Sports book series in reading order

by Fredrik Backman

by Elle Kennedy

by Allan Zullo

by Ben Osborne

Contemporary and LGBT romance novels by Sarina Bowen have reached the USA Today bestseller list 20 times. Bowen once traded derivatives on Wall Street, holds a BA in economics from Yale University and lives in New Hampshire. The catalogue lists 61 books from 2014, when Coming in from the Cold and The Year We Fell Down appeared, to My Kind of Guy (2026), and Bad Girls Make Good Liars is due in 2027. Series include Ivy Years, True North, Brooklyn Bruisers, Gravity and Hello Goodbye, and sports romance and new adult are among the subjects.

Mike Lupica, born May 11, 1952, is an American author and former newspaper columnist known for sports commentary in the New York Daily News and for appearances on ESPN. The catalogue lists 64 books, from Reggie (1985) to Framed (2026). Children's fiction about basketball, football and baseball fills much of the subject list, along with twins, friendship and fathers and sons. Series include Zach & Zoe Mysteries, Comeback Kids, Home Team, Peter Finley and Danny Walker/Travel Team.

Golf and football supplied Dan Jenkins with most of his material, handled as sports humour and sportswriting. Saturday's America (1970) opens the catalogue, Semi-Tough (1972) and Life its Ownself (1984) take up football, and Dead Solid Perfect (1974) and Fairways and Greens (1980) take up golf. The Bobby Joe Grooves series sits inside the run. Twenty-five books date from 1970 to 2018, at a median 272 pages, mixing novels with anecdote collections and sports history.

Sport drives Rich Wallace's fiction for young readers. Basketball and soccer supply most of the plots, with teamwork, sportsmanship, competition and self-confidence among the listed subjects, across the Winning Season, Kickers, Game Face and Up2u series. Wallace's 43 catalogued books start at Riding Time and Wrestling Sturbridge in 1996 and end with Race Against Time: The Untold Story of Scipio Jones and the Battle to Save Twelve Innocent Men (2021). Volumes are short, at a median of 117 pages.

Contemporary romance and romantic suspense are the two fields Canadian author Elle Kennedy works in. Born on 19 January 1982, Kennedy has won a RITA Award from the Romance Writers of America. The catalogue credits 78 books to Kennedy, starting with Bad Moon Rising (Short Story) in 2007 and reaching Bad Idea, due in 2027. Kennedy's series include Killer Instincts, Off-Campus, Briar U, Campus Diaries, Avalon Bay, Outlaws, Prep and Small Town Scandals. Subjects tagged on the books include hockey and sports romance.

Fredrik Backman

13 books• 5 series

Swedish author Fredrik Backman, born in 1981, also works as a blogger and columnist. A Man Called Ove (2012) opens his catalogue of 13 books, which runs to My Friends (2025). Other titles include My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, Britt-Marie Was Here, Beartown, Us Against You, Anxious People and The Winners. His books were number one bestsellers in Sweden and have been published in more than twenty-five languages. Subjects include hockey teams, neighbours, friendship, and fathers and sons.

Sport is Tim Green's subject on both sides of his catalogue: football and baseball novels for young readers, and suspense novels for adults. Ruffians (1993) opens the list, followed by Titans, Outlaws and The Red Zone, with the non-fiction The Dark Side of the Game alongside. Football Genius, Baseball Great and Baseball Genius are the children's series, and Casey Jordan heads a legal one. Forty-five titles run to Rocket Arm in 2025.

John Feinstein (1955-2025) was an American sportswriter and commentator, for many years a reporter at the Washington Post. A Season on the Brink (1986) is his best known book, an account of a season inside Bob Knight's Indiana Hoosiers basketball programme, and it opens a catalogue of 51 titles reaching The Ancient Eight (2024). Basketball, golf, football and college sport run through the nonfiction, and the Sports Beat, Benchwarmers and Bobby Kelleher series were written for younger readers.

Charles M. Schulz was an American cartoonist, born in Minneapolis in 1922 and working until his death in 2000. Schulz created the comic strip Peanuts, whose cast includes Charlie Brown and Snoopy, after developing an earlier strip called Li'l Folks from 1947. United Features Syndicate renamed the redeveloped strip Peanuts and began publishing it in October 1950. The book catalogue holds 781 titles, from More Peanuts in 1954 to Snoopy, the Story of My Life in 2025, gathered into collections such as The Complete Peanuts and Peanuts Every Sunday.

Sports cartoon collections appear in the catalogue listed for Steve Moore, alongside the Bleachers and King of the Bench series. Born in the Bleachers: Sports Cartoons (1989) is the first title, and Back to the Bleachers: Baseball Cartoons (1996) and Dibs on His Clubs!: An In The Bleachers Golf Collection (2004) came later. Titles from 2017 and 2018 include Control Freak (2017), No Fear! (2017) and Comeback Kid (2018). Subjects include children's fiction, golf, baseball, phobias and middle school boys.

Automobile racing runs through Burt S. Levy's catalogue: 8 books published between 1998 and 2021, filed under sports, action and adventure, and historical subject headings. The Last Open Road (1998) is the earliest title, followed by Montezuma's Ferrari (1999), A Potside Companion (2001) and The Fabulous Trashwagon (2002). Two series sit under Levy's name, Last Open Road and 200mph Steamroller. Automobile mechanics and young men also appear in the headings. Out of the Mist (2021) is the most recent entry, and the measured books run to a median of 464 pages.

