SeriesStack

Rougon-Macquart Books in Order

by Émile ZolaLiterature & Fiction

16 books from The Fortune of the Rougons (2026) to Money (2014). Rated 4.2 across 945 listener reviews.

Reading order

  1. The Fortune of the Rougons

    Book 1 2026

    Émile Zola's The Fortune of the Rougons (1871), the opening title in the series of twenty novels dealing with the Rougon-Macquart dynasty, explores the origins of the family against the backdrop of the 1851 coup d'état.

    Kindle Paperback Audiobook

  2. The Kill (La Curee)

    Book 2 2016 3.7 (24)

    Émile Zola's The Kill is one part of the French author's 20-volume series about the fictitious Rougon-Macquart family during the Second French Empire, and it is rich with symbolism....

    Kindle Paperback Audiobook

  3. The Belly of Paris

    Book 3 1996 4.0 (77)

    Although it is little known in this country, The Belly of Paris is considered one of Émile Zola’s best novels. Set in the newly built food markets of Paris, it is a story of wealth and poverty set against a sumptuous banquet of food and…

    Kindle Paperback Audiobook

  4. The Conquest of Plassans

    Book 4 2026

    This audiobook is narrated by an AI Voice. They invited him into their home. He took everything. François and Marthe Mouret have carved out a life of comfortable respectability in the provincial town of Plassans.

    Kindle Paperback Audiobook

  5. The Sin of Abbé Mouret

    Book 5 2026

    This audiobook is narrated by an AI Voice. Paradise is not lost. It is forbidden. Serge Mouret is the perfect priest—pious, devoted, consumed by a mystical love for God that leaves no room for earthly desire.

    Kindle Paperback Audiobook

  6. His Excellency Eugène Rougon

    Book 6 2026

    This audiobook is narrated by an AI Voice. In the glittering, corrupt halls of Napoleon III's Second Empire, power is the only currency that matters—and Eugène Rougon knows how to spend it.

    Kindle Paperback Audiobook

  7. L'Assommoir [The Drinking Den]

    Book 7 2006 4.6 (58)

    Brutal, gripping, and heart-wrenching, L'Assommoir (also known as The Drinking Den) chronicles the tragic downward spiral of Gervaise Macquart, a good-natured and hardworking laundress who slides into alcoholism and despair....

    Kindle Paperback Audiobook

  8. A Page of Love

    Book 8 2026

    This audiobook is narrated by an AI Voice. In the shadow of duty, desire blooms—and innocence becomes obsession. Hélène Grandjean has devoted herself entirely to two things: her irreproachable virtue and her fragile daughter Jeanne.

    Kindle Paperback Audiobook

  9. Nana

    Book 9 1880 3.4 (157)

    Emile Zola, along with fellow novelists Honoré de Balzac and Gustave Flaubert, was an early realist in French literature....

    Kindle Paperback Audiobook

  10. The Ladies' Paradise

    Book 11 2013 3.5 (107)

    Country girl Denise Baudu arrives in Paris hoping for a position in her uncle's clothing shop. However, her uncle's shop, along with other small shops in the area, is doing poorly....

    Kindle Paperback Audiobook

  11. The Bright Side of Life

    Book 12 2018 4.5 (19)

    Orphaned with a substantial inheritance at the age of 10, Pauline Quenu is taken from Paris to live with her relatives, Monsieur and Madame Chanteau and their son Lazare, in the village of Bonneville on the wild Normandy coast.

    Kindle Paperback Audiobook

  12. Germinal

    Book 13 1885 4.6 (340)

    Widely regarded as Zola's masterpiece, the novel describes the working conditions of French coalminers in the 1860s in harsh and realistic terms. It is visceral, graphic, and unrelenting....

    Kindle Paperback Audiobook

  13. The Masterpiece

    Book 14 2020 4.4 (57)

    Perhaps the most autobiographical of Zola's Rougon-Macquart cycle of novels, The Masterpiece is a hard, bleak, and raw portrait of unrecognized artistic genius....

    Kindle Paperback Audiobook

  14. La Terre

    Book 15 2022 4.9 (12)

    Zola’s La Terre (The Earth) proved highly controversial on publication in 1887 and still retains the power to shock. It follows the fortunes of the Fouan family in the years leading up to the Franco-Prussian War....

    Kindle Paperback Audiobook

  15. The Beast in Man

    Book 17 1956 4.7 (41)

    Sex, betrayal, murder and corruption form the basis of this sensational novel by one of the leading French authors of the 19th century....

    Kindle Paperback Audiobook

  16. Money

    Book 18 2014 4.7 (53)

    The irresistible power of money, a lever that can lift the world. Love and money are the only things....

    Kindle Paperback Audiobook

About this reading order

Books are listed in the series' own numbering, which for Rougon-Macquart is also the best order to read them in. Years are first publication where we could confirm it, and otherwise the first audiobook release.

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