Author Guide · Literary Fiction
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Richard Russo grew up in Gloversville, New York, a glove-making town in the foothills of the Adirondacks that was already in decline by the late 1960s. He left for the University of Arizona, earned a PhD on the early American novelist Charles Brockden Brown, and taught English for years before his first novel, Mohawk, appeared in 1986. Almost everything since has gone back to towns like the one he left: North Bath, Thomaston, Empire Falls, places where the mill or the tannery has closed and the people stayed. In 2002 Empire Falls won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and Paul Newman starred in screen versions of two of his novels. This guide covers his 13 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 13 key books · 1986–2026 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Richard Russo has published 13 key books, from Mohawk (1986) to Under the Falls (2026). The best known are Empire Falls (2001), which won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Nobody’s Fool (1993) and the campus comedy Straight Man (1997). Start with Empire Falls; if you like it, the North Bath trilogy that begins with Nobody’s Fool is the next step.
Where to Start with Richard Russo
If you want his defining novel
→ Empire Falls (2001) — the 2002 Pulitzer winner, set in a Maine mill town.
If you want a trilogy to live in
→ Nobody’s Fool (1993) — the first of three North Bath novels.
If you want to laugh
→ Straight Man (1997) — a week in the life of an English department chair.
If you want the life behind the fiction
→ Elsewhere (2012) — his memoir of his mother and Gloversville.
13 Richard Russo Books, in Order
Mohawk
His first novel, set in Mohawk, a fictional leather-tanning town in upstate New York modelled on Gloversville. It follows several families and the regulars of a local diner through one stretch of the town’s long decline. Russo was teaching English at Southern Illinois University Carbondale when it was published.
The Risk Pool
Also set in Mohawk, the novel is narrated by Ned Hall and follows him through four periods of his life with his absent, gambling father, Sam, much of it spent in bars and pool halls. Russo has said his own father shared many of Sam’s traits.
Nobody’s Fool
Donald “Sully” Sullivan, a man with a bad knee, an ex-wife and no steady work, rents an upstairs apartment in North Bath, New York. When his estranged son Peter returns to town after losing a university job, Sully has to face the years he was absent. Robert Benton filmed it in 1994 with Paul Newman as Sully, Jessica Tandy and Bruce Willis; Newman was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor.
Straight Man
William Henry Devereaux Jr. is the reluctant interim chair of the English department at West Central Pennsylvania University in Railton, in the middle of budget cuts and a mid-life crisis. To force the administration’s hand he threatens to kill a duck from the campus pond each day until his department gets its budget. AMC adapted it in 2023 as Lucky Hank, starring Bob Odenkirk.
Empire Falls
Miles Roby has managed the Empire Grill in a failing Maine mill town all his adult life, for Francine Whiting, the widow who owns the grill and much of the town. He worries about his teenage daughter Tick, his ex-wife’s new fiancé and his disreputable father Max, while flashbacks circle his late mother’s affair. It won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; HBO’s 2005 miniseries starred Ed Harris and Paul Newman, who won an Emmy for playing Max.
The Whore’s Child
His first story collection, published the year after Empire Falls. Several stories turn on academics, writers and long marriages; in the title story an elderly nun joins a university fiction workshop and writes about her childhood.
Bridge of Sighs
Louis Charles “Lucy” Lynch, sixty, has lived his whole life in Thomaston, New York, a town poisoned by its tannery, where his family ran a corner grocery for nearly half a century. As he writes a history of the town and his family, the story turns to his boyhood friend Bobby Marconi, now a celebrated painter in Venice, and to Lucy’s wife of forty years, Sarah.
That Old Cape Magic
Jack Griffin drives to a wedding on Cape Cod, where he and his wife Joy honeymooned and his parents spent their summer holidays, with his father’s ashes in the boot of his car. Over that wedding and a second one a year later, his marriage of thirty-four years comes apart and his acerbic mother keeps calling.
Elsewhere
A memoir about his mother, Jean, with whom he lived on the top floor of his grandparents’ house in Gloversville. She followed him to Arizona and later wherever he taught. Only later did he come to see her behaviour as obsessive-compulsive disorder, and his years of looking after her as enabling it.
Everybody’s Fool
The return to North Bath, ten years after Nobody’s Fool. Doug Raymer, the town’s police chief, is obsessed with a garage-door opener he believes will reveal who his late wife was seeing, while Sully, who has come into money and no longer has to work, is still at the centre of the town. The novel opens with a funeral at the town cemetery.
Chances Are…
Three men in their late sixties who met at college in the 1960s — Lincoln, a real estate broker; Teddy, who runs a tiny press; and Mickey, a musician — meet again on Martha’s Vineyard. All three are still haunted by Jacy, the young woman who vanished from the island on Memorial Day weekend in 1971.
Somebody’s Fool
The last North Bath novel. Sully has been dead for ten years; the town has been annexed by its richer neighbour Schuyler Springs, which may cost Doug Raymer his job, and Sully’s son Peter is renovating his father’s house when his own estranged son Thomas turns up unannounced.
Under the Falls
Tyler Sinclair, a Nashville star, returns to Stone Mountain, New York, to play a benefit concert for his childhood friend Tim “Doc” Dockery, who was paralysed as a teenager in an accident at the local swimming hole. The concert is interrupted by news of a death. Kirkus called it darker and faster than his usual work; an afterword says it began as a television pilot shelved during the writers’ strike.
In What Order to Read Richard Russo
Most of Russo’s novels stand alone and can be read in any order. The exception is the North Bath trilogy — Nobody’s Fool (1993), Everybody’s Fool (2016) and Somebody’s Fool (2023) — which should be read in that order, since the later books depend on what happened to Sully and his son. Mohawk and The Risk Pool share a town but not a story.
