War book series in reading order

by John Flanagan

by Richard Yancey

by Michael Buckley

by Allen Drury

John Marsden

41 books• 5 series

John Marsden (27 September 1950 to 18 December 2024) was an Australian writer and teacher who wrote more than 40 books. Marsden started writing for children while teaching, and So Much to Tell You (1987) was the first published book. The young adult novel Tomorrow, When the War Began (1993) started a series of seven books. In 2006 Marsden founded Candlebark School, an alternative school, and cut back on writing; the arts-focused Alice Miller School followed in 2016, both in Victoria's Macedon Ranges. Other titles include Letters from the Inside (1991) and The Dead of Night (1994), and the Ellie Chronicles also appear in the catalogue.

Allan W. Eckert wrote historical novels for adults and children, natural history and plays. The Narratives of America sequence takes up the frontier, Shawnee history and the wars that came with European settlement. Incident at Hawk's Hill (1971) was a Newbery Medal runner-up, went into Reader's Digest Condensed Books, and Disney adapted it as the 1975 television film The Boy Who Talked to Badgers. Eckert, a naturalist, also wrote more than 225 episodes of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom and took an Emmy Award for that work. The catalogue holds 39 titles, from The Last Great Auk in 1963 to The Infinite Dream in 2011.

John Flanagan

37 books• 6 series

John Flanagan writes fantasy adventure for readers in grades 6 to 8. The Ruins of Gorlan (2004) opens Ranger's Apprentice, which extends into The Royal Ranger and The Early Years; the Brotherband Chronicles are a second series, and seafaring life and pirates sit in the subject tags. Thirty-eight titles are catalogued through Ambush at Sorato (2024). Apprentices, heroes, courage and friendship recur across the books.

Terry C. Johnston wrote westerns about the American frontier: pioneer life, the wars of the West, and the Plains nations including the Dakota and Crow. His 31 novels appeared between 1982 and 2001, at a median of 469 pages, with the 1990s the densest decade. Titus Bass is his best known recurring character and gives one series its name; The Plainsmen, Son Of The Plains and Jonas Hook are the others. Carry the Wind (1982) opens the catalogue and Turn the Stars Upside Down (2001) closes it. Johnston lived from 1947 to 2001, and more than ten million of his books are in print.

Terry Pratchett

148 books• 18 series

Terry Pratchett (28 April 1948 to 12 March 2015) was an English author, humorist and satirist. Discworld, a run of 41 comic fantasy novels published from 1983 to 2015, is the work most associated with Pratchett, together with Good Omens (1990), written with Neil Gaiman. The Carpet People (1971) was the first Pratchett novel, and The Colour of Magic (1983) opened Discworld. The Shepherd's Crown, the last Discworld novel, came out in August 2015, five months after Pratchett's death. The catalogue also lists the Long Earth, Bromeliad Trilogy and Johnny Maxwell series, with The Discworld Bestiary dated 2026.

Tracy Wolff

71 books• 22 series

Tracy Wolff is the professional name of Tracy Deebs-Elkenaney, an American young adult author best known for the Crave series, who also writes as Tessa Adams. The catalogue lists 73 Wolff books, from No Apologies (2008) to It's Always Us (2026), with Mythfall scheduled for 2027. Other Wolff series include Dragon's Heat, Ethan Frost, Vilified, Shaken Dirty, Extreme Risk, Lone Star Witch, Diamond Tycoons, Fort Worth Wranglers, His Royal Hotness and Calder Academy. Subjects include romantic suspense, paranormal romance, erotica and mermaids.

Marie Lu

29 books• 11 series

Marie Lu, born Xiwei Lu on 11 July 1984, is an American author of young adult science fiction and fantasy. The Legend series, set in a dystopian and militarised future, is Lu's best known work, alongside Young Elites, Warcross and Batman: Nightwalker in the DC Icons line. The catalogue lists 30 books from Legend (2011) to Rebel (2026), with Silver Dawn listed for 2027. Skyhunter, Stars and Smoke and New Alchemists are further series. Subjects include resistance to government, plague, fugitives, soldiers and the supernatural.

