Short stories book series in reading order

by David Lubar

by Jorge Borges

by Martin H. Greenberg

by Kate Chopin

by Richard Harding Davis

by Goscinny

by Albert Payson Terhune

by Dorothy L. Sayers

by Donald J. Sobol

by Wendell Berry

by Clark Ashton Smith

by John Mortimer

by Philip José Farmer

by Theodore Sturgeon

by Margery Williams Bianco

by Leigh Bardugo

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).

Joyce Carol Oates

180 books• 8 series

Joyce Carol Oates, born June 16, 1938, is an American writer of novels, short stories, poetry, plays and nonfiction. The catalogue holds 180 books, beginning with By the North Gate (1963) and reaching The Frenzy: Stories (2026). Oates took the National Book Award for the novel Them (1969), and later honours include two O. Henry Awards, the National Humanities Medal and the Jerusalem Prize in 2019. Black Water, What I Lived For, Blonde and the collection Lovely, Dark, Deep were each finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. Oates taught at Princeton University from 1978 to 2014.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

79 books• 5 series

F. Scott Fitzgerald, born Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald on September 24, 1896, was an American novelist, essayist and short story writer who died on December 21, 1940. The Jazz Age is the era most tied to Fitzgerald, who spread the term through the story collection Tales of the Jazz Age. Fitzgerald's output came to four novels, four story collections and 164 short stories; fortune arrived in the 1920s, and critical recognition followed only after death. The catalogue holds 79 books dated 1914 to 2020, including Flappers and Philosophers (1920), Bernice Bobs Her Hair (1920) and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Stories (2020). Subjects name short stories, social customs and the nineteen twenties.

Joan Aiken

125 books• 12 series

Joan Aiken (Joan Delano Aiken, 4 September 1924 to 4 January 2004) was an English writer of supernatural fiction and alternative history novels for children. The Whispering Mountain (1968) won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize and was commended for the Carnegie Medal, and Night Fall won an Edgar Allan Poe Award in 1972. Aiken received an MBE in 1999 for services to children's literature. The catalogue lists 125 books from All You've Ever Wanted (1953) to 2020, including The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (1962) and the Wolves Chronicles, Arabel and Mortimer and Felix Brooke series.

Isaac Asimov

553 books• 31 series

Isaac Asimov (c. January 2, 1920 – April 6, 1992) was an American writer who also taught biochemistry at Boston University. Hard science fiction is the core of Asimov's reputation, and the Foundation series about a fallen space empire is the most famous work; Asimov ranked with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke as one of the "Big Three" of the genre. The output also covers mysteries, fantasy and popular science, with non-fiction lines such as How Did We Find Out and the Library of the Universe. Asimov wrote or edited more than 500 books. This catalogue opens with the story Marooned Off Vesta (1939) and names Asimov on 400 of the listed books.

Robert Silverberg

240 books• 17 series

Robert Silverberg, born January 15, 1935, is an American science fiction author and editor with multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards, a place in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, and Grand Master status since 2004. Nightwings (1969), a novella, and the novels Downward to the Earth (1970), The World Inside (1971), Dying Inside (1972) and Lord Valentine's Castle (1980) are among the most noted Silverberg works, and Lord Valentine's Castle was the first Majipoor book. By 2015 Silverberg had attended every Hugo Award ceremony since the first in 1953. The catalogue lists 240 books from Revolt on Alpha C (1955) to Beast Hunt: Volume 1 (2024), with The Shrouded Planet (1957) and Collision Course (1958) among the early ones. Series include Majipoor: Lord Valentine, Majipoor: Lord Prestimion, New Springtime, Time Gate and New Dimensions.

Ray Bradbury

132 books• 13 series

Fahrenheit 451 (1953) is the novel Ray Bradbury is best known for, alongside the short-story collections The Martian Chronicles (1950), The Illustrated Man (1951) and The October Country (1955). Bradbury (22 August 1920 – 5 June 2012) was an American author and screenwriter whose work covered fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery and realistic fiction. Dandelion Wine (1957) is a coming-of-age novel, Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) a dark fantasy, and Green Shadows, White Whale (1992) a fictionalized memoir. The catalogue reaches back to Kaleidoscope (1940) and Dark Carnival (1947), and Green Town and Crumley Mysteries are among the series.

