Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | August Is A Wicked Month | 1965 | Edna O’Brien | Buy |
| 2 | Casualties of Peace | 1966 | Edna O’Brien | Buy |
| 3 | Zee & Co. | 1971 | Edna O’Brien | Buy |
| 4 | A Pagan Place | 1971 | Edna O’Brien | Buy |
| 5 | Night | 1973 | Edna O’Brien | Buy |
| 6 | Johnny I Hardly Knew You | 1977 | Edna O’Brien | Buy |
| 7 | The Dazzle | 1981 | Edna O’Brien | Buy |
| 8 | The Rescue | 1983 | Edna O’Brien | Buy |
| 9 | The High Road | 1988 | Edna O’Brien | Buy |
| 10 | On The Bone | 1989 | Edna O’Brien | Buy |
| 11 | Time and Tide | 1992 | Edna O’Brien | Buy |
| 12 | House of Splendid Isolation | 1994 | Edna O’Brien | Buy |
| 13 | Down by the River | 1997 | Edna O’Brien | Buy |
| 14 | Wild Decembers | 1999 | Edna O’Brien | Buy |
| 15 | In the Forest | 2002 | Edna O’Brien | Buy |
| 16 | The Light of Evening | 2006 | Edna O’Brien | Buy |
| 17 | The Little Red Chairs | 2015 | Edna O’Brien | Buy |
| 18 | Girl | 2019 | Edna O’Brien | Buy |
Edna O’Brien’s eighteen standalone novels span from the mid-1960s to 2019 and cover a remarkable range of subject matter. Early works like August Is A Wicked Month and Casualties of Peace explore female desire and independence in ways that continued to challenge Irish convention. Later novels turned to political violence and social upheaval — House of Splendid Isolation examines the Troubles through a hostage situation, Down by the River addresses the controversy over abortion rights in Ireland, and In the Forest is based on a real triple murder.
Her final two novels pushed even further outward. The Little Red Chairs (2015) follows a mysterious stranger — based loosely on Radovan Karadzic — who arrives in a small Irish town, while Girl (2019) tells the story of girls kidnapped by Boko Haram. These books proved that O’Brien’s literary ambitions only grew as she aged, tackling global subjects while maintaining the psychological intimacy of her earlier work.