• “The smartest historical sci-fi adventure-romance story ever written by a science Ph.D. with a background in scripting 'Scrooge McDuck' comics.”—Salon.com
  • A time-hopping, continent-spanning salmagundi of genres.”
    —ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
  • “These books have to be word-of-mouth books because they're too weird to describe to anybody.”
    —Jackie Cantor, Diana's first editor

The Outlander Series

The OUTLANDER series started by accident in the late 1980s when I decided to write a novel for practice. My goals were::

  1. To learn what it took to write a novel, and
  2. To decide whether I really wanted to do that for real.

I did, and I did—and here we all are, still trying to figure out what the heck you call books that nobody can describe, but that fortunately most people seem to enjoy.

In essence, these novels are Big, Fat, Historical Fiction, à la James Clavell and James Michener.  However, owing to the fact that I wrote the first book for practice, didn’t intend to show it to anyone, and therefore saw no reason to limit myself, they  include…

history, warfare, medicine, sex, violence, spirituality, honor, betrayal, vengeance, hope and despair, relationships, the building and destruction of families and societies, time travel, moral ambiguity, swords, herbs, horses, gambling (with cards, dice, and lives), voyages of daring, journeys of both body and soul…

you know, the usual stuff of literature.

I don’t like to do things I’ve already done, so (in spite of the fact that this is a series, and does involve the same central characters throughout) each book is unique in structure, tone, approach, and theme. The books can be read independently of each other (I can’t be sure that people seeing the newest one on a bookstore table will realize that it’s part of a series, so the books are (with minor exceptions) engineered to stand alone)mdash; but if you have a choice, I’d strongly recommend beginning at the beginning, with OUTLANDER, and reading through the story in order of publication (I’d say “in chronological order,” but that isn’t necessarily a useful term when you’re playing fast and loose with time, which I not infrequently do):

  1. OUTLANDER, which is published as Cross Stitch in the U.K.
  2. DRAGONFLY IN AMBER
  3. VOYAGER
  4. DRUMS OF AUTUMN
  5. THE FIERY CROSS
  6. A BREATH OF SNOW AND ASHES
  7. AN ECHO IN THE BONE
  8. WRITTEN IN MY OWN HEART’S BLOOD. Nicknamed “MOBY,” the eighth book in the series was first published in the U.S. in the summer of 2014.
  9. GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE— which I am currently writing and researching— will be the ninth book in the OUTLANDER series of novels. Completion and publishing dates have not been announced yet.

The Lord John Grey novels are in fact part of the series, rather than being a spin-off—but these novels are constructed differently and are focused on Lord John as a central character. Also, while they do include Jamie Fraser as an important character, they don’t include Claire, as many take place during a stretch of time where Claire wasn’t physically present. This Lord John sub-series can be read either independently of the main series, or as part of it. 

If you choose to read the Lord John stories as part of the Outlander series, you can read these novels after reading VOYAGER. See my Chronology of the Outlander series for more details.

THE EXILE, A Graphic Novel

There is one more addition to the OUTLANDER series— THE EXILE, a graphic novel.

For those unfamiliar with the term, a graphic novel is—in essence—a comic book for grown-ups. {g}  That is, the story is conveyed in visual images, augmented by dialogue. THE EXILE covers (roughly) the first third of  the material in OUTLANDER, but is not just an adaptation of the original novel. The editor who invited me to do it (an opportunity I leapt at, as I grew up reading comic books, and in fact, used to write comic scripts for Walt Disney) asked for “a new Jamie and Claire story, but one set within the parameters of OUTLANDER.” To which I said, “Hmmmm….” And what I came up with is Jamie’s (and his godfather Murtagh’s) view of events—meaning that we see all the things Claire didn’t see, didn’t understand, or was kept out of.

The OUTLANDER Series

Below is a list (and reading order) of books (with example of cover art) in my OUTLANDER series with links to their web pages for more information:

Outlander-cover-medium

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Outlander

OUTLANDER (also published in the U.K. under the title "CROSS STITCH") is the best-selling first novel in my Outlander series of books. It was first published in the U.S.A. in 1991. What Is OUTLANDER? Frankly, I’ve never been able to describe this book in twenty-five words or less, and neither has anyone else in the twenty years since it was first published.  I’ve seen it (and the rest of the series) sold—with evident success—as <deep breath> Literature, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical NON-fiction (really. Well, they are very accurate), Science Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery, Romance, Military History (no, honest), Gay and Lesbian Fiction, and…Horror. (Really!  One of my books beat both George R.R. Martin and Stephen King for a Quill Award in 2006.) Anyway, the only way I’ve ever found of describing this book to anyone is to begin telling them the story. So here goes…. In 1946, after WW II, a young Englishwoman named Claire Beauchamp Randall goes to the Scottish Highlands with her husband, Frank. She’s an ex-combat nurse, he’s been in the army as […]

