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Joanne M Harris Books in Order

Browse Joanne M Harris books in order, with short summaries, series guides, and where to start with Chocolat, Loki, Runemarks, and her standalones.

Last updated: June 10, 2026

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42 books

The Evil Seed

by Joanne M Harris

1992

In Cambridge, Alice is unnerved by the strange beauty of her ex-boyfriend’s new partner and by a diary that reaches back decades. Past and present close in around a dark, seductive presence that refuses to stay buried.

Sleep, Pale Sister

by Joanne M Harris

1994

A Victorian painter turns a child model into his ideal wife, only to discover that innocence, desire, and the dead do not stay obedient. This is Harris in full Gothic mode, all obsession, ghosts, and hidden rot.

Blackberry Wine

by Joanne M Harris

1999

Stuck in midlife and creatively dry, writer Jay Mackintosh opens bottles of homemade wine that seem to hold the past inside them. Their magic sends him to rural France, where memory, desire, and second chances wait.

Chocolat

by Joanne M Harris

1999

Vianne Rocher and her daughter Anouk arrive in Lansquenet at the start of Lent and open a chocolate shop opposite the church. What begins as a small act of temptation becomes a battle over hunger, joy, and control.

Five Quarters of the Orange

by Joanne M Harris

2001

Returning to her childhood village under another name, Framboise must face wartime betrayals and the damage her family never outran. Her mother’s recipe book becomes a key to guilt, memory, and survival.

Coastliners

by Joanne M Harris

2002

Mado returns to the Breton island of Le Devin hoping to save its damaged shoreline, but engineering plans stir up family grief and village resentments. It is a novel about belonging, stubbornness, and communities that resist change.

My French Kitchen

by Joanne M Harris

2002

This cookbook blends approachable French recipes with stories, photographs, and food memories from Harris’s Anglo-French upbringing. It is less about restaurant polish than about the pleasures of cooking and eating at home.

The French Kitchen

by Joanne M Harris

2002

Harris and Fran Warde gather rustic French recipes, family food memories, and dishes linked to Harris’s novels. It is part cookbook, part affectionate tour of the home cooking that helped shape her fictional worlds.

Holy Fools

by Joanne M Harris

2003

Juliette, once an acrobat, has been hiding as a nun on a tiny island off the Brittany coast with her daughter. When her old enemy LeMerle appears, the convent turns into a place of fear, performance, and revenge.

Jigs & Reels

by Joanne M Harris

2004

This short story collection moves from the eerie to the comic, with ordinary lives tipped off balance by obsession, guilt, fantasy, and sudden cruelty. It is a good sampler of Harris at her most flexible and mischievous.

Gentlemen and Players

by Joanne M Harris

2005

As a new term begins at St Oswald’s, Latin master Roy Straitley notices petty acts of sabotage that do not feel petty at all. Someone inside the school wants revenge, and they have been planning it for years.

The French Market

by Joanne M Harris

2005

Written with Fran Warde, this cookbook looks toward French markets, summer produce, and relaxed regional cooking. The recipes are grounded, generous, and shaped by the food memories that run through Harris’s fiction.

Runemarks

by Joanne M Harris

2007

In a world rebuilt after Ragnarok, Maddy Smith is feared for the rune mark on her hand and her talent for old magic. When the Order tightens its grip, she is pulled into a fight between control and Chaos.

The Lollipop Shoes / The Girl with No Shadow

by Joanne M Harris

2007

In Montmartre, Vianne is living under a new name and trying to stay still for her daughters’ sake. Then Zozie de l’Alba steps into their lives, bright, helpful, and far more dangerous than she first seems.

Blueeyedboy

by Joanne M Harris

2010

A middle-aged man who still lives with his mother pours his violent fantasies into online stories under the name blueeyedboy. As identities slip and buried family truths surface, the line between performance and confession starts to vanish.

Breakfast at Tesco’s

by Joanne M Harris

2011

Miss Golighty is no longer young, and the supermarket café is a long way from movie glamour. But her unlikely friendship with waitress Cheryl becomes a small, touching push toward courage and a better life.

Runelight

by Joanne M Harris

2011

Years after Runemarks, Maddy and her twin sister stand on opposite sides of a growing war. As old gods, new powers, and breaches in Chaos threaten the worlds, personal loyalties become part of the battle.

A Cat, a Hat, and a Piece of String

by Joanne M Harris

2012

Another collection of short fiction, this one looser on the surface but full of quiet links to Harris’s larger fictional world. Expect sharp turns, strange premises, and a mix of wit, melancholy, and bite.

