Lois Duncan Books in Order

Lynn Chambers seems to have everything until a decision about her debutante season knocks her out of her town's tight social circle. Duncan turns popularity, romance, and status into a sharp coming-of-age story.

Joyce steps into first love and first serious choices with more feeling than experience. This early novel follows the excitement, pressure, and confusion of late-teen romance.

Joyce returns to college hoping her second year will feel steadier, but classes, independence, and strain in her romance make growing up harder than she expected. It is an intimate early novel about love and change.

After her grandmother dies, Nancy discovers she has been given a disturbing psychic gift. Reading minds and influencing others sounds thrilling at first, until she learns how dangerous power can be.

The youngest child in a busy family longs to be taken seriously and to do what the bigger kids can do. Duncan turns that small hurt into a sweet picture book about finding your place.

Ruth Porter feels awkward, overlooked, and trapped between two sisters. As she tries to copy her glamorous older sister, she has to learn who she is when imitation stops working.

A late-night phone call sends Annie and her little brother fleeing with a mysterious letter and no time to ask questions. As scandal swirls around their father, the siblings are pulled into a tense chase shaped by secrecy and fear.

A child watches his overworked mother rush through one task after another and decides something has to change. This playful picture book turns everyday family chaos into a warm story about noticing and helping.

In this gently funny picture book, a child imagines that little Suzanne might be one family member too many. Duncan turns sibling jealousy into a warm story about irritation, imagination, and affection.

Natachu leaves her Pueblo home for Albuquerque, where she cares for two children so she can attend high school. Caught between cultures, expectations, and first love, she has to figure out where she belongs.

This later edition of Ransom follows five students abducted on a school bus and held for money. Duncan keeps the pressure high as fear, class differences, and survival instincts collide.

A young widow retreats with her children to a remote beach house after her husband's death, only to feel danger closing in. What begins as refuge turns into a stalking nightmare.

Five students are kidnapped on their school bus, and suddenly their families are bargaining for their lives. Trapped together, the teenagers have to think fast if they want any chance of escape.

Two boys vanish after a hiking trip, and the explanations only get stranger from there. As one sister starts digging, she uncovers fear, lies, and the possibility that the boys are in far worse trouble than anyone guessed.

This historical novel reimagines the life of Peggy Shippen, the woman who became Benedict Arnold's second wife. Duncan blends politics, ambition, and private feeling into a portrait of a girl caught near the center of history.

When Andi and Bruce cannot keep a stray named Friday at home, they turn an empty house into a secret refuge. Their improvised hotel soon fills with dogs, trouble, and a lot of heart.

Four teenagers share a terrible secret after a hit-and-run accident, then spend the next year waiting for it to surface. Guilt, suspicion, and the fear of exposure make every ordinary moment feel dangerous.

Divorced Kate finds herself unexpectedly pregnant and forced to rethink love, family, and the life she thought she had under control. Duncan treats a private crisis with sympathy, tension, and hard choices.

Kit Gordy arrives at an isolated boarding school where only a handful of girls have been admitted. When the students begin developing eerie talents, Kit realizes the school wants far more than obedience.

After her cousin Julia comes to live with the family, Rachel feels her life sliding out of place piece by piece. Jealousy, dread, and the suspicion of witchcraft make this one of Duncan's creepiest slow burns.

A group of students plan to scare their strict English teacher with a kidnapping prank. When it goes wrong, panic and selfishness turn one terrible mistake into something much darker.

At a small-town high school, a group of girls bond over the sexism hemming them in and form a secret society under a new teacher. Their anger begins as solidarity and turns into something far more dangerous.

Duncan turns from fiction to practical advice in this guide to shaping real-life experience into publishable writing. It is straightforward, encouraging, and rooted in her own long magazine career.

Laurie keeps being seen in places she knows she has never been. The answer leads to an identical twin, astral projection, and a fight over identity that gets more frightening the deeper it goes.

Part autobiography and part writing story, this book follows Duncan from childhood manuscripts to published work. It is candid, readable, and especially appealing to young writers.

This poetry collection pairs reflective verse with photographs, tracing family life and feeling across the seasons. It shows a quieter side of Duncan, more meditative than suspenseful.

