Available Book Series
A Dear Little Girl by Amy Ella Blanchard
Blanchard’s charming tales of warm family themes around the central character of Edna Conway. The reader will follow Edna and her friends through the various adventures during school, a summer at the seashore and a good old-fashioned Thanksgiving on grandmother’s farm. Each episode is filled with charming detail, dialog and written with passion, joy and enthusiasm.
Suitable for readers aged 8 to 14, and for adults who still have a young heart!
A. J. Raffles by E. W. Hornung
Hornung wrote a series of twenty-six short stories and one novel about the adventures of Arthur J. Raffles, cricketeer and gentleman thief, and his chronicler, Harry “Bunny” Manders. The early adventures were published in The Amateur Cracksman and continued with The Black Mask after Raffles’s and Bunny’s exposure through to Raffles’s death. The last collection, A Thief in the Night, as well as the novel, Mr. Justice Raffles, tell of adventures previously withheld.
Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard
Allan Quatermain is the protagonist of H. Rider Haggard’s novel King Solomon’s Mines and its various prequels and sequels. Quatermain is an English-born professional big game hunter and occasional trader in southern Africa. He supports colonial efforts to spread civilization in the Dark Continent, and he also favours native Africans’ having a say in their affairs. Quatermain is also the inspiration behind Steven Spielberg’s “Indiana Jones” movie trilogy.
This list is built from the chronological sequence of the Quatermain stories.
A Modern Comedy by John Galsworthy
Galsworthy’s own sequel to The Forsyte Saga came in A Modern Comedy, comprising of three novels and two interludes. The White Monkey: Fleur marries Michael Mont and plays the role of society wife though is ultimately dissatisfied and unfulfilled and her attempts to find happiness lead to trouble. The Silver Spoon follows the battle between Fleur and socialite Marjorie Ferrar. Swan Song: Fleur and Jon meet again after seven years apart and their passion is reignited. Meanwhile, disaster strikes as Soames tries to save his beloved paintings from a fire.
Andrew Lang Fairy Books by Andrew Lang
Andrew Lang’s coloured Fairy Books constitute a twelve-volume series of fairy tale collections. Although Lang didn’t collect the stories from the oral tradition himself, he can make claim to the first English translation of many, which are often cited as inspiration to J.R. Tolken and his Middle-Earth novels.
Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery
Anne of Green Gables is a series is eight-book by L. M. Montgomery, about the character Anne Shirley, and later her children. Centred on Anne for the majority of the series, the collection is prized and loved by many. Located in a lovely spot in Prince Edward Island, Canada, the first two books are based in Avonlea, a quaint town that is based on the real-life town of Cavendish. Anne of the Island is set in Kingsport for the most part, a bustling city with a large college by the name of Redmond College. The fourth book is put in Summerside, Prince Edward Island, and Windy Poplars.
Arsène Lupin by Maurice Leblanc
Arsène Lupin is a fictional gentleman thief who appears in a series of detective fiction and crime fiction novels by the French writer Maurice Leblanc. The character has also appeared in a number of non-canonical sequels and numerous film, television such as Night Hood, stage play and comic book adaptations. A contemporary of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Maurice Leblanc created the character of the gentleman thief who, in Francophone countries, has enjoyed a popularity as long-lasting and considerable as Sherlock Holmes in the English-speaking world.
Ayesha by H. Rider Haggard
Ayesha, an ageless and immortal sorceress, who is still beautiful even after more than two millennia, since immersing herself in a magical flame, and claims that the leader of an expedition to East Africa is the reincarnation of her long-dead beloved. Ayesha has been cited as a prototype by psychoanalysts as different as Sigmund Freud (in The Interpretation of Dreams) and Carl Jung.
Barchester Chronicles by Anthony Trollope
The Barchester Chronicles is a series of six novels by the English author Anthony Trollope, set in the fictitious English county of Barsetshire (located approximately where the real Dorset lies) and its cathedral town of Barchester. The novels concern the dealings of the clergy and the gentry, and the political, amatory, and social manœuvrings that go on among and between them. Of the six novels, the second in the series, Barchester Towers, is generally the best known. (source: Wikipedia)
Barsoom by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Barsoom is a fictional representation of the planet Mars created by American pulp fiction author Edgar Rice Burroughs. The first novel, A Princess of Mars , is followed by ten sequels over a period of three decades, further extending his vision of Barsoom and adding many other characters. The worlds of Burroughs are often cited as inspiration on films such as Avatar, Babylon 5 and Star Wars.
