Jim Harrison Books in Order
Explore Jim Harrison's books in order with quick summaries, reading tips, and where to start, plus notes on his novels, novellas, poems, and essays.
Last updated: December 25, 2025
As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases (at no extra cost to you).
Publication Order
141 books
Conversations with Jimmy Carter
by Jim Harrison
2023
Interviews with Jimmy Carter spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
The Search for the Genuine: Nonfiction, 1970-2015
by Jim Harrison
2022
A large selection of Harrison's nonfiction, bringing together essays on food, travel, fishing and hunting, and books. It reads like a long conversation with an opinionated, funny guide who keeps changing his mind in public.
Jim Harrison
by Jim Harrison
2020
A focused poetry volume gathering Jim Harrison's ghazals, a form built on repeating lines and sudden turns. The poems move between desire, hunger, and the wild, using the form's music to sharpen his plain talk.
Jim Harrison
by Jim Harrison
2019
A selection of Jim Harrison's most representative poems, chosen from across his career. It's a strong entry point to his poetic voice, mixing nature writing, lust, grief, and blunt humor in compact lines.
A Really Big Lunch
by Jim Harrison
2017
A selection of Jim Harrison's food writing and personal essays, moving from French bistros to home kitchens. Between meals he talks about travel, friendship, and aging, in a voice that stays blunt and funny.
The Ancient Minstrel
by Jim Harrison
2016
Harrison's late collection of novellas, moving between Michigan and farther-off roads, where older characters look for meaning in sex, friendship, and the natural world. The stories mix barroom comedy with moments of hard-earned clarity.
The Big Seven
by Jim Harrison
2015
Retired detective Sunderson is back in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, older, meaner, and trying to keep his head down. When violence and old grudges arrive next door, his quiet retirement turns into a messy investigation.
Dead Man's Float
by Jim Harrison
2015
A late poetry collection that keeps circling hunger, weather, animals, and the plain fact of getting older. Harrison moves between rough humor and sudden tenderness, with short poems that feel like notes from the field.
The River Swimmer
by Jim Harrison
2013
A trio of novellas about aging bodies, sudden lust, and the pull of water and wilderness. Harrison's characters keep trying to start over, even when history, family, and habit are already in the room.
Darkness Sticks to Everything: Collected and New Poems
by Jim Harrison
2013
A career-spanning poetry gathering that mixes earlier work with later poems, showing how Harrison returned again and again to hunger, animals, weather, and grief. The voice stays direct and human, even when the subject turns dark.
Brown Dog
by Jim Harrison
2013
A linked set of stories following Brown Dog, a mixed-blood misfit in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, as he drifts through jobs, women, and trouble. It's funny and bleak at once, with the woods always close and civilization never quite trusted.
Songs of Unreason
by Jim Harrison
2011
Poems that roam through wild places, memory, and the body, often in quick, conversational bursts. Harrison leans into contradiction, grief, and appetite, letting small observations open into bigger questions.
Great Leader
by Jim Harrison
2011
Detective Sunderson, close to retirement, starts looking into a self-styled guru running a cult near his Upper Peninsula home. What seems like local weirdness turns darker, and Sunderson's own appetites and doubts keep getting in the way.
The Etiquette of Freedom
by Jim Harrison
2010
A wide-ranging essay collection that swings from hunting and fishing to books, travel, and the stubborn pleasures of eating well. Harrison mixes story, opinion, and hard-won experience without smoothing the edges.
The Farmer's Daughter
by Jim Harrison
2009
Three novellas that range from rural desire to family fallout, including a return to Brown Dog in a later stage of his hard-living life. Harrison writes with rough tenderness, letting the landscape press against every decision.
In Search of Small Gods
by Jim Harrison
2009
A poetry collection grounded in the natural world, with poems that balance awe and skepticism. Harrison writes about animals, weather, desire, and loss, looking for meaning in small, stubborn details.
The English Major
by Jim Harrison
2008
After a bruising divorce, a former teacher and farmer hits the road with a plan to visit all fifty states. The trip turns into a funny, aching tour of motels, old friends, lust, and late-life reinvention.
Conversations with Kazuo Ishiguro
by Kazuo Ishiguro
2008
Interviews with Kazuo Ishiguro spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Returning to Earth
by Jim Harrison
2007
Told through several linked voices, this novel follows an extended family in Michigan's Upper Peninsula as illness forces them to talk honestly about love, obligation, and what they owe each other. It's a story about reconciliation, not easy fixes.
Conversations with Wendell Berry
by Wendell Berry
2007
Interviews with Wendell Berry spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Sonia Sanchez
by Jim Harrison
2007
Interviews with Sonia Sanchez spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Leon Forrest
by Jim Harrison
2007
Interviews with Leon Forrest spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Larry Brown
by Jim Harrison
2007
Interviews with Larry Brown spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Saving Daylight
by Jim Harrison
2006
Poems that pay attention to daylight, seasons, and the way time slips. Harrison writes about love, anger, animals, and the body as it changes, mixing plain talk with sudden lyric turns.
Conversations with Thomas McGuane
by Jim Harrison
2006
Interviews with Thomas McGuane spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
The Summer He Didn't Die
by Jim Harrison
2005
A collection of three late novellas about marriages, politics, and the ways people lie to themselves to get through a season. Harrison keeps the stakes human and close, with quick humor and sudden sadness.
Conversations with Robert Penn Warren
by Jim Harrison
2005
Interviews with Robert Penn Warren spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Jack Kerouac
by Jim Harrison
2005
Interviews with Jack Kerouac spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Isaac Asimov
by Jim Harrison
2005
Interviews with Isaac Asimov spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Gore Vidal
by Jim Harrison
2005
Interviews with Gore Vidal spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.





























