Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alexander’s Bridge | 1912 | Willa Cather | Buy |
| 2 | One of Ours | 1922 | Willa Cather | Buy |
| 3 | A Lost Lady | 1923 | Willa Cather | Buy |
| 4 | The Professor’s House | 1925 | Willa Cather | Buy |
| 5 | My Mortal Enemy | 1926 | Willa Cather | Buy |
| 6 | Death Comes for the Archbishop | 1927 | Willa Cather | Buy |
| 7 | Shadows on the Rock | 1931 | Willa Cather | Buy |
| 8 | Lucy Gayheart | 1935 | Willa Cather | Buy |
| 9 | Sapphira and the Slave Girl | 1940 | Willa Cather | Buy |
Willa Cather published nine standalone novels between 1912 and 1940. Her debut, Alexander’s Bridge, was set in Boston and London, but she quickly turned to the American settings that would define her career. One of Ours won the Pulitzer Prize, and A Lost Lady became one of her most widely read shorter novels. Death Comes for the Archbishop, set in nineteenth-century New Mexico, is often ranked among the greatest American novels of the twentieth century.
Her later standalone works include The Professor’s House, which blends academic life with the discovery of an ancient cliff dwelling, and Shadows on the Rock, a quiet story of French colonists in Quebec. Lucy Gayheart and Sapphira and the Slave Girl, her final novel, round out a body of work that covered American life from the frontier era to the early twentieth century.