William Trevor, born William Trevor Cox on 24 May 1928 and died 20 November 2016, was an Irish novelist, playwright and short story writer, widely rated among the finest short story writers in English. Trevor won the Whitbread Prize three times and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times, most recently for Love and Summer (2009), which also reached the International Dublin Literary Award shortlist in 2011. He took the International Nonino Prize in 2008 and was made a Saoi of Aosdana in 2014. His catalogue holds 55 titles, from A Standard of Behaviour (1958) to Last Stories (2018).

Jack London

156 books• 2 series

Jack London (January 12, 1876 to November 22, 1916), born John Griffith Chaney, was an American novelist, journalist and activist. London helped pioneer commercial fiction and the American magazine, and became one of the first American writers to win international celebrity and a large fortune from writing. A member of the radical San Francisco literary group "The Crowd", London campaigned for animal welfare, workers' rights and socialism. Those causes shaped The Iron Heel, a dystopian novel, and The People of the Abyss, a non-fiction exposé, as well as War of the Classes and Before Adam. The catalogue lists 156 titles from The Wisdom Of The Trail (1899), including The Son of the Wolf (1900) and Children of the Frost (1902).

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.

John Updike

83 books• 8 series

John Updike, born March 18, 1932, was an American novelist, short-story writer, poet and critic of art and literature who died on January 27, 2009. Updike won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction twice, one of only four writers to do so, and the output spans over twenty novels and more than twelve short-story collections, plus poetry, children's books and criticism of art and literature. The New Yorker printed hundreds of Updike stories, reviews and poems from 1954 on, and Updike wrote regularly for The New York Review of Books. The catalogue lists 83 books from The Poorhouse Fair (1958) to Hoping for a Hoopoe (2020), including Rabbit, Run (1960) and The Centaur (1963). Series include Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, Henry Bech, Maples Stories and Eastwick.

Doris Lessing

66 books• 6 series

Doris Lessing, born Doris May Tayler on 22 October 1919 and died on 17 November 2013, was a British novelist and the winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Iran to British parents, Lessing lived there until 1925, grew up in Southern Rhodesia - now Zimbabwe - and moved to London in 1949, which is why the early career is sometimes labelled Rhodesian. The catalogue holds 66 titles from The Grass Is Singing (1950) to An Old Woman and Her Cat (2013). Children of Violence and Canopus in Argos are the two five-novel sequences; the Diaries of Jane Somers, The Fifth Child, Mara and Dann and the Collected African Stories follow. Africa, women and British social life recur as subjects.

Louis L’Amour

183 books• 11 series

Westerns are what Louis L'Amour is catalogued for - 183 titles built on frontier and pioneer life. The Sackett family novels form the largest sequence, with Kilkenny, Chantry, Bowdrie and Talon beside them. L'Amour also wrote Hopalong Cassidy novels, among them The Riders of High Rock and The Rustlers of West Fork (1951). Smoke from This Altar (1939) is the earliest entry, and the Lost Treasures line carries later releases through 2019.

Robert E. Howard

158 books• 14 series

Robert E. Howard (January 22, 1906 to June 11, 1936) was an American pulp fiction writer across many genres. Howard created Conan the Barbarian and is regarded as the father of sword and sorcery. Born and raised in Texas, Howard lived mostly in Cross Plains, with some time in nearby Brownwood. A bookish child and a boxing fan, Howard boxed as an amateur and took up bodybuilding in the late teens. Howard wanted to write adventure fiction from the age of nine but found real success only at 23. Early catalogued titles include Spear and Fang (1925), Skull-Face (1929) and Kings of the Night (1930). Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn, Cormac Mac Art and James Allison are other series on the author page.

Alice Munro

28 books

Alice Munro (1931–2024) built a career on short fiction across five decades of publishing. The Canadian writer took the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 and the Man Booker International Prize in 2009 for her body of work. Her stories are set most often in Huron County in southwestern Ontario and move forward and backward in time within linked cycles, taking women, families and small-town manners as their material. 28 books are catalogued, from Dance of the Happy Shades (1968) onward, including Lives of Girls and Women (1971), The Beggar Maid (1977) and Open Secrets (1994).

