Idiosyncratic Episode Naming / Literature

This has been split into two sections. Creators, and Books.

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Creators:

• Jack Chalker:
  • The Four Lords of the Diamond: Each book in the quartet is titled using the pattern of [Mythical Monster]: A [X] in/at/by the [Y].
    • Lilith: A Snake in the Grass
    • Cerberus: A Wolf in the Fold
    • Charon: A Dragon at the Gate
    • Medusa: A Tiger by the Tail
  • Rings of the Master: Each book in the quartet is titled using the pattern of [Plural X] of the [Y].
    • Lords of the Middle Dark
    • Pirates of the Thunder
    • Warriors of the Storm
    • Masks of the Martyrs
  • Well World: Most of the stories are "[X] at/of Well of Souls". The two that aren't are The Return of Nathan Brazil and The Sea is Full of Stars:
    • Midnight at the Well of Souls
    • Exiles at the Well of Souls
    • Quest for the Well of Souls
    • Twilight at the Well of Souls
    • Ghost of the Well of Souls
    • Echoes of the Well of Souls
    • Shadow of the Well of Souls
    • Gods of the Well of Souls
• Nahoko Uehashi:
  • The Deer King: The two volumes of the original novel are subtitled "[verb] Mono".
  • Moribito:
    • Six of the main novels are titled "______ no Moribito" ("Guardian of ______").
    • Two of the main novels, which focus on Chagum's adventures without Balsa, are titled "______ no Tabibito" ("Traveler of ______").
    • The spin-off books are titled "______ Yuku Mono".
• Robert Ludlum and his Mad Lib Thriller Titles.
  • While he was aware that he had adopted this naming convention, he didn't treat it as having any significance. One time (probably in the 70s) he came up with a title that was not "The ______ ______". Both his agent and his publisher queried this, then called him in for a meeting to beg him (almost on the verge of tears, he recalls) to change the title to follow his previous convention.
  • This was mocked in a Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode, where Joel and the 'Bots come up with a Long List of bogus titles in "the Ludlum library": The Horshack Conspiracy, The Forbin Conundrum, The Slingshack Congealment, etc.
• Laurell K Hamilton:
  • Anita Blake series: titled from night clubs.
  • By the same author, the Merry Gentry series, the titles of which could be stated as " A [suggestive verb] of [noun]":
    • A Kiss of Shadows (Book 1)
    • A Caress Of Twilight (Book 2)
    • A Stroke of Midnight (Book 4)
    • A Lick of Frost (Book 6)
    • A Shiver of Light (Book 9)
  • Books that defy that pattern:
    • Seduced By Midnight (Book 3)
    • Mistral's Kiss (Book 5)
    • Swallowing Darkness (Book 7)
    • Divine Misdemeanors (Book 8)
• David Eddings:
  • The Belgariad: All the titles are a reference to chess, and Eddings said it was Executive Meddling, by his editor. Eddings said he wanted to publish a trilogy, but the books would have exceeded the publisher's size limit:
    • Chess pieces:
    • Pawn of Prophecy
    • Queen of Sorcery
    • Castle of Wizardry
    • Strategic terms:
    • Magician's Gambit
    • Enchanter's End Game
  • The Malloreon: A quintet, each book was titled "(Significant person/people) of (Location of note in that book)", such as:
    • "Guardians of the West"
    • "King of the Murgos": A slight exception, but the Murgos were specific to one region)
  • The Elenium: A trilogy with jeweled items in their titles: (ex. "The Diamond Throne") to emphasize the jeweled nature of the series' MacGuffin.
• Enid Blyton used this device to disambiguate her very similar series about different groups of children solving mysteries:
  • All 21 of The Famous Five book titles begin with the word "Five", which have the parody novel Five Go Mad In Dorset.
  • The words Secret Seven appear in the titles of all 15 books about them.
  • The six "Barney Mysteries" are all called The __________ Mystery with the missing word beginning with R.
  • The title formats The ________ of Adventure, Mystery of [the] _________ and The Secret [of] _________ each define a series too.
  • Her school stories, which nearly all follow the formula "[Number] Form at [School]", such as Sixth Form at St. Clare's and Second Form at Malory Towers.
• MC Beaton:
  • Agatha Raisin: Character Name and the Noun Phrase book titles such as Agatha Raisin and the [Thing That Causes The Problem]
  • Hamish Macbeth: Along the lines of Death Of A [Noun Describing The Person Who Snuffs It]. Though in special circumstances, such as A Highland Christmas they will avert this.
• Wildbow: All of wildbow's serials have arc titles that relate to some part of the work's overall themes, and relate somehow to the action taking place in that arc. Additionally, each chapter is numbered by which arc it belongs to and which chapter it is within that arc, e.g. Taking Root 1.1, Radiation 18.2. Interlude chapters, which are told from a perspective other than the protagonist's, have a chapter letter instead of a number, e.g. Blinding 11.a.
  • Worm: All of the arc titles are biology terms relating to insects and their life cycles. The main character has the power to control insects with her mind.
  • Pact: The arc titles are all legal terms. The magic system revolves around making deals and contracts with supernatural entities and other practitioners in order to gain power.
  • Twig: The arc titles are all common sayings that are also puns that relate to the mad bio-science that defines the setting.
  • Ward: The arc titles are all related to light and darkness, metaphorically relating to the main character's struggles with depression and morality, and more literally alluding to the means by which the world was nearly destroyed at the end of Worm, namely blasts of golden light.
  • Pale: The arc titles all relate to fear in ways that would make someone pale.

