Paula Fox Books in Order

Eight-year-old Maurice treasures the crowded, junk-filled room that makes sense only to him. When a family move threatens his private kingdom, he must figure out what can be carried forward and what cannot.

Lewis feels misunderstood at home and dreams of finding a place where no one is always correcting him. A strange week, an unlikely friendship, and a secret hideout help him see himself differently.

Ten-year-old James skips school for a secret place of his own and ends up trapped with older boys running a dog-stealing racket. The story moves quickly from fantasy of escape to real danger.

George Mecklin is a soft-spoken teacher whose attempt to help a troubled boy begins to wreck his marriage and his sense of order. Fox turns good intentions into a sharp study of self-deception and collapse.

In a letter to a former master, a runaway dog tells the story of the many people who have owned him. The result is funny, a little sad, and full of sharp observations about human behavior.

Gus seems unable to show what he feels, even to the people closest to him. A snowstorm, a stray dog, and the presence of his unusual great-aunt push him toward a reckoning with his buried emotions.

A distant father hires an artist to paint eleven-year-old Ivan, then lets the boy join him on a trip to Florida. The journey slowly becomes Ivan's chance to see himself, and his family, more clearly.

A bored and ineffective medieval king longs for a life with more freedom and purpose. With help from a falcon, Fox turns his wish into a brief, sly fable about power and escape.

Carrie watches her older stepbrother Ben unravel under the weight of his anger at an absent father. When the two go searching for him, long-buried disappointments rise to the surface.

A stray cat bites Sophie Bentwood on a quiet Brooklyn evening, and that small shock opens wider cracks in her marriage and surroundings. Fox builds an intense portrait of fear, class anxiety, and urban unease.

Annie grows up on the edges of Depression-era and wartime California, watching glamour, instability, and danger from close range. It is a coming-of-age novel about a girl trying to save herself in a world of unreliable adults.

Everyone wants Ethan to be a good boy, but the demands of the grown-ups around him are not always fair or clear. Fox turns that familiar pressure into a small, sharp story about obedience and independence.

Kidnapped from the New Orleans docks, Jessie Bollier is forced onto a slave ship to play music for captive Africans. Fox tells the story with blunt force, making one boy's terror a window into the slave trade.

A mother, her daughter, her brother, and a few uneasy companions gather in New York for what should be a simple evening. Old grievances and fresh humiliations turn it into a merciless family reckoning.

A duck hoping to discover talent listens to a goose tell a string of odd, funny fables. Fox fills the collection with swineherds, animals, vanity, luck, and dry humor.

After her father's death, Victoria moves with her mother from Boston to a small New England town. Grief, isolation, and a troubling friendship with an older boy force her to rethink what trust really means.

In Depression-era New York, ten-year-old Ned secretly takes a rifle and shoots at a gray shape in the dark. His growing bond with a wounded one-eyed cat turns the book into a powerful story about guilt and confession.

Luisa grows up marked by class and family history, especially the fact that her mother served in the house where her own grandmother lives. Fox turns her life into a quiet, piercing novel about dignity and belonging.

Catherine finally gets the month alone with her father she has always wanted, at a cabin in Nova Scotia. Instead she begins to see his drinking and unpredictability clearly, and the discovery leaves her changed.

On the Greek island of Thasos, Lily and her brother Paul meet another American boy whose reckless sadness changes their summer. It is a tense coming-of-age story about jealousy, compassion, and a moment that goes too far.

While her father is in the hospital, Emma is sent to stay with difficult Aunt Bea and gentle Uncle Crispin by the water. Friendship, beachcombing, and a tiny handmade village help her face fear and loneliness.

A young person finds that an unfamiliar setting can sharpen every family tension already waiting at home. Fox turns a seemingly ordinary break from routine into a tense story about fear, loyalty, and growing up fast.

Fox follows Helen from girlhood into adulthood as she tries to make sense of family damage, desire, and the adults who fail her. It is a searching novel about memory, moral confusion, and the long reach of childhood.

When his parents disappear from his life, eleven-year-old Clay runs from a welfare hotel to the streets of New York. There he finds a rough, fragile kind of family among homeless men trying to survive winter.

This collection retells witty Italian tales full of tricksters, stubborn animals, and sudden turns of fortune. The title story follows clever Amzat and his wife as they outmaneuver his greedy brothers.

Disappointed and confused, Elizabeth is sent to spend a month with her grandmother on a small island off Maine. There she learns family truths, sees other people's fears up close, and begins to grow steadier herself.

After inheriting a cattle ranch, Melody Malone learns just how dangerous that gift can be. To keep the land, he must stand up to a ruthless man determined to control the whole range.

Thirteen-year-old Liam spends Thanksgiving with his father, who is dying of AIDS in an isolated cabin. Their visit forces him to face anger, grief, and the truth about the family silence around his father's life.

Liam travels to see his estranged father, who is gravely ill, and the visit shatters the stories he has been told. It is a quiet, painful novel about family secrecy, fear, and hard-won understanding.

Paul loves his younger brother Jacob, but he also resents the attention Jacob needs. This tender novel follows one boy's painful, gradual move toward understanding a sibling with Down syndrome.

Fox's memoir traces a childhood shaped by abandonment, shifting caretakers, and constant movement between homes and countries. It is a clear-eyed account of loneliness, resilience, and the making of a writer.

In this memoir, a young Paula Fox travels through postwar Europe as a journalist stringer. What she finds is not romance but ruin, hunger, and the strange moral cold left behind by war.

A brief, lyrical picture book about the signs living things leave behind. Fox turns footprints, sounds, smells, and half-seen movements into a quiet invitation to notice the world more closely.

This collection gathers Paula Fox's stories, essays, and autobiographical pieces from across decades of work. Together they show the same clear eye found in her novels, especially in pieces about memory, childhood, and ordinary life.