Women novelists book series in reading order

by Veronica Stallwood

by Susan Rogers Cooper

by Margaret Duffy

Donald Bain (March 6, 1935 - October 21, 2017) was an American author and ghostwriter credited with more than 115 books over a 40-year career. Murder, She Wrote is the series listed for Bain, and the subjects include Jessica Fletcher and the fictional Cabot Cove, Maine. The catalogue holds 59 books, from Coffee, Tea or Me? (1967) to A Time for Murder (2019), and also lists Veronica: The Autobiography of Veronica Lake (1969).

Veronica Stallwood writes the Kate Ivory mysteries, set in Oxford, where the historical novelist Kate Ivory turns sleuth, often reluctantly, and puts historical research to work on past events. Stallwood has also written two novels outside the series. The catalogue lists 16 books from Deathspell (1992) to Oxford Ransom (2011), including Death and the Oxford Box (1994), Oxford Exit (1994), Oxford Mourning (1995) and Oxford Blue (1998). Born in London, Stallwood spent teenage years in Athens and Beirut, later worked for a publisher and as a cataloguer at the Bodleian Library, and moved to Charlbury, north-west of Oxford.

Stephanie Barron

19 books• 3 series

Stephanie Barron is the name under which Francine Barron Mathews, an American writer of mystery and spy fiction born May 23, 1963, publishes historical mysteries. Jane Austen and women sleuths appear in the subjects, and the listed books run from Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor (1996) through Jane and the Man of the Cloth (1997) and Jane and the Stillroom Maid (2000) to Jane and the Final Mystery (2023). The catalogue holds 19 books, including A Flaw in the Blood (2008), and Regency romance and England appear in the subjects. Mathews is profiled in Great Women Mystery Writers (2007).

Susan Rogers Cooper (1947-2024) was an American mystery novelist from Austin, Texas, working in the cosy category. Three series carry the Cooper name: Sheriff Milt Kovak, set in the invented Prophesy County, Oklahoma, and opening with The Man In the Green Chevy (1988); E.J. Pugh; and Kimmey Kruse, whose titles put a comic at the centre, in Funny as a Dead Comic (1993) and Funny As a Dead Relative (1994). Women sleuths, sheriffs and police procedure supply the subject matter. 29 titles are catalogued through Best Served Cold (2017).

Elizabeth Peters was a pen name of Barbara Louise Mertz (September 29, 1927 to August 8, 2013), an American writer who also published as Barbara Michaels. Mertz earned a PhD in Egyptology from the University of Chicago in 1952. Mertz was best known for mystery and suspense novels, above all the Amelia Peabody series. In the 1960s Mertz also wrote two histories of ancient Egypt, Temples, Tombs, and Hieroglyphs and Red Land, Black Land, both revised in 2007 and 2008. The catalogue lists 43 Elizabeth Peters titles from The Jackal's Head (1968) to The Locked Tomb Mystery: And Other Stories (2018), with the Amelia Peabody, Vicky Bliss and Jacqueline Kirby series.

Nora Roberts

279 books• 37 series

Nora Roberts, born Eleanor Marie Robertson on October 10, 1950, is an American writer of romance under that name. As J. D. Robb, Roberts writes police procedurals with science-fiction elements, and has also published as Jill March and, in the UK, as Sarah Hardesty. This listing carries 280 Roberts books, opening with Irish Thoroughbred (1981); The Missing is scheduled for 2027. Series on the page include the In Death Universe, the MacGregors, Night Tales, the Calhoun Women, the Chesapeake Bay Saga, Irish Hearts and the O'Hurleys.

Sandra Brown

94 books• 11 series

Sandra Brown, born Sandra Lynn Cox on March 12, 1948, is an American author of romance and suspense thrillers. Brown has also published under three pen names: Rachel Ryan, Laura Jordan and Erin St. Claire. The catalogue counts 94 titles from 1981, when Love's Encore and Love Beyond Reason came out as Rachel Ryan, to Bloodlust (2026). Listed series include the Texas! Tyler Family Saga, the Coleman Family Saga, Mason Sisters and Lee Coburn. Texas, widows and murder recur among the subject headings.

Kasey Michaels is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author credited with more than 110 books, and the catalogue lists 123 from The Belligerent Miss Boynton (1982) to Her Royal Pain-In-The-Highness (2023). Early titles include The Tenacious Miss Tamerlane (1982), The Rambunctious Lady Royston (1983), The Savage Miss Saxon (1985) and Compliments of the Groom (1987). Michaels has received a RITA, four Publishers Weekly starred reviews and a Romantic Times Career Achievement award for Regency historical romance, and is on the Romance Writers of America Honor Roll. Series include Maggie Kelly, Romney Marsh, Redgraves, Daughtry Family, Crown Family and Sunshine Girls.

Ralph McInerny (February 24, 1929 to January 29, 2010) was an American novelist and a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. Father Dowling is the priest at the centre of the most popular McInerny mysteries, which were adapted as the Father Dowling Mysteries television series from 1987 to 1991. The catalogue holds 110 books from Jolly Rogerson (1967) to A Student's Guide to Philosophy (2014), including philosophy titles such as Thomism in an Age of Renewal (1968). Other series include Sister Mary Teresa, Andrew Broom and Notre Dame. McInerny also used the pen names Monica Quill, Harry Austin, Matthew FitzRalph, Ernan Mackey and Edward Mackin.

Mary Jane Maffini is a Canadian mystery writer, credited with three mystery series and 12 novels. Short stories by Maffini have appeared in Chatelaine, Storyteller and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and in the Ladies Killing Circle and RendezVous Crime anthologies, and two of those stories won Arthur Ellis Awards. The catalogue records 26 books from Menopause Is Murder (1999) to You Light Up My Death (2022). Series include Camilla MacPhee Mystery, Charlotte Adams Mystery, Fiona Silk Mystery and the Book Collector Mystery Series, published as Victoria Abbott. Subjects include women sleuths, women lawyers and book collectors.

Birds name the early novels of Margaret Duffy: A Murder of Crows (1987), Death of a Raven, Brass Eagle, Who Killed Cock Robin?, Rook-Shoot, Gallows Bird. Two series carry the catalogue, one following the writer Ingrid Langley and the intelligence officer Patrick Gillard, the other the police officer Joanna McKenzie, both set in Britain. 30 books span 1987 to The Not Quite Perfect Murderer in 2021, at a median of 288 pages.

Mystery runs through Kay Finch's eight catalogued books, which stretch from Final Decree (2003) to The Black Cat Breaks a Mirror (2020). Subject headings cover women private investigators, murder, investigation, black cats, Texas, women novelists, crime and family relationships. Finch writes the Bad Luck Cat Mystery and Corie McKenna Mystery series. Readers looking up Kay Finch books in order work through eight titles, at a median of 295 pages.