Happy Days School becomes the scene of gleefully exaggerated disasters and spooky-sounding mischief in this younger read. Duncan plays with classroom fears and kid humor rather than real danger.

Karen Connors is finally starting to fit in when sudden visions pull her into a missing-child case. Her psychic gift may save lives, but it also threatens her friendships, romance, and sense of normalcy.

A child rides through the night with a herd of dreamlike horses in this lyrical picture book. The journey feels magical, slightly dangerous, and full of the freedom children imagine in sleep.

Seventeen-year-old Nore joins her father's new family in a decaying Southern house and quickly senses something is very wrong. The deeper she digs, the more this eerie family seems trapped in a secret that refuses to age.

Tracy agrees to help a troubled boy rescue his supposedly kidnapped half-sister, but the story never quite fits. Duncan builds the suspense around shifting trust, hidden motives, and a tightening trap.

Brian dreads school because a bully keeps stealing his lunch. With help from another student, he hatches a plan to fight back in this brisk, funny early chapter book.

When her father testifies in a dangerous case, April Corrigan and her family are forced into witness protection. Losing her name, home, and old life is hard enough, but the threat may not be over.

A gentle collection of songs and verse for young children, full of bedtime rhythms and dreamy images. It trades suspense for softness, warmth, and a calm read-aloud mood.

A child imagines receiving the moon as the perfect birthday gift and finding new uses for each shape it takes. It is whimsical, rhythmic, and quietly magical.

Duncan recounts the 1989 murder of her daughter, Kaitlyn Arquette, and the painful investigation that followed. It is part memoir, part true-crime account, driven by a mother's refusal to stop asking questions.

Using photographs by her father, Duncan gives readers an inside look at circus life in its winter quarters. The book mixes history, anecdote, and vivid visual detail.

Co-written with parapsychologist William Roll, this nonfiction book surveys telepathy, apparitions, psychic healing, and other paranormal claims. It is a curious, accessible tour of the topics Duncan found compelling.

Edited by Duncan, this anthology collects dark short stories for young readers, from ghostly encounters to human threats. Each tale is different, but all of them lean into nighttime fear and suspense.

Drawing on a Navajo teaching tale, this picture book follows Wandering Girl, who learns weaving from Spider Woman. The story centers on balance, beauty, and the danger of giving too much of oneself to perfection.

Sarah moves to a hostile new town and pretends to be a fortune-teller at a school fair, only to start seeing real visions. Soon old fears and new cruelty push her toward a modern witch hunt.

This follow-up returns to buried secrets, teenage fear, and the sense that guilt has a long reach. It keeps the focus on consequences and the danger of believing the past will stay quiet.

This anthology gathers stories about characters hemmed in by fear, circumstance, or danger, sometimes literally and sometimes emotionally. The mix ranges from eerie to realistic, with every piece built around pressure and escape.

Emily gets her birthday wish for beautiful long hair, then discovers that getting exactly what you want can become a problem. It is a playful picture book with a fairy-tale twist.

By day he is a house cat, but after dark he slips into a different life of prowling and freedom. This picture book follows one nighttime adventure from dusk to dawn.

Edited by Duncan, this anthology brings together stories about teens at breaking points, facing choices, risks, and emotional pressure. The voices vary, but each piece is about life at its most unsettled.

Circus children Gisselda and Bop are swept into chaos when a performance goes wrong and a tiger breaks free. Duncan tells the story in lively rhyme with real big-top energy.

A later poetry collection about love, grief, memory, and growing older. Duncan writes plainly and personally, letting small moments carry the emotion.

Now that the dog hotel days are over, Andi and Bruce start a neighborhood newspaper for dog lovers. Their new project becomes a mystery when dognappers enter the picture.

Bruce enters a dog-themed filmmaking contest, and Andi jumps in as writer. What starts as a fun project soon grows into a much bigger adventure with cameras, canines, and unexpected attention.

This collection gathers stories Duncan wrote between ages thirteen and twenty-two, then pairs them with brief reflections from her later life. It offers both early fiction and a glimpse of how a young writer grows.