Paula McLain Books in Order (Updated 2026-02-06)

Paula McLain’s bibliography is pleasantly navigable: a handful of historical novels (mostly centered on real lives and real eras), plus one memoir, two poetry collections, and a shorter work of fiction. There’s no continuing cast across the novels, so order is about preference, not continuity.

If you want the neatest experience, read the novels in publication order. If you’re choosing just one to start, pick based on setting and tone.

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The novels, in publication order

1. A Ticket to Ride (2008): A young woman’s marriage and identity are tested as personal longing collides with the force of family expectations.
2. The Paris Wife (2011): Ernest Hemingway’s early Paris years are reimagined through Hadley Richardson’s perspective, where love and ambition keep changing the rules.
3. Circling the Sun (2015): In colonial-era East Africa, an unconventional woman pushes against social boundaries as danger and desire tighten around her.
4. Love and Ruin (2018): A portrait of Martha Gellhorn’s drive and vulnerability as she moves through war reporting, love, and the cost of being underestimated.
5. When the Stars Go Dark (2021/2022, edition-dependent): A troubled investigator arrives in a coastal town to help find missing girls, while her own past keeps surfacing in sharp flashes.
6. Skylark (2026): Two Paris stories, centuries apart, echo each other as ordinary people fight for art, safety, and moral courage when history turns brutal.

Note on dates: When the Stars Go Dark is listed with different publication years depending on country and edition; the book itself is the same novel.

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Shorter fiction

• A Mind of Her Own (2019): A compact, character-driven piece where a woman’s private resolve becomes the most disruptive force in the room.

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Memoir

• Like Family: Growing Up in Other People’s Houses (2004): A clear-eyed memoir of foster care and found family, told with tenderness and hard-earned honesty.

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Poetry collections

1. Less of Her (1999): Poems that move through absence, attachment, and the quiet emotional mathematics of what remains.
2. Stumble, Gorgeous (2005): Poems that lean into desire and self-invention, where the voice is both intimate and bracing.

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Where to start if you’re new to Paula McLain

• For classic literary historical fiction in a famous setting: start with The Paris Wife.
• For sweeping place-based immersion: start with Circling the Sun.
• For a darker, contemporary mystery tone: start with When the Stars Go Dark.
• For her newest historical scope and structure: start with Skylark.

None of these will spoil the others.

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A sensible reading flow (if you want one)

If you’d like variety without whiplash:

1. The Paris Wife (intimate, relationship-forward historical lens)
2. Circling the Sun (big landscape, big consequences)
3. Love and Ruin (war, work, and complicated love)
4. When the Stars Go Dark (shift into suspense and investigation)
5. Skylark (return to historical Paris with a wider structure)
6. Add Like Family and the poetry collections whenever you want a different register

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FAQ

Do Paula McLain’s novels connect to each other?
No. They share interests, women’s interior lives, ambition, survival, but not plot or characters.

Is there a “chronological order” that’s different from publication order?
Not in any useful way, because the novels are independent.

What’s the newest release right now?
Skylark (released January 2026) is the most recent novel as of this update.