您的具体问题的答案（在澄清了 作者应按姓名排序，图书集合按先前排序的作者名单排序后 ）是这样的：
var query = db.Books .OrderBy(b => b.Authors.OrderBy(a => a.Name).Select(a => a.Name).FirstOrDefault());
这将生成一个单个SQL查询，如下所示：
SELECT [Project2].[Id] AS [Id], [Project2].[Title] AS [Title] FROM ( SELECt [Extent1].[Id] AS [Id], [Extent1].[Title] AS [Title], (SELECT TOP (1) [Project1].[Name] AS [Name] FROM ( SELECt [Extent2].[Name] AS [Name] FROM [dbo].[Author] AS [Extent2] WHERe [Extent1].[Id] = [Extent2].[BookId] ) AS [Project1] ORDER BY [Project1].[Name] ASC) AS [C1] FROM [dbo].[Book] AS [Extent1] ) AS [Project2] ORDER BY [Project2].[C1] ASC
请注意，不含作者的书籍将排在第一位。
另一种方法是使用
Min函数：
var query = db.Books .OrderBy(b => b.Authors.Min(a => a.Name));
用SQL翻译：
SELECt [Project1].[Id] AS [Id], [Project1].[Title] AS [Title] FROM ( SELECt [Extent1].[Id] AS [Id], [Extent1].[Title] AS [Title], (SELECT MIN([Extent2].[Name]) AS [A1] FROM [dbo].[Author] AS [Extent2] WHERe [Extent1].[Id] = [Extent2].[BookId]) AS [C1] FROM [dbo].[Book] AS [Extent1] ) AS [Project1] ORDER BY [Project1].[C1] ASC
