The alphabet ends at Y
With the recent passing of Sue Grafton, fans will be left to wonder forever what Z would have stood for in Grafton’s long-running Kinsey Millhone series, known more casually as “the alphabet series.” The most recent title, Y is for Yesterday marks the definitive, official end of the 25-book series with no posthumous releases planned.
In what is intended to be a respectful tribute to Grafton’s career, this is not a list of readalikes, but a parallel alphabet comprised of books by other authors featuring a single letter in their titles. I tried to stick to fiction, but I had to stray from plan a bit, because while S offered a wealth of options, some letters were quite underrepresented.
Feel free to add to this list in the comments section. Or to speculate wildly about what Grafton would have done for Z.
A is for: a by Andy Warhol
B is for: Plan B by Jonathan Tropper
C is for: C by Tom McCarthy
D is for: Vampire Hunter D by Hideyuki Kikuchi
E is for: e. by Matt Beaumont
F is for: F by Daniel Kehlmann
G is for: G. by John Berger
H is for: H by Elizabeth Shepard
I is for: I. by Stephen Dixon
J is for: J by Howard Jacobson
K is for: The Brothers K by David James Duncan
L is for: The Haunting of L. by Howard Norman
M is for: M Train by Patti Smith
N is for: Stephen King’s N by Marc Guggenheim
O is for: Story of O by Pauline Réage
P is for: P by Andrew Lewis Conn
Q is for: Q by Evan Mandery
R is for: R Is for Rocket by Ray Bradbury
S is for: S by Koji Suzuki
T is for: t zero by Italo Calvino
U is for: The Big U by Neal Stephenson
V is for: V by Thomas Pynchon
W is for: W, or the Memory of Childhood by Georges Perec
X is for: The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
Y is for: Y by Marjorie Celona
Z is for: Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Ann Fowler