Dragonfly-1sted-Delacorte

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Dragonfly in Amber

DRAGONFLY IN AMBER is the second in my OUTLANDER series of major novels, and was first published in the U.S.A. on July 1, 1992. 25th Anniversary Edition For those people who have been asking if/when Random House, my main publisher in the U.S.A., might be going to do special Anniversary editions of the books following OUTLANDER… yes, they are! The new 25th Anniversary edition of DRAGONFLY IN AMBER is now available! (See the cover art at right.) It was released in the U.S.A. and some international markets on October 24, 2017. The other versions of DRAGONFLY are still available, so be sure you are ordering the new “25th Anniversary Edition” if it is the one you want. Please look for it at your local independent bookstore. If you prefer to order online, here are some quick links to order the anniversary edition in hardcover or ebook: Want a new hardcover signed by me, but can’t come to one of my events? Click here for information or to order a signed […]

Cover art for the 25th anniversary edition of VOYAGER

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Voyager

"He was dead. However, his nose throbbed painfully, which he thought odd in the circumstances." Thus begins the third book in the OUTLANDER series, in which we learn that—despite his best efforts—Jamie Fraser did not die on the battlefield at Culloden. He isn’t pleased. Back in the 20th century, Claire is equally shocked by the revelation of Jamie’s survival—but much more pleased about it. We hear Jamie’s story as he moves forward, trying to forge a life from the bits of his soul and his country that are left, and hear Claire’s brief recounting of the twenty years since she left him at Culloden, while Roger MacKenzie and Brianna (Claire and Jamie’s daughter) draw close to each other as they sleuth through the clues of the past, in an urgent hunt for Jamie Fraser. Can they find him? And if they do, will Claire go back to him? And if she does… what will happen then? To be honest, it would be easier to describe what doesn’t happen than what does.  The story moves from the […]

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Drums of Autumn

“I heard the drums long before they came in sight.   The beating echoed in the pit of my stomach, as though I too were hollow… it was a hot day, even for Charleston in June.  The best places were on the seawall, where the air moved; here below, it was like being roasted alive.  My shift was soaked through, and the cotton bodice clung between my breasts.  I wiped my face for the tenth time in as many minutes and lifted the heavy coil of my hair, hoping for a cooling breeze upon my neck.  I was morbidly aware of necks at the moment…” DRUMS OF AUTUMN opens with a hanging.   One of Jamie’s old companions from his days in Ardsmuir prison is being hanged for theft, and Jamie has come to lend what support he can.   Suddenly the proceedings are disrupted, as another prisoner makes a break for it–and Jamie, moved by the death of his friend, impulsively helps the man, a pirate named Stephen Bonnet, to escape; a […]

Cover art for THE FIERY CROSS by Diana Gabaldon

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The Fiery Cross

THE FIERY CROSS is the fifth book in my OUTLANDER series of books, and follows DRUMS OF AUTUMN. Set against the War of the Regulation in North Carolina (the first tax-payer’s rebellion in the American colonies, and a precursor to the full-blown Revolution), the story deals with Jamie Fraser’s efforts to protect his family, build a community on Fraser’s Ridge, and keep his land—this last requiring him to walk a delicate tight-rope between the pressing urgency of the rebellion and the increasingly unsteady but still dangerously powerful government. In these efforts, Jamie is mostly aided—and occasionally hindered—by his wife Claire, who has become the conjure-woman for the Ridge; his daughter Brianna, whose 20th-century inventiveness may possibly kill them all; his new son-in-law, Roger MacKenzie, with whom he has a rather wary relationship, owing to his having at one point sold Roger to the Iroquois (under the misapprehension that Roger had raped his daughter, but still…); and to Roger’s sense of inferiority, comparing his own budding skills at swordcraft, farming, and leadership […]