Bastable by Edith Nesbit
A series of books told from the perspective of Oswald Bastable, whose style owes greatly to that of Julius Caesar. Oswald. through a cunning use of the third person, is able to establish his marked superiority over others. He is a delightful narrator and the stories he tells are among Nesbit’s best. As is usual with Nesbit, she takes a family of children and involves them in many adventures, with them having to deal with scrapes the children get into while searching for treasure in familiar surroundings, and coping as sensibly as possible with the contrary world of grown-ups.
Betty Gordon by Alice B. Emerson
The Betty Gordon books were an early Stratemeyer Syndicate series, published under the pseudonym Alice B. Emerson. Edward Stratemeyer created the series and wrote plot outlines, but the books themselves were written by a number of ghostwriters.
Blandings Castle by P. G. Wodehouse
The upper-class inhabitants of the fictional Blandings Castle, including the eccentric Lord Emsworth, obsessed by his prize-winning pig, the “Empress of Blandings”, are the subject of eleven novels and nine short stories, written between by P.G. Wodehouse.
Bulldog Drummond by Sapper
Bulldog Drummond is a British fictional character, created by H. C. McNeile and published under his pen name “Sapper”. Drummond is a First World War veteran, brutalised by his experiences in the trenches and bored with his post-war lifestyle. He publishes an advertisement looking for adventure, and soon finds himself embroiled in a series of exploits, many of which involve Carl Peterson—who becomes his nemesis—and Peterson’s mistress, the femme fatale Irma. Several novels have been adapted to film, either based on McNeile’s stories or with unique storylines.
Carr Family by Susan Coolidge
The Katy series is a set of novels by Sarah Chauncey Woolsey, writing under the pen-name of Susan Coolidge. The first in the series was What Katy Did followed a year later by What Katy Did at School and then What Katy Did Next. Two further novels, Clover and In the High Valley, were also written but these focused upon other members of the eponymous character’s family. In a survey in 1995, What Katy Did was voted as one of the top-10 books for 12-year-old girls.
Caspak Trilogy by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Caprona (also known as Caspak) is a fictitious island in the literary universe of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Caspak Trilogy. Described as a land mass near Antarctica, Caprona was first reported by the (fictitious) Italian explorer Caproni in 1721, the location of which was subsequently lost. The island is ringed by high cliffs, making it inaccessible to all but the most intrepid explorers. Other stories in the series include The Land That Time Forgot, The People That Time Forgot, and Out of Time’s Abyss, each of which has been adapted to film.
Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis
Set in the fictional realm of Narnia, a fantasy world of magic, mythical beasts, and talking animals, the series narrates the adventures of various children who play central roles in the unfolding history of that world. Except in The Horse and His Boy, the protagonists are all children from the real world, magically transported to Narnia, where they are called upon by the lion Aslan to protect Narnia from evil and restore the throne to its rightful line. The Chronicles of Narnia is considered a classic of children’s literature and has sold over 100 million copies in 47 languages.
Clarissa: History of a Young Lady by Samuel Richardson
Clarissa is a tragic heroine, pressured by her unscrupulous family to marry a wealthy man she detests. She’s then tricked into fleeing with the witty and debonair Robert Lovelace, however, he proves himself to be an untrustworthy rake. And yet, she finds his charm alluring, her scrupulous sense of virtue tinged with unconfessed desire. Clarissa is considered “the first book in the world for the knowledge it displays of the human heart” and most critics agree that it is one of the greatest European novels.
Conan the Barbarian by Robert E. Howard
Drifting into Khauran, Conan becomes captain of the Queen’s guard; A Witch Shall be Born. While wandering the city in The Devil In Iron he reflects that its spaced-out inhabitants remind him of Xuthal (The Slithering Shadow). After riding West to ransom a precious ring to the Queen of Ophir, Conan goes south to Koth. After trying to create an army from local outlaws, the empire’s government feels obligated to smash them, leaving Conan to flee to Vendhya. In The People Of The Black Circle, Conan tries to organize the local mountain tribes into an army.
