A curated selection of book series and their reading orders. Open any to see the order to read them in, where each book fits, and what to read next.
Stieg Larsson
Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy follows Lisbeth Salander, a brilliant and damaged hacker, and Mikael Blomkvist, an investigative journalist, through three novels of Swedish crime fiction that redefined the genre internationally. The series is known for its unflinching portrayal of violence against women, its meticulous procedural detail, and Salander herself - one of the most distinctive protagonists in contemporary crime fiction. Published posthumously, Larsson died in 2004 before seeing their success. The series has been continued by David Lagercrantz with four additional novels (The Girl in the Spider's Web, The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye, The Girl Who Lived Twice, The Girl in the Eagle's Talons), though these are typically treated as a separate continuation rather than part of the original trilogy.
3 books
Brandon Sanderson
The original Mistborn trilogy introduces readers to a world of ash and mist, where a seemingly immortal tyrant has ruled for a thousand years and the skaa live as slaves beneath noble oppression. This is where Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere begins for many readers - a complete, self-contained story that showcases his signature magic systems and intricate plotting. Allomancy, the magic of burning metals for supernatural powers, drives both the action and the mysteries at the heart of these books. Follow Vin, a street urchin who discovers she's Mistborn - capable of using all Allomantic metals - as she's recruited into a crew planning the ultimate heist: overthrowing the Lord Ruler himself.
5 books · The Cosmere
Brandon Sanderson
Three hundred years after the events of the original Mistborn trilogy, the world has industrialised. Elendel is a city of railways, electric lights, and political corruption, where the heroes of the old age have hardened into religion and legend and the houses that rule the basin have largely forgotten what their world cost. Waxillium Ladrian spent twenty years as a lawman in the Roughs before being dragged back to the city to save his house from bankruptcy. He brings his irreverent partner Wayne, a talent for violence, and a set of Allomantic and Feruchemical abilities that make him uniquely suited to the conspiracies he keeps stumbling into. The four books blend the epic fantasy foundation of the original trilogy with detective noir and a genuinely funny double act at their centre.
4 books · The Cosmere
Terry Pratchett
Moist von Lipwig is a cheat, a swindler, and a conman - so he's the natural choice whenever an ailing institution needs new management. With a taste for flashy suits and even flashier publicity stunts, he takes on some of the worst jobs on the Disc and battles even bigger crooks than himself. Going Postal puts him in charge of the defunct Ankh-Morpork Post Office, Making Money hands him the Royal Bank, and Raising Steam sees him overseeing the development of the railway. The three books chart the Disc's industrial modernisation, with Moist as the reluctant engine of progress, always one step ahead of exposure. Lord Vetinari looms large as the puppet master behind each appointment.
3 books · Discworld
Arthur Conan Doyle
The four Sherlock Holmes novels form the structural backbone of the canon, introducing the universe's central characters and establishing its most substantial plots. A Study in Scarlet presents the first meeting of Holmes and Watson and sets out the consulting detective's method in full; The Sign of Four deepens their partnership while introducing one of the canon's more personally consequential cases; The Hound of the Baskervilles, the most celebrated and self-contained of the four, sends Holmes and Watson to the Devon moors for the canon's most atmospheric investigation; and The Valley of Fear, the final novel, returns to the theme of organised crime and secret societies that runs through the earlier work. The novels reward reading in publication order but The Hound of the Baskervilles functions as a natural entry point for newcomers encountering Holmes for the first time.
4 books · Sherlock Holmes
Rick Riordan
Percy Jackson is twelve years old, has been kicked out of every school he has ever attended, and has just found out that his father is Poseidon. Camp Half-Blood, a training ground for the children of Greek gods hidden in Long Island, is both a refuge and the beginning of something much larger. Over five books Percy grows from a confused kid who can breathe underwater to the demigod at the centre of a prophecy that will determine the fate of Olympus. The original series that launched the Riordanverse, built around a voice so distinct and a mythology so confidently reimagined that it created its own genre of modern mythology fiction.
5 books · Riordanverse
Robin Hobb
Four novels set in the Rain Wilds following a group of misfit dragon keepers and their damaged charges on an expedition to find the lost Elderling city of Kelsingra. The Rain Wild Chronicles is the most adventure-driven strand of the Elderlings sequence and the most directly concerned with the dragons and the ancient Elderling civilisation that underlies the universe's mythology. Thymara and Alise Finbok are its central characters, and the series deepens the Liveship Traders' world considerably while standing relatively independently of the Fitz narratives.
