Tamora Pierce Books in Order
Explore all Tamora Pierce books in order, with Tortall and Emelan reading guides, quick summaries, series background, and tips on where to start in her fantasy worlds.
Last updated: December 23, 2025
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Publication Order
36 books
Alanna
by Tamora Pierce
2025
This graphic novel adaptation of *Alanna: The First Adventure* retells the story of a noble girl who disguises herself as a boy to train as a knight. Dynamic art brings palace training, secret magic, and Alanna's hard won friendships vividly onto the page.
First Test Graphic Novel
by Tamora Pierce
2024
Adapted from the novel *First Test*, this graphic novel follows Keladry of Mindelan as the first girl to openly pursue knighthood in Tortall. Panels capture brutal training, schoolyard politics, and Kel's steady resolve as she faces a one year trial no boy has endured.
Tempests and Slaughter
by Tamora Pierce
2018
At the Imperial University of Carthak, young Arram Draper struggles to control immense magical power while navigating classes, gods, and the friendship of Varice and Ozorne, a spare prince with dangerous ambitions. His choices here will echo across the Tortall universe.
Tortall
by Tamora Pierce
2017
Presented as the secret files of spymaster George Cooper, this in world guide collects letters, reports, timelines, and notes about Tortall's history, magic, and heroes. It offers fans a behind the scenes look at the realm's wars, spies, immortals, and royal families.
Battle Magic
by Tamora Pierce
2013
Briar, Rosethorn, and Evvy are visiting the peaceful kingdom of Gyongxe when a ruthless emperor launches an invasion. Caught between armies, gods, and living landscapes, the three mages must use every scrap of their power to protect people and sacred places from war's devastation.
Mastiff
by Tamora Pierce
2011
Three years after the events of Bloodhound, Beka Cooper is a seasoned Dog called to join a secret Hunt when the young heir to the throne is kidnapped. Tracking traitors across dangerous countryside, she uncovers a conspiracy that reaches the highest levels of Tortall.
Tortall and Other Lands
by Tamora Pierce
2010
This collection gathers eleven of Tamora Pierce's short stories, some set in Tortall, others in new fantasy or contemporary worlds. Familiar faces share space with new heroines as the tales explore courage, choice, and the small moments that change a life.
Bloodhound
by Tamora Pierce
2009
Now a full Dog, Beka Cooper is sent to Port Caynn to trace a flood of counterfeit silver that threatens Tortall's economy. With scent hound Achoo and veteran Dog Goodwin at her side, she infiltrates gambling dens and criminal courts to sniff out the colemongers.
White Tiger: A Hero's Compulsion
by Tamora Pierce
2007
Former FBI agent Angela Del Toro inherits the mystical White Tiger amulets and steps into a vigilante role on the streets of New York. As she learns to wield her new powers, she must balance family, duty, and a criminal underworld that will not let her walk away.
Melting Stones
by Tamora Pierce
2007
Stone mage Evvy travels with Rosethorn to the island of Starns, where trees are dying and springs have turned foul. Listening deep below the surface, she discovers restless magma spirits and must find a way to divert a looming volcanic disaster before the island is destroyed.
Terrier
by Tamora Pierce
2006
Sixteen year old Beka Cooper starts her first year as a Puppy in the Provost's Guard, assigned to two hard bitten Dogs in the Lower City. Using her street knowledge and eerie ability to hear the dead, she hunts kidnappers, killers, and a shadowy extortionist.
Young Warriors
by Tamora Pierce
2005
This anthology, co edited by Tamora Pierce, gathers fifteen short stories about young warriors in many eras and worlds. From legendary figures to brand new heroes, the collection explores what truly makes someone a fighter beyond swords, spells, or armor.
The Will of the Empress
by Tamora Pierce
2005
Years after going their separate ways, Sandry, Tris, Daja, and Briar reunite for a trip to Namorn, where Sandry must confront an ambitious empress cousin. Old hurts, new loyalties, and political traps force the four to decide whether their magical bond still matters.
Trickster's Queen
by Tamora Pierce
2004
No longer a slave, Aly now serves as the central spy for a raka uprising in the Copper Isles. Balancing love, loyalty, and the meddling of gods, she helps turn whispered prophecy into a real bid to replace a corrupt royal line with a new queen.
Trickster's Choice
by Tamora Pierce
2003
Alianne, daughter of Alanna the Lioness and spymaster George Cooper, runs away after yet another argument about her future and is captured by slavers. Sold in the Copper Isles, she strikes a dangerous bargain with a trickster god and becomes embroiled in a brewing rebellion.
