Author Guide · Historical Fiction
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Sixty literary agents turned down The Help over three years before Susan Ramer agreed to represent Kathryn Stockett. She had started it after the September 11 attacks, homesick in New York, writing about the Black maids who worked for white families in the Jackson, Mississippi, of her childhood. Published in February 2009, it spent more than 100 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list and has sold more than 15 million copies. Her second novel took another seventeen years: her publisher dropped her in 2019, and The Calamity Club finally appeared in May 2026. This guide covers her two key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 2 key books · 2009–2026 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Kathryn Stockett has written two novels: The Help (2009), set among Black maids and white families in Jackson, Mississippi, in the early 1960s, and The Calamity Club (2026), set in Oxford, Mississippi, in 1933. Start with The Help; the two books are not connected, so the order is up to you.
Where to Start with Kathryn Stockett
If you want her defining book
→ The Help (2009) — three women in Jackson, Mississippi, in the early 1960s.
If you want the Depression-era South
→ The Calamity Club (2026) — an orphan and two women in Oxford, Mississippi, in 1933.
If you want her newest novel
→ The Calamity Club (2026) — published in May 2026, seventeen years after her debut.
2 Kathryn Stockett Books, in Order
The Help
Jackson, Mississippi, in the early 1960s, told in turn by three women. Aibileen Clark, a Black maid who looks after a white toddler, Mae Mobley, and her outspoken friend Minny Jackson agree to tell their stories to Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, a young white graduate who wants to be a writer and is trying to find out what happened to the maid who raised her. It spent more than 100 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list, was longlisted for the Orange Prize in 2010, and was filmed in 2011.
The Calamity Club
Oxford, Mississippi, in 1933. Meg Lefleur, eleven, is one of the “big girls” at the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum, too old to be adopted; Birdie Calhoun, an unmarried bookkeeper, comes to town to ask her socialite sister for money to save the family home and finds her sister’s life built on lies. With Charlie, a woman with a dangerous past who is looking for her daughter, they make a plan against poverty, hypocrisy and the state’s sterilisation law. Published by Spiegel & Grau in May 2026, it reached number one on The New York Times bestseller list.
In What Order to Read Kathryn Stockett
The two novels are not a series and share no characters, only a state: Mississippi, thirty years apart. Publication order is the natural way in, because The Calamity Club was written partly in answer to the reception of The Help, and Stockett has said in interviews that she went back to being the “scrappier writer” she was when she wrote her debut.
Both are long: The Help runs to more than 500 pages in hardback, The Calamity Club to more than 600. Each alternates between several first-person narrators, so read the opening chapters closely until the voices settle.
A reading path
1. The Help (2009)
2. The Calamity Club (2026)
The years · 1969–2026
Quick facts about Kathryn Stockett
- Known for
- Writing Southern historical fiction in several first-person voices, starting with a debut about Black maids and white families in 1960s Mississippi that became one of the bestselling novels of its decade
- 1969
- Born in Jackson, Mississippi
- 2009
- The Help
- 2019
- Her first publisher drops her
- Born
- 1969, Jackson, Mississippi
- Education
- University of Alabama, degree in English and Creative Writing
- Worked
- Nine years in magazine publishing and marketing in New York
- Lives
- Mississippi and New York City
- Family
- One daughter; divorced from Keith Rogers in 2011
- Honours
- Goodreads Choice Award and Townsend Prize for Fiction for The Help; Orange Prize longlist (2010)
The red mark is 2009: The Help, her debut, which spent more than 100 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list.
How Kathryn Stockett Writes: Many Voices, One Town
Stockett builds her novels from alternating first-person narrators. The Help moves between Aibileen, Minny and Skeeter, two Black maids and a white college graduate; The Calamity Club alternates between eleven-year-old Meg, whose speech is set in italics rather than quotation marks, and Birdie. The plots run on secrets kept across lines of race, class and family, and on what happens when they come out.
Both books start from something close to her own life. Demetrie, the Black maid who worked for her family and died when Stockett was sixteen, was the starting point for Aibileen: “I wanted to hear her voice again,” she said. Minny was written with her friend the actor Octavia Spencer in mind. For The Calamity Club she worked from period newspapers such as The Oxford Eagle, and found the turn the book needed in a 1928 Mississippi law that allowed the sterilisation of people judged “feeble-minded”.
Writing Black characters’ voices and dialect as a white Southerner brought her the strongest criticism of her career, and she has said it made her write more carefully, and sometimes fearfully, for years. She names Eudora Welty as a bigger influence than Faulkner, and Donna Tartt’s The Secret History as the book that gave her permission to be a writer.
Frequently asked questions about Kathryn Stockett’s books
How many books has Kathryn Stockett written?
Two novels: The Help (2009) and The Calamity Club (2026).
What are Kathryn Stockett’s books in order?
The Help (2009), followed seventeen years later by The Calamity Club (2026).
Where should I start with Kathryn Stockett?
With The Help, her best-known book. The two novels are not connected, so you can also start with The Calamity Club if you prefer a story set in the Depression.
What is Kathryn Stockett’s most famous book?
The Help (2009), which spent more than 100 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list, has sold more than 15 million copies and was made into a film in 2011.
Is The Help based on a true story?
No, it is fiction, but it draws on Stockett’s childhood in Jackson. Demetrie, the Black maid who worked for her family from 1955 and died when Stockett was sixteen, was the starting point for Aibileen, and Minny was written with her friend Octavia Spencer in mind.
Is there a film of The Help?
Yes. The Help (2011) was written and directed by Tate Taylor, a childhood friend of Stockett’s, and filmed mostly in Greenwood, Mississippi. Octavia Spencer won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress as Minny; the film was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Actress for Viola Davis and Best Supporting Actress for Jessica Chastain.
Why was The Help criticised?
Two reasons. Critics objected to a white author writing Black maids’ stories and dialect; in 2011 the Association of Black Women Historians said the book and film distorted and trivialised the experiences of Black domestic workers. And in February 2011 Ablene Cooper, a maid who worked for Stockett’s brother, sued for 75,000 dollars, saying Aibileen was based on her. Stockett said she had met Cooper only briefly, and on 16 August 2011 a Hinds County judge dismissed the case because it was filed too late.
Why did it take so long for Kathryn Stockett to publish a second novel?
She worked on The Calamity Club on and off for years and has said the story lacked “soul” until she found the 1928 Mississippi sterilisation law. In 2019 her first publisher dropped her; Julie Grau of Spiegel & Grau took the book on, and it came out on 5 May 2026.
Is The Calamity Club a sequel to The Help?
No. It has different characters and is set thirty years earlier, in Oxford, Mississippi, in 1933. The only link is the state.
Is Kathryn Stockett still alive?
Yes. She was born in 1969 in Jackson, Mississippi, and published her second novel, The Calamity Club, in May 2026.
Footnotes
- Kathryn Stockett — Wikipedia
- The Help — Wikipedia
- The Help reader’s guide — Penguin Random House
- The Calamity Club — Spiegel & Grau
- Ablene Cooper to appeal ‘Help’ decision — Jackson Free Press, 2011
- Kathryn Stockett interview — Hot Press, 2026
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“I wanted to hear her voice again.”
— Kathryn Stockett on Demetrie, her family’s maid, in the reader’s guide to The Help (Penguin)
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