moth and the Flame (all 2016). Flame in the Mist (2017) and Smoke in the Sun (2018) are also listed, and the catalogue records the Wrath and The Dawn and Flame In The Mist series. Recorded subjects include fairy tales, magic, samurai, arranged marriage and alchemists. Park Avenue (2025) is the newest listed title.

Bonnie Garmus

2 books

Two novels by Bonnie Garmus are catalogued: Lessons in Chemistry (2022) and Peck & Peck (2026). The subject headings attached to that work name women scientists, single mothers, television cooking shows, sex roles and the nineteen sixties. Garmus, an American author born in 1957, worked as a copywriter before publishing fiction.