There's no better feeling - you discover a book you love, then realise it's just the first instalment in an epic series. And you've got so much great reading ahead of you.
You might find that a lot of these bingeable book series are crime-related - Bosch, Strike, Rebus, the Thursday Murder Club, and so on. So we wanted to highlight some of the other great series you can dive into when you're in the mood for something different.
From a science fiction epic where humanity faces an invasion from a distant solar system with three suns, to a sweeping family saga about six adopted sisters summoned home following the death of their father, there's something for everyone on this list.
Click the links below to get started.
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The Seven Sisters series (8 books) – Lucinda Riley
The series follows the story of seven sisters, and begins as their adoptive father – the elusive billionaire they call Pa Salt – dies, and they are each given a tantalising clue to their true heritage. Each book is the story of one of the sisters as they trace their origins all over the world in spellbinding tales of love and loss.
Inspired by the Greek mythology surrounding the famous star constellation, the Seven Sisters series is an epic, page-turning saga.
Start with The Seven Sisters: Maia’s Story (book, audiobook on BorrowBox)
The Three-Body Problem series (3 books) – Cixin Liu
1967: Ye Wenjie witnesses Red Guards beat her father to death during China's Cultural Revolution. This singular event will shape not only the rest of her life but also the future of mankind.
Four decades later, Beijing police ask nanotech engineer Wang Miao to infiltrate a secretive cabal of scientists after a spate of inexplicable suicides. Wang's investigation will lead him to a mysterious online game and immerse him in a virtual world ruled by the intractable and unpredictable interaction of its three suns.
This is the Three-Body Problem and it is the key to everything: the key to the scientists' deaths, the key to a conspiracy that spans light-years and the key to the extinction-level threat humanity now faces.
Start with The Three Body Problem (book, ebook on BorrowBox)
Beartown series (3 books) - Frederick Backman
Beartown is a small town in a large Swedish forest. For most of the year it is under a thick blanket of snow, experiencing the kind of cold and dark that brings people closer together - or pulls them apart. Its isolation means that Beartown has been slowly shrinking with each passing year. But now the town is on the verge of an astonishing revival.
Everyone can feel the excitement. A bright new future is just around the corner. Until the day it is all put in jeopardy by a single, brutal act. It divides the town into those who think it should be hushed up and forgotten, and those who'll risk the future to see justice done.
At last, it falls to one young man to find the courage to speak the truth that it seems no one else wants to hear. With the town's future at stake, no one can stand by or stay silent. Everyone is on one side or the other. Which side would you be on?
Start with Beartown (book)
Crazy Rich Asians series (3 books) – Kevin Kwan
New Yorker Rachel Chu does not know that her loving boyfriend, Nicholas Young, also happens to be Singapore’s most eligible bachelor and likely heir to a massive fortune. So when she agrees to spend the summer in Nick’s home, her life unexpectedly becomes an obstacle course of old money, new money, nosy relatives, and scheming social climbers. And that’s all before she discovers the true identity of her long-lost father...
Kevin Kwan’s New York Times bestselling series reveals the outrageous world of high net worth society with humor and heart.
Start with Crazy Rich Asians (book)
A Court of Thorns & Roses series (5 books) - Sarah J Maas
Feyre's survival rests upon her ability to hunt and kill - the forest where she lives is a cold, bleak place in the long winter months. So when she spots a deer in the forest being pursued by a wolf, she cannot resist fighting it for the flesh. But to do so, she must kill the predator and killing something so precious comes at a price…
Dragged to a magical kingdom for the murder of a faerie, Feyre discovers that her captor, his face obscured by a jewelled mask, is hiding far more than his piercing green eyes would suggest. Feyre's presence at the court is closely guarded, and as she begins to learn why, her feelings for him turn from hostility to passion and the faerie lands become an even more dangerous place. Feyre must fight to break an ancient curse, or she will lose him forever.
Lose yourself in a land of legends, and a fae world so sumptuous that you may never return home...
Start with A Court of Thorns & Roses (book, ebook on BorrowBox)
The Kingsbridge series (3 books) - Ken Follett
1135. In a troubled world a resourceful monk strives to build the world's greatest Gothic cathedral.
A spellbinding epic tale of ambition, anarchy, and absolute power set against the sprawling medieval canvas of twelfth-century England, this is Ken Follett's classic historical masterpiece.
The Pillars of the Earth tells the story of Philip, prior of Kingsbridge, a devout and resourceful monk driven to build the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has known… of Tom, the mason who becomes his architect – a man divided in his soul… of the beautiful, elusive Lady Aliena, haunted by a secret shame… and of a struggle between good and evil that will turn church against state, and brother against brother.
If three books aren’t enough, you can also read two prequel novels to the series!
Start with Pillars of the Earth (book, audiobook on BorrowBox)
Chocolat series (4 books) - Joanne Harris
In the small French village of Lansquenet, nothing much has changed in a hundred years. Then an exotic stranger, Vianne Rocher, blows in on the changing wind with her small daughter, and opens a chocolate boutique directly opposite the church. Soon the villagers cannot keep away, for Vianne can divine their most hidden desires.
But it's the beginning of Lent, the season of abstinence, and Father Reynaud denounces her as a serious moral danger to his flock. Perhaps even a witch...
A beguiling series full of strong female characters, charming settings, delicious food and a sprinkling of magic.
Start with Chocolat (book, ebook on BorrowBox)
The Dark Tower series (8 books) - Stephen King
The Dark Tower series tells the story of Roland Deschain, Mid-World’s last gunslinger, who is traveling southeast across Mid-World’s post-apocalyptic landscape, searching for the powerful but elusive magical edifice known as The Dark Tower.
Located in the fey region of End-World, amid a sea of singing red roses, the Dark Tower is the nexus point of the time-space continuum. It is the heart of all worlds, but it is also under threat. Someone, or something, is using the evil technology of the Great Old Ones to destroy it.
Inspired in equal parts by Robert Browning’s poem, “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came,” J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, and Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Western classics, The Dark Tower series is an epic of Arthurian proportions.
Start with The Gunslinger (book)
The Outlander series (9 books) – Diana Gabaldon
What if your future lay in the past?
1946, and Claire Randall goes to the Scottish Highlands with her husband Frank. It's a second honeymoon, a chance to re-establish their loving marriage. But one afternoon, Claire walks through a circle of standing stones and vanishes into 1743, where the first person she meets is a British army officer - her husband's six-times great-grandfather.
Unfortunately, Black Jack Randall is not the man his descendant is, and while trying to escape him, Claire falls into the hands of a gang of Scottish outlaws, and finds herself a Sassenach - an outlander - in danger from both Jacobites and Redcoats.
Marooned amid danger, passion and violence, her only chance of safety lies in Jamie Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior. What begins in compulsion becomes urgent need, and Claire finds herself torn between two very different men, in two irreconcilable lives.
Start with Outlander (book, audiobook on CD)