4 books · Realm of the Elderlings
Terry Pratchett
Rincewind is the Disc's most useless wizard - he can't even spell "wizzard," and his most notable talent is running away very fast. Beginning with The Colour of Magic, these were Pratchett's earliest Discworld novels, initially written as parodies of fantasy before evolving into broader satire. The other wizards of Unseen University aren't much better, spending more time studying the common room biscuit tin than mystical tomes, though they occasionally stretch to some magic between elevenses. Across eight books, Rincewind is dragged into adventures spanning the entire Disc - from the Counterweight Continent to ancient civilisations to XXXX - while the Unseen University faculty, led by Archchancellor Ridcully, provide a recurring ensemble. Unseen Academicals shifts focus almost entirely to the university itself. The series establishes much of Discworld's cosmology, geography, and the Luggage - Rincewind's homicidal travelling companion.
8 books · Discworld
Leigh Bardugo
Alina Starkov is a mapmaker's assistant in the Ravkan army when she discovers she is a Sun Summoner: a Grisha with the rarest power in the world, one that could destroy the Fold and reunite the kingdom. Brought to the Little Palace to train under the Darkling, the most powerful Grisha alive, she begins to understand that power this rare attracts attention of a particularly dangerous kind. A trilogy about the cost of being extraordinary in a world that wants to use extraordinary people, and about whether the promise of salvation is ever worth the price attached to it.
3 books · Grishaverse
Arthur Conan Doyle
Fifty-six stories published across five collections between 1891 and 1927, originally appearing in The Strand Magazine before being gathered into the volumes that define the canon's short form. The collections span the full arc of Doyle's relationship with his creation - from the sharp, inventive work of the Adventures and Memoirs through the resurrection of the Return, the valedictory tone of His Last Bow, and the uneven final cases of the Case-Book. Each collection is distinct in period, quality, and tone, and together they contain the majority of the canon's most celebrated cases, its most significant character appearances, and its most consequential plot developments.
5 books · Sherlock Holmes
Leigh Bardugo
Ketterdam is a city built on trade and crime, where the Merchant Council looks the other way and the gangs run everything below the surface. Kaz Brekker, the most feared teenager in the city's most powerful gang, is offered a job that should be impossible: break into the most secure prison in the world and extract a hostage worth more than any of them can imagine. He assembles a crew of specialists: a convict, a sharpshooter, a runaway, a spy, a Grisha. A duology that runs parallel to the events of Shadow and Bone, set in a different country with a different tone: darker, funnier, and more interested in what loyalty costs when everyone involved has reasons to betray everyone else.
2 books · Grishaverse
George R. R. Martin
A Song of Ice and Fire is George R.R. Martin's epic fantasy series following the struggle for control of the Iron Throne of Westeros. The story is told through rotating point-of-view characters whose perspectives often conflict, creating a narrative where no single character holds the full truth. The series is known for its moral complexity, willingness to kill major characters, intricate political plotting, and a sprawling cast that grows with each volume. Five of a planned seven novels have been published, with the sixth - The Winds of Winter - long awaited by readers.
5 books · The World of Ice and Fire
William Gibson
William Gibson's three novels - Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive - are set in the same near-future world a generation apart, following different characters whose stories intersect around the same powerful forces: megacorporations, rogue artificial intelligences, and the cyberspace matrix that underlies all of it. The trilogy doesn't work as a conventional sequel series - each book has its own cast and concerns - but they build a cumulative portrait of a world where corporate power has replaced government, the street has its own economy and culture, and the AIs are quietly doing something nobody fully understands. Gibson wrote all three in the 1980s and in doing so defined cyberpunk as a genre, introduced the vocabulary of cyberspace that shaped how a generation imagined the internet before the internet existed, and produced some of the most influential science fiction prose of the twentieth century.
3 books · The Sprawl
Brandon Sanderson
Roshar is a world scoured by highstorms - massive, recurring tempests of such power that its ecology, architecture, and culture have all formed around surviving them. The magic comes from those storms: Stormlight, breathed in to fuel the Surgebinding abilities of the Knights Radiant, an ancient order that protected humanity for millennia before mysteriously abandoning their oaths and disappearing. The series follows Dalinar Kholin, a highprince haunted by visions of the past, Kaladin, a former slave who becomes a soldier and then something more, and Jasnah, a scholar-queen who suspects the Return of the ancient enemy is already underway. Brandon Sanderson's most ambitious work - planned as ten books, with five published - and the centrepiece of the Cosmere.