Conan the Cimmerian by Robert E. Howard
Conan the Cimmerian is a fictional Sword & Sorcery hero (by Robert E. Howard), that originated in pulp fiction magazines and has since been adapted to books, comics, several films (Conan the Barbarian/Conan the Destroyer), TV programs (cartoon and live-action), video games, role-playing games and other media. An exact reading order isn’t necessary, but for those who like to read in chronological order, I’m going to use Joe Marek’s: The Coming of Conan, Conan the Barbarian, The Sword of Conan, King Conan, Conan The Conqueror.
d'Artagnan Romances by Alexandre Dumas
The d’Artagnan Romances (The Three Musketeers) are a set of novels by Alexandre Dumas telling the story of the musketeer d’Artagnan from his humble beginnings in Gascony to his death as a marshal of France in the Siege of Maastricht in 1673. The life and character of d’Artagnan is based upon the 17th-century captain of musketeers Charles de Batz-Castelmore, Comte d’Artagnan.
Deathworld by Harry Harrison
Deathworld is a series of science fiction novels by Harry Harrison including the books Deathworld, Deathworld 2 and Deathworld 3, plus the short story “The Mothballed Spaceship”. Jason dinAlt, a professional gambler who uses his erratic psionic abilities to tip the odds in his favor, is he central hero of Deathworld who becomes involved with colonists of an extremely hostile planet.
Divine Comedy by Dante
The Divine Comedy is an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321 and is divided into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. (Hell, Purgatory, Paradise) It’s widely considered the preeminent work of Italian literature and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature. The poem’s imaginative and allegorical vision of the afterlife is a culmination of the medieval world-view as it had developed in the Western Church. These volumes include many illustrations.
Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting
Doctor John Dolittle is the central character of a series of children’s books by Hugh Lofting starting with the The Story of Doctor Dolittle. He is a doctor who shuns human patients in favour of animals, with whom he can speak in their own languages. He later becomes a naturalist, using his abilities to speak with animals to better understand nature and the history of the world. Doctor Dolittle first saw light in the author’s illustrated letters to children, written from the trenches during World War I when actual news, he later said, was either too horrible or too dull.
Drew Rennie by Andre Norton
Drew Rennie is an adventure western rebels series written by American science fiction and fantasy writer, Andre Norton, from 1961-62.
Educated Evans by Edgar Wallace
The Educated Evans stories combine Wallace’s talent for humour with his hallmark detective story themes. The eponymous principal character is a London racing tipster. Garrulous and delightfully ignorant of most of the subjects about which he professes to have knowledge, Evans provides the comic foil for the towering figure of ‘The Miller,’ a formidable police detective named for his perpetual habit of chewing upon a length of straw. Together the pair form an uneasy partnership as they undertake various adventures in the worlds of racing and petty criminality.
Emily Trilogy by L. M. Montgomery
Like her earlier, more famous Anne of Green Gables series, the Emily novels depict life through the eyes of a young orphan girl, Emily Starr, who is raised by her relatives after her father dies of tuberculosis. She is sent to live at New Moon Farm on Prince Edward Island with her aunts Elizabeth and Laura Murray and her Cousin Jimmy. She makes friends with Ilse Burnley, Teddy Kent, and Perry Miller, each having a special gift. Emily was born to be a writer, Teddy is a gifted artist, Ilse a talented elocutionist, and Perry has the makings of a great politician. (source: Wikipedia)
End of the Chapter by John Galsworthy
In the End of the Chapter trilogy Galsworthy continues the story of the Forsyte’s as the old Victorian society declines further under the onslaught of the Edwardian era. Here he writes about the Cherrells, cousins of the Forsytes, who’s son’s have for centuries left Condaford Grange to serve the state as soldiers, clergymen and administrators, but the 1930’s bring uncertainty in a world of changing values and unemployment. Galsworthy’s grasp of political and social change and its effect on a family, as well as his incisive sense of character, make this a fine trilogy to end the saga.
Extraordinary Voyages by Jules Verne
The Extraordinary Voyages (Voyages Extraordinaires) was a publishing title affixed to the novels and non-fictional writings of French author and science fiction pioneer Jules Verne. According to Verne’s publisher, Jules Hetzel, the intention of the Voyages was “to outline all the geographical, geological, physical, and astronomical knowledge amassed by modern science and to recount, in an entertaining and picturesque format … the history of the universe.”
Famous Five by Enid Blyton
The Famous Five is a series of children’s novels, featuring the adventures of a group of young children: Julian, Dick, Anne, Georgina (George) and her dog Timmy. The stories usually take place in the children’s school holidays, and each time they meet they get caught up in an adventure, often involving criminals or lost treasure.
With over 100 million novels sold, The Famous Five is one of the best-selling series for children ever written. All the novels have been adapted for television, and several have been adapted as films in various countries. (source: Wikipedia)