Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | A Garden of Earthly Delights | 1967 | Joyce Carol Oates | Buy |
| 2 | Expensive People | 1968 | Joyce Carol Oates | Buy |
| 3 | Them | 1969 | Joyce Carol Oates | Buy |
| 4 | Wonderland | 1971 | Joyce Carol Oates | Buy |
The Wonderland Quartet is a sequence of four novels Joyce Carol Oates published between 1967 and 1971. Each book follows a different protagonist from a different social class, exploring what it means to be American during a period of rapid change. A Garden of Earthly Delights centers on a migrant worker’s daughter, Expensive People examines suburban affluence, them traces a Detroit family through poverty and the 1967 riots, and Wonderland follows a young man’s journey through the medical profession.
them won the National Book Award in 1970 and remains one of Oates’s most acclaimed works. The quartet is not a traditional series with recurring characters but rather four thematically linked novels that together form a portrait of American society.