Not Actually Series

Many authors have book series where the titles follow a pattern. While I was generating the data for the book pages on this site I was amused when the stream of data pulled up titles that looked as though they could be series but weren't, so I (eventually) made this page to showcase them.

The rules are that there have to be at least three books and they have to be written by a variety of authors. I've deliberately ignored some super common title patterns featuring words like Death, Dead and Murder since those just don't seem very interesting as you know the bookshop is crammed with them. And this is all pulled from just books that I have personally read.

The Someone's Wife Series

It was reading The Mapmaker's Wife that spurred me on to actually putting this page together so I could see whether my feeling that I'd read a ton of books with this pattern of title was correct. I've not read any books called The Someone's Husband, in fact in an (admittedly cursory) search I couldn't even find any books with that pattern of title at all! There's also a possible series of The Something Wife but I haven't yet read enough entries from it for it to count.

The Doctor's Wife by Brian Moore
The Mapmaker's Wife by Hannah Evans
The Photographer's Wife by Suzanne Joinson
The Salaryman's Wife by Sujata Massey
The Senator's Wife by Sue Miller
The Soldier's Wife by Joanna Trollope
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

The Something Girl Series

I have read a book called The Something Boy (The American Boy to be precise) but there aren't yet enough entries for it to count as a series.

The Burning Girl by Mark Billingham
The Einstein Girl by Philip Sington
The Floating Girl by Sujata Massey
The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies

The Woman Series

Of course there's a series of books about women too, though I'm being less restrictive on the pattern of the title here.

The Other Woman by Jill McGown
The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey
The Woman in Blue (Ruth Galloway, #8) by Elly Griffiths
The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware
The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn

The Man Series

But there are more books about men in their own right (according to the titles at least) than women.

The Ever-Running Man by Marcia Muller
The Lost Man by Jane Harper
The Man Who Disappeared by Clare Morrall
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick
The Man Who Was Thursday by GK Chesterton
The Mushroom Man by Stuart Pawson
The Roundabout Man by Clare Morrall
The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal
The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett

The People Series

This series definitely feels like it could do with a few more entries. Interesting that the adjectives here (when I put the page together they were Normal, Ordinary and Real) are all rather featureless.

Normal People by Sally Rooney
Ordinary People by Diana Evans
Real People by Alison Lurie

The House Series

Stepping away from people there's a whole street of books about houses. (There are lots of books about homes but the titles are diverse enough that they don't read like series entries.)

The House At Riverton by Kate Morton
The House at Sea's End (Ruth Galloway, #3) by Elly Griffiths
The Island House by Amanda Brittany
The Merchant's House by Kate Ellis
The Stranger House by Reginald Hill
The Winter House by Nicci Gerrard

The Room Series

And inside the house rooms make for varied titles.

The Glass Room by Ann Cleeves
The Hidden Room by Stella Duffy
The Locked Room by Elly Griffiths
The Red Room by Nicci French
The Spare Room by Helen Garner

The Beach Series

Generally I think the titles need to to have more pattern than just containing a word to make them sound like they could be a series, but I think this just about counts if you fancy some beach reads.

Brazzaville Beach by William Boyd
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
On The Beach by Nevil Shute
Ruin Beach (DI Ben Kitto, #2) by Kate Rhodes
The Beach Road by Sarah Diamond

The Colour Series

If you want to colour coordinate your bookshelves it looks like black, white, blue and red are your main options. I've excluded books with the colour later in the title as they stop looking like series again, which is why Ann Cleeves' Raven Black doesn't show up here despite her commitment to writing one book for each variation of this series! Also including the colour later in the title means that titles like Red Team Blues and Black Swan Green get to count double which seems like cheating.

I'm also divided on whether these really count given the number of different authors here who are using colours to theme their own series titles. And incidentally even if I'd read more than one of his books John D. MacDonald wouldn't get in here because his titles nearly all have the colour later in the title.