Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| The Patron Saint of Liars | 1992 |
| Taft | 1994 |
| The Magician’s Assistant | 1997 |
| Bel Canto | 2001 |
| Run | 2007 |
| State of Wonder | 2011 |
| Commonwealth | 2016 |
| The Dutch House | 2019 |
| Tom Lake | 2023 |
| Whistler | 2026 |
Publication Order of Children’s Books
| Lambslide | 2019 |
| Escape Goat | 2020 |
| The Verts | 2024 |
| Button at the Bookstore | 2027 |
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
| Truth & Beauty: A Friendship | 2004 |
| What Now? | 2008 |
| The Getaway Car | 2011 |
| This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage | 2013 |
| Nashville: Scenes from the New American South (With: Heidi Ross) | 2018 |
| These Precious Days | 2021 |
About Ann Patchett
Ann Patchett is an American novelist, born in Los Angeles in 1963 and raised in Nashville, Tennessee, whose fourth novel, “Bel Canto” (2001), won the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize. She has published ten novels, among them “State of Wonder”, “Commonwealth”, “The Dutch House” and “Tom Lake”, along with memoirs, essays and picture books. She also co-founded Parnassus Books, an independent bookshop in Nashville.
Patchett moved to Nashville at the age of six after her parents divorced. She studied at Sarah Lawrence College and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and published her first story in “The Paris Review” while still an undergraduate. For nine years she wrote non-fiction for “Seventeen” magazine. Her first novel, “The Patron Saint of Liars” (1992), was written during a fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and was made into a television film in 1998.
“Taft” and “The Magician’s Assistant” followed, but “Bel Canto” was the breakthrough. Based on the 1996 to 1997 hostage crisis at the Japanese embassy in Lima, it follows a group of young terrorists and their captives. It was adapted as an opera in 2015 and as a film with Julianne Moore and Ken Watanabe in 2018.
Her later novels are all standalones. “State of Wonder” (2011) sends a pharmacologist into the Amazon and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. “Commonwealth” (2016), which she has called her autobiographical novel, traces two families joined by an affair, and “The Dutch House” (2019), about a brother and sister over five decades, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. “Tom Lake” (2023) was a “New York Times” bestseller.
Her non-fiction includes “Truth & Beauty” (2004), a memoir of her friendship with the writer Lucy Grealy, and the essay collections “This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage” and “These Precious Days”. With the illustrator Robin Preiss Glasser she has written picture books beginning with “Lambslide” (2019).
Patchett opened Parnassus Books with Karen Hayes in November 2011. She received the National Humanities Medal in 2021 and was named winner of the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction in 2026. Her most recent novel is “Whistler” (2026).
Photo: JaceMerlyn, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).