7 books · The Cosmere
Robin Hobb
Set fifteen years after the conclusion of the Farseer Trilogy, the Tawny Man follows an older Fitz drawn reluctantly back into the world of Buckkeep and its politics. The reunion with the Fool is the emotional heart of the trilogy, and Hobb uses the passage of time and the weight of the first trilogy's events to examine what survives of a person after they have given everything once already. The Tawny Man is generally regarded as the finest of the Elderlings trilogies for the maturity and emotional precision of its character work.
3 books · Realm of the Elderlings
Terry Pratchett
Tiffany Aching is a young witch, social worker, and cheese maker extraordinaire. She hails from a long line of shepherds and has a powerful connection with the Chalk where she lives. Wherever Tiffany goes, it's almost certain that a horde of tiny fighting, drinking blue men in kilts - the Nac Mac Feegle - won't be far away. The five books follow Tiffany from age nine through to young adulthood, each dealing with a different stage of growing up and learning what it means to be a witch. The series connects back to the Witches sub-series, with Granny Weatherwax serving as Tiffany's mentor. The Shepherd's Crown, the final Discworld novel, serves as a conclusion to both Tiffany's story and the series as a whole.
5 books · Discworld
Rick Riordan
Zeus has punished Apollo by casting him out of Olympus as a mortal teenager with no powers, no godly authority, and a body he finds deeply inadequate. To regain his place among the gods, Apollo must serve the demigod Meg McCaffrey and find and free a series of ancient Oracles scattered across America, each held captive by a different Roman emperor brought back from the dead. Five books that use Apollo's enforced mortality and his long history of careless cruelty as the basis for a genuine redemption arc, set against the largest and most politically complex threat the Riordanverse has faced.
5 books · Riordanverse
Brandon Sanderson
On the tropical nation of Hallandren, gods walk among mortals - Returned who are worshipped in the Court of Gods, sustained by the weekly sacrifice of a human Breath. Breath is the currency of power here: it can be given, traded, or hoarded to unlock extraordinary abilities, and those who surrender theirs become Drabs, drained of colour and vitality. When two princesses from the austere mountain kingdom of Idris are drawn into Hallandren's politics - one sent to marry the God King, the other to rescue her - they find themselves entangled in a web of mercenaries, immortal schemers, and an ancient sentient sword that hungers to destroy evil. The deeper they look, the more they discover that the histories both nations were raised on may be lies. Set on the planet Nalthis in the Cosmere, the Warbreaker series explores a world where colour is magic, identity is mutable, and the most dangerous weapons have minds of their own.
1 book · The Cosmere
Robert Jordan
Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time is one of the most ambitious and influential epic fantasy series ever written - 14 novels spanning over four million words, thousands of named characters, and a richly detailed world built on mythology from dozens of cultures. The story begins with five young people from a remote village drawn into a struggle against the Dark One, the embodiment of evil imprisoned since the creation of the world, and follows them as they discover their roles in a prophecy that may save or destroy civilisation. Jordan published the first eleven books between 1990 and 2005 before his death in 2007 from a rare blood disease. Working from Jordan's extensive notes and outlines, Brandon Sanderson completed the final three volumes, bringing the series to its conclusion in 2013. The Wheel of Time has sold over 90 million copies worldwide and has been adapted as an Amazon Prime Video television series.
15 books · The Wheel of Time
Terry Pratchett
Discworld's witches, based around the rural and mostly vertical kingdom of Lancre, deliver babies, treat warts, and keep an eye on troublesome kings, vampires, and incursions from other worlds. They don't have leaders, but Granny Weatherwax is the most highly regarded and steely of the leaders they don't have, assisted by Nanny Ogg - mother of fifteen and brewer of lethally strong cider. Equal Rites introduces witchcraft on the Disc, but the core trio forms in Wyrd Sisters, which sets the template for the series: sharp parodies of well-known stories (Shakespeare, fairy tales, opera) filtered through Pratchett's rural comedy. Across six books, the cast expands to include Magrat Garlick and later Agnes Nitt, and the stories move from Lancre to Genua and back again.
6 books · Discworld
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