James Patterson

510 books• 73 series

James Patterson, born on March 22, 1947, is an American writer whose catalogue here holds 514 books published from 1976 to 2027. The run opens with The Thomas Berryman Number (1976), and Along Came a Spider (1992) and Kiss the Girls (1995) follow later. Alex Cross, Michael Bennett, Maximum Ride, Daniel X, Witch & Wizard, NYPD Red, Private, Middle School and the Women's Murder Club are among the Patterson series, alongside standalone thrillers, non-fiction and romance. Marshall Karp shares the credit on 5 of the books. Patterson's sales exceed 425 million copies, and Patterson was the first person to sell one million e-books. Forbes ranked Patterson the highest-paid author in 2016, for a third year running, and the National Book Foundation gave Patterson the Literarian Award in November 2015. 27 Stars is scheduled for 2027.

John Grisham

65 books• 11 series

Legal thrillers are the core of John Grisham's work. Grisham is an American writer, lawyer and former politician, born in 1955, who studied at Mississippi State University and took a law degree from the University of Mississippi in 1981. The catalogue holds 65 books, running from A Time to Kill (1989) through The Firm, The Pelican Brief and The Client to Shaken (2026). Series include Jake Brigance, Mitch McDeere, Camino Island, Rogue Lawyer and Theodore Boone. The American Academy of Achievement credits Grisham with 37 consecutive number-one fiction bestsellers and 300 million copies sold.

Mitch Albom

21 books• 1 series

Sports journalism came first for Mitch Albom, born Mitchell David Albom on May 23, 1958; inspirational storytelling followed, with Tuesdays with Morrie (1997) an early landmark. Albom is also an American talk show host and philanthropist, and reported sales of Albom's books stood at 40 million copies in 2021. The catalogue lists 21 titles, opening with Live Albom (1988), which was followed by Live Albom II, III and IV. Later entries include The Fab Five (1993), The Five People You Meet in Heaven (2003), For One More Day (2006) and Twice (2025). Heaven is the one series listed.

Shantel Tessier writes dark romance, and the subjects attached to the catalogue also list new adult, suspense, mafia, sports and dual point of view. The 37 books on file run from Undescribable and Unbearable (both 2013) to Chaotic (2026). Tessier's series are Undescribable, Lords, Dark Kingdom, Dare, Selfish and Dash, and the catalogue marks the author as still publishing.

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.

Matthew Reilly is an Australian action thriller writer, born 2 July 1974, whose books sell internationally. The catalogue lists 41 titles, from Contest (1996) and Ice Station (1998) to The Detective (2025). Reilly's series are Jack West Jr., Shane Schofield, Hover Car Racer, Troll Mountain and Tournament, plus a set of short stories. Subject tags include antiquities, automobile racing, action and adventure, and children's fiction.

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.

Thomas McGuane (Thomas Francis McGuane III, born December 11, 1939) is an American writer of ten novels, short fiction, screenplays and three essay collections about life outdoors. McGuane belongs to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the NCHA Members Hall of Fame and the Fly Fishing Hall of Fame. The Sporting Club (1968) opens the catalogue of 23 books, followed by The Bushwhacked Piano (1971) and Ninety-two in the Shade (1973), and A Wooded Shore: And Other Stories (2025) is the newest. Subjects include Montana, ranch life and Key West.

Jonathan London has 141 catalogued books dating from 1992 to 2022, the Froggy series among them. Froggy Gets Dressed (1992) is the earliest title, alongside The Lion Who Had Asthma and Thirteen Moons on Turtle's Back from the same year. Other series include Duck and Hippo, Aaron's Wilderness, Shawn and Keeper and Brown Bear. Subjects include picture books, stories in rhyme, children's poetry, animals, wolves and imagination. Here Comes Truck Driver Hippo (2022) is the most recent title.

Allan Zullo, born on 23 November 1947, is an American non-fiction writer who has written or co-written more than 120 paperbacks for adults and younger readers. Zullo produced the Hall of Shame sports books with Bruce Nash, the Ten True Tales series for children and the Haunted Kids books, and he wrote A Boomer's Guide to Grandparenting with his wife Kathryn. He also created the newspaper comic strip The Ghost Story Club, which ran from 1995 to 1998. Raised in Rockford, Illinois, Zullo took a journalism degree from Northern Illinois University in 1969; the catalogue lists 104 titles between 1987 and 2019.

Hockey runs through Roy MacGregor's books. The Screech Owls series puts a young hockey team into mysteries and adventures, from Mystery at Lake Placid (1995) onward, and the Ice Chips books carry that line to The Ice Chips and the Killer Wave (2021). MacGregor also wrote about the professional game in Road Games: A Year in the Life of the NHL (1993). The listing holds 56 books dated 1983 to 2021, at a median of 156 pages.

Will Mara's catalogue mixes juvenile literature with thrillers: schools, school principals, practical jokes, birds, blue jays and tsunamis sit among the subjects alongside victims of terrorism. The 27 books run from What's Up with the New Principal? (1999) to The Secret of Locker 24 (2022), and the median length is 120 pages. NFL, Jason Hammond Novels and Izzy Jeen the Big-mouth Queen are the three series credited to Mara. The Draft (2006), The Cut (2007) and The Comeback (2008) fall in the middle of the run, and nothing has been listed since 2022.

Endurance training and sports nutrition head the subjects attached to Matt Fitzgerald's catalogue, which also covers running, exercise, physical fitness and triathlon. The 24 books run from Triathlete Magazine's Complete Triathlon Book (2003) to The Other Talent (2024), taking in Runner's World Guide to Cross-Training (2004), Performance Nutrition for Runners (2005), Brain Training For Runners (2007) and Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance (2009). Racing Weight is the one series recorded, and Fitzgerald remains actively publishing.