Animal Fiction Books

This is not meant to be an all-inclusive list, but more a guide to help people who might be interested in finding fiction books about a particular animal, or maybe something they read a long time ago, or another book ‘like’ a book they read and enjoyed.  Although a lot of these books were originally written for children, I've tried to limit the list to ones that adults could read and enjoy as well.  This list includes books published in both the US and/ or the UK. About half of these books I've read at one point or another, and only books that I have actually read and thought were good get therecommended tag.  I'm sorry I cannot provide a synopsis or publication information on all these books, but additional information for most of them is available on Amazon.com or other book specialty websites.

The books on this list are divided into 3 categories:

1. “Realistic’ animal stories, like Call of the Wild, where the animals do not talk and generally behave in a naturalistic manner.

2. Talking animal stories like Watership Down, where the animals talk and reason among themselves, but otherwise live realistic lives in the wild or as pets.

3. Animal Vs. Man stories like Jaws, which may be a little (or a lot) far-fetched in premise, but take place in the ‘real’ world.

For the first two categories, I’ve tried to stick with books where the animals are the primary focus and point-of-view characters.  So I am not including books such as Old Yeller or Irish Red, which are told completely from the human character’s point of view.  Nor have I listed book where the animals are excessively anthropomorphic, such as Redwall or theSpellsinger series. Some of the books listed may have alternating chapters of humans and animals, or a portion of the book may deal with human characters, but I’ve tried to avoid books where the human portions are greater than the animal portions.

Most of the books listed in the Animal Vs. Man category focus on the human characters, but a number of them (perhaps even most) do include some portion from the animal’s point of view.

I've gotten cover illustrations from many different sources, some better than others.  Make sure to check all four categories to see if there's a scan for any particular book!  Because of space limitations I could only put a handful of book covers on any given page.  Cover scans of books that I don’t have illustrations of are always appreciated.

Email with  comments, corrections, or anything else.                                       All pages updated 02-10-07

Books that arehighlighted are recommended.

Choose your path:

Book List by Author        Book List by Category        Book List by Title       Book List by Animal

Many thanks to Tracy Kazaleh and Fred Patten for their assistance, and a special thanks to

Fenris Lorsrai of Rainyday Paperbacks for all her research and help.  Go visit her store.