Katherine Rundell Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Katherine Rundell is an award-winning and bestselling author of young adult fiction. As a child, she grew up in Belgium, Zimbabwe, and London since her parents moved around a lot during this time.
Since 2008, she has been working as a Renaissance literature fellow at the Oxford-based All Souls College.

Rundell made her debut with the publishing of “The Girl Savage,” her debut novel in 2011 which would become a bestselling title.

She would then pen several novels and works of fiction including contributions to other series, collections of short fiction, an omnibus, and even edited “The Book of Hopes” anthology which was published in 2020.
Since Katherine Rundells works have become very popular, they have been translated into more than thirty languages and won many awards.

Some of the awards she has won include the Le Prix Sorcieres in France, the Costa Childrens Book Award, the Andersen Prize in Italy, and the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize among many others.
She has also been involved in the writing of plays including “Life According to Saki” in 2016, which was the winner of the Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh award.
She also won an Outstanding Original Interactive Programme Emmy Award for a short film titled “Oculus Rift.”

Rundell’s father used to work as a government development adviser for the United Kingdom when she was a child while her mother taught French.

At some point, her father was sent to Zimbabwe and this is where she spent much of her childhood. She still fondly remembers this time in her life as one full of unbridled freedom.
She used to run barefoot and dodge imaginary river crocodiles alongside many local children she was friends with.

While she loved the outdoors, she also developed a love of reading and writing and while she was just eight she completed the writing of Sally’s Surprise her first novel. She covered the manuscript in blue silk and gave it to her father as a birthday gift.
But things changed when her older foster sister died and the death hit her parents hard that they did not have much time for her.

Since her parents were preoccupied, she spent much of the time she had reading. It was this voracious reading that would later influence her later desire to become a fiction author.
While she initially believes that she started writing because she loved reading as a child, she now believes it may have something with the death of her sister.

In fact, Rundell has a tendency to write novels for children of about the same age she was at the time of her sibling’s death.

Katherine Rundell sat down to pen her debut novel when she woke up with a hangover on her 21st birthday.

The work draws on Rundell’s free and wild childhood in Zimbabwe and the devastation she felt as a fourteen-year-old when her family moved to Belgium.

She began writing the novel just as she was beginning a seven-year All Souls College fellowship. She had earned the fellowship after successfully taking what has been called the hardest exam in the world which involved a viva and 15 hours of papers.
Rundell believes that her novel short story which she wrote from a one-word prompt is what got her the fellowship.

It was a tough life as she has to wake up at five, work on her academic work up until the late evening and then work on her novel till ate at night.

As such, she would spend much of her early twenties combining fiction writing and academia. Rundell finally had her manuscript for “The Girl Savage” bought by Faber who published it in 2011.

“Rooftoppers” by Katherine Rundell is the story of an orphan named Sophie.

She had been among several survivors of a shipwreck in the English Channel and had been found floating on the water.

She still remembers how her mother frantically waved for help before she disappeared. Her guardian has been telling her that her mother being alive was almost an impossibility.
But Sophie believes that almost impossible means that there is still hope given that the guardian has been using the word almost.

But then her guardian gets a letter from a Welfare Agency that is threatening to send her to an orphanage.

She decides she will not go into the foster system and head to Paris to find her mother with a cello maker’s address the only clue she has to go with.
She evades the authorities in France and ultimately teams up with Matteo and his urchins known as the rooftoppers.

Together, they scour the city searching for her mother but they are running out of time as Sophie could get caught at any time and be sent back to London.

Katherine Rundell’s “The Wolf Wilder” tells an intriguing story of a girl named Feodora. The story is all about the girl as she traverses the treacherous and dangerous wilds of Russia as she seeks to save her mother.
Her mother had been attacked and kidnapped by the army since she refused to give them something they believed she had.

They had destroyed her house and taken her to prison under the orders of Mikhail Rakov, one of the most diabolical generals in the country.

But what they did not know is that she is a wolf wilder and Feo her daughter is in training to become a wolf wilder.

A wolf wilder has the skills needed to teach tamed animals to run and to fight, to fight for themselves, and to be wary of humans.

Rich owners that grow afraid or bored of their wolves have been known to often send them, out into the wild.

Working with Ilya a trustworthy boy soldier and three loyal wolves, Feo heads into the forest on a quest that is sure to change her life.

“The Explorer” by Katherine Rundell is a beautiful work about Fred an English boy, Lila a Brazilian girl and Max her little brother, and lastly Con an English girl.

The four find themselves lost in the thick rainforest of the Amazon after their plane crashes. They are all complex characters each with their unique personalities.

Fred just wants to impress his father, even though he had read a few books and desires to be a wannabe explorer.

Con has lived a proper and prim life as she was brought up by strict parents. Lila loves her brother Max with all her heart while Max is just a young boy that is looking forward to his life.
As they traverse the forest and try to survive, they have to deal with all manner of unexpected turns and twists.

The author places her readers in the gorgeous even if dangerous Amazon rainforest, which makes for an intriguing quest in which all the characters grow and develop.