Jane Yolen

237 books• 22 series

Jane Yolen (Jane Hyatt Yolen, February 11, 1939 to June 11, 2026) was an American author of fantasy, science fiction and children's books. The Devil's Arithmetic, a Holocaust novella, is the best-known Yolen work, and Owl Moon and The Emperor and the Kite are among the others. The short works Sister Emily's Lightship and Lost Girls both won Nebula Awards. The catalogue counts 237 books from The Witch Who Wasn't (1964) to Daddy Plays a Mean Guitar (2026). Series include Commander Toad, How Do Dinosaurs...?, Pit Dragons, the Young Merlin Trilogy, Books of the Great Alta and Tartan Magic. Yolen worked as an editor, collaborated most often with Adam Stemple, and in 2012 became the first woman to give the Andrew Lang lecture.

Michael Buckley

28 books• 7 series

Michael Buckley, born August 16, 1969, is an American children's author. Buckley's catalogue holds 28 books published between 2005 and 2025, opening with The Fairy Tale Detectives (2005) and reaching The Weirdest One of All (2025). Sisters Grimm, Weirdies, Undertow Trilogy and Finniverse are among the recorded series, and the subject headings cover mystery and detective stories, magic, spies and humorous stories for grades 3 to 5. Buckley also co-created the animated television series Robotomy.

Richard Yancey

16 books• 6 series

Richard Yancey, born John Richard Yancey on 4 November 1962, is an American writer of young adult suspense, fantasy and science fiction. The Alfred Kropp, Monstrumologist and 5th Wave series are the best known of that work, and The 5th Wave became a feature film in 2016. The catalogue also lists the Teddy Ruzak series, with subjects including private investigators, Tennessee, monsters and extraterrestrials. The 16 catalogued books run from A Burning in Homeland (2003) to The Last Star (2016), and include The Highly Effective Detective (2006) and The Monstrumologist (2009).

Robyn Carr is the American author of the Virgin River books, and an executive producer on the television versions of Virgin River and Sullivan's Crossing. The catalogue records 70 Carr books, from Chelynne (1980) to The Friendship Club (2024). Thunder Point, Sullivan's Crossing and the Grace Valley Trilogy are Carr's other series. Several novels, The Hero among them, reached The New York Times Best Seller list. Subject tags on the books include contemporary romance, California, single mothers, veterans and city and town life.

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.

Larry McMurtry

48 books• 10 series

Larry McMurtry (Larry Jeff McMurtry, June 3, 1936 to March 25, 2021) was an American novelist, essayist and screenwriter. Most of McMurtry's fiction takes place in the Old West or in contemporary Texas, and the early novels Horseman, Pass By (1961), The Last Picture Show (1966) and Terms of Endearment (1975) trace the decline of small-town Texas life. Screen adaptations of McMurtry's work received 34 Oscar nominations and 13 wins. The catalogue lists 48 books from 1961 to Thalia (2017), including the Lonesome Dove and Berrybender Narratives series and non-fiction.

Zane Grey

144 books• 13 series

Zane Grey, born Pearl Zane Grey (January 31, 1872 – October 23, 1939), was an American author of adventure novels and stories in the Western genre who presented an idealised American frontier. Riders of the Purple Sage (1912) was Grey's best-selling book. Adaptations of Grey's novels and stories number 112 films, two television episodes and the television series Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre. The catalogue opens with Betty Zane (1903), followed by The Spirit of the Border (1906), The Last of the Plainsmen (1908), The Last Trail (1909) and The Heritage of the Desert (1910). Outlaws, cattle stealing, Mormons and fishing appear among the subjects, and series include the Ohio River Trilogy, Ken Ward and Jim Traft.

Victor Davis Hanson

30 books• 3 series

Military history and classical Greece run through the 30 catalogued books of Victor Davis Hanson, an American classicist, military historian and conservative political commentator born September 5, 1953. The Western Way of War (1989) comes first, followed by Hoplites (1991), The Other Greeks (1995), Fields Without Dreams (1996), Who Killed Homer (1998) and Carnage and Culture (2001); The Counterrevolution (2026) is the newest. Hanson is professor emeritus of classics at California State University, Fresno, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a visiting professor at Hillsdale College. Hanson received the National Humanities Medal in 2007, and agriculture and family farms also appear among the subjects.

