Isabel Allende Books in Order
This page gathers Isabel Allende's books in order, with summaries, series overviews, and guidance on the best place to start exploring her fiction and memoirs.
Last updated: December 16, 2025
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Publication Order
33 books
Perla and the Pirate
by Isabel Allende
2025
In Perla and the Pirate, Perla uses her two superpowers—making everyone love her and roaring like a lion—to track down Nico after he gets lost on the way home, turning a scary afternoon into a gentle lesson about courage, friendship, and feeling safe.
My Name Is Emilia del Valle
by Isabel Allende
2025
My Name Is Emilia del Valle follows a bold young journalist who leaves San Francisco for Chile to cover the 1891 civil war and secretly track down the aristocratic father who abandoned her, confronting danger, censorship, and the cost of telling the truth.
Perla The Mighty Dog
by Isabel Allende
2024
Perla the Mighty Dog introduces a small rescue dog with a huge roar who helps her boy, Nico, face a school bully, showing young readers that bravery, kindness, and speaking up can matter more than size or strength.
Lovers at the Museum
by Isabel Allende
2024
Lovers at the Museum is a playful short tale in which a runaway bride wakes after a night of impossible passion inside the Guggenheim Bilbao beside a stranger, forcing a skeptical detective to decide whether their enchanted explanation could somehow be true.
The Wind Knows My Name
by Isabel Allende
2023
The Wind Knows My Name links a boy sent away from Nazi‑occupied Vienna on a Kindertransport with a Salvadoran girl separated from her mother at the U.S. border, as a lawyer and social worker fight to reunite families across decades of war and migration.
Violeta
by Isabel Allende
2022
Told as a long letter to her grandson, Violeta recounts a Chilean woman’s hundred‑year life, from birth during a pandemic in 1920 through war, dictatorships, great loves, betrayals, and reinvention, turning one woman’s story into a panorama of a turbulent century.
The Soul of a Woman
by Isabel Allende
2020
The Soul of a Woman is Isabel Allende’s brief, fiery reflection on a lifetime of feminism, tracing how her mother’s struggles, her own relationships, and global movements shaped her beliefs about power, aging, desire, and what liberation might look like for women today.
A Long Petal of the Sea
by Isabel Allende
2019
A Long Petal of the Sea follows doctor Victor Dalmau and musician Roser Bruguera from the Spanish Civil War onto a refugee ship bound for Chile, then through decades of exile and dictatorship as they build an improvised marriage and a chosen country.
In the Midst of Winter
by Isabel Allende
2017
In the Midst of Winter begins with a fender‑bender in a Brooklyn snowstorm and quickly turns into a journey shared by a grieving professor, a Chilean scholar, and a young Guatemalan refugee, each forced to confront buried trauma and unexpected second chances.
The Japanese Lover
by Isabel Allende
2015
The Japanese Lover braids the secret, decades‑long love between Alma Belasco and Japanese American gardener Ichimei Fukuda with the present‑day story of Irina, a young care worker, as they piece together a hidden past marked by war, exile, and forbidden devotion.
Ripper
by Isabel Allende
2013
Ripper centers on Amanda, a brilliant San Francisco teen who plays an online mystery game with her grandfather—until a string of real‑world murders, and then her mother’s disappearance, forces her to use every clue‑hunting skill she has to stop a killer.
Maya's Notebook
by Isabel Allende
2011
Maya’s Notebook is the journal of a runaway teenager who crashes into addiction and crime in Las Vegas, then is hidden by her Chilean grandmother on a remote island, where she slowly rebuilds her life and uncovers buried political secrets.
Zorro, Volume 1
by Isabel Allende
2009
Zorro, Volume 1 collects the opening arc of a graphic‑novel retelling of Diego de la Vega’s youth, following his training, first adventures, and decision to don the mask of Zorro to fight corruption in colonial California.
Island Beneath the Sea
by Isabel Allende
2009
Island Beneath the Sea follows Zarité, known as Tété, from childhood slavery on a brutal sugar plantation in Saint‑Domingue through the fires of the Haitian Revolution and onward to New Orleans, tracing one woman’s fight to claim freedom, love, and a future.
The Sum of Our Days
by Isabel Allende
2007
The Sum of Our Days continues the story after Paula, as Isabel Allende recounts rebuilding a patched‑together family in California, navigating love, addiction, spirituality, and fame while trying to honor her daughter’s memory through everyday acts of care and generosity.