Books

• Animal Ark: In the original series and Hauntings spin-off, every book's title followed the convention "(Animal) in/on/at/by the (Noun)", with the animal and noun being alliterative. The Animal Ark Pets books have alliterative two-word titles, with the first word being an animal. Little Animal Ark also makes use of alliteration, with the convention being "The (Adjective) (Animal)".
• Animorphs: All 54 main series book titles were of the form "The [Single Word]." Sometimes this makes sense, like how they meet an android in the book called The Android; many times, however, you get random words like The Absolute or The Ultimate.
  • The four Prequel books were "The [Species] Chronicles," except for the One Word, Antagonist Titled Visser.
  • Alternamorphs books were "The [Adjective] [Noun]," namely The First Journey and The Next Passage.
  • Megamorphs titles didn't really have a pattern, being respectively called The Andalite's Gift, In the Time of Dinosaurs, Elfangor's Secret and Back to Before.
• Some of Baccano!'s volumes have idiosyncratic chapter naming: The Rolling Bootlegs name chapters by the time ("The First Day", "That Night", "The Second Day"), Children of the Bottle name chapters after alternating positive and negative emotions (Happiness, Angst, Delight, Anger), and Alice in Jails has chapters that always start with "Let's ___" ("Let's Go to Prison!", "Let's Eat Our Last Supper", "Let's Just Admit That This Is All Your Fault").
• Each individual story in A. A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner starts out in the form of Chapter "x": In Which (Story Title)
• Lilian Jackson Braun's series titles use the formula "The Cat Who <something>".
• Chocoholic Mysteries: All the book titles start with the words "The Chocolate" and follow it with a two-word term, nearly always alliterative (such as "Cat Caper" or "Bear Burglary") or alliterative-sounding (such as "Kidnapping Clue" or "Cupid Killings").
• The Chronicles of Narnia: In some of the books, the chapter titles are linked to each other:
  • The first two chapters of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe are "Lucy looks into a wardrobe", and "What Lucy found there".
  • In the same book, a later chapter is "Deep Magic from the Dawn of Time", followed two chapters later by "Deeper Magic from before the Dawn of Time".
  • In Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the third chapter is "The Lone Islands", followed by "What Caspian did there".
• Codex Alera: Each book has the word "Fury" in the title. After the first book, the word preceding "Fury" is the rank/title of the main character (meaning that the later titles can be majorly spoileriffic). Some of them are:
  • Princeps' Fury
  • Captain's Fury
  • Furies of Calderon
  • The first book was going to be this way too (and change the naming convention to ___'s Fury). The title was originally Shepherd Boy's Fury, but Executive Meddling changed it, but it still kind of fits the "main character's rank/title" pattern. "Calderon" is what Max calls Tavi throughout the books.
• The first 3.5 A Court of Thorns and Roses books are called "A Court of [1-syllable word] and [2-syllable word]." The fourth book, which begins a de facto Sequel Series, changes the formula with A Court of Silver Flames.
• Katharine Kerr zig-zagged this in her Deverry cycle, but the UK publisher enforced it.
  • The first two books are Daggerspell and Darkspell. The next two are The Bristling Wood and The Dragon Revenant. The UK titles are Dawnspell: The Bristling Wood and Dragonspell: The Southern Sea, not only continuing the "D-spell" theme, but adding a new one of "The Adjective Place" in the subtitles.
  • The first two books of the second sequence are A Time of Exile and A Time of Omens. The US editions then shift to a different pattern with Days of Blood and Fire and Days of Earth and Darkness. The UK retitles them A Time of War and A Time of Justice, again using the US titles as subtitles.
• The Daevabad Trilogy: Each book is titled "The [Location] of [Metal]" — The City of Brass, The Kingdom of Copper, The Empire of Gold, and the short story collection The River of Silver.
• The first four books in the DC Icons series all had titles of the format: [Hero]: [Noun][verb]er. (Wonder Woman: Warbringer, Batman: Nightwalker, Catwoman: Soulstealer and Superman Dawnbreaker.) They broke the pattern with Black Canary Breaking Silence and the Harley Quinn trilogy goes for a different pattern where each subtitle starts with "R". (Harley Quinn: Reckoning, Harley Quinn Ravenous and Harley Quinn Redemption.)
• Discworld:
  • The French translations renamed The Colour of Magic to La Huitième Couleur ("The Eighth Colour"), The Light Fantastic became Le Huitième Sortilège ("The Eighth Spell") and Equal Rites became La Huitième Fille ("The Eighth Child"). Averted with Mort, which was just elongated into Mortimer.
  • As for the English version, all books following Moist von Lipwig are all Verbing Nouny: Going Postal, Making Money and Raising Steam. Had it not been for Pterry's death, there was going to be a fourth called Raising Taxes.
• The Divine Comedy: Each of the story's three parts has a One-Word Title that ends in "o" and is a name location:
  • Inferno
  • Purgatorio
  • Paradiso
• Dragaera:
  • Save for Taltos itself, the novels featuring Vlad Taltos are all named after Houses of the Dragaeran Empire. Sometimes the chapters of a specific book also follow a pattern: Issola bases them on etiquette principles, while Dzur uses dishes of food. Brust has stated that he intends to have one more book with an Odd Name Out: the final one, after all the "house" books have been done, will be The Final Contract.
  • The Khaavren Romances, meanwhile, loosely base their titles on The Three Musketeers and its sequels, to which the series is a homage. The chapter titles also imitate the style, using a lengthy and flowery description of the chapter contents that always begin "In Which..."
    "In which the plot, in the manner of soup to which cornstarch has been added, at last begins to thicken."
• Dragon Eggs: In the third book, Dragon's First Christmas, the chapters are One-Word Title Ch-words: "Charred", "Chasten", "Challenge", "Charm", "Chimney", "Choleric", "Cheer", "Chill", "Choice", "Cherished"
• In the Dragon Masters books by Tracey West, all the titles end with "the [Element] Dragon", and most consist of the exact formula [Noun] of the [Element] Dragon.
• The Dragonlance series gives related books related titles. For example, the trilogy about Mina is "Amber and X", there are several sets of "Dragons of Adjective Noun" books (starting with the original trilogy of "Dragons of Season Time-of-Day"), and many others.
• Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files novels all have two-word titles, with the same number of letters in each word. They also hint to the book's theme. And they are all puns. Most of them are [Descriptor] [Noun] titles as well. It's been theorized that this form is deliberate because it looks really good on book covers. Some of the titles are:

Storm Front, which had a Working Title of One Word Portmantitle

Semiautomagic.

White Night

Fool Moon

The working title for Death Masks — in which the Shroud of Turin was the McGuffin — was Holy Sheet. Rumor has it that the publishers demanded a change.

The tenth book became Small Favour in the British edition, due to a fundamental difference between Commonwealth and American spelling.

This naming convention was broken with the 12th book, with a One-Word Title, which is itself ironic: Changes. This was, according to Word of God, a deliberate in order to set it apart. He was also going to have Ghost Story and Cold Days be One Word Titles thus forming a separate Idiosyncratic Episode Naming scheme for them since they are basically a pseudo-trilogy within the overall series. However, at the publisher's demand he had to change them to their current titles (Ghost Story was going to be Dead, and Cold Days' original title is unknown).

The author intends to conclude the series with a trilogy bearing the titles Hell's Bells, Stars and Stones, and Empty Night. By themselves they are interesting titles, but even a casual reader will recognize them as recurring curses used in the series (the first two by Harry, the last by Thomas and Lara). He claims this is because "they're curses for a reason." Note that he plans for it to be an Apocalyptic Trilogy.

