Mackinlay Kantor Books in Order

Young reporter Marry Javlyn leaves Iowa for 1920s Chicago and gets pulled into love, politics, speakeasies, and gangland violence. Kantor's debut doubles as a newsroom story and a sharp portrait of Prohibition-era city life.

Kantor's early Civil War novel follows soldiers and civilians swept into the Battle of Gettysburg. Instead of one hero, it builds a broad picture of fear, confusion, and endurance across three decisive days.

In the Missouri hills, old hunter Spring Davis loves his hound Bugle Ann like kin. When he believes a sheepman killed her, the shooting that follows tears through two families and a young romance.

This collection gathers Kantor's ballads and rustic verse in a folksy American key. The pieces draw on frontier talk, rural humor, and old-song rhythms, showing the storyteller side of his work.

Two Union soldiers escape the Confederate prison at Belle Isle in 1864 and head north through enemy country. When a woman fleeing Richmond joins them, the journey turns into a tense Civil War chase.

Set in Missouri after the Civil War, this novel follows a community still split by old loyalties and suspicion. A stranger's arrival, and the feelings he stirs in one family, force buried wounds back into the open.

In this brief Midwestern tale, a mysterious drummer boy rides into Plattville saying he has been ordered to beat the long roll. Kantor turns the strange visit into a compact story of rumor, memory, and unease.

A wealthy bird lover offers a fortune for proof that passenger pigeons still exist, and the hunt sets people scrambling. What begins as a quest for wonder turns darker as money, obsession, and loss take over.

In a small Iowa town, a father broken by his son's death in naval action is visited by the ghost of his own father. Through memory and family stories, Kantor turns grief into a tender portrait of ordinary American life.

Written in blank verse, this novel follows three servicemen coming home after World War II and trying to fit back into civilian life. Their friendships, marriages, and private wounds make it a clear-eyed homecoming story.

In 1890s cattle country near Denver, hired killer Bus Crow is paid to wage a dirty range war against small settlers. Then he meets Mattie, and compassion begins to tug against the violence that has defined him.

When Dolly Hessian arrives in small-town Iowa in 1911, beauty and ambition quickly become a dangerous mix. Her bid to shape Ben Steele's future, and outmaneuver the powerful men around her, turns into a tense social drama.

For younger readers, Kantor recreates the last days of the Civil War and the surrender at Appomattox. He gives both generals human weight and shows why the terms of peace mattered beyond the battlefield.

A bored bank employee and his equally restless wife drift toward temptation as small-town routines start to feel unbearable. Kantor watches their longings and missteps with a sharp eye for postwar dissatisfaction.

Set in New York City's Twenty-Third Precinct, this police novel follows patrolmen moving between penthouses and slums. Kantor uses their cases and home lives to show the strain, danger, and humanity of the job.

This memoir looks back on Kantor's Webster City childhood with unusual candor. Poverty, his father's absence, and the rough edges of growing up are all here, alongside the people and places that first made him a writer.

Set in and around postwar Japan, this novel brings together American servicemen, their wives, and the women orbiting military life. Kantor uses romance and resentment to explore desire, loneliness, and war's aftershocks.

Written for younger readers, this book walks through the Battle of Gettysburg step by step. Kantor mixes generals, townspeople, and battlefield movement to show why the clash mattered so much in the Civil War.

This later version returns to Lem Siddons, the man who settles in a small town and shapes generations of boys through Scouting. It is friendly, big-hearted small-town Americana built around one life of service.

Lem Siddons comes to a small Iowa town almost by accident and ends up giving decades of himself to its Boy Scouts. It's a warm, quietly moving novel about service, community, and the lives one steady man can change.

Kantor's Pulitzer Prize winner plunges into the Confederate prison camp at Andersonville and the lives around it. Through prisoners, guards, and nearby civilians, it shows how cruelty, endurance, faith, and fear coexist.

This affectionate nonfiction portrait tells how Lobo, a Basque shepherd dog, came into the Kantor household and became part of the family. Travel, temperament, and loyalty give the little book both humor and feeling.

This frontier tale follows the Goss boys as family loyalty and outlaw trouble pull them toward violence. Kantor keeps one eye on the hardships of starting over and the other on the damage young pride can do.

This collection gathers frontier tales about scouts, settlers, soldiers, and collisions at the edge of American expansion. Kantor writes the West and borderlands as places of danger, movement, and hard choices.

A crime story built around a witness no one notices until the truth begins to shift. Kantor draws suspense from hidden knowledge, fear, and the difference between what people think they saw and what actually happened.

This collection of crime stories follows thieves, killers, cops, and unlucky bystanders through tense, fast-moving situations. It shows Kantor's background in pulp and police fiction, with a strong feel for pressure and motive.

Set on the Iowa frontier in the 1850s, this large novel follows settlers, Native people, and wanderers as tension builds toward violence around Spirit Lake. Kantor treats the frontier as crowded, hopeful, and deeply dangerous.

These stories return to the Missouri hills that fed much of Kantor's fiction. Hunters, farmers, drifters, and hardheaded families fill the pages, along with the speech, humor, and violence of the region.

In this famous alternate history, Kantor imagines the Confederacy winning the Civil War and traces the shock waves that follow. It's less a battlefield tale than a speculative look at how America might have split apart.

This large collection brings together stories and reflective pieces from across Kantor's magazine career. It shows the range of his interests, from crime and war to small-town memory and offbeat human comedy.

This nonfiction collection gathers essays and memoir pieces from across Kantor's career. Travel, animals, war memories, and literary reflections all appear, giving a looser and more personal side of his voice.

Once there was a boy named Thomas, and he has a distressing habit of giving adults the same nasty answer. This children's book turns his stubborn mischief into a brisk, funny cautionary tale.

Set in the slaveholding South, this novel centers on a white woman's obsessive desire for a young enslaved man. Kantor builds the story around power, taboo, and the violence baked into the society around them.

Kantor and his wife wander Missouri in this chatty memoir of roads, towns, legends, meals, and arguments. Part travel book and part personal notebook, it captures the state through stories, history, and strong opinions.

Using Hamilton County in Iowa as a starting point, Kantor and his son Tim roam through other Hamilton counties around America. The result is a nostalgic, wide-ranging portrait of place and the people who fill it.

Part novel and part memoir, this late book draws on Kantor's long marriage to Irene Layne Kantor. It reflects on love, memory, quarrels, and companionship with the intimacy of a writer looking back.

A tour group moving through East Asia becomes the stage for clashing marriages, buried prejudice, and uneasy self-discovery. Kantor turns the journey from Bangkok to Japan into a crowded, restless novel about what travel reveals.

Kantor turns the winter at Valley Forge into a human story of soldiers, camp families, and leaders like Washington. The novel looks past the legend to the hunger, endurance, and hope that kept the Revolution alive.

After the Civil War, Annie Goss heads west with her sons and tries to make a decent life from almost nothing. But the boys are drawn toward outlaw shortcuts, and Annie's fierce love cannot keep danger away forever.

Years after the first feud, Little Lady, Bugle Ann's daughter, stirs old feelings in the Missouri hills. The sequel returns to Benjy Davis and Camden Terry as dog, memory, and stubborn pride draw them back together.

This short life of Saint Francis of Assisi is written for younger readers. Kantor focuses on the wealthy young man who chose poverty, compassion, and service, telling the story in clear, direct language.