The Chronicles of Narnia Books in Order

The Chronicles of Narnia is C. S. Lewis’s best-known series, seven short fantasy novels that move between our world and the magical land of Narnia. Children step through wardrobes, paintings, rings, and railway platforms and find themselves in a country where animals talk and trees sometimes walk.

Narnia itself feels both homely and ancient. There are beavers who serve tea, dwarfs brewing at campfires, fauns with armfuls of parcels, but also centaurs who read the stars and lions who sing new worlds into being. At the center stands Aslan, a great lion who is king of Narnia and yet not tame, whose arrival changes everything.

Most readers first meet Narnia in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, when the four Pevensie siblings stumble out of wartime England into a forest locked in “always winter and never Christmas.” There they discover that prophecy, betrayal, and sacrifice are woven into the land’s story, and that even ordinary children can be called to fight for a kingdom.

From there the series opens out. Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader follow a young king fighting to reclaim his throne and then sailing east in search of lost friends and the world’s end. The Silver Chair sends schoolchildren underground to rescue a missing prince, while The Horse and His Boy takes place along Narnia’s southern border, tracing a desperate desert ride to stop an invasion.

The Magician’s Nephew reaches back to the very beginning, showing how Aslan called Narnia out of nothing and how evil first entered the new world. The Last Battle brings the long history to a close, as false leaders misuse Aslan’s name and a remnant must decide whom to trust when the sky itself seems to be falling.

Across the books Lewis mixes fairy-tale adventure with questions about courage, loyalty, mercy, and pride. Children face bullying, homesickness, and sibling rivalry alongside dragons, witches, and talking beasts, and their growth often comes through repentance as much as heroics. The stories can be enjoyed simply as imaginative quests, yet they also carry a quiet Christian undercurrent that many readers only notice on rereading.

You can read the series either in publication order, starting with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, or in Narnian chronological order, beginning with The Magician’s Nephew. This page lays out the books both ways and offers enough background to help you decide where you—or a child you’re reading with—might want to step through the wardrobe first.