• Elemental Series (Kemmerer):
  • The novels all start with S and are 5 letters long except the last: Storm, 'Spark, Spirit, Secret, Sacrifice''
  • The novellas all end in "-less" except the first: Elemental, Fearless, Breathless.
• The Empirium Trilogy: The titles of each novel are named after the most recent members of House Courverie: Furyborn is named after Eliana, Kingsbane after Rielle, and Lightbringer after Audric.
• Enchanted Forest Chronicles: Every title is formatted [Gerund] [Preposition] Dragons. One book, which Patricia C. Wrede absolutely could not think up a title for, was jokingly sent to her editor as Bowling For Dragons.
• Everworld uses Alliterative Titles, such as The Search for Senna, Land of Loss and Enter the Enchanted.
• Flavia de Luce: The titles of the novels are lines of songs, poems, dramas, or nursery rhymes that either play a role in Kid Detective Flavia's life or can in some way be related to the current case.
• Franny K. Stein: Most of the books have titles with a play on "Fran" (e.g. The Invisible Fran, The Frandidate), with the exceptions of the first book Lunch Walks Among Us, the second book Attack of the 50-Ft. Cupid, the eighth book Bad Hair Day, the ninth book Recipe for Disaster and the tenth book Mood Science.
• Gotrek & Felix: Most of the books are called "[blank]slayer" with the blank being filled in by whatever Gotrek needs to kill this time — Skavenslayer, Daemonslayer, Dragonslayer, and so on.
• Hannah Swensen: All the main series books start with the name of some baked good, followed by the word "Murder", e.g. Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder, Apple Turnover Murder, Banana Cream Pie Murder... Two of the five novellas also follow the pattern. Averted with the other three novellas ("Candy For Christmas", "The Twelve Desserts of Christmas" and "Joanne Fluke's Lake Eden Cookbook"), which don't involve murder.
• Hedge Witch: All the books in the series are titled "[something]Witch"- HedgeWitch, WoodWitch and SeaWitch.
• Almost all of Tony Hillerman's novels have either a two word title or a three word title starting with "the", usually, they will be of the format [Verb]ing noun, The [noun] Way, or The [adjective] [noun]:
  • The exceptions:
    • The Fly on the Wall
    • Dance Hall of the Dead
    • People of Darkness
• Standard operating practice for the Honor Harrington franchise:
  • The main storyline has the eponymous character's first name somewhere in the title of every even-numbered book, though the gimmick started to wear thin by the end, with the names' repetitiveness suggesting that Weber has run out of good puns.
    • First two short-story anthologies (More Than Honor and World of Honor) also followed the same model, but it was later dropped.
  • All novels in the spin-off Saganami Island series have followed the Shadow of pattern for their titles.
  • Another spin-off series (Wages of Sin) have parts of the Statue of Liberty (vis Crown of Slaves and Torch of Freedom) in their titles.
  • A prequel series Manticore Ascendant has all the novels named in the same A Call to _______ model.
  • All companion books containing various references and bits of worldbuilding are named after the symbolic representations of the political powers they describe: House of Steel for Manticore, House of Lies for Haven, and House of Shadows for Mesa.
• The Hungry Plague: For its books, "The [Child] [Phrase]": The Girl With All the Gifts, and The Boy on the Bridge
• Each book in J. D. Robb's Eve Dallas series has a title using the pattern _______ In Death, beginning with Naked in Death. The one exception is New York to Dallas, and even that bears the subtitle An In Death Novel.
• Subverted with The Inheritance Cycle—the first two books were called Eragon and Eldest, establishing a six-letter "E"-word pattern. Fans generally expected the last book to be called Empire...until the author announced that the third book would be called Brisingr, and also there would be a fourth book (which wound up being called Inheritance).
• In the book series Janitors, each chapter title is an appropriate quote from the chapter.
• Sue Grafton's "Kinsey Milhone" series of detective novels began with A is for Alibi, and continued in alphabetical order up to (so far) Y is for Yesterday. However, the 24th book is simply titled X.
• Each book in the Legacy of Orïsha series is titled Children of X and Y, combined with Alliterative Title (Children of Blood and Bone, Children of Virtue and Vengeance, Children of Anguish and Anarchy).
• The Legend of Drizzt: The Drizzt Do'Urden novels sometimes have idiosyncratic names within series.
  • The Dark Elf Trilogy has all One Word Titles.
  • Three of four books in the Legacy of the Drow series worked like this: Starless Night, Siege of Darkness, Passage to Dawn.
  • The current series, Transitions, has three books, each with the title The _____ King.
• The Lunar Chronicles: The four main novels have Protagonist Titles, where the name in question also functions as a normal word: Cinder, Scarlet, Cress and Winter. The shorter Villain Episode, Fairest, dispenses with that but is still a One-Word Title.
• John D. MacDonald's mysteries starring Travis McGee all included a color in the title.
• The Magic Tree House books also have alliterative titles (Night Of The Ninjas, Dolphins Past Daybreak). If the title isn't alliterative then it rhymes (Ghost Town At Sundown) or manages to make a pun (The Knight At Dawn). In addition, at least one word is a time of day, a day of the week, or some other reference to time (e.g., a season in Warriors in Winter).
• Lindsey Davis's Marcus Didius Falco series started out this way, with The Silver Pigs being followed by Shadows in Bronze, Venus in Copper, The Iron Hand of Mars and Poseidon's Gold. At which point, she ran out of metals that were known to the Romans and sounded promising in a title. Titles from then on follow no particular pattern, though several play with a well-known phrase (Three Hands in the Fountain, for example.)
• All the book in the Midnights Twins Trilogy include the word "Midnight" somewhere in the title: Midnight's Twin, A Gathering Midnight and A Midnight Dark & Golden.
• Mix Beer With Liquor And You Will Get Sicker has all of the chapters and the story itself named after idioms and sayings which meanings usually relate closely to the chapter's content.
• My Babysitter Is a Vampire: "My Babysitter [Phrase]": My Babysitter Is a Vampire, My Babysitter Has Fangs, My Babysitter Bites Again, My Babysitter Flies by Night, My Babysitter Goes Bats, and My Babysitter Is a Movie Monster.
• My Brother is a Superhero uses the formula "My [Person] is a [Supernatural Entity]."
• My Weird School: Each book has a Rhyming Title of "[school staff member who's the focus of the book] is [synonym of "crazy" that rhymes with that character's name]!" Examples include "Mr. Klutz is Nuts!", "Ms. Hannah is Bananas!", and Mrs. Yonkers is Bonkers!" The rhyme scheme continued for the other books past the first series, but branched out beyond the "crazy" synonyms.
• The Otherworld novels have a different title format for each narrator. Elena's novels are all -en verbs: Bitten, Stolen, Broken and Frostbitten. Paige's novels are "(Type of) Magic": Dime Store Magic, Industrial Magic and Counterfeit Magic.
• After Donald Westlake restarted his series of Anti-Villain Parker novels (under the pseudonym Richard Stark), the One Word Titles of the first five novels were chained together thusly:
  • Comeback
  • Backflash
  • Flashfire
  • Firebreak
  • Breakout
  • Outcome, which chains the last part of the last title to the first part of the first.
• All the Perry Mason novels were called The Case of... the (adjective) (noun). The two words were usually an alliterative pairing, e.g. The Case of the Notorious Nun, etc.
• All twelve of the Philo Vance novels had titles The ______ Murder Case; except for The Gracie Allen Murder Case, the extra word had six letters.
• The first nine Ellery Queen novels had titles of form The (nationality) (noun) Mystery.
• Martha Grimes' Richard Jury novels are named after pubs or bars featured in the stories.
• Edward S. Aaron's Sam Durell novels had titles in the form Assignment _______.
• Septimus Heap uses One Word Titles with Xtremely Kool Letterz, such as Magyk and Flyte. Its two sidebooks drop the first rule, being called The Darke Toad and The Magykal Files.
