Young men book series in reading order

by Tennessee Williams

Neil Gaiman

199 books• 41 series

Neil Gaiman, born Neil Richard Gaiman on 10 November 1960, is an English writer of short fiction, novels, comic books, audio theatre and screenplays. The Sandman comic series ran from 1989 to 1996, and the novels include Stardust (1999), American Gods (2001), Coraline (2002), Anansi Boys (2005) and The Graveyard Book (2008). The Graveyard Book made Gaiman the first author to win both the Newbery and Carnegie medals for one work, and other awards include the Hugo, Nebula and Bram Stoker. Gaiman co-created the television adaptations of Good Omens and The Sandman. The catalogue runs from Duran Duran (1984) to The Silver Age (2024) and includes Sandman and Death graphic novels and children's books.

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.

J.P. Donleavy

23 books

The Ginger Man (1955) made J.P. Donleavy's name. Donleavy (1926-2017) was an American-Irish novelist, short story writer and playwright known for dark humour. The Ginger Man, a picaresque novel first published in Paris, sold 50 million copies, was translated into more than 30 languages, and in 1998 placed 99th on the Modern Library's list of the century's best novels. The catalogue lists 23 books through 1998, including A Singular Man (1963) and The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B (1967).

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.

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.

Dave Robicheaux, a Louisiana detective, is the figure most associated with James Lee Burke, who also writes the Holland family novels around Billy Bob, Hackberry and Weldon Holland. Burke's 49 catalogued books stretch from Half of Paradise (1965) to The Hadacol Boogie in 2026, a span of six decades. Hard-boiled crime in Louisiana and Texas is the core subject. Median length is 387 pages, with the 2000s as the peak decade.

Anne Tyler, born on October 25, 1941, is an American novelist, short story writer and literary critic. Tyler's 30 catalogued books run from If Morning Ever Comes (1964) to Three Days in June (2025), with family life, marriage, widowhood and Baltimore as recurring subjects. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982), The Accidental Tourist (1985) and Breathing Lessons (1988) were all Pulitzer Prize finalists, and Breathing Lessons won in 1989. Other honours include the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence in 2012.

Eric Jerome Dickey wrote about African American men and women, love and betrayal, often in Los Angeles. 33 catalogued books run from Sister, Sister (1996) to The Son of Mr. Suleman, including Friends and Lovers (1997), Milk in My Coffee (1998), Cheaters (1999) and Liar's Game (2000). The Gideon novels, the McBroom Sisters and Nia Simone Bijou head series of their own, alongside standalone fiction, short stories and graphic novels. The catalogue closed in 2021.

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.

Three novels make up Donna Tartt's catalogue: The Secret History (1992), The Little Friend (2002) and The Goldfinch (2013). College students, classicists, teacher-student relationships, murder and friendship are the subjects attached to the work. The books are long, at a median of 624 pages. No new Tartt title has appeared since 2013.

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.

Dame Catherine Cookson (born Catherine Ann McMullen, 20 June 1906 to 11 June 1998) was a British novelist. A hard childhood in South Shields, North East England, shaped the novels and supplied their setting. By 2003 Cookson's books had sold an estimated 100 million copies, and 104 titles appeared under the Cookson name and two pen names. The catalogue records 112 books, from Kate Hannigan (1950) to The Rag Maid (2017). Series include Mary Ann Shaughnessy, the Bailey Chronicles, the Mallen Trilogy and the Hamilton Trilogy. Working-class life, family sagas and historical romance appear among the subject tags.

Henry James

131 books• 1 series

Henry James was an American-British author, placed between literary realism and literary modernism. Americans abroad, social life and manners, and the friction between Europe and the United States are the standing subjects of the fiction, and James's correspondence and travel writing are catalogued alongside it. The catalogue lists 131 titles with publication dates from 1866 to 2016, opening with Selected Tales and The Novels of George Eliot, both 1866. The 1870s were the heaviest decade, holding A Passionate Pilgrim, At Isella and Watch and Ward, all published in 1871.

Roddy Doyle

33 books• 4 series

Roddy Doyle is an Irish novelist, dramatist and screenwriter, born in 1958. Ireland, and working-class Dublin in particular, is where Doyle sets the work, written with dialogue in slang and Irish English. Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha took the Booker Prize in 1993. The catalogue holds 33 books, from The Commitments (1987), filmed in 1991, to The Women Behind the Door (2024), and takes in the Barrytown Trilogy, the Last Roundup and the Rover Adventures written for children. Friendship, families, brothers and humorous stories carry the subject tags.

James Joyce

21 books

Chamber Music (1907) opens a James Joyce catalogue of 21 titles. Joyce (1882-1941) was an Irish novelist, poet and literary critic who contributed to the modernist movement. Dubliners (1914), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Ulysses (1922) follow, the last of them tracking the episodes of Homer's Odyssey through shifting literary styles. The listing reaches Finn's Hotel (2013) and takes in manuscript facsimiles and correspondence alongside the fiction.

