Preliminary steps:
- Ensure that your ereader is plugged into your computer and that it is recognized by calibre.
- Ensure that all of the books on your ereader are also in your calibre library. This is important since you'll be working in library view rather than device view. (It's okay if there are books in your calibre library that aren't in your ereader library.)

Click on the toolbar icon to show the books in your calibre library (it looks like the calibre application icon).

You will see a sidebar with Authors, Languages, Series, etc. on the left. If you want to filter by Author, click on Authors then click on the author name. You want to see the books for several authors, hold down shift while clicking on each author name. Look at the column headings for the results. You will see one called On Device. You click on that column heading to sort the results based you whether or not it is on your ereader. This will work for other fields in the sidebar, including series.

Seeing a list of books that were last added to the device involves switching from the calibre library to the device or storage card library. Click on the toolbar icon that looks like your ereader or an SD card, then click on the column labelled date.