• The title of each book in A Series of Unfortunate Events alliterates (e.g. The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room). The last book, simply titled The End, is the exception. Also, in every title except The Reptile Room, the middle word is an adjective, nearly always with negative connotations.
• Most of the Sherlock Holmes short stories are titled The Adventure of ________. The first six stories didn't follow this scheme, but from the second set onward it was adhered to with only three exceptions ("The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax", "His Last Bow" and "The Problem of Thor Bridge"). This is how the stories were originally published in the Strand magazine; but when they were collected in book form, the second volume (The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes) omitted "The Adventure of" in the stories' titles, and the twelve stories of the Memoirs often appear without this prefix in various complete collections and other reprints.
• Shadow Children: Each book is titled "Among The _______":
  • Among the Hidden
  • Among the Imposters
  • Among the Betrayed
  • Among the Barons
  • Among the Brave
  • Among the Enemy
  • Among the Free
• Something Like... Series: Each book title follows the pattern "Something Like [X]". The first four fill in the blank with seasons, and the next four with stormy weather phenomena.
• A Song of Ice and Fire
  • In the first three books, chapters are exclusively named for the POV character they're being told through. In books four and five however, some chapters are named for a title or nickname that refers (sometimes quite obliquely) to that character. A few characters are referenced with both their name and title (Victarion Greyjoy has a namesake chapter and one titled "The Iron Suitor"), while others are referenced with different titles (Arya Stark has a chapter named "The Blind Girl" and another named "The Ugly Little Girl").
  • The titles of the books all take the form of "Article Noun Preposition Noun".
• Star Wars Legends:
  • The Hand Of Thrawn duology consisted of titles that relate to time: Specter of the Past and Vision of the Future.
  • The Legacy of the Force novels each had a One-Word Title:
    • Betrayal
    • Bloodlines
    • Tempest
    • Exile
    • Sacrifice
    • Inferno
    • Fury
    • Revelation
    • Invincible
  • The Corellian trilogy included planets/space stations in the Corellian system as its titles.
• Nearly all the Stephanie Plum novels by Janet Evanovich include a number in the title, and the numbers are sequential. The only four exceptions to the "title includes the number of the book in a chronological listing of the series" pattern so far are four holiday-theme entries, all of which include the word Plum in the title.
• The Twilight Saga: All the book titles are celestial phrases, and they go in One-Word Title then a two word title, and the repeat:
  • Twilight
  • New Moon
  • Eclipse
  • Breaking Dawn
  • Additionally, most chapter titles are simple One or two-word phrases:
    • Except in part 2 of Breaking Dawn, where the story is narrated by Jacob; and therefore, the chapter titles are all in same sarcastic tone as Jacob's narration. (eg: "Why Didn't I Just Walk Away? Oh Right, Because I'm an Idiot.", and "The Two Things at the Very Top of My Things-I-Never-Want-To-Do List")
• The Girls Series: The 4 books of the series use a "Girls [verb] [noun]" pattern: Girls in Love, Girls Under Pressure, Girls Out Late, and Girls in Tears.
• Lawrence Block's books about Bernie Rhodenbarr all start with "The Burglar Who..." or "The Burglar In...". Block unintentionally created a pattern with his books about Matt Scudder, which all had five word titles (Eight Million Ways to Die, A Dance at the Slaughterhouse, Time to Murder and Create, etc.) until somebody pointed it out to him. He called the next one A Long Line of Dead Men to break the pattern.
  • More deliberately, his novels about philatelist gun-for-hire John Keller all play in to his profession: Hit Man, Hit List, Hit Parade, Hit and Run, and Hit Me.
• Glen Cook's Garrett, P.I. novels all have titles in the form [Adjective] [Metal] [Nouns]: Cold Copper Tears, Angry Lead Skies, Sweet Silver Blues, etc. Some people even refer to the books as "the Adjective Metal Noun series".
• Every book of Haruhi Suzumiya is entitled "The ______ of Haruhi Suzumiya". Examples are "Melancholy", "Disappearance", "Rampage", "Intrigues" etc.
  • Fanfic titles often follow the convention. A Death Note crossover was called "The Boredom of Shinigami Ryuk".
  • It's always two kanji after the phrase (the original grammatical format is "Suzumiya Haruhi no ________"). Anything after the "no" is always a complicated enough word for two kanji, but not so complicated it requires three. Kyoto Animation and Kadokawa carried this over to the music and games, too; even some of the puns in Haruhi-chan use this format.
• Chapter names in Raymond E. Feist's The Riftwar Cycle are all one words. Each book subtitle (the first book has two, one for each part) has an interesting naming gimmick. The first one is called "Pug and Tomas", the second "Milamber and the Valheru" and the third is "Arutha and Jimmy", to show that each part will focus on a particular pair of characters. The first 2 pairs are in fact only one pair, and the reason for the name change isn't obvious until some time into the second part.
• Dirty Pair
  • The novels' titles usually follow the pattern "Dirty Pair no Dai______" ("The Dirty Pair's Great _______"). The only exceptions are the side story "Dokusaisha no Isan" ("Legacy of the Dictator") and possibly "Doruroi no Arashi" ("Storm of Doruroi"), although the latter is considered part of the Crusher Joe series.
  • The Dirty Pair Flash novels' title follow the pattern "Tenshi no ______" ("The Angels' ______").
• Frank Herbert's original Dune novels all contain the word "Dune", and four out of six follow the formula "X of Dune".
  • The three Prelude to Dune novels by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson are each named after a noble house in the Dune Verse.
• Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series: Each of the ten Novels were published with "Foundation" in their title. Two sets of three novels are considered a Trilogy; Foundation (1951), Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation forms The Foundation Trilogy, while Foundation's Fear, Foundation And Chaos, and Foundations Triumph forms The Second Foundation Trilogy. In the first trilogy, "Second Foundation" refers to an organization mentioned in the first book that becomes relevant towards the end of the second book, and features prominently in the third. However, the second trilogy is named such because it is the second trilogy set in the Foundation universe, and it takes place during Hari Seldon's lifetime.
• Charlaine Harris:
  • Each novel in The Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries series has the word "Dead" in its title.
  • In the Harper Connelly Mysteries series, each title features the word "Grave".
  • In the Lily Bard Mysteries series, titles follow the pattern "Shakespeare's ______".
• The chapter headings and subheadings of Ian M. Banks's novella The 'State of the Art' are revealed, in that the end in the supposed translation notes, to be the names of various ships and the Minds that control them. Although since Culture ship names can be pretty much anything whether this qualifies as a pattern is debatable.
• All of the books in The Hollows series, written by Kim Harrison, are titled after westerns, most often those starring Clint Eastwood (The Outlaw Demon Wails).
• Shouji Gatou names all "mainline" Full Metal Panic! novels by [Japanese verb][Three-word English proverb] system (Yureru Into The Blue, Owaru Day By Day, Moeru One Man Force etc). His comedic short story anthologies (read Fumoffu!) are correspondingly named by Japanese proverbs, each having the number of respective book somewhere inside. Recently he complained that he starts to run out of suitable proverbs.
