Books in Order: A Comprehensive Guide to Rebecca Stead's Works

Rebecca Stead didn't start out planning to write for kids — she worked as a public advocate first, still in New York City, the place that appears throughout her fiction. The turn toward writing came almost by accident: after her young child knocked a laptop off a table and wiped out her saved work, she started spending time in a local bookstore restocking the books she'd loved as a kid, and the shop became something like a second home before it became a career.

Her debut novel, First Light, arrived in 2007. This guide runs all seven of her novels since, ending with 2023's The Lost Library, co-written with Wendy Mass — sixteen years of work from a writer still rooted in the city that shaped her fiction.