Shatterglass
by Tamora Pierce
2003
In the ancient city of Tharios, weather mage Tris is meant to study scrying on the wind. Instead she is saddled with Kethlun, a glassmaker whose lightning mixed magic creates orbs that reveal murders, pulling them both into a hunt for a hidden killer.
Air and Earth
by Tamora Pierce
2003
This bind up collects *Daja's Book* and *Briar's Book*, the dramatic conclusion of the Circle of Magic quartet. Together they follow the four young mages through wildfire, plague, and the hard choices that come with using their intertwined powers to save others.
Lady Knight
by Tamora Pierce
2002
Now a knight, Keladry expects to fight on the front lines when war with Scanra erupts. Instead she is put in charge of a refugee camp and secretly charged with stopping the mage behind terrifying killing devices, forcing her to redefine what heroism looks like.
Cold Fire
by Tamora Pierce
2002
Daja and smith mage Frostpine spend the winter in the icy city of Kugisko, where unexplained fires begin to devastate homes and a charity hospital. As she works with a firefighter she admires, Daja slowly realizes that someone close to her may be setting the blazes.
Street Magic
by Tamora Pierce
2001
Traveling in the eastern city of Chammur, plant mage Briar Moss spots a stone working street girl using dangerous, uncontrolled magic. As he tries to teach Evvy basic skills, gang wars and a bored noble patron drag them both into a deadly struggle for the city.
Squire
by Tamora Pierce
2001
Having passed her page exams, Kel becomes squire not to her idol Alanna but to Lord Raoul of Goldenlake. On campaign with the King's Own, she faces raiders, tournaments, court politics, and her own growing feelings, all under the shadow of the Ordeal that awaits her.
Page
by Tamora Pierce
2000
Kel is now a full page, juggling grueling training, a crippling fear of heights, and nobles who want her gone. When bandits strike and her timid maid is threatened, Kel's sense of justice forces her to act, whatever the cost to her own future.
Magic Steps
by Tamora Pierce
2000
In Summersea, thread mage Sandry discovers a boy whose dancing channels powerful magic. While she reluctantly learns to teach him, a ruthless magical assassin begins slaughtering a merchant clan, and only the combined talents of teacher and student can stop the killings.
First Test
by Tamora Pierce
1999
Keladry of Mindelan is the first girl to openly enter page training in Tortall. Given an unfair one year trial and relentless hazing, she must master weapons, endure prejudice, and prove that a girl can stand in the shield line beside any boy.
Briar's Book / The Healing in the Vine
by Tamora Pierce
1999
When a mysterious plague erupts in Summersea's poorest districts, plant mage Briar, his teacher Rosethorn, and the other young mages race to trace its source. Their search leads deep into the city's slums and forces Briar to risk everything for the street kids he once ran with.
Tris's Book
by Tamora Pierce
1998
After a devastating earthquake, Winding Circle's defenses lie weakened. When pirates armed with a new weapon attack the harbor, storm mage Tris and her foster siblings must combine their tangled powers to protect the temple city they now call home.
Daja's Book
by Tamora Pierce
1998
Daja, an outcast Trader and smith mage, travels with her friends to a drought stricken valley on the edge of disaster. As wildfires rage and old prejudices flare, her bond with living metal forces her to choose between the past that shunned her and the people she can save.
Sandry's Book / The Magic in the Weaving
by Tamora Pierce
1997
Four lonely children with strange ambient magic are brought to Winding Circle Temple and housed together in Discipline Cottage. As earthquakes, cave ins, and rising tensions threaten their new home, Sandry's gift with thread may be the key to binding them all.
The Realms of the Gods
by Tamora Pierce
1996
In the midst of a brutal war, Daine and Numair are swept into the Divine Realms, far from the kingdom that needs them. As Daine uncovers the truth of her parentage, the pair must find a perilous road home to confront an old enemy once and for all.
Emperor Mage
by Tamora Pierce
1995
Daine joins a Tortallan embassy to Carthak, charged with healing the emperor's beloved birds to ease tense relations. Surrounded by glittering decadence, cruelty, and gods who are losing patience, her magic and conscience pull her into dangerous court intrigues.
Wolf-Speaker
by Tamora Pierce
1993
Summoned by the wolves who once sheltered her, Daine travels to the valley of Dunlath and finds nobles poisoning the land for profit. With only her wild magic, a few allies, and a growing war looming, she must decide how far she will go to stop them.
Wild Magic
by Tamora Pierce
1992
Thirteen year old Daine, an orphan with an uncanny way with animals, takes a job helping the Queen's Riders drive ponies to Tortall. When monsters escape from myth and her wild magic surges beyond control, she must learn what she really is.