• Almost all of Lynn Kurland's De Piaget and MacLeod romances are titled after songs (Till There Was You, With Every Breath, My Heart Stood Still, The Very Thought of You, When I Fall In Love, If I Had You, This Is All I Ask, From This Moment On, etc); those that aren't are song lyrics (Stardust of Yesterday from "Stardust," Another Chance to Dream from Greg Sczebel's "Everybody," Love Came Just In Time from "Just In Time," etc.) The sole exceptions to this seem to be Dreams Of Stardust and Much Ado in the Moonlight^note the latter of which is an allusion to Shakespeare, which features heavily in the plot.
  • Similarly, every Nine Kingdoms book is ________: A Novel of the Nine Kingdoms.
• Canadian children's author Linda Bailey with her Stevie Diamond mystery books. The first one was titled How Come the Best Clues Are Always In the Garbage?, so her publisher insisted subsequent titles all had to be questions about ten words in length. For example, the title of the third book was going to be Who's Got Gertie?, but this was deemed too short, so it was extended with And How Can We Get Her Back?
• Each chapter of Walter Jon Williams' This Is Not a Game is titled "This Is Not a(n) _____" or "This is not the ______".
• P. G. Wodehouse:
  • Most of the titles of the Jeeves and Wooster stories (usually the novels, but also a chunk of the short stories and the American publication re-titlings) use "Jeeves and the _____" or some quotation of Bertie's from the story directed at Jeeves, "_____________, Jeeves" (examples of the latter include "Right Ho, Jeeves", "Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves", and "Thank You, Jeeves"). Among the exceptions: "The Code Of The Woosters" and the short story "Bertie Changes His Mind" - the latter is a double exception, as this is the only story narrated by Jeeves rather than Bertie.
  • All of the Psmith and Mr. Mulliner books have their respective main character's name in their title. (At least in book form; the first two Psmith books had different titles in their original magazine serial publication, because it had not yet become apparent that Psmith was the Breakout Character.)
• Robin Hobb's first three trilogies were all on the same pattern. Book one and three would have (X's)(noun), while book two had (adjective)X. For the first trilogy, X=Assassin, in the second, X=Ship, and for the third X=Fool. The Soldier Son has the same general pattern but relaxes a bit on the exact words used. (Shaman's Crossing/Forest Mage/Renegade's Magic)
• The Harry Potter books are all titled "Harry Potter and the <subject of the story>", e.g. "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone". Four of the books also follow a "Harry Potter and the <X> of <y>" pattern, like for example "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets"
• The Rabbi Small mysteries by Harry Kemelman all have titles of the form "<X>day the Rabbi <Y>." Many use days of the week ("Wednesday the Rabbi Got Wet," "Friday the Rabbi Slept Late"). He started with "Friday", because the day of the week was plot-relevant and worked through to "Thursday" in chronological order. The later books kept the "day" theme but in a rather more forced way (such as "One Fine Day the Rabbi Bought a Cross"), and book 8 ("Conversations With Rabbi Small") actually averts it.
• Gordon R. Dickson
  • Each book of The Dragon Knight series has the title start with "The Dragon". Half of them are The Dragon and the _____.
  • A trilogy of children's books are all titled Secret Under ______.
• The Dexter series by Jeff Lindsay likes to stick with 'D' alliteration and always have 'Dexter' in the title. Examples include 'Darkly Dreaming Dexter', 'Dexter by Design', 'Dearly Devoted Dexter', Dexter is Delicious'.
• There's a trend of the German versions of Stephen King novels to get titles that are one word. It is particularly striking in the first half of the Dark Tower series, which looks like they were trying to go for one syllable titles for the whole run. This might or might not have to do something with the success of It, but that seems particularly likely in the case of Misery, whose translation was published in the year after It was a bestseller, under the title Sie ("She"). As to the Dark Tower series: The Gunslinger -> Schwarz ("Black"), The Drawing of the Three -> Drei ("Three"), The Waste Lands -> Tot ("Dead"), Wizard and Glass -> Glas, Wolves of the Calla -> Wolfsmond ("Wolf Moon"), Song of Susannah -> Susannah - the last, Der Turm, gets an article. The other wiki has a full list for the completists.
• Starting with the eighth book, the reference/humor series Uncle John's Bathroom Reader began naming its books Uncle John's [adjective] Bathroom Reader.
• Donna Andrews' Meg Langslow Mysteries series are all named on a bird theme. After the first three, the names also reference popular sayings or quotes (Murder with Peacocks, No Nest For the Wicket, We'll Always Have Parrots, Cockatiels At Seven, etc.) and they all involve the named birds in some manner. They also progress seasonally, so that the reader expecting Six Geese A-Slaying to be set at Christmas is going to be absolutely correct. The Turing Hopper series are all have references to computer terms in the name (You Have Murder references AOL's well-known "You've Got Mail!", while Delete All Suspects is more similar to "Delete All Files"), which is thematically appropriate since the main character, Turing, is an AI.
• All of the Night Huntress novels have the word "Grave" in their title, since they're about vampires, half-vampires, ghouls, and ghosts.
• The Bailey School Kids books are all named "[Supernatural creature(s)] doesn't/don't [do something mundane]".
• All of the Kate Daniels novels have the title format of "Magic (Verb)s", with the verb more or less related to the story arc. "Magic Mourns" is about a funeral being cancelled due to a missing body, and Magic Strikes is about an underground gladitorial arena.
• The Mas Arai series of Naomi Hirahara are all composed of one English and one Japanese word. The author sort of follows the same pattern herself, but "Naomi" is a name in English (derived from Hebrew) and Japanese, though it's pronounced differently.
• Each city in Invisible Cities has a feminine name. The city chapters are titled either "<adjective> cities" or "cities and the <noun>".
• Another Forgotten Realms example. The War Of The Spider Queen hexalogy has titles ending in "-tion". In order: Dissolution, Insurrection, Condemnation, Extinction, Annihilation, Resurrection. They also refer to the events of the book (Dissolution deals with the dissolution in Menzoberranzan for example).
• Each of John Updike's "Rabbit" novels has a title with an alliteration involving the main character's name: Rabbit, Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit Is Rich, Rabbit at Rest.
  • A decade or so after the last Rabbit book (at the end of which the character dies), Updike wrote a short novella following up on the activities of his descendants. The title was - what else? - Rabbit Remembered.
• Every book in The Guardians series is titled "Demon (Word)", with the word being related to the main plot. Demon Bound is about a woman bound by a Deal with the Devil, and Demon Forged is about a blacksmith's trial by fire. The series itself is about the war between angels and demons.
• Dean Koontz' series starring Odd Thomas are called; Odd Thomas, Forever Odd, Brother Odd and Thomas goes on holiday. ... No okay it's called Odd Hours.
• The Matthew Swift books all have titles of the form: "[Plot-related noun phrase], or, the [single, longish action noun] of Matthew Swift".
• Every chapter title in Scott Westerfeld's novel The Last Days is the name of a rock band. This is fitting because the title of the book is the name the protagonists finally chose for their own band.
• The autobiography of Jewish-Italian chemist Primo Levi is named "The Periodic table". Every chapter is named for a chemical element more or less related to the content.
• Every chapter in Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel follows the pattern [noun] [preposition] [article] [noun], for instance "Conversation with a Commissioner".
  • In the sequel, The Naked Sun chapter titles follow the pattern "A [noun] is [verb]ed". In the second sequel The Robots of Dawn, chapters are simply titled after the most important characters that appear in each chapter. Robots has a fairly small cast of important characters, and several chapters are titled "Again [Name]".
