How to Read All the ‘Outlander’ Books in Order, and Yes, There Are Spin-Offs

Adaptation babes! Have you put off reading Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series after devouring season after season of Claire and Jamie goodness on Starz? Bookmark this primer before you get out an actual bookmark–here’s what you need to know about how to read the Outlander books in order, and what supplemental stories you might want to pepper into your time-traveling adventure.

It’s not as simple as just going through the series of books as they were released, because Gabaldon has written a ton of novellas, short stories, and a whole spin-off series about a supporting character. How you choose to go about integrating all of the books, if you do choose to do so, is entirely up to you. I’ve included release dates for every work, so you could just go through them chronologically by when they came out. I almost always prefer reading things in release order, rather than “timeline order” (some of the novellas and spin-offs are prequels) when there’s a choice. But, at least when it comes to the novellas, you can skip around!

The Main Event: All of the Outlander Books, in Release Order

• Outlander (1991)
• Dragonfly in Amber (1992)
• Voyager (1993)
• Drums of Autumn (1996)
• The Fiery Cross (2001)
• A Breath of Snow and Ashes (2005)
• An Echo in the Bone (2009)
• Written in My Own Heart’s Blood (2014)
• Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (2021)

So far, more or less, each book corresponds to a season of the Starz series. Season 1 is Outlander, season 2 is Dragonfly in Amber, and so on. If you’ve seen the series and want to read the books but want to skip ahead for whatever reason—maybe you don’t want to deal with Randall, or can’t wait to get to Brianna and Roger—it should be pretty easy to figure out where to jump in. Maybe you want to skip right to the books that haven’t been adapted yet. That’s okay, too!

The Spin-Off: The Lord John Grey Mysteries

Do you feel like there’s not enough Lord John, the British sweetie who rolls in once a season and gets up to stuff while making heart eyes at Jamie? I have great news for you. There are many books and novellas about the fan-favorite character AND they’re mysteries AND Jamie is in more than one of them. How fun is that?!

• Lord John and the Private Matter (2003)
• Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade (2007)
• Lord John and the Hand of Devils (2007)
  • This is a collection of three Lord John Novellas: Lord John and the Hellfire Club (1998), Lord John and the Succubus (2003), and Lord John and the Haunted Soldier (2007).
• The Scottish Prisoner (2011)

Even More: Seven Stones to Stand or Fall: A Collection of Outlander Fiction

If you want more miscellaneous reading, this collection includes both Lord John and Outlander stories. It also has a story about Jamie and Ian Murray’s time in France.

• The Custom of the Army (2010)
• Lord John and the Plague of Zombies (2011)
• “A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows” (2012)
• The Space Between (2013)
• Virgins (2013)
• A Fugitive Green (2017)
• Besieged (2017)

Finally, there is an Outlander crossover story called “Past Prologue” in the short story collection Match Up. In it, characters from Outlander interact with characters from the Cotton Malone novels by Steve Berry, who co-wrote the story with Gabaldon. It’s not connected to Outlander, but there’s also a story co-written by True Blood author Charlaine Harris in this collection, FYI.