Peaches for Monsieur le Curé / Peaches for Father Francis

by Joanne M Harris

2012

Summoned back to Lansquenet by a letter from the dead, Vianne finds a village changed by new neighbours and old suspicions. Set during Ramadan, it returns to questions of faith, appetite, prejudice, and belonging.

The Death Pit

by Joanne M Harris

2013

A *Doctor Who* short story featuring the Fourth Doctor. In this creepy tale, the Doctor encounters a strange and deadly golf hotel where something lurks beneath the sand. Part of the *Time Trips* collection.

A Handful of Stardust

by Joanne M Harris

2014

A *Doctor Who* short story featuring the Sixth Doctor and Peri. They visit a library planet where the greatest mathematicians are dying under mysterious circumstances. Part of the *Time Trips* collection.

Into the Nowhere

by Joanne M Harris

2014

A *Doctor Who* short story featuring the Eleventh Doctor and Clara. They land on an unknown planet where the Doctor must face a mystery in the dark. Part of the *Time Trips* anthology.

Keeping Up with the Joneses

by Joanne M Harris

2014

A *Doctor Who* short story featuring the Tenth Doctor. The Doctor finds himself in a bed-and-breakfast run by a suspicious couple with a very strange secret. Part of the *Time Trips* collection.

Salt of the Earth

by Joanne M Harris

2014

A *Doctor Who* adventure featuring the Third Doctor and Jo Grant. They travel to Australia in the near future and encounter strange salt statues on a remote island. Part of the *Time Trips* collection.

The Anti-Hero

by Joanne M Harris

2014

A *Doctor Who* adventure featuring the Second Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe. They arrive in ancient Alexandria and face a villain who knows their future. Part of the *Time Trips* anthology.

The Bog Warrior

by Joanne M Harris

2014

Cecelia Ahern's own contribution to the *Doctor Who* universe. The Tenth Doctor lands in the Kingdom of Cashel and gets involved in a bizarre masked ball with a missing prince. A whimsical tale from the *Time Trips* series.

The Gospel of Loki

by Joanne M Harris

2014

Loki tells his own version of Norse myth, from Odin’s bargain with him to the betrayals that end in Ragnarok. Funny, bitter, and sly, it turns the trickster god into a brilliantly unreliable guide to Asgard’s rise and fall.

The Little Book of Chocolat

by Joanne M Harris

2014

Part recipe collection, part celebration of cocoa lore, this companion volume brings together chocolate history, kitchen ideas, and indulgent treats inspired by the world of Chocolat. It is a good fit if the novel left you wanting to cook.

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Time Traveller

by Joanne M Harris

2014

A *Doctor Who* short story featuring the Third Doctor. The Doctor finds himself trapped in a surreal town where time behaves strangely and nothing is quite what it seems. Part of the *Time Trips* collection.

Different Class

by Joanne M Harris

2016

St Oswald’s is reeling from scandal when a charismatic new head arrives, and Roy Straitley senses that the past is not done yet. Old school loyalties, buried crimes, and dangerous performances keep turning the knife.

A Pocketful of Crows

by Joanne M Harris

2017

A wild girl from the woods falls in love with a human boy and pays hard for it. Harris turns an old ballad into a dark revenge fairy tale full of blood, birds, and the changing seasons.

The Blue Salt Road

by Joanne M Harris

2018

A nameless selkie is trapped into marriage with a human woman and pulled away from the sea he cannot forget. Dark, salty, and mournful, it turns a folk tale into a story about freedom, love, and the cost of being named.

The Testament of Loki

by Joanne M Harris

2018

After Ragnarok, Loki slips into the modern world inside the body of a troubled teenage girl named Jumps. Still sly and self-serving, he must navigate school, desire, and human weakness while plotting his way back to power.

The Strawberry Thief

by Joanne M Harris

2019

Vianne has finally made a home in Lansquenet, but old confessions, new secrets, and the restless wind are not finished with her. As family loyalties shift, the village again becomes a place of temptation, change, and reckoning.

Orfeia

by Joanne M Harris

2020

After her adult daughter’s suicide, Fay travels through layers of London, Faerie, and the land of the dead to try to bring her back. It is a grief story shaped like myth, with real tenderness under the darkness.

Ten Things About Writing

by Joanne M Harris

2020

A practical guide built from Harris’s brisk, clear advice on character, plot, voice, revision, publishing, and the habits that help writers keep going. Useful whether you are starting a draft or trying to rescue one.

A Narrow Door

by Joanne M Harris

2021

At St Oswald’s, new head Rebecca Buckfast seems to have finally won. Then bones are found on school grounds, and Roy Straitley is drawn into a story of ambition, buried violence, and the narrow ways power lets women in.