• All the chapters in Garry Kilworth's novel House of Tribes are named after cheeses (including Wensleydale). Of course, given that most of the main characters are mice...
• In the Firebird Trilogy, each of the five books' names are based off of the main character's name: Firebird, Fusion Fire, and Crown of Fire with Firebird Angelo Caldwell, Wind and Shadow with Wind Haworth, and Daystar with Tavkel Caldwell, one of whose epithets is the Daystar.
• The Julesburg Mystery Series themes its titles off of deadly water phenomena: Riptide, Whirlpool, and Undertow.
• Mindy Starns Clark titled her Million Dollar Mystery series using common sayings with incremental units of money in each title: A Penny for Your Thoughts, Don't Take Any Wooden Nickels, A Dime a Dozen, A Quarter for a Kiss, and The Buck Stops Here.
• Kathey Reichs' early Temperence Brennan books don't have Idiosyncratic Episode Naming (although one of them is called Bare Bones), but since the TV adaptation Bones started in 2005, they've all had the word "bones" in the title.
• The R.D. Wingfield novels that inspired the TV series A Touch of Frost all go for the Epunymous Title: Night Frost, Hard Frost, Frost at Christmas etc.
• John Sandford's Lucas Davenport novels are all titled __________ Prey, from 1989's Rules of Prey through 2011's Buried Prey.
• Dick Francis' mystery novels usually have titles incorporating slang or terminology borrowed from the world of horse racing (which Francis, a former jockey, used as the setting for most of the books).
• Every single Irving Wallace novel is called The ________ (The Word, The Chapman Report, The Prize, The Miracle and so on).
• Every chapter of the web-novel Domina is a Latin word or short phrase. On that note, the chapters are referred to as "scenes."
• All the book titles in the October Daye series come from Shakespeare.
• The Roman Mysteries has all its novels using a The X of Y format, with the X always being a group of people and the Y always being a place in the Roman Empire.
• In Howl's Moving Castle, all the chapter titles describe something that happens in that chapter, and all but one begin with "In Which..." (the Odd Name Out is Chapter 5, "Which is far too full of washing").
• All three books in Megan Crewe's Fallen Worlds trilogy have a title that consist of 'The X We X': The Way We Fall, The Lives We Lost, and "The Worlds We Made''.
• The Shadowhunter Chronicles:
  • The Mortal Instruments: All books are all titled "City of [x]". In the first three books (which kind of form their own trilogy) the X is always one word and in the last three books the X is always two words.
  • The Infernal Devices: All books are all titled "Clockwork [x]". All the chapters are also named after poems.
  • The Last Hours: All books are all titled "Chain of [x]"
• Doctor Who Expanded Universe
  • In the novel The Silent Stars Go By, by Dan Abnett, all the chapter titles, like the title of the book itself, are lines from Christmas carols.
  • Jenny T. Colgan's novelisation of "The Christmas Invasion" does the same thing.
  • In Steven Moffat's novelisation of "The Day of the Doctor", all but one of the chapter titles are "X of the Doctor".
• Each book in the Dirigent Mercenary Corps series is named for the rank held by viewpoint character Lon Nolan, from Officer Cadet to Colonel.
• Each book in Russell and Lilian Hoban's "Frances" series usually takes the form of "X for Frances" (e.g., "Bedtime for Frances", "Bread and Jam for Frances", etc.).
• All of the books in the Relativity series have titles consisting of two words with an ampersand between them. So far there's Lost & Found, Secrets & Revelations, Heroes & Villains, Love & Politics, Friends & Foes, Sweat & Blood, Hellos & Goodbyes, and Flight & Refuge. The side-stories collections have the deliberately bland-sounding names This & That and Here & There.
• According to Jack Campbell, every title of his main The Lost Fleet series is named after a ship playing a key role in that particular story. Since Alliance ships tend to be named after personal qualities (e.g. Dauntless, Courageous, Victorious, Invincible), the book titles are the same. The exception to this rule is the title of the second novel, Fearless. The author wanted to name the book Furious after a ship playing a key role in the novel only to be vetoed by the publisher. There is a ship called Fearless in the novel, but it plays a minor role. This trend is broken in the spin-off series The Lost Stars. This may be justified by the fact that the stories don't deal with Alliance ships. The names of the spin-off books are two-worded and Medieval in nature (e.g. Tarnished Knight).
• Several chapter titles in A Wolf in the Soul are names of animals. The first three are Goose^note Not Goat, oddly enough, Cat, and Dog.
• The full-length novels in the Sabina Kane series use the pattern Color-Adjective Noun (e.g. the first book is Red-Headed Stepchild).
• The three books in the Star Trek: Terok Nor trilogy use the Time of Day of the Predatory Animal (e.g. the last book is Dawn of the Eagles).
• Noel Streatfeild's Shoes books had this added to them. Her first two children's books were Ballet Shoes and Tennis Shoes. The American publication of some of her other books were renamed to match, including Circus Shoes (The Circus is Coming); Theater Shoes (Curtain Up); Party Shoes (Party Frock); Movie Shoes (The Painted Garden); Skating Shoes (White Boots, which almost fits anyway); Family Shoes (The Bell Family); Dancing Shoes (Wintle's Wonders); and Travelling Shoes (The Apple Bough).
• The books in the Animal Antics A to Z picture book series combine this with Alliterative Title. Each features alphabetically a different animal, and each word within a particular title begins with the same letter, i.e. Izzy Impala's Imaginary Illnesses, Quentin Quokka's Quick Questions, etc.
• The books in Jill Churchill's Jane Jeffry series all have titles which pun on the title of a better-known literary work, such as Mulch Ado About Nothing or A Farewell to Yarns. The books in her Grace and Favor series are all named after 1920s-1940s popular songs.
• In Diane Duane's Young Wizards series:
  • Every book has Wizard or Wizardry as part of its title.
  • Most of the books also have thematic chapter titles.
    • Book 1: all chapters are as in the titular book within the book.
    • Book 2: all chapters have the word "song" as part of them.
    • Book 3: all chapters are computer terms.
    • Book 4: all chapters are written in Celtic, some of which have English as well.
    • Book 5: all chapters name days and times during the days (Tuesday Night; Late Tuesday Night. Wednesday Morning). The final chapter is simply Dawn.
    • Book 8: all chapters are military terms.
    • Book 9: most chapters are place names on Mars.
• The m/m FBI series Cut and Run by Abigail Roux qualifies. Every book title uses a two-word phrase connected with "and" that gives a hint as to a theme or major event in that volume: Cut & Run, Sticks & Stones, Fish & Chips, Divide & Conquer, Armed & Dangerous, Dine & Dash, Stars & Stripes, Touch & Geaux, Ball & Chain, Shock & Awe, Cross & Crown, Crash & Burn, Part & Parcel. Volume seven combines this with Pun-Based Title (Touch & Geaux) thanks to it being set in New Orleans.
• The names of the first two books in the Divergent trilogy end in 'gent'. Subverted by the last book which ends in 'giant', but is pronounced the same way.
• Edward D. Hoch does this with many of series short story characters:
  • Nick Velvet stories are titled "The Theft of..."
  • Dr Sam Hawthorne stories are titled "The Problem of..."
  • Jeffery Rand stories are titled "The Spy at..." or "The Spy and..."
• Every chapter in Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan is titled after the Spanish word for either a fruit or a vegetable that figures into the plot. The titular protagonist grows up in a vineyard and spends the bulk of the novel working as a farm laborer in a migrant camp, so her life revolves around planting and harvesting crops. The first chapter takes place during the grape harvest at the family vineyard, so it's titled "Las Uvas" ("Grapes"); a later chapter has the family escaping to the United States while hiding under piles of guavas in a wooden cart, so it's titled "Las Guayavas" ("Guavas"); chapters where she takes jobs peeling potatoes and packing asparagus are titled "Las Papas" ("Potatoes") and "Los Espárragos" ("Asparagus"), respectively; a chapter where she uses an avocado salve to heal her injured hands is titled "Los Aguacates" ("Avocados"); etc.