Wilkie Collins

88 books

Wilkie Collins, born William Wilkie Collins on 8 January 1824 and died on 23 September 1889, was an English novelist and playwright. The Woman in White (1860) is an early sensation novel; The Moonstone (1868) set out much of what the modern detective novel came to do, and stands as an early example of the police procedural. Collins was the son of the London painter William Collins and Harriet Geddes, spent two years in Italy and France from the age of twelve, learned Italian and French there, and worked at first as a tea merchant. The catalogue holds 88 titles, from Iolani; Or, Tahiti as It Was (1840) onward, with the 1850s the heaviest decade.

Irvine Welsh

24 books• 9 series

Irvine Welsh, born 27 September 1958, is a Scottish novelist, short story writer, screenwriter and filmmaker. The fiction is nearly always set in Scotland and portrays working-class life, including drug addiction, social alienation, lack of opportunity and boredom. Trainspotting (1993), the debut novel, was adapted into a film of the same name. The catalogue counts 24 books, among them The Acid House (1994), Filth (1998), Glue (2001) and Porno (2005), through Men In Love (2025). Trainspotting / Mark Renton and Terry Lawson are series.

W. Michael Gear, born in 1955, is an American writer and archaeologist whose novels have appeared in 29 languages. Gear co-wrote the North America's Forgotten Past series with his wife Kathleen O'Neal Gear, and writes science fiction and westerns besides, through Donovan, the Spider Trilogy, Forbidden Borders, the Athena Trilogy, Wyoming Chronicles, Flight of the Hawk and Team Psi. Thirty-four catalogued titles run from 1988, the year of Long Ride Home and Big Horn Legacy, to Bad Choices (2024), taking in frontier life, the American West, revenge and extrasolar planets.

Jacquelyn Mitchard

29 books• 3 series

Jacquelyn Mitchard is an American journalist and novelist who also writes for children. The Deep End of the Ocean (1996) was the first title chosen for Oprah's Book Club, on 17 September 1996. Twenty-nine books are catalogued from Mother Less Child: The Love Story of a Family (1985) to The Birdwatcher (2025), among them The Most Wanted (1998), A Theory of Relativity (2001), Twelve Times Blessed (2003) and children's titles such as Baby Bat's Lullaby (2004). Mitchard's series are Cappadora Family, Midnight Twins and What We Saw at Night. Mitchard teaches creative writing at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

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.

Walker Percy

14 books• 3 series

Walker Percy (May 28, 1916 to May 10, 1990) was an American novelist and a Southern Catholic literary figure. Alienation, existentialism, faith and the limits of science run through the Percy novels, several of them set in New Orleans. The Moviegoer (1961), the first, won the National Book Award for Fiction. Will Barrett and Dr. Tom More are the two series, and The Last Gentleman, Love in the Ruins, Lancelot and The Second Coming are among the novels. Percy earned an M.D. from Columbia University in 1941 after studying chemistry at Chapel Hill.

Sigmund Brouwer, born in 1959, is a Canadian author writing for children, young adults and adults, with more than 100 titles and four million books in print. Dead Man's Switch won the 2015 Arthur Ellis Award for best Canadian young adult mystery, and Shock Wave won the same award in 2025. Thief of Glory, a novel for adults, was named Book of the Year at the Christy Awards and also won an Alberta Readers Choice Award. The Last Disciple, co-authored with Hank Hanegraaff, was featured in Time magazine. The catalogue holds 162 books from Lost Beneath Manhattan (1990) to A Dangerous Game (2026), across series such as Accidental Detectives, Mars Diaries, Winds of Light, Lightning on Ice, Cyberquest and Robot Wars.

Peter Ackroyd

70 books• 4 series

Peter Ackroyd is an English novelist, biographer and critic, born in 1949, whose standing subject is the history and culture of London. Seventy books are catalogued from London Lickpenny (1973) to Forgotten London (2025). Biography fills much of the list, in Chaucer (1980), Ezra Pound and His World (1980), T.S. Eliot (1984) and later lives of William Blake, Charles Dickens, Charlie Chaplin and Sir Thomas More; the novels include The Great Fire of London (1982), The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde (1983) and Hawksmoor (1985). Ackroyd's Brief Lives, Voyages Through Time, a History of England and Shakespeare: the Biography are the series. The Somerset Maugham Award and two Whitbread Awards followed.

Theodore Dreiser

25 books• 5 series

Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945) was an American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school. His central characters often reach their objectives without a firm moral code, and the situations read closer to studies of nature than to tales of choice. Sister Carrie (1900) and An American Tragedy (1925) are the best known of the novels. The catalogue holds 25 items, among them Jennie Gerhardt (1911), The Financier (1912), A Traveler At Forty (1913), The Titan (1914), The Genius (1915), Twelve Men (1919) and A Book about Myself (1922). A Trilogy of Desire sequence sits among the series alongside standalone novels, short stories and non-fiction, and American Diaries, 1902-1926 is dated 2015.