Inés of My Soul
by Isabel Allende
2006
Inés of My Soul dramatizes the life of Inés Suárez, a poor Spanish seamstress who follows her missing husband to the New World and instead becomes a key partner to conquistador Pedro de Valdivia, helping to found Santiago amid brutal conflict and moral compromise.
Zorro
by Isabel Allende
2005
Zorro reimagines the masked vigilante’s youth, tracing Diego de la Vega from his mixed‑heritage childhood in colonial California to his fencing lessons in Spain and his choice to become Zorro, defending the oppressed with wit, courage, and a flashing blade.
Kingdom of the Golden Dragon
by Isabel Allende
2004
In Kingdom of the Golden Dragon, Alex and Nadia travel with Kate Cold to a remote Himalayan kingdom where a sacred statue coveted by outsiders draws them into palace intrigue, mountain dangers, and another test of their shared animal‑spirit powers.
Forest of the Pygmies
by Isabel Allende
2004
Forest of the Pygmies takes Alex, Nadia, and Kate to East Africa on a safari that becomes a rescue mission, as they uncover a brutal regime enslaving villagers and help a hidden Pygmy community reclaim its freedom.
My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey Through Chile
by Isabel Allende
2003
My Invented Country blends memoir and essay as Isabel Allende revisits the Chile of her childhood, the coup that sent her into exile, and the quirks of her adopted home, asking how memory, nostalgia, and storytelling shape the idea of a homeland.
City of the Beasts
by Isabel Allende
2002
City of the Beasts sends fifteen‑year‑old Alexander Cold to the Amazon with his fearless grandmother, where he and local girl Nadia confront dangerous explorers, a legendary creature, and an invisible Indigenous tribe that forces them to rethink what “civilized” really means.
Portrait in Sepia
by Isabel Allende
2001
Set between San Francisco and Chile at the turn of the twentieth century, Portrait in Sepia follows photographer Aurora del Valle as she uses images and memory to uncover her lost childhood and the tangled history of the family that raised her.
Recommended by:
Daughter of Fortune
by Isabel Allende
1999
In Daughter of Fortune, orphan Eliza Sommers leaves the safety of her British‑Chilean household to chase a vanished lover into the lawless gold fields of California, discovering instead her own resourcefulness, thirst for freedom, and a very different kind of love.
Recommended by:
Conversations with Isabel Allende
by Isabel Allende
1999
Conversations with Isabel Allende gathers interviews in which she talks about her childhood, exile, writing process, politics, and family, offering a candid, often funny self‑portrait that complements the stories told in her fiction and memoirs.
Aphrodite
by Isabel Allende
1998
Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses is Isabel Allende’s playful exploration of the links between appetite and desire, mixing personal anecdotes, folklore, and history with recipes meant less for perfect cooking than for shared pleasure at the table.
Mothers and Sons
by Isabel Allende
1996
Mothers and Sons: In Their Own Words pairs black‑and‑white portraits with brief, first‑person reflections from famous and ordinary families, framed by Isabel Allende’s introduction on the complicated, enduring bond between mothers and their sons.
Paula
by Isabel Allende
1994
Written beside her comatose daughter’s hospital bed, Paula weaves Isabel Allende’s memories of family, exile, and early success with the story of Paula’s illness, becoming an intimate meditation on grief, faith, and the stubborn will to go on.
The Infinite Plan
by Isabel Allende
1991
The Infinite Plan follows Gregory Reeves from a childhood in a travelling revival caravan to a rough Los Angeles barrio, the war in Vietnam, and a restless legal career, as he struggles to escape neglect and build a life that finally feels his own.
The Stories of Eva Luna
by Isabel Allende
1989
The Stories of Eva Luna gathers tales the heroine tells her lover, from folktale‑like fables to sharp portraits of soldiers, servants, and schemers, each revealing another facet of power, desire, and survival in Latin America.
Paths of Resistance
by Isabel Allende
1989
Paths of Resistance collects talks by writers including Isabel Allende, Charles McCarry, Gore Vidal, and others, reflecting on how political history, ideology, and personal conviction shape the modern novel and the risks of turning outrage into art.
Eva Luna
by Isabel Allende
1986
Eva Luna follows an orphaned girl with a gift for storytelling as she survives servitude, revolution, and love in a turbulent Latin American country, turning her own life into the most daring tale she knows how to tell.