• Every novel of the Tantei Team KZ Jiken Note starts with an item and ends with "knows" (wa shitteru). This spilled into the Animated Adaptation as the episode titles are just named after the novel the episode's been adopted from.
• Most of Beatrix Potter's books start with "The Tale of...".
• All the titles in C. J. Cherryh's Foreigner (1994) series are one singular noun ending in "-er" or "-or".
• Longarm: All of the 400+ titles in this series start Longarm... and the majority begin Longarm and the....
• The first five novels in the Craft Sequence by Max Gladstone have numbers in their titles: Three Parts Dead, Two Serpents Rise, Full Fathom Five, Last First Snow and Four Roads Cross. Though they're not sequential in their publishing order, the numbers in the titles indicate the actual timeline within the story, meaning that Last First Snow details the earliest and Full Fathom Five the concluding events of the first part of the series. Word of God says that the sixths book, Ruin of Angels, does not follow that naming convention because it is the beginning of part two of the series as well as of an overarching continuous timeline.
• The Girl in the Steel Corset:
  • Each main book's title has some of this. They all start with "The Girl", the first two books have 'in the' and involve pieces of clothing, a "Corset" and a "Collar", respectively, while the last two have 'with the'. Each odd-numbered-book's title involves some metallic object, "Steel Corset" and "Iron Touch", respectively, and each even-numbered-book's title involves clockwork mechanisms, "Clockwork Collar" and "Windup Heart".
  • Each novella's title is The X of Y:
    • The Strange Case of Finley Jayne
    • The Dark Discovery of Jack Dandy
    • The Wild Adventure of Jasper Renn
• The Millennium Series: The English titles of each book start with "The Girl", and aside from each trilogy starter they follow with "Who [Past Tense Verb] [Something]":
  • The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
  • The Girl Who Played with Fire
  • The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
  • The Girl in the Spider's Web
  • The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye
  • The Girl Who Lived Twice
• The Spirit Thief: Each book is titled "The Spirit _____", with the exception of the final one, "Spirit's End".
• Princesses of the Pizza Parlor: A more accurate trope name than usual, for a piece of literature as each book is called an episode, in the text. The first three books have titles that start with "Princesses" and are phrased negating something:
  • Princesses Don't Do Summer School
  • Princesses Are Never Lost: (Everything Else Is Simply Misplaced)
  • Princesses Don't Play Nice
• Simon R. Green
  • Every book in the Secret Histories series has a title that's a play on a James Bond title, usually altered to contain either something magical or Eddie Drood's surname.
  • The first three books in the Ghost Finders are titled "Ghost of a X". The next three are "X From Beyond".
• Tad Williams' Otherland: [Location] of [Color] [Material-ish thing], for each of the 4 books:
  • City of Golden Shadow (1996)
  • River of Blue Fire (1998)
  • Mountain of Black Glass (1999)
  • Sea of Silver Light (2001)
• Tad Williams' Shadowmarch: Each volume is called Shadow[something] being both One Word Titles and Portmantitles.
  • Shadowmarch
  • Shadowplay
  • Shadowrise
  • Shadowheart
• The Stoneheart Trilogy: Stoneheart, Ironhand, and Silvertongue. [Material][Body Part] pattern.
• Krim Pyramid: The novels of the duology are named after phrases to do with pyramids: pyramid scheme and Pyramid Power.
• Volume titles in High School Dx D follow the format "[Supernatural concept featured in volume] of the [School-related concept featured in volume]". For example, the first three are "Diabolus of the Old School Building", "Phoenix of the Battle School Building" and "Excalibur of the Moonlit Schoolyard". Even the series title can be considered this, if interpreted as "DxD of the High School".^note DxD has several meanings within the series, all relating to the supernatural. Sometimes "of the" is replaced by something else (e.g. "Holy behind the Gymnasium") and side story volumes may ignore the format altogether (e.g. "Ise SOS").
• Jewel Princess by Jahnna N. Malcolm:
  • The stories are named for one of the Princesses, and is in Character Name and the Noun Phrase style, going Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Diamond, rinse and repeat:
  1. The Ruby Princess Runs Away
  2. The Sapphire Princess Meets a Monster
  3. The Emerald Princess Plays a Trick
  4. The Diamond Princess Saves the Day
  5. The Ruby Princess Sees a Ghost
  6. The Sapphire Princess Hunts for Treasure
  7. The Emerald Princess Finds a Fairy
  8. The Diamond Princess and the Magic Ball
  9. The Ruby Princess and the Baby Dragon
  10. The Sapphire Princess Helps a Mermaid
  11. The Emerald Princess Follows a Unicorn
  12. The Diamond Princess Steps Through Her Mirror
  • The Super Special follows the same format: "The Jewel Princesses and the Missing Crown"
• Heralds of Valdemar: Most of the sub-series uses it:
  • The Mage Wars: The X Gryphon:
    • The Black Gryphon (1994)
    • The White Gryphon (1995)
    • The Silver Gryphon (1996)
  • The Last Herald-Mage: Magic's P-X:
    • Magic's Pawn (1989)
    • Magic's Promise (1990)
    • Magic's Price (1990)
  • The Collegium Chronicles: All One Word Titles. The last two are a type of building.
    • Foundation (2008)
    • Intrigues (2010)
    • Changes (2011)
    • Redoubt (2012)
    • Bastion (October 2013)
  • The Herald Spy, a sequel to the Collegium Chronicles with an adult Herald Mags.
    • Closer to Home (October 2014)
    • Closer to the Heart (October 2015)
    • Closer to the Chest (October 2016)
  • Vows and Honor: Oath-X:
    • The Oathbound (1988)
    • Oathbreakers (1989)
    • Oathblood (1998)
  • Exile's Duology: Exile's X:
    • Exile's Honor (2002)
    • Exile's Valor (2003)
  • The Arrows Trilogy: Arrow's / Arrow's X:
    • Arrows of the Queen (1987)
    • Arrow's Flight (1987)
    • Arrow's Fall (1988)
  • Mage Winds: Winds of X:
    • Winds of Fate (1991)
    • Winds of Change (1992)
    • Winds of Fury (1993)
  • Mage Storms: Storm X:
    • Storm Warning (1994)
    • Storm Rising (1995)
    • Storm Breaking (1996)
  • The Owl Trilogy (Darian's Tale): Owl-X Portmantitles:
    • Owlflight (1997)
    • Owlsight (1998)
    • Owlknight (1999)
• Antares: The books in the trilogy go, "Antares X":
  • Antares Dawn
  • Antares Passage
  • Antares Victory
• Volume titles in Date A Live consist of the name of the Spirit featured in the volume and one (very rarely two) descriptive words. For some reason, the order of the two components differs between the Japanese and English versions of the title (both of which are printed on the covers). The Japanese has the Spirit's name first, while the English has the Spirit's name second.
• Crazy Rich Asians: Each of the books of the series have three word titles, and the word "Rich" in it:
  • "Crazy Rich Asians"
  • "China Rich Girlfriend"
  • "Rich People Problems"
• The Caster Chronicles: Two instances, for its two subseries:
  • The main books has "Beautiful [X]":
    • Beautiful Creatures
    • Beautiful Chaos
    • Beautiful Redemption
  • The Ridley-focused series has "Dangerous [X]", and then there's also Dangerous Dreams:
    • Dangerous Creatures
    • Dangerous Deception
  • The first books of its subseries are "[X] Creatures"
    • Beautiful Creatures
    • Dangerous Creatures
• Tasakeru: Instead of titles, each chapter opens with a haiku that describes the events within.
• Ilivais X has each chapter as a "day", which makes sense given each one takes place within a rough 24-hour period (though it tends to be more divided on when the main characters sleep). Also, most of the chapter titles not only relate to the specific Monster of the Week, but also somewhat to the character interactions. For example, "Shifting Hearts" not only refers to how they fight a Transforming Mecha that becomes the "heart" of a Combining Mecha, but also to how this is the point where Mille and Iriana start definitively heading towards being an Official Couple.
