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In September 1992 Alfred A. Knopf printed 75,000 copies of a first novel by a 28-year-old graduate of Bennington College, at a time when 10,000 was a normal run for a debut. The novel was The Secret History, and its author, Donna Tartt, born in Greenwood, Mississippi, in 1963, has published one novel a decade since: The Little Friend in 2002 and The Goldfinch in 2013, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She has said she spends about ten years on each book. In between she has published a few short stories, essays on writers she admires and introductions to other people’s books. This guide covers her three key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 3 key books · 1992–2013 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Donna Tartt has written three novels: The Secret History (1992), The Little Friend (2002) and The Goldfinch (2013), which won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Start with The Secret History, her debut about a group of classics students at a Vermont college who kill one of their own. Beyond the novels she has published four short stories and a handful of essays, all listed further down.
Where to Start with Donna Tartt
If you want her defining book
→ The Secret History (1992) — the campus murder story told by one of the guilty.
If you want the prize winner
→ The Goldfinch (2013) — the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
If you want Southern Gothic
→ The Little Friend (2002) — a twelve-year-old’s hunt for her brother’s killer in 1970s Mississippi.
3 Donna Tartt Books, in Order
The Secret History
Richard Papen, a student from Plano, California, transfers to Hampden College in Vermont and talks his way into the Greek classes of Julian Morrow, who teaches only five other students. The prologue tells you straight away that the group killed one of their own, Bunny Corcoran; the rest of the book explains how, from a Dionysian rite that ends in a farmer’s death to Bunny’s blackmail. Hampden is modelled on Bennington, where Tartt studied classics, and the novel draws partly on Euripides’ The Bacchae.
The Little Friend
Mississippi in the early 1970s. Twelve-year-old Harriet Cleve Dufresnes decides to find out who killed her brother Robin, who was found hanging from a tree in 1964, when she was a baby; no one was ever charged. With her younger friend Hely Hull she fixes on Danny Ratliff, from a family that cooks methamphetamine. Unlike the other two novels it is told in the third person. It appeared in Dutch, as De kleine vriend, before the English edition, and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 2003; reviews were mixed.
The Goldfinch
Thirteen-year-old Theo Decker survives a bomb attack at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that kills his mother, and walks out with Carel Fabritius’s small 1654 painting of a chained goldfinch, which in reality hangs in the Mauritshuis in The Hague. The novel follows Theo and the hidden painting from New York to Las Vegas and Amsterdam, with his friend Boris and the antiques dealer Hobie. It also won the Andrew Carnegie Medal and was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Baileys Women’s Prize. John Crowley’s 2019 film, with Ansel Elgort and Nicole Kidman, was a box-office failure.
In What Order to Read Donna Tartt
The three novels share no characters or settings, so you can read them in any order. Publication order does show a writer changing her approach each time: a tight campus novel narrated by one of the killers, a long Southern novel told in the third person around a child, and a first-person novel that crosses three cities.
Most readers go from The Secret History to The Goldfinch, the two novels narrated in retrospect by a young man who has done something he cannot undo. The Little Friend is the one that divides readers most, so it makes sense to read it once you know whether her pace suits you.
A reading path
1. The Secret History (1992)
2. The Goldfinch (2013)
3. The Little Friend (2002)
Everything Else Donna Tartt Published
Beyond the 3 key books: 10 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Short stories
4
4 books · 1993–2005
- 1993Tam-O’-ShanterThe New Yorker, April 1993
- 1993A Christmas PageantHarper’s Magazine, December 1993
- 1995A Garter SnakeGQ, May 1995
- 2005The AmbushThe Guardian, June 2005; reprinted in The Best American Short Stories 2006
Essays and introductions
6
6 books · 1992–2024
- 1992Sleepytown: A Southern Gothic Childhood, with Codeineessay, Harper’s Magazine, July 1992
- 1992Basketball Seasonessay on being a freshman cheerleader, Oxford American; reprinted in The Best American Sports Writing 1993
- 2000The Spirit and Writing in a Secular Worldessay in Paul Fiddes (ed.), The Novel, Spirituality and Modern Culture
- 2000The Glory of J. F. Powersessay, Harper’s Magazine, July 2000
- 2005True Grither introduction to Charles Portis’s novel, Bloomsbury edition; she also recorded the audiobook
- 2024Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artificeher introduction to J. F. Martel’s book
The years · 1963–2023
Quick facts about Donna Tartt
- Known for
- Long, slowly written literary novels about crime, guilt and beauty, above all The Secret History (1992), her debut about classics students at a Vermont college.
