About Books on Board
A Brief History
Books on Board began as a resource for eBook readers. It relaunched in 2024 with a narrower purpose: working out what order a series should be read in, and saying so plainly. The focus shifted, but the audience did not – people who read a great deal and would rather not start in the middle. Whether you read on paper or on a screen makes no difference to any list here.
Why I Built This
I built Books on Board because I finished a trilogy I loved, went looking for what came next, and found a sprawl of connected series with no straight answer anywhere about where to start. Hours of forum-reading later I had my answer, and the strong sense that nobody should have to do that twice. The longer version is on the homepage.
So the aim is simple: clear, spoiler-free reading orders for series across every genre, so you can take a story the way it was meant to unfold instead of reverse-engineering the timeline yourself. One page per author, one per series, and no piecing it together from forum posts.
What You’ll Find Here
Reading Orders for Hundreds of Series
From the classics to this year’s bestsellers, with a page for the author as well as the series, so it does not matter which one you searched for.
More Than One Order
Publication order and chronological order wherever the two differ, and a plain note on why you might pick one over the other.
What the Author Recommends
Where a writer has said publicly how they would like their books read, I include that route alongside the other two.
The Easily Missed Books
Novellas, short stories and companion volumes that fall outside the main numbering, so a series reads complete rather than merely in sequence.
How I Put These Together
Getting a reading order right is slower work than it looks. Every guide on this site combines careful reading with modern research tools, and none of it goes live until I have been through it myself. Here is how that works:
Reading and Cross-Checking
Hours per series, spent working out publication dates, numbering, and the spin-offs that never made it onto the official list.
AI-Assisted Gathering
I use AI tools to collect and organise the raw material from author websites, publisher catalogues and reader communities. They do the collecting; they do not do the deciding.
Checked by Hand
Every record is reviewed by me before it goes live. Nothing reaches a reading order on the strength of an automated guess.
Reader Corrections
When someone writes in to say a book sits in the wrong place, or is missing altogether, I check it and fix it. This is the main reason the orders keep improving.
Judgment first, tools second. That is what lets one person keep reading orders this detailed across a catalogue this size — and why, when something is wrong, there is someone to tell.
Who Writes This
Corrections and Questions
Books on Board is one person, a great deal of reading, and a great deal of cross-checking. Corrections from readers are the main reason the lists keep getting better – if you spot a book in the wrong position, a novella I have missed, or a series I have not covered yet, write to me at [email protected] and I will look at it.
I read everything that comes in. Not every suggestion ends up on a page, but every correction gets checked.
Thank you for visiting Books on Board. Happy reading, and may you always know which book comes next.