Carol Shields

Carol Shields is a Pulitzer Prize-winning literary fiction author from Canada who made a name for illuminating and capturing the ordinariness of life. The author was born in Oak Park Illinois in 1935 and was the third child of schoolteacher Inez Warner and candy factory manager Robert Elmer. In her teenage years, Shields went to Indiana-based Hanover College, which is where she graduated with her bachelor's degree in 1957.

The best place to start is the Dropped Threads series, the earliest of Carol Shields's multi-book series: it opens with Dropped Threads: What We Aren't Told (2001) and runs to 2 books across 2001–2003, ending with Dropped Threads 2: More of What We Aren't Told (2003).

Carol Shields has 66 books catalogued in this guide, published between 1960 and 2021. 34 of them belong to 2 named series — the largest being the Dropped Threads series with 2 books — and 32 are standalone titles, collections or anthologies.

Read each series in publication order — the numbered entries in each series follow the year each book first appeared. Carol Shields's series do not depend on one another, so they can be started in any order; by start date they are Dropped Threads (2001–2003, 2 books).

This guide splits Carol Shields's 66 books into 2 named series and 32 titles that stand alone or appear only in collections: Dropped Threads (2 books, 2001–2003); Penguin Lives (32 books, 1960–2011).