- 1963
- Born in Greenwood, Mississippi
- 1982
- Transfers to Bennington College
- 2014
- Pulitzer Prize for The Goldfinch
- 2023
- Confirms she is writing a fourth novel
- Born
- 23 December 1963, Greenwood, Mississippi; raised in nearby Grenada
- Education
- University of Mississippi from 1981; Bennington College, 1982–1986
- Publishers
- Alfred A. Knopf (first two novels); Little, Brown (The Goldfinch)
- Honours
- WH Smith Literary Award (2003); Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and Andrew Carnegie Medal (2014)
- Recognition
- Time 100 most influential people, 2014
- Pace
- About ten years per novel, by her own account
The red mark is 1992: The Secret History, her debut and still her best-known book.
How Donna Tartt Writes: Character First, Slowly
Tartt works slowly and says character comes before plot. “If you have the right characters, the characters will take care of the plot for you,” she told NPR in 2013. The Goldfinch is an example: for its first two or three years it was set only in New York and Amsterdam, and Las Vegas came in after a chance visit, when she saw an exhibition of French Impressionists in a casino and began thinking about art and dirty money.
Two of her three novels are told in the first person by a young man looking back on a disaster he helped cause. The Secret History gives away its central killing in the prologue, so the suspense is about how and why, not who. The Little Friend is the exception: a third-person novel that moves between a child, her family and the Ratliffs, the family she suspects.
She builds on older stories and real places. The Secret History borrows from Euripides’ The Bacchae and from Bennington, where she studied classics; The Goldfinch is built around a real Dutch painting, and Michiko Kakutani called it a “glorious, Dickensian novel”. For writers with the same pull, see Authors like Donna Tartt.
Watch
Donna Tartt on The Secret History
A year after her debut, Tartt speaks about The Secret History at the John Adams Institute in Amsterdam in March 1993.
Frequently asked questions about Donna Tartt’s books
How many books has Donna Tartt written?
Three novels: The Secret History (1992), The Little Friend (2002) and The Goldfinch (2013). She has also published four short stories and a number of essays and introductions; ten of these shorter pieces are listed on this page.
What are Donna Tartt’s books in order?
The Secret History (1992), The Little Friend (2002) and The Goldfinch (2013). The three are standalone novels, not a series.
Where should I start with Donna Tartt?
With The Secret History (1992), her debut and her best-known book. If you would rather begin with the prize winner, start with The Goldfinch (2013).
What is Donna Tartt’s most famous book?
The Secret History (1992), her campus novel about classics students who commit murder. The Goldfinch (2013) is her most decorated: it won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
What is The Secret History about?
Richard Papen, a student from California, joins a small Greek class at Hampden College in Vermont taught by Julian Morrow. The prologue reveals that the group killed one of its members, Bunny Corcoran; the novel then explains how it happened and what the guilt does to the survivors.
Why does Donna Tartt write so slowly?
She has said she spends about ten years on each novel. After the success of The Secret History she told Publishers Weekly: “I can’t think of anything worse than having a big success, and then trying to rush out another big success.”
Did Donna Tartt win any awards?
Yes. The Goldfinch won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Baileys Women’s Prize. The Little Friend won the WH Smith Literary Award in 2003 and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in 2014.
Are there film adaptations of Donna Tartt’s books?
Only one has been made: The Goldfinch (2019), directed by John Crowley, with Ansel Elgort as Theo and Nicole Kidman as Mrs Barbour; it was a critical and box-office failure. The Secret History has never been filmed, despite attempts by Alan J. Pakula in the 1990s, Miramax in the early 2000s and a planned television series around 2013.
When is the next Donna Tartt book coming out?
No date or title has been announced. In a November 2023 interview with The Queen’s Reading Room she confirmed she was working on a new novel; her last, The Goldfinch, came out in 2013.
Has Donna Tartt been involved in any controversies?
Two are well documented. The Goldfinch split critics: it won the Pulitzer, while James Wood and others called it juvenile, and a 2014 Vanity Fair article, “It’s Tartt — But Is It Art?”, turned the argument into a public debate. In 2021 her representatives wrote to Apple about Lili Anolik’s podcast Once Upon a Time… at Bennington College, objecting to inaccurate statements about her and to use of her work without permission.
Footnotes
- Donna Tartt — Wikipedia
- The Secret History — Wikipedia
- The Little Friend — Wikipedia
- Donna Tartt, 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction — Pulitzer.org
- What’s really priceless? Art, money and fate in Tartt’s Goldfinch — NPR, 2013
- Donna Tartt sends legal warning to Bennington podcast — InsideHook, 2021
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.
“The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.”
— Donna Tartt, The Secret History (1992), the first line of the prologue
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