Oz Series

L. Frank Baum wrote fourteen official Oz novels between 1900 and his death in 1919, the last published posthumously in 1920. The series begins with the iconic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, in which Dorothy Gale of Kansas is swept by a cyclone into a magical country across the Deadly Desert. The next thirteen books expand the fictional geography of Oz and the surrounding lands in considerable detail, introduce a large recurring cast including the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, Cowardly Lion, Princess Ozma, the Wizard, Tik-Tok, the Patchwork Girl, Trot, Betsy Bobbin, Polychrome, Button-Bright, and many others, and develop a coherent if frequently contradictory internal cosmology. After Baum's death the series was continued by Ruth Plumly Thompson, John R. Neill, Jack Snow, and others, but only Baum's fourteen volumes are usually considered the canonical core. Best read in publication order, since the later books assume familiarity with the earlier cast, though The Wonderful Wizard of Oz itself works as a standalone introduction.