Gilbert Morris produced Christian historical fiction at length: 248 catalogued books between 1977 and 2014. The House of Winslow follows one family across American history; the Appomattox Saga and Bonnets & Bugles take up the Civil War; Cheney Duvall, M.D. follows a woman physician; the Seven Sleepers, Dixie Morris and Too Smart Jones series sit alongside, with children's fiction among the subjects. The catalogue opens with Race Against Time (1977), reaches Raina's Choice, and is listed as likely complete.

Nathaniel Philbrick

19 books

Nathaniel Philbrick writes American history. In the Heart of the Sea (2000) and Mayflower (2006) sit among 19 catalogued titles that run from The Passionate Sailor (1987) to The Rush (2026). Whaling, the whaleship Essex, the Plymouth pilgrims, the Battle of Bunker Hill, Boston and Native American history fill the subject tags.

Hampton Sides

10 books

Hampton Sides, born Wade Hampton Sides in 1962, is an American historian, journalist and author of narrative history and literary nonfiction. Ghost Soldiers, Blood and Thunder, Hellhound on His Trail and On Desperate Ground are among the ten Sides books catalogued between Stomping Grounds (1992) and The Wide Wide Sea (2024). Sides is editor-at-large for Outside magazine, and magazine work by Sides has twice been nominated for National Magazine Awards. Subjects on file include military history, campaigns and Martin Luther King Jr.

Cinda Williams Chima

16 books• 4 series

Cinda Williams Chima, born in 1952, writes young adult fantasy and has reached the New York Times bestseller list. The Heir Chronicles, a contemporary fantasy sequence, ran from 2006 to 2008 and gained two further instalments in 2013 and 2014. Seven Realms, high fantasy, appeared between 2009 and 2012, and the Shattered Realms books, set a generation later in that same world, ran from 2016 to 2019. Chima's Runestone Saga opened with Children of Ragnarok in 2022. Sixteen books are catalogued, from The Warrior Heir (2006) to Bane of Asgard (2024).

Michael Grant writes young adult science fiction and horror. The Gone series opens his catalogue in 2008 and runs through Hunger, Lies, Plague and Fear; BZRK, the Magnificent 12, Messenger of Fear, Eve and Adam and the Soldier Girl books follow. Survival, good and evil, the supernatural and the Second World War are the recurring subjects across 30 catalogued titles published between 2008 and 2019. Hero (2019) is the most recent entry.

Rebecca Solnit

30 books• 1 series

Rebecca Solnit is an American writer and activist, born in 1961, whose subjects include feminism, the environment, politics, place and art. River of Shadows won the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism. A Paradise Built in Hell (2009, revised 2020) examines how communities help one another after disasters, The Faraway Nearby (2013) is a memoir, and Men Explain Things to Me (2014) collects essays on feminism and women's writing. The catalogue lists 30 titles, beginning with Secret Exhibition (1991) and including Savage Dreams (1994), Wanderlust: A History of Walking (2001) and A Field Guide to Getting Lost (2005). The Beginning Comes After the End (2026) is the newest.

Niall Ferguson

26 books• 7 series

Sir Niall Ferguson, born 18 April 1964, is a British and American historian. Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a senior fellow at Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and has held professorships at Harvard, the London School of Economics and New York University. Titles include Paper and Iron (1995), Virtual History (1997), The Pity of War (1998), The House of Rothschild (1998), The Cash Nexus (2001) and Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe (2021). Series include Rothschild, Government and Niall Ferguson Biographies. Subjects include banking, imperialism, foreign relations and economic conditions.

M.L. Buchman has 269 catalogued books spanning 1997 to 2026, from Cookbook from Hell (1997) to Galactic Gastronomy (2026). Romantic suspense, special operations, women helicopter pilots and wildfires are recurring subjects. Buchman's series include Night Stalkers CSAR, Delta Force, Miranda Chase NTSB, White House Protection Force Short Stories, Henderson's Ranch and Dead Chef. M.L. Buchman is still publishing.

Terry Deary

340 books• 41 series

Terry Deary is a British children's author, born in 1946, best known as the writer of the Horrible Histories series. Deary has written 351 books, which have sold more than 38 million copies in over 45 languages, and has ranked among Britain's best-selling authors since 1994. In 2012 Deary was the tenth most-borrowed author in British libraries, and Books for Keeps magazine named Deary the Outstanding Children's Non-Fiction Author of the 20th Century. The catalogue lists 340 titles from Teaching Through Theatre (1977) onward, including the True Stories and Tudor Terror series.