Lioness Rampant
by Tamora Pierce
1988
Alanna embarks on a desperate quest to find the Dominion Jewel, a legendary gem that could save Tortall in time of war. As old enemies rise and alliances shift, she races to protect her kingdom and claim her place as the Lioness of legend.
The Woman Who Rides Like a Man
by Tamora Pierce
1986
Newly made a knight, Alanna heads into the desert seeking adventure and freedom from court. Captured by a Bazhir tribe, she must prove herself as a warrior and shaman, confront her own power, and decide what kind of life she truly wants.
In the Hand of the Goddess
by Tamora Pierce
1984
Now a squire, Alanna serves Prince Jonathan while war with a neighboring kingdom looms. Guided by a mysterious goddess and torn between two very different suitors, she faces battlefields, assassins, and the growing threat of Duke Roger's sorcery.
Alanna: The First Adventure
by Tamora Pierce
1983
Noble girl Alanna of Trebond trades places with her twin brother and rides to court disguised as a boy so she can train as a knight. Surrounded by new friends, enemies, and hidden magic, she must keep her secret while surviving page training.
Where should I start?
If you want the classic Tortall hero's journey: Alanna: The First Adventure → In the Hand of the Goddess → The Woman Who Rides Like a Man → Lioness Rampant
If you love animal magic and epic stakes: Wild Magic → Wolf-Speaker → Emperor Mage → The Realms of the Gods
If you prefer found-family mages and quieter stakes: Sandry's Book / The Magic in the Weaving → Tris's Book → Daja's Book → Briar's Book / The Healing in the Vine
If you like gritty, street-level fantasy mysteries: Terrier → Bloodhound → Mastiff
If you want a recent prequel with a school setting: Tempests and Slaughter
Author bio
Tamora Pierce was born in South Connellsville, Pennsylvania, on December 13, 1954, and spent her early childhood crisscrossing small towns in coal country and then coastal California. Her mother meant to name her Tamara, but a nurse misheard it, and the unusual spelling stuck.
Books were a constant as her family moved from Dunbar to San Mateo, Miramar, El Granada, and Burlingame. She read anything she could find, from adventure stories to history, and started scribbling her own tales in sixth grade. Discovering The Lord of the Rings as a young reader opened the door to fantasy and showed her how large a made up world could feel.
When her parents divorced, Pierce, her mother, and her two younger sisters moved back to western Pennsylvania. High school in Fayette County and later Uniontown meant drama club rehearsals, singing, and assignments for the school paper. A teacher who took her writing seriously nudged her to keep at it instead of treating stories as a private escape.
Pierce attended the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where she studied writing and began the massive manuscript that would eventually become the four books of The Song of the Lioness. She originally imagined Alanna's adventures as one long adult novel. When that proved hard to sell, she reworked it for younger readers, splitting the story into Alanna: The First Adventure and its three sequels.
With Alanna's journey into knighthood, Pierce found the heart of her work, fantasy stories about girls who grab for power in worlds that often insist they should stand aside. In the decades that followed she returned to Tortall again and again, following new heroines like Daine in The Immortals, Kel in Protector of the Small, Aly in the Daughter of the Lioness books, and Beka Cooper in her Lower City journals. Later, the Numair Chronicles stepped back in time to show how a bookish Carthaki student named Arram grew into the mage readers already knew.
Alongside Tortall, she built a second universe around the temple city of Winding Circle and the merchants' port of Summersea.
In the Emelan books, the Circle of Magic quartet, The Circle Opens, and The Circle Reforged, Pierce followed four ambient mages whose power runs through thread, metal, weather, and plants. Those stories lean into found family and craft, but also into hard topics, plague, earthquakes, arson, war, and the way trauma lingers even after the immediate danger passes.
Her novels have reached readers around the world and earned honors including the Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Association for The Song of the Lioness and Protector of the Small. Beyond her core series she has written short fiction collected in Tortall and Other Lands, co edited anthologies such as Young Warriors, and co wrote the superhero comic White Tiger: A Hero's Compulsion.
Pierce often says that ideas come from the things she cannot stop thinking about. Everyday details, the feel of yarn in her hands, the behavior of neighborhood cats, a documentary about wildlife, have all slipped into her worlds as thread magic, talking animals, and rich ecosystems. Many of her characters borrow traits from friends, family, or former pets, then grow into their own people on the page.
She now lives in Syracuse, New York, with her husband, Tim Liebe, and a rotating household of cats, birds, and rescued creatures. She still writes most days, still answers reader questions when she can, and still believes that putting determined girls at the center of big adventures is one of the most useful things she can do.
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