Gail Godwin

Gail Godwin is a literary fiction, mystery, and historical fiction author that is best known for the “Margaret Bonner” series of novels. The author was born in 1937 in Birmingham, Alabama but she moved with her newly divorced mother to Asheville North Carolina where she spent most of her childhood. In Asheville, her mother worked as a newspaper reporter, taught at two colleges, and wrote romance stories for pulp magazine to support the family.

The best place to start is the Margaret Bonner series, the earliest of Gail Godwin's multi-book series: it opens with Father Melancholy's Daughter (1991) and runs to 2 books across 1991–1999, ending with Evensong (1999).

Gail Godwin has 40 books catalogued in this guide, published between 1970 and 2026. 6 of them belong to 2 named series — the largest being the Margaret Bonner series with 2 books — and 34 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. Gail Godwin's series do not depend on one another, so they can be started in any order; by start date they are Margaret Bonner (1991–1999, 2 books).

This guide splits Gail Godwin's 40 books into 2 named series and 34 titles that stand alone or appear only in collections: Margaret Bonner (2 books, 1991–1999); Contemporary Literature and the Life of Faith (4 books, 1994–2002).