David Lubar, born March 16, 1954, writes books for teens and has also worked as a video game programmer. Lubar programmed Super Breakout for the Game Boy and Frogger for the Super Nintendo and Game Boy, and designed Frogger 2: Swampy's Revenge for the Game Boy Color. The catalogue lists 55 books from It's Not a Bug, It's a Feature! (1995) to The Clone Catastrophe (2021). Series include Weenies, Hidden Talents, Nathan Abercrombie, Accidental Zombie, and Monster Itch, with subjects such as horror stories, monsters and vampires.

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.

Frank Herbert

90 books• 8 series

Frank Herbert (October 8, 1920 – February 11, 1986) was an American science fiction writer best known for Dune (1965) and the five sequels that followed it. Dune ranks among the best-selling science fiction novels ever published. Herbert also wrote short stories and worked as a newspaper journalist, photographer, book reviewer, ecological consultant and lecturer. The catalogue opens with Operation Syndrome (1954) and continues through The Dragon in the Sea (1956), Missing Link (1959), The Worlds of Frank Herbert (1961) and Dune World (1963). Pandora Sequence and ConSentiency Universe are further series, and metaphysics and the imaginary place Dune appear in the subjects.

T.C. Boyle

37 books• 1 series

T.C. Boyle is an American novelist and short story writer with thirty-one novels and more than 150 short stories behind him. Descent of Man (1979) opens a run of 37 catalogued titles that takes in Water Music (1981), World's End (1987) and The Road to Wellville (1993) and reaches No Way Home in 2026. World's End, covering 300 years of upstate New York, took the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1988. Boyle held a Distinguished Professorship in English at the University of Southern California, and the 2000s were his busiest decade.

P.G. Wodehouse

145 books• 13 series

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (15 October 1881 to 14 February 1975) was an English humorist, one of the most widely read of the 20th century. Wodehouse created Bertie Wooster and his valet Jeeves, the talkative Psmith, Lord Emsworth and the Blandings Castle circle, the Oldest Member with golf stories, and Mr. Mulliner with tall tales. Born in Guildford, Wodehouse attended Dulwich College. The catalogue records 145 books from The Pothunters (1902) through 2019, including school stories, the Jeeves, Psmith, Ukridge and Uncle Fred series, short stories and non-fiction.

L. Ron Hubbard

110 books• 5 series

L. Ron Hubbard (Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, March 13, 1911 to January 24, 1986) was an American writer and the founder of Scientology. The early career produced a large body of pulp science fiction and fantasy. The catalogue holds 110 books, starting in 1934 with Sea Fangs, Dead Men Kill, Hurtling Wings and Twenty Fathoms Down. Series include Mission Earth, Slaves of Sleep and collections of western and science fiction short stories. Hubbard wrote Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health in 1950, a book described as pseudoscientific, created Scientology in 1952 and led the Church of Scientology until 1986. Subjects include air pilots, sea stories, westerns and crime.

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.

Isaac Bashevis Singer

54 books• 1 series

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1903-1991) was a Polish-born Jewish American novelist, short story writer and essayist who wrote in Yiddish and then translated his own work into English. Singer received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978 and stood among the leading figures of the Yiddish literary movement. This catalogue holds 54 titles dated 1950 to 2024, opening with The Family Moskat (1950) and taking in Satan in Goray (1955), Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories (1957), The Magician of Lublin (1959) and The Slave (1962). The newest entry is A Letter to Mama and Other Uncollected Stories (2024).

Martin Harry Greenberg (March 1, 1941 - June 25, 2011) was an American academic and anthologist who worked across mysteries and horror and, above all, speculative fiction. Greenberg compiled 1,298 anthologies and commissioned more than 8,200 original short stories, founded the book packager Tekno Books and co-founded the Sci-Fi Channel; terrorism and the Middle East were a second field of expertise, and Isaac Asimov was a long-standing friend and business partner. The 51 titles listed here are edited collections rather than single-author works, running from Fantastic Lives (1981) to Louisiana Vampires (2010) and taking in Civil War Women (1988), Murder Most Sacred (1989), Horse Fantastic (1991) and Dragon Fantastic (1995).