Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ellen Rogers | 1941 | James T. Farrell | Buy |
| 2 | Bernard Carr | 1946 | James T. Farrell | Buy |
| 3 | The Road Between | 1949 | James T. Farrell | Buy |
| 4 | Gas-house McGinty | 1950 | James T. Farrell | Buy |
| 5 | It Has Come to Pass | 1958 | James T. Farrell | Buy |
| 6 | Yet Other Waters | 1960 | James T. Farrell | N/A |
| 7 | Boarding House Blues | 1961 | James T. Farrell | N/A |
| 8 | The Silence of History | 1964 | James T. Farrell | N/A |
| 9 | What Time Collects | 1965 | James T. Farrell | Buy |
| 10 | Lonely for the Future | 1966 | James T. Farrell | Buy |
| 11 | When Time was Born | 1966 | James T. Farrell | Buy |
| 12 | A Brand New Life | 1968 | James T. Farrell | Buy |
| 13 | Invisible Swords | 1971 | James T. Farrell | Buy |
| 14 | The Dunne Family | 1976 | James T. Farrell | Buy |
| 15 | Olive and Mary Anne | 1977 | James T. Farrell | Buy |
| 16 | The Death of Nora Ryan | 1978 | James T. Farrell | Buy |
| 17 | Sam Holman | 1983 | James T. Farrell | Buy |
| 18 | Dreaming Baseball | 2007 | James T. Farrell | Buy |
James T. Farrell published eighteen standalone novels over a career that stretched from 1941 to the posthumous release of Dreaming Baseball in 2007. These books return again and again to the same neighborhoods, families, and social pressures that defined the Studs Lonigan and Danny O’Neill cycles. Ellen Rogers (1941) centers on a young Chicago woman caught up with a manipulative man. Bernard Carr (1946) and The Road Between (1949) follow a young writer trying to establish himself, a premise with obvious autobiographical roots.
Later novels like The Silence of History (1964), Lonely for the Future (1966), and Invisible Swords (1971) continued to explore working-class and lower-middle-class life in Chicago, though by this point Farrell’s brand of social realism had fallen out of critical favor. The books sold modestly and received less attention than his earlier work. Still, Farrell kept writing at a steady pace until his death in 1979, and several manuscripts were published posthumously. Dreaming Baseball, a novel about a Chicago White Sox pitcher during the 1919 Black Sox scandal, did not appear until 2007, nearly three decades after Farrell’s death.