Lionel Shriver Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of Anthologies

Lionel Shriver is an author and journalist from North Carolina in the United States.
She was born Margaret Ann Shriver but at the age of 15, she took up the name Lionel as she no longer wanted to associate herself with the pink ribbon girl that would get married to her high school sweetheart and end up as a housewife.

She thought the name Margaret Ann had all those connotations and that her family would expect something similar from her.
Shriver attended Columbia University in her teenage years and later on earned an MFA from the same institution. Over the years, she has lived all over the world from Bangkok, Nairobi London and as a journalist in Belfast reporting on the Troubles.

“The Female of the Species,” her debut novel, was published in 1986 when she was twenty nine years old. Since then, she has become quite a popular author, selling thousands of copies of her works on both sides of the Atlantic.

As a journalist, she has written for the likes of “The Guardian,” the “Wallstreet Journal,” the “Philadelphia Enquirer,” and “The Economist.”

Even though many of her earlier works garnered critical acclaim, she sold too few and as such was forced to continue earning a living as a journalist.
But things would change when in 2003 she published “We Need To Talk About Kevin” her seminal work in which a high school student kills his classmates in the now classic school shooting. His mother is left reeling and has to confront the monstrous act committed by her son and carries a sense of guilt.
Even though she had an agent at the time he refused to find a publisher and she was forced to try to sell it on her own. After more than 30 rejections and a new agent later, a small publisher agreed to publish the work which went on to win several awards.

Reviewers have asserted that while many fictional authors have tried to write about mass shootings no one does it better than Shriver. She would follow her debut novel with the 2007 published “The Post-Birthday World” that garnered just as much critical acclaim.

In a recent interview , Lionel Shriver said that she has a penchant for hot food and is in fact a very good cook. She often finds herself with an inclination to lace every meal she has from ice cream to cucumber canapes with so much fresh chillies that almost no one but herself can eat it.
Outside of food, she is a stickler for pronunciation and grammar and loves to call herself the only champion of the accusative case.

Shriver also loves to run and on most summer mornings she can be found running a nine mile course from Kensington Gardens in London to Hyde Park, where she lives with Jeff Williams, her jazz drummer husband.

She decided very young that she did not want children and still thinks it would throw a major spanner in the works if she had one now as she would never have time to write.

“We Need to Talk About Kevin” by Lionel Shriver is a novel written in epistolary form. The lead is Eva Khatchadourian who is writing to Franklin Plaskett, her absent husband. She is the mother to the architect of one of the most callous high school massacres in Kevin Khatchadourian.

The letters are divided into the present time where the mother becomes shunned following the mass shooting, is fighting a civil suit brought by the parents and visiting Kevin in prison where he remains incarcerated. The second part of the story follows the conception of the child and events following up to the time he shot up a school.
Eva is an independent, spirited and very liberal Armenian American citizen that happens to be a little contemptuous of the country she now calls home. Franklin, who is Kevin’s father, is a boring and conventional American man.

Before the child was born, she had been the owner of a very successful travel guidebook business and never wanted a child. But she had finally been convinced by her husband to have a child and immediately he was conceived, he became the centerpiece of a horror show.

He is an evil child whose evil expands as he grows up. To Eva’s frustration, Franklin, his father, believes his son is perfect.

Lionel Shriver’s “The Post-Birthday World” is an entertaining and imaginative lok at the small and large implications brought about by the people we choose to love. Shriver writes a story that follows one woman’s future.

Irina McGovern is a children’s book illustrator living a settled and quiet life in London with Lawrence Trainer. He is an American expatriate that works for a prestigious think tank and she knows him as a disciplined intellectual, and a loyal and smart man.

All their friends believe they have the model relationship until Irina finds herself dying to kiss Ramsey Acton.
He is a passionate, extravagant, top ranking snooker player from South London who is an old friend. She knows that if she gives in to temptation, she may just lose everything including friends and family and her relationships.

It is an enchanting work of fiction that depicts her future influenced by two men that are worlds apart in temperament but equally honorable.

“Big Brother” by Lionel Shriver is a story with an intriguing modern plot.
The lead is Pandora, a woman whose brother turns up on her doorstep penniless and obese and nothing like what she remembers when she last saw him. Edison had once upon a time been a good looking, svelte jazz musician that seemed to have a very bright future.
She wonders what could have happened to make him into the obese monstrosity he now was. But she desires to help her brother to lose the weight and become the person he once upon a time was.

She comes up with a plan to save Edison but it may just have severe consequences particularly for many of the people she loves. She is a newly wed woman and her husband and two children are bound to be impacted by her decision.

Fletcher her husband is strict with his health and eating habits and could even be called controlling and uptight when it comes to healthy eating that he has been known to butt heads with his children over this.

Pandora too will need to lose some weight and hence there are at least three people who are dealing with food issues both bad and good.