Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Leaving Atlanta | 2002 | Tayari Jones | Buy |
| 2 | The Untelling | 2005 | Tayari Jones | Buy |
| 3 | Silver Sparrow | 2011 | Tayari Jones | Buy |
| 4 | An American Marriage | 2018 | Tayari Jones | Buy |
| 5 | Half Light | 2020 | Tayari Jones | Buy |
| 6 | Kin | 2026 | Tayari Jones | Buy |
Tayari Jones has published six standalone novels over more than two decades, each set against the backdrop of the American South. Her fiction returns again and again to Atlanta, a city she knows well, and to the tensions that run through families and communities shaped by race, class, and history. Leaving Atlanta (2002) told the story of three children living through the real-life Atlanta child murders of the early 1980s, while The Untelling (2005) followed a young woman grappling with a family tragedy she has never fully processed.
Silver Sparrow (2011) explored the fallout of a man’s secret double life through the eyes of his two daughters, and An American Marriage (2018) examined what happens to love when injustice intervenes. Her more recent works, Half Light (2020) and Kin (2026), continue her interest in the personal costs of broader social forces. Each novel stands on its own, but together they form a body of work rooted in the same questions about belonging, loyalty, and what people owe each other.