Publication order shows a slow widening: the first two books stay inside one Gloversville-like town, the middle ones move to Maine, Pennsylvania and Cape Cod, and Elsewhere (2012) reveals how much of the fiction came from his own family.
A reading path
1. Empire Falls (2001)
2. Nobody’s Fool (1993)
3. Straight Man (1997)
4. Elsewhere (2012)
5. Everybody’s Fool (2016)
Everything Else Richard Russo Published
Beyond the 13 key books: 5 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Stories, essays and short works
5
5 books · 2012–2025
- 2012Interventionsa novella and three stories in four volumes, with illustrations by his daughter Kate Russo
- 2017Trajectoryhis second story collection
- 2018The Destiny Thiefessays on writing, writers and life
- 2021Marriage Storya short memoir published by Scribd
- 2025Life and Artessays
The years · 1949–2023
Quick facts about Richard Russo
- Known for
- Tender, funny novels about declining small towns in upstate New York and Maine and the people who stay in them, above all Empire Falls, which won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
- 1949
- Born in Johnstown, New York; grows up in Gloversville
- 1986
- First novel, Mohawk
- 1994
- Paul Newman stars in Nobody’s Fool
- 2002
- Pulitzer Prize for Empire Falls
- 2023
- Lucky Hank on AMC
- Born
- 15 July 1949, Johnstown, New York; grew up in nearby Gloversville
- Education
- University of Arizona: BA, MFA and PhD
- Taught
- Southern Illinois University Carbondale and Colby College, Maine; left teaching in 1996
- Prize
- Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 2002, for Empire Falls
- Screen
- Co-wrote Twilight (1998) and The Ice Harvest (2005) with Robert Benton; wrote the Empire Falls teleplay
- Family
- Married to Barbara Russo; two daughters, Kate and Emily
- Lives
- Portland, Maine
The red mark is 2002: the year Empire Falls won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
How Richard Russo Writes: Towns After the Mill Closes
Russo writes about one kind of place again and again: a small town whose industry has gone, whether gloves and leather in upstate New York or textiles in Maine. Mohawk, North Bath, Thomaston and Empire Falls are invented, but each is a version of Gloversville, and the people who stay — diner managers, odd-job men, a police chief, a corner grocer — are the centre of the books rather than background to them.
His novels are large casts held together by comedy. Sully’s schemes and grudges, Devereaux threatening a duck on local television, Raymer and the garage-door opener: the jokes come from character, and the sadness sits underneath them. Fathers who let their sons down are a recurring subject, from Sam Hall in The Risk Pool to Sully and Max Roby, and he has said his own father shared many of those traits.
He writes in an unhurried, conversational third person, often moving between past and present within a chapter. For other writers of ordinary American lives in small places, see the guides to Kent Haruf and Elizabeth Strout below.
Frequently asked questions about Richard Russo’s books
How many books has Richard Russo written?
Eighteen under his name. Thirteen are the key books on this page — eleven novels, a story collection and a memoir, from Mohawk (1986) to Under the Falls (2026). The other five are the story collection Trajectory, the essay collections The Destiny Thief and Life and Art, Interventions and the short memoir Marriage Story.
What are Richard Russo’s books in order?
Mohawk (1986), The Risk Pool (1988), Nobody’s Fool (1993), Straight Man (1997), Empire Falls (2001), The Whore’s Child (2002), Bridge of Sighs (2007), That Old Cape Magic (2009), Elsewhere (2012), Everybody’s Fool (2016), Chances Are… (2019), Somebody’s Fool (2023) and Under the Falls (2026).
Where should I start with Richard Russo?
Empire Falls (2001), his Pulitzer-winning novel about a diner manager in a Maine mill town; it shows his range of characters, comedy and sadness in one book. If you prefer something lighter, start with Straight Man.
What is Richard Russo’s most famous book?
Empire Falls, which won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and became an HBO miniseries in 2005. Nobody’s Fool is also widely known through the 1994 film with Paul Newman.
In what order should I read the North Bath books?
Nobody’s Fool (1993), Everybody’s Fool (2016), then Somebody’s Fool (2023). The second picks up ten years after the first, and the third is set ten years after Sully’s death.
Which Richard Russo books have been adapted?
Nobody’s Fool became a 1994 film directed by Robert Benton, with Paul Newman nominated for the Best Actor Oscar. Empire Falls became a 2005 HBO miniseries, written by Russo, with Ed Harris and Paul Newman; Newman won an Emmy. Straight Man became the AMC series Lucky Hank (2023) with Bob Odenkirk, cancelled after one season.
Has Richard Russo won the Pulitzer Prize?
Yes. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2002 for Empire Falls.
Is Mohawk a real town?
No. Mohawk, New York, the setting of his first two novels, is fictional, modelled on Gloversville, where Russo grew up. North Bath, Thomaston and Empire Falls are invented too.
Is Richard Russo still alive?
Yes. He was born on 15 July 1949 in Johnstown, New York, lives in Portland, Maine, and published his most recent novel, Under the Falls, in August 2026.
Does Richard Russo write screenplays?
Yes. Besides the Empire Falls teleplay, he co-wrote Twilight (1998) and The Ice Harvest (2005) with Robert Benton, and Keeping Mum (2005) with Niall Johnson.
Footnotes
- Richard Russo — Wikipedia
- Empire Falls — Wikipedia
- Empire Falls (miniseries) — Wikipedia
- Richard Russo — The Pulitzer Prizes
- Under the Falls — Kirkus Reviews, 2026
- Richard Russo interview — NPR, 2016
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.
“Imagination — you don’t spring from the air into the air. You spring from the ground into the air.”
— Richard Russo, interview with Steve Inskeep, NPR (2016)
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