Every series in the catalog, grouped by genre, with its author, the number of books it counts and a link to its full reading order. There are 165 series in all, written by 122 authors.

Why Reading Order Matters

Military and spy series are built to be read in sequence. A protagonist is recruited, trained, wounded, promoted or betrayed, and each book inherits the consequences of the one before: an ally lost in the third novel is still missing in the eighth, a rival who escapes returns years later, a career that starts in the field ends behind a desk. Read out of order, the individual plots still work, but the larger story, often the reason readers stay with a series for twenty books, comes apart. Long series add further complications: prequels written after the original books, novellas between the main volumes and, in some cases, new authors who continue a character after the creator has stopped writing.

Series by Genre

Within each genre, series are listed by the surname of their author. The number next to each series is the count of books in its reading order; where no number appears, the list is compiled directly on the series page.

Military Thrillers

Spy Novels

Political Thrillers

Action Thrillers

Navy SEAL and Special Forces Thrillers

War Novels

Cold War Spy Novels

Techno-Thrillers

Naval and Submarine Thrillers

Geopolitical Thrillers

WWII Spy Novels

Publication Order and Chronological Order

Publication order is the sequence in which the books came out. Chronological order is the sequence of events inside the story. In most series the two coincide, but not always: an author may go back to the early career of a character, set a novel between two earlier ones, or publish a short story collection that fills gaps across the timeline.

Every series page lists the books in publication order, in a numbered register with the year of each book, because that is the order in which the author built the story and in which later books assume the earlier ones are known. When the internal chronology differs, the page says so in a separate section, explains where each out-of-sequence book fits and states which order it recommends for a first reading. When sources disagree on the numbering of a series, the page says which numbering it follows and why.

Readers who prefer to browse by theme can start from the genres index; those who follow a writer rather than a character will find every name in the authors index.

The novels of Marc Dufort, the author who curates this archive