Below is the complete list of Rita Mae Brown books in order. For each series, the chronological reading order is the same as the order of publication.
Publication Order of Mags Rogers Books
Publication Order of Mrs. Murphy Books
Publication Order of Runnymede Books
Publication Order of “Sister” Jane Books
Publication Order of Standalone Books
Publication Order of Collections Books
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
About Rita Mae Brown
Rita Mae Brown is an American novelist, screenwriter, poet, and mystery writer whose career has ranged from groundbreaking feminist fiction to long-running cozy mystery series. She is best known for Rubyfruit Jungle, a landmark 1973 novel about a young lesbian woman coming of age on her own terms, and for the Mrs. Murphy mysteries, written with her cat Sneaky Pie Brown credited as co-author. Her fiction spans literary novels, social satire, historical fiction, foxhunting mysteries, and animal-centered crime stories, often combining sharp humor with observations about class, gender, community, and human behavior.
Brown was born in Hanover, Pennsylvania, in 1944 and grew up in Florida. She attended the University of Florida before moving to New York, where she became involved in the feminist and gay-rights movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s. She later earned a degree in classics and English from New York University and continued graduate study at the New York School for Social Research and the School of Visual Arts.
Her literary breakthrough came with Rubyfruit Jungle. The novel follows Molly Bolt, a fiercely independent young woman who grows up poor in the South, refuses to conform to conventional expectations, and ultimately pursues a career in filmmaking. Its candid treatment of lesbian identity, ambition, sexuality, and class made it highly unusual for its time. Initially published by a small press, the book later reached a much wider readership and became a durable work of LGBTQ+ and feminist literature.
Brown continued exploring relationships, identity, and social expectations in novels such as In Her Day, Six of One, Southern Discomfort, and Sudden Death. Several of these books draw strongly on Southern settings and family histories, while others move into professional or sporting worlds. Her work is often satirical, with characters whose personal ambitions expose larger assumptions about status, gender, and respectability.
She also worked extensively in film and television, writing screenplays and scripts while continuing to publish fiction. Her experience as a screenwriter contributed to the brisk dialogue and strongly visual scenes that appear throughout much of her prose.
A major shift in Brown’s career came with Wish You Were Here in 1990, the first Mrs. Murphy mystery. The series centers on Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen, a resident of the fictional town of Crozet, Virginia, who becomes involved in local murder investigations. Harry’s pets—Mrs. Murphy, a tiger cat; Pewter, another cat; and Tucker, a corgi—observe clues humans frequently miss and communicate with one another, although their conversations remain beyond human understanding.
The books are credited to Rita Mae Brown and Sneaky Pie Brown, originally Brown’s own cat and later a continuing fictional co-author identity. Beneath the playful premise, the Mrs. Murphy mysteries examine small-town relationships, local politics, wealth, history, and recurring social tensions.
Brown created another mystery sequence with the “Sister” Jane Arnold books, beginning with Outfoxed. These novels draw on her deep involvement with foxhunting and center on Jane Arnold, master of a Virginia hunt. Like the Mrs. Murphy series, they use a close community and its traditions as the setting for crimes, but they place much greater emphasis on horses, hounds, land, and sporting culture.
Her nonfiction includes memoir, writing advice, social commentary, and works connected with animals and rural life. Across genres, Brown has remained difficult to categorize neatly. She has written both politically confrontational fiction and traditional mysteries, serious literary novels and books in which animals discuss the evidence.
That range is central to her career. Whether writing about Molly Bolt challenging social convention, Harry Haristeen investigating another suspicious death in Crozet, or Sister Jane navigating the politics of a hunt, Brown repeatedly returns to independent women whose communities expect them to behave differently. Her work combines rebellion with affection for place and tradition, making her bibliography unusually broad while retaining a recognizably sharp, unsentimental voice.