Six novels about twins who fall into a book and land in the world of the fairy tales. The main run is short and clearly ordered; the confusion comes from the companion volumes, which look like sequels on a store page, are written in a completely different format, and are numbered as though they belong in the main sequence.
Here is the order, and which of the extras are worth buying.
The short answer
Start with The Wishing Spell and read the six novels by number. Everything else is optional and none of it needs to be read at any particular point.
Do you have to read them in order?
Yes. Alex and Conner’s story runs continuously across all six, and the series widens considerably as it goes — book one is a fairy-tale quest, book five is about authorship itself, and book six pulls in worlds from outside the fairy tales entirely. The jokes about what those characters would be like as adults are funnier in sequence, too, because Colfer keeps building on his own running gags.
Every Land of Stories book in order
- The Wishing Spell
- The Enchantress Returns
- A Grimm Warning
- Beyond the Kingdoms
- An Author's Odyssey
- Worlds Collide
The companion books
These are the ones that cause the trouble. None are novels and none advance the plot:
- Adventures from the Land of Stories Boxed Set: The Mother Goose Diaries and Queen Red Riding Hood's Guide to Royalty
- Adventures from the Land of Stories Boxed Set: The Mother Goose Diaries and Queen Red Riding Hood's Guide to Royalty
- A Treasury of Classic Fairy Tales
- The Ultimate Book Hugger's Guide
- Trollbella Throws a Party: A Tale from the Land of Stories
The two Adventures from the Land of Stories volumes are illustrated diary-and-guidebook formats aimed at a younger reader than the novels, and both work fine at any point after book two. The treasury is a collection of the original fairy tales that the series draws on — useful, but it is Grimm and Andersen rather than Colfer. The Trollbella story is a short picture-book spin-off.
Which extras are worth it
For a reader who has finished all six and wants more, the Adventures volumes are the only ones that scratch that itch, and they are pitched two or three years younger, so expect a lukewarm response from a twelve-year-old. The treasury is a better buy for a family reading aloud than for the child who just finished book six.
A note on reading age
The novels sit comfortably around eight to eleven — lighter and warmer than most of the fantasy series readers move on to next. Book six is the longest and the most complicated, and some readers stall there. It is worth knowing in advance that it is the last one, so the effort has an end point.
Keep browsing
Every book above has a page in our catalog. For what to read after book six, see books like Harry Potter, which includes this series and eight others sorted by what you liked. For more at the same reading level, try fantasy books for tweens or books for 10-year-olds.