[Bob Russell]

I've noticed in the eReader free book promotion that they are giving away some great books. (Let's give them credit because we were pretty down on them when everything seemed like it would be public domain!)

Anyway, a lot of them seem to be one book in a series, whether it's a mystery series like today, or action or Star Trek, etc. They want you to get hooked, and continue to buy from that author of course, which is more than fair.

Well, after noticing that, I realized that a lot of popular fiction authors have written in a series. I get the impression that for some series, it's probably pretty important to read them in order. For other series it probably doesn't matter. Like Mary Higgens Clark has a bunch of mysteries, that I suppose doesn't matter in the order.

So my question is... How can you tell the ones that need to be read in order from the ones that can be read in any order?!

For example, there's a mystery series that goes "A is for Alibi", "B is for Burgler", ... , "R is for Ricochet". Does that just mean they are written in that order and help me remember which ones I've read, or does the sequence mean they need to be read in order?

And if order doesn't matter, I wonder if there's a simple way to tell which ones are the most popular in a series, so I can start with the best ones?

Any thoughts from the avid readers out there?!