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A Breath of Snow and Ashes

Time is a lot of the things people say that God is. There’s the always preexisting, and having no end.  There’s the notion of being all powerful—because nothing can stand against time, can it?  Not mountains, not armies. And time is, of course, all-healing.  Give anything enough time, and everything is taken care of: all pain encompassed, all hardship erased, all loss subsumed. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Remember, man, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return. And if Time is anything akin to God, I suppose that Memory must be the Devil. That’s the Prologue to A BREATH OF SNOW AND ASHES, the sixth novel in the bestselling OUTLANDER series of major novels (following THE FIERY CROSS).   Here, history once more catches up with the Frasers, and Jamie is at last obliged to declare himself a rebel, though this means the sacrifice of much of what he’s built.  The American Revolution is a civil war, with neighbor turned against neighbor, and the community of Fraser’s Ridge […]

An Echo in the Bone cover

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An Echo in the Bone

The seventh—but NOT the last!—novel in the OUTLANDER series, An Echo In The Bone, has four main storylines: Jamie and Claire Fraser, are now in the midst of the American Revolution; Their daughter Brianna, her husband Roger MacKenzie, and their two children, settled at Lallybroch in the 1970′s (finding their feet after their return from the past—but are unaware that that past is just about to leap out at them again); Lord John Grey and his step-son William (Jamie’s unacknowledged illegitimate son), are embroiled in the Revolution on the British side with William in the army and Lord John on the clandestine side of intelligence; and Jamie’s nephew Young Ian: his troubled love-life is about to take another sharp left turn. The US cover design for this book shows a caltrop (and not, as one wit suggested to me, a Celtic chicken-foot)—an ancient military weapon, designed to stop oncoming cavalry (and still in equally effective use by the modern Highway Patrol, for stopping cars).   A caltrop resembles a child’s jack, […]

MOBY-cover-final-US1

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Written in My Own Heart’s Blood

The Eighth Book in the Outlander Series… The eighth major novel in the Outlander series of novels is titled WRITTEN IN MY OWN HEART’S BLOOD. It continues the story of Jamie and Claire and the constellation of other OUTLANDER characters. I call the book “MOBY” for short. My Own Heart’s Blood = MOHB = MOH-B = Moby. -Diana Publisher’s Description In OUTLANDER, the story of Claire Beauchamp Randall was introduced, an English ex-combat nurse who walks through a stone circle in the Scottish Highlands in 1946, and disappears . . . into 1743. The story unfolded from there in six more novels, and CNN has called it "a grand adventure written on a canvas that probes the heart, weighs the soul and measures the human spirit across [centuries]." Now the story continues in book eight, WRITTEN IN MY OWN HEART’S BLOOD. It is June 1778, and the world seems to be turning upside-down. The British Army is withdrawing from Philadelphia, with George Washington in pursuit, and for the first time, […]

2021-04-15-BEES-PRH-US-cover

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Go Tell The Bees That I Am Gone

GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE (aka “BEES”) is the ninth book in my OUTLANDER series of novels which focus on Jamie Fraser and Claire Beauchamp Randall Fraser. BEES follows WRITTEN IN MY OWN HEART’S BLOOD, aka "MOBY," which is the eighth book in my OUTLANDER series. BEES was first published in hardcover on Tuesday, November 23, 2021 in the U.S.A., Canada, U.K., and Germany. A Spanish-language edition was first released in Spain on Thursday, July 7, 2022. Information on Global Publication Dates. New! The pull-down purchasing menus at left have been updated with many vendors, including those in the U.S.A., as well as international purchasing links for Canada, the U.K., Germany (German-language edition) and Spain (Spanish-language edition). Please support independently owned bookstores whenever you can, including in your neighborhood. The German-language edition is the first version of BEES translated in a language other than English. Barbara Schnell translated BEES from English into German. A Spanish-language edition was released in Spain on July 7, 2022. Publisher’s Description for […]

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The Outlandish Companion – Vol. One

Volume One of THE OUTLANDISH COMPANION (aka "OC") is a non-fiction book, supplying information, background, entertaining trivia and the answers to the many questions that readers asked me about the first four novels in my OUTLANDER series of books. It was first published in the U.S.A. in March, 2015. Volume One of the OC is an updated and revised version of the original, single-volume OUTLANDISH COMPANION, first published in 1999. By 2015, there were four more novels in the main OUTLANDER series (and quite a few other related books, to boot), so a second volume of the OC was added, a project which took several years. What Does The Revised OC Contain? How is the new OUTLANDISH COMPANION different from the original edition? To start with, there were two whole chapters (and a number of smaller items scattered here and there) of the original COMPANION that had become completely obsolete: the chapter about On-Line Communities and Resources (the internet has changed a lot since 1998 and most of the sites […]