Of Love and Shadows
by Isabel Allende
1984
Of Love and Shadows pairs privileged journalist Irene Beltrán with photographer Francisco Leal as a routine assignment leads them to a hidden mass grave, forcing them to risk their lives—and their forbidden love—exposing the terror of a military dictatorship.
The House of the Spirits
by Isabel Allende
1982
The House of the Spirits traces three generations of the Trueba and del Valle families, blending ghosts, prophecy, and political upheaval as Chile moves from country estates to dictatorship and a young woman must choose between vengeance and hope.
Recommended by:
Where should I start?
If you want her classic family saga and magical realism: The House of the Spirits → Of Love and Shadows → Eva Luna
If you love sweeping historical epics: Daughter of Fortune → Portrait in Sepia → Island Beneath the Sea → A Long Petal of the Sea
If you’re in the mood for memoir and reflection: Paula → My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey Through Chile → The Sum of Our Days → The Soul of a Woman
If you want something recent and timely: Violeta → The Wind Knows My Name → My Name Is Emilia del Valle
If you’re choosing for a younger reader: City of the Beasts → Kingdom of the Golden Dragon → Forest of the Pygmies → Perla The Mighty Dog
Author bio
Isabel Allende was born in Lima, Peru, in 1942, the daughter of a Chilean diplomat and a young mother who suddenly had to raise three children on her own. She grew up mostly in Santiago, in her grandparents’ big house, where stories, gossip, and the occasional ghost felt as real as the furniture.
Her grandmother believed in omens and spirits, read cards, and talked about the dead as if they had just stepped into the next room. The house overflowed with books, and Allende read everything she could reach. Later, when her mother remarried another diplomat, the family moved through Bolivia, Lebanon, and back to Chile, giving her a sense that the wider world was both inviting and fragile.
As a teenager she wanted independence more than anything. She left school ready to work, first as a secretary for a United Nations agency and then as a translator of paperback romances, where she was fired for making the heroines sharper and less submissive. In her early twenties she married engineer Miguel Frías; they had two children, Paula and Nicolás, and spent several years in Europe before returning to Chile.
By the late 1960s she had found her way into journalism. In Santiago she wrote columns, edited a women’s magazine, and hosted television programs that mixed interviews, satire, and a clear feminist streak. Those jobs taught her how to meet deadlines, how to listen to people, and how to smuggle serious topics into apparently light formats.
The 1973 military coup that toppled her relative, President Salvador Allende, cut that life short. As friends disappeared or fled, she helped people find safe passage out of Chile and soon landed on the regime’s blacklist herself. In 1975 she left with her family for Venezuela, where she spent more than a decade piecing together a new existence as a journalist and school administrator.
In 1981 she received news that her beloved grandfather was close to death. She began a long, emotional letter to him that grew into her first novel, The House of the Spirits, a family saga saturated with memory, politics, and flashes of the supernatural. Published in Spanish in 1982, it became an international success and was followed by books such as Of Love and Shadows, Eva Luna, and The Stories of Eva Luna, which confirmed her place among the leading Latin American storytellers.
Over the next decades her fiction stretched across continents and centuries. Historical novels like Inés of My Soul, Island Beneath the Sea, A Long Petal of the Sea, and Violeta follow characters through conquest, revolution, and dictatorship. Young adult adventures beginning with City of the Beasts take teenagers into the Amazon, the Himalayas, and Africa. More intimate works—memoirs such as Paula, My Invented Country, The Sum of Our Days, and The Soul of a Woman—draw directly on her own life, including the devastating loss of her daughter in 1992.
In 1988 she settled in California, later becoming a U.S. citizen while still claiming Chile as a spiritual home. She founded the Isabel Allende Foundation in 1996 in honor of Paula, using proceeds from the memoir to support organizations that work with women and girls on education, health, and safety. Teaching, public talks, and activism around human rights and feminism have long run alongside the novels.
Along the way she has picked up many of the markers of literary success—major international prizes, shelves of honorary degrees, membership in a distinguished arts academy, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom—yet she tends to describe herself simply as a hardworking storyteller.
Now in her eighties, living in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and dogs, she still sits down every year to begin a new book, drawing on the same mix of family lore, political memory, and stubborn hope that has shaped her work from the start.
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