Diana Gabaldon
Diana Gabaldon is an author.
Diana Gabaldon has a doctorate in behavioural ecology and was writing scientific software when she started Outlander as a practice novel she had no intention of showing anyone. She posted excerpts to a CompuServe forum, someone asked for the rest, and the result is a nine-book series about a Second World War nurse who steps through a stone circle into 1743. The research is genuinely deep, the books are enormous, and the Starz adaptation has now run for a decade.
Books (15)
- Written in My Own Hearts Blood (2014)
- The Exile (2010)
- Excalibur (1995)
- The Outlandish Companion (1999)
- Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (2020)
- MatchUp (2017)
- An Echo in the Bone (2009)
- Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade (2007)
- The Fiery Cross (2005)
- A Breath of Snow and Ashes (2005)
- Lord John and the private matter (2003)
- Drums of Autumn (1997)
- Voyager (1994)
- Dragonfly in Amber (1992)
- Outlander (1991)
Where to start with Diana Gabaldon
Start at the start, since these do not work out of order. Outlander is the first and sets the pattern: history, romance, medicine and a great deal of Scotland. Dragonfly in Amber and Voyager are the strongest of the early run. Drums of Autumn moves the story to America, and Lord John and the private matter opens the side series if you want the smaller books.
The Outlander novels
Read these in order, because they genuinely do not work otherwise. The first three are the strongest run, and Drums of Autumn is where the story leaves Scotland for colonial America and the scale of the thing becomes clear.
The later books and the side series
The back half of the series plus the Lord John books, which are shorter mysteries following a supporting character and a good way to keep going between the enormous main novels. The Outlandish Companion is the reference volume.