Honeycomb

by Joanne M Harris

2021

An illustrated mosaic of one hundred linked fairy tales set in Harris’s wider mythic universe. At its heart is the Lacewing King, a trickster ruler whose wandering story crosses paths with bees, queens, inventors, monsters, and death.

Broken Light

by Joanne M Harris

2023

Bernie Ingram is forty-nine, lonely, and used to being overlooked until a woman’s murder shocks loose powers she has hidden since childhood. What follows is part psychological thriller, part story of rage, visibility, and survival.

Maiden, Mother, Crone

by Joanne M Harris

2023

This illustrated omnibus gathers A Pocketful of Crows, The Blue Salt Road, and Orfeia, alongside new stories set in the same wider mythic world. It is a strong entry point if you want Harris’s darker fairy-tale side in one volume.

The Moonlight Market

by Joanne M Harris

2024

Photographer Tom Argent falls for Vanessa and follows her into a hidden London that can only be seen by those who look differently. Beneath King’s Cross, rival magical factions are already at war over love, memory, and survival.

Vianne

by Joanne M Harris

2025

Years before Chocolat, a young pregnant woman arrives in Marseille after scattering her mother’s ashes in New York. As she learns to cook, work, and rename herself, she edges toward the life readers already know is waiting.

Where should I start?

If you want the best-known place to begin: ChocolatThe Lollipop Shoes / The Girl with No ShadowPeaches for Monsieur le Curé / Peaches for Father Francis
If you want dark school thrillers: Gentlemen and PlayersDifferent ClassA Narrow Door
If you want myth and fantasy: RunemarksRunelightThe Gospel of LokiThe Testament of Loki
If you want modern fairy tales: A Pocketful of CrowsThe Blue Salt RoadOrfeiaHoneycomb

Author bio

Joanne M Harris was born in Barnsley, Yorkshire, in 1964, to a French mother and an English father. French was her first language, and she grew up with one foot in Yorkshire and the other in a very French world of food, stories, and strong family traditions. That sense of living between cultures shows up all through her work.

As a child she read in both languages, and old tales stayed with her. Fairy stories, folklore, saints, tricksters, kitchen myths, and local legends all sank in early. Later, those influences would become one of her signatures, not fantasy sealed off from ordinary life, but magic turning up in shops, schools, gardens, and kitchens.

She studied modern and mediaeval languages at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, then trained as a teacher at Sheffield. Before teaching, she had a short spell in accountancy that she has described with very little fondness. Teaching suited her better, and she spent about fifteen years teaching modern languages, mostly at Leeds Grammar School.

She was writing the whole time.

Her first books, The Evil Seed and Sleep, Pale Sister, are dark Gothic novels, full of atmosphere, danger, and young Harris trying things out at full stretch. Then, while still teaching full-time and raising a small daughter, she wrote Chocolat. That was the book that changed her life.

Chocolat became a bestseller, and the 2000 film adaptation brought the story to an even bigger audience. But Harris did not settle into writing the same book over and over. Readers who start with Vianne Rocher often end up somewhere very different: the wartime family secrets of Five Quarters of the Orange, the sharp school malice of Gentlemen and Players, the Norse playfulness of Runemarks and The Gospel of Loki, or the anger and strangeness of Broken Light.

She never stayed in one lane.

What links the books is not genre so much as the way she sees people. Harris returns again and again to outsiders entering closed communities, mothers and daughters circling each other, belief and superstition, hidden appetites, performance, reinvention, and the private stories people tell to survive. Food matters in her fiction, but it is never just decoration. Smell, taste, and cooking are often how memory, comfort, temptation, and power enter the room.

She has also written cookbooks, short story collections, and a practical guide for writers, Ten Things About Writing. Along the way she has been recognised for her work with an MBE in 2013, an OBE in 2022, and a fellowship of the Royal Society of Literature. She is also an Honorary Fellow of St Catharine's College, Cambridge.

Now she lives in Yorkshire with her husband, works from a shed in her garden, and still plays in the band she first joined as a teenager. That feels fitting. Her books may wander all over the place, but the voice behind them stays grounded, curious, and just a little bit mischievous.

Edited by

Richard Reis

Software engineer whose passion for tracking book recommendations from podcasts inspired the creation of MRB.

Anurag Ramdasan

Lead investor at 3one4 Capital whose startup expertise and love for books helped shaped MRB and its growth.

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All 42 Joanne M Harris Books in Order (Complete List 2026)