• The name of every chapter of The Saga of Tuck is a pun on "Tuck", with the exceptions of 28-29, 43, and 104-117, which are instead named after Pink Floyd songs and break from the usual first-person narration.
• Each installment of Unlikely Eden is named for either the last word or words in the passage.
• Whateley Universe: Multiple different patterns, for the multiple series:
  • All the Phase stories have titles "Ayla and the...". Probably because Phase was/is a rich kid with years of prep schooling, the novels have meaningful chapter titles as well.
    • The first novel has five chapters named for the books of the Old Testament.
    • "Ayla and the Birthday Brawl" had chapter titles taken from Spenser's "The Faerie Queene".
    • "Ayla and the Great Shoulder Angel Conspiracy" has its chapters all named after angels: Ishim, Cherubim, Elohim, etc.
    • Ayla and the Tests has its chapters named after Herculean Labors:
    • Chapter 1 - The Lernean Hydra
    • Chapter 2 - The Augean Stables
    • Chapter 3 - The Ceryneian Hind
    • Then there's Ayla and the Mad Scientist, with its French titles...
  • The Gateway stories all start with Summoning, Summoning Courage, Summoning Tactics, and Summoning Sweeties.
  • Tea-related titles in E. E. Nalley's stories mean that Jadis is involved. As she said in the forums: "both of my Tea stories are call backs to Afternoon Tea with the Devil's Daughter [...] if you see 'Tea' in one of my titles, you can count on a Jadis appearance." The two stories are:
    • "Tea and Dagger" - Jadis, and Tansy story.
    • "Tea and Tears" - Jadis, and Tansy story.
• Chaos Fighters has a few examples of replacing something for chapter: path for every novel in main series and file for Chaos Fighters: Cyber Assault-The Secret Programs.
• Zero Sight: All the books are titled "Zero [X]":
  • Zero Sight
  • Zero Sum
  • Zero Tango
• Island (2000): Each of the books in the trilogy have a One-Word Title:
  • Shipwreck
  • Survival
  • Escape
• The Viridian Saga looks like it's never going to go past the first book, Awoken, but Word of God says that the plan was to give each book a similar name, with possibilities including Aliven and Another. In Awoken itself, each chapter title begins with "C."
• The War Against the Chtorr: Each novel has a name of the form "A [X] for [Y]" where the words X and Y are alliterative. "A Matter for Men", "A Day for Damnation", "A Season for Slaughter" and "A Rage for Revenge.", "A Nest for Nightmares", "A Method for Madness", According to Word of God Forthcoming books were thought to be named "A Time for Treason" (sixth) and "A Case for Courage" (seventh), but "A Method for Madness" was thought to be the fifth book but became the title for the sixth, and now no title has surety.
• Tairen Soul: [Noble Rank] of [Noun] and [Noun]:
  • Lord of the Fading Lands
  • Lady of Light and Shadows
  • King of Sword and Sky
  • Queen of Song and Souls
  • Crown of Crystal Flame
• Anne Cleves' Jimmy Perez novels (the inspiration for Shetland). The first four (the "Four Seasons" series) all have a colour in them (Raven Black, White Nights, Red Bones, Blue Lightning), and apart from the first are all "[colour] [noun]". The next four (the "Four Elements" series) are all "[adjective] [Natural Elements]" (Dead Water, Thin Air, Cold Earth, Wild Fire). (Blue Lightning could be considered an overlap, depending on what element system you're using.)
• Gor: Each of John Norman's Chronicles of Counter-Earth is "(Character)...of Gor".
• All of the Roy Grace novels by Peter James have the word 'Dead' in their title.
• Many novels by Craig Thomas include the name of an animal in their title, arguably the best-known of which is Firefox.
• The Julius Zebra books follow the "X with the Y!" title.
• Oliver Twist takes this up to eleven with most chapters titled an entire sentence or so summarizing what's going to happen.
• Majyk by Accident: The three entries in the series are all "Majyk By [X]", [X] being "Accident", "Hook or Crook", and "Design".
• The Neverending Story: Variant. The names of the chapters are ordinary enough, but Ende notably begins each of them with a successive letter of the alphabet. Since the book's only illustrations are said capital letters (which each take up an entire page), it's hard not to think of the book in terms of "Chapter A", "Chapter M", "Chapter X", etc.
• Every chapter in We Sold Our Souls is named after a metal album.
• The first four novels in the Wyatt series were all Portmantitles: Kickback, Paydirt, Deathdeal, and Crosskill. This was dropped with the fifth book Port Villa Blues.
• The Generic Online series: Pun-Based Title-style:
  • The Threadbare series: About a Living Toy bear. Crafting-based Theme Naming for the first two books: Stuff and Nonsense, Sew You Want to be a Hero. The third is The Right to Arm Bears.
  • The Small Medium series: Episode Finishes the Title, two-words style: Big Trouble, At Large, Well Done.
• The Partials series: One-Word Title-style: Partials, Isolation, Fragments, Ruins.
• The DC Icons series all have titles of the form "Character: Noun Verber": Wonder Woman: Warbringer; Batman: Nightwalker; and Catwoman: Soulstealer.
• The Xandri Corelel series, with the exception of the first novella, takes all its titles from communication-based terms: Failure to Communicate, Tone of Voice, and Facial Expression.
• The Ordinary Princess: All four chapter titles are Compound Title, going together to form, a version of the nursery rhyme, "Lavender's Blue":
  Lavender's blue
  Rosemary's green
  When you are King
  I shall be Queen
• When You Reach Me: As part of the plot is Miranda helping her mother before her appearance on the $20,000 Pyramid, most chapters are references to categories on the show, with titles in the form "Things that..." or "...Things". The few chapters that aren't references deal with the notes.
• My Weird School: The first series were all titled "[school staff member who's the focus of the book] is [synonym of "crazy" that rhymes with that character's name]!" Examples include "Mr. Klutz is Nuts!", "Ms. Hannah is Bananas!", and Mrs. Yonkers is Bonkers!" The rhyme scheme continued for the other books, but branched out beyond the "crazy" synonyms.
• The novels in Earl Norman's Burns Bannion series (about an expat American GI in Tokyo who uses karate in his new job as a private eye) are titled Kill Me in (the novel's setting).
• Plonqmas: All stories in the series are titled “A Plonqmas Tale,” followed by the year written.
• John Sandford’s Prey series. Each title ends in “Prey”.
• Mary Janice Davidson’s series whose titles are “Undead and (blank). Undead and Unwed was the first.
• The Ravirn series: CamelCase-type One-Word Title with a technological / magical theme: WebMage, Cybermancy, Codespell, MythOS, SpellCrash
• Both of the books in the Emblem Island Series are titled "Curse of the XX"; Curse of the Night Witch and Curse of the Forbidden City.
• My Best Friend's Exorcism names all its chapters after pop songs from the 1980s, with the titles also having some thematic connection to their respective chapter.

Warrior Cats

• Books in the New Prophecy arc are all named after times at night.
  • Midnight
  • Moonrise
  • Dawn
  • Starlight
  • Twilight
  • Sunset
• Books in A Starless Clan are named after the warrior Clans.
  • River
  • Sky
  • Shadow
  • Thunder
  • Wind
• Super Editions and Novellas follow the naming pattern of "[Main Character]'s [Noun]" (e.g. Bluestar's Prophecy, Tigerheart's Shadow, Mapleshade's Vengeance, Ravenpaw's Farewell). The only exception is Sky Clan's Destiny, named as such due to having multiple protagonists.

Wings of Fire

• Books in its first and third arc are all named "The [Adjective] [Noun]" (e.g. The Dragonet Prophecy, The Hidden Kingdom, The Dangerous Gift). The only exception is the last book of the third arc, The Flames of Hope.
• The titles of the first three books in the second arc were a pun on the main characters' names:
  • Moon Rising
  • Winter Turning
  • Escaping Peril
• Books in the Winglets and Legends series all have a one-word title:
  • Prisoners
  • Assassin
  • Deserter
  • Runaway
  • Darkstalker
  • Dragonslayer

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