Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| If Morning Ever Comes | 1964 |
| The Tin Can Tree | 1965 |
| A Slipping-Down Life | 1970 |
| The Clock Winder | 1972 |
| Celestial Navigation | 1974 |
| Searching for Caleb | 1975 |
| Earthly Possessions | 1977 |
| Morgan’s Passing | 1980 |
| Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant | 1982 |
| The Accidental Tourist | 1985 |
| Breathing Lessons | 1988 |
| Saint Maybe | 1991 |
| Ladder of Years | 1995 |
| A Patchwork Planet | 1998 |
| Back When We Were Grownups | 2001 |
| The Amateur Marriage | 2004 |
| Digging to America | 2006 |
| Noah’s Compass | 2009 |
| The Beginner’s Goodbye | 2012 |
| A Spool of Blue Thread | 2015 |
| Vinegar Girl | 2016 |
| Clock Dance | 2018 |
| Redhead by the Side of the Road | 2020 |
| French Braid | 2022 |
| Three Days in June | 2025 |
| The Return Trip Is Shorter | 2027 |
Publication Order of Children’s Books
| Tumble Tower | 1993 |
| Timothy Tugbottom Says No! | 2005 |
About Anne Tyler
Anne Tyler (born 1941) is an American novelist who has set most of her fiction in Baltimore, where she has lived since the 1960s. She has published 25 novels, among them “Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant”, “The Accidental Tourist” and “Breathing Lessons”, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1989.
Tyler was born in Minneapolis, the eldest of four children of Quaker parents, and from the age of seven to eleven lived in the Celo Community, a Quaker settlement in the mountains of North Carolina. The family then moved to Raleigh. She entered Duke University at sixteen, studied writing under Reynolds Price and graduated in 1961 with a degree in Russian literature, before a year of graduate work in Slavic studies at Columbia. In 1963 she married Taghi Modarressi, an Iranian psychiatrist and novelist, with whom she had two daughters.
Her first novel, “If Morning Ever Comes”, was published in 1964 and “The Tin Can Tree” a year later; she has since disowned both. After a gap while her children were small she returned with “A Slipping-Down Life” in 1970. “Celestial Navigation” (1974) brought national attention, John Updike praised “Searching for Caleb” (1975), and “Morgan’s Passing” (1980) won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize.
“Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant” (1982), which she considers her best book, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. “The Accidental Tourist” (1985) won the National Book Critics Circle Award and became a 1988 film starring William Hurt and Geena Davis. “Breathing Lessons” was filmed for television in 1994, and screen versions of “Saint Maybe”, “Earthly Possessions”, “A Slipping-Down Life” and “Back When We Were Grownups” followed.
Among her later novels, “A Spool of Blue Thread” (2015) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and “Redhead by the Side of the Road” (2020) was longlisted. “Vinegar Girl” (2016) was written for the Hogarth Shakespeare project, in which contemporary novelists retell Shakespeare’s plays. “Three Days in June” appeared in 2025, and Knopf has announced “The Return Trip Is Shorter”, about a newly widowed man whose youngest sister moves in with him, for 27 April 2027. Tyler has also written two picture books illustrated by her daughter Mitra Modarressi.