Action & adventure book series in reading order

by James Axler

by Elisabetta Dami

by James Axler

by Wilbur Smith

by H. Rider Haggard

by Patrick O’Brian

by Julian Stockwin

by Jack Du Brul

by Robert J. Randisi

by Chris Bennett

by E. A. Meigs

by Donald E. Westlake

by David Poyer

by Douglas Reeman / Alexander Kent

by Jon Land

by Wilbur Smith

by Richard S. Prather

by Garon Whited

by Ace Atkins

by John Norman

by C.S. Forester

by Franklin W. Dixon

by S.D. Smith

by Don Mann

by Lian Hearn

by John R. Monteith

by David Baldacci

by Rick Riordan

by Stuart Woods

Donald Eugene Pendleton (December 12, 1927 to October 23, 1995) was an American author of fiction and non-fiction who created Mack Bolan, a character with hundreds of millions of copies sold since a 1969 debut. From 1980, other authors wrote the Bolan books under the Pendleton name, at first with Pendleton's editorial guidance. Pendleton also wrote six Joe Copp, Private Eye novels and six Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective novels. Early titles include The Insatiables (1967), War Against the Mafia (1969) and Miami Massacre (1970).

Clive Cussler

104 books• 9 series

Clive Cussler (July 15, 1931 – February 24, 2020) was an American adventure novelist and underwater explorer. Cussler founded and chaired the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA), which has located more than 60 shipwreck sites. Cussler's thrillers, many of them featuring Dirk Pitt, reached The New York Times fiction best-seller list more than 20 times. The catalogue lists 105 books under Cussler's name, beginning with The Mediterranean Caper (1973), with The Serpent's Eye due in 2027. Robin Burcell shares credit on 6 of them, Jack Du Brul on 5 and Grant Blackwood on 3. Series include Dirk Pitt, NUMA Files, Oregon Files and Sea Hunters.

James Axler is the pen name under which Mark Ellis wrote scores of Deathlands and Outlanders novels. The books are post-apocalyptic men's adventure: survivalism, the regression of civilisation, imaginary wars and the invented territory called Deathlands. The Axler name carries 234 titles published between 1986 and 2025, from Pilgrimage to Hell (1986) to Wraith Winter (2025). Volumes run long at a median of 347 pages, and Earthblood is a third series beside the two main runs.

L. Ron Hubbard

110 books• 5 series

L. Ron Hubbard (Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, March 13, 1911 to January 24, 1986) was an American writer and the founder of Scientology. The early career produced a large body of pulp science fiction and fantasy. The catalogue holds 110 books, starting in 1934 with Sea Fangs, Dead Men Kill, Hurtling Wings and Twenty Fathoms Down. Series include Mission Earth, Slaves of Sleep and collections of western and science fiction short stories. Hubbard wrote Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health in 1950, a book described as pseudoscientific, created Scientology in 1952 and led the Church of Scientology until 1986. Subjects include air pilots, sea stories, westerns and crime.

Wilbur Smith was a British-South African novelist born in Northern Rhodesia. Smith's historical fiction covers four centuries of international involvement in Southern Africa. The catalogue lists 66 books, from When the Lion Feeds (1964) to Flashpoint (2026). Series include Courtney, Jack Courtney, Ancient Egypt, Hector Cross and Prey Zone. Recurring character listings include the Courtney family, Ballantyne and Hector Cross. David Churchill and Tom Harper each share the credit on 1 book. Subjects include Africa, Egypt, revenge, espionage and terrorism.

Alex Archer is the name on the Rogue Angel series, 66 catalogued books published between 2006 and 2025. Annja Creed, a woman archaeologist, is the recurring character, and the books mix antiquities, adventure and suspense with fantasy. Destiny (2006) opens the run, followed by Solomon's Jar (2006), The Spider Stone (2006) and a rapid 2007 sequence including Forbidden City, God of Thunder, Provenance, Secret of the Slaves, Serpent's Kiss, The Chosen and The Lost Scrolls. Shadow Highlanders (2025) is the newest title, at a median of 320 pages.

H. Rider Haggard

78 books• 6 series

Sir Henry Rider Haggard (1856-1925) was an English writer of adventure romances set in exotic locations, Africa above all, and a pioneer of the lost world genre. The eighteen Allan Quatermain stories begin with King Solomon's Mines (1885), and Ayesha is the other named series. Haggard also worked on land reform across the British Empire. The catalogue holds 78 titles dated 1882 to 2013, from Cetywayo and His White Neighbours to a complete anthology, and covers novels, non-fiction and short fiction.

Barry Sadler

35 books• 1 series

Casca is the recurring character in the fiction of Barry Allen Sadler, and the catalogue lists 35 titles dated 1977 to 2001, with mercenary troops, prisoners of war, murder for hire and the Vietnam War among the recorded subjects. The Moi (1977) is the earliest entry, followed by God of Death and The Eternal Mercenary in 1979. Sadler, an American singer-songwriter as well as an author, was born November 1, 1940 and died November 5, 1989, at 49, shot in the head in Guatemala City. Military service ran through the work: the Air Force first, then the Army as a Green Beret medic at the rank of staff sergeant, and Vietnam from late December 1964 to late May 1965. The 1966 number-one song The Ballad of the Green Berets carries his name furthest.

Stuart Woods

104 books• 9 series

Crime and detective thrillers make up Stuart Woods's catalogue of 104 titles, running from Blue Water, Green Skipper (1977) to Finders Keepers (2025). The Barrington Universe, built around the recurring character Stone Barrington, is the largest strand; Teddy Fay, Ed Eagle and Rick Barron head further series, with standalone novels and non-fiction beside them. Private investigators, police and New York settings recur through the subject tags.

Tabor Evans is a house pseudonym used by a number of authors at Jove Books for the Longarm westerns. The Longarm novels follow Custis Long, known as Longarm, a U.S. Deputy Marshal working out of Denver, Colorado in the 1880s. The catalogue lists 464 books, from Longarm (1978) to Longarm and the Model Prisoner (2015), with the 2000s the busiest decade. Longarm Giant is also listed as a series. Subjects include outlaws, frontier and pioneer life, U.S. marshals, missing persons and Wyoming.

Warren Burton Murphy was an American author, born September 13, 1933, who died on September 4, 2015. Murphy co-created The Destroyer series, which became the basis for the film Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins. The catalogue opens with Created The Destroyer (1971), followed in 1972 by Chinese Puzzle, Death Check and Mafia Fix, and counts 155 books in total. Remo and Chiun are listed as fictitious characters, and subjects include men's adventure, action and adventure, pulp and crime. Other series are Trace, Razoni & Jackson, New Destroyer, Forever King and Grandmaster.

Chase Fulton is the character behind Cap Daniels's espionage and action thrillers, and almost the whole catalogue sits inside his series and the wider Avenging Angel universe. The word Chase runs through the titles: The Opening Chase, The Broken Chase and The Unending Chase (2018), The Devil's Chase (2019), through to The Assassin's Chase in 2026. Fifty-six books have been catalogued since 2018.

William H. Keith writes military fiction and science fiction. Naval warfare supplies much of the subject matter, from Navy SEALs and aircraft carriers to submarines, naval battles and the Vietnam War, with men's adventure and espionage alongside. The catalogue runs to 116 titles dated between 1985 and 2021, and the 1990s are its busiest decade. SEAL Team Seven, Carrier, Warstrider, Silent Service, Freedom's Rangers, Cybernarc and Renegade Legion are among the series. The listing also carries tabletop game material, sourcebooks and CD-ROM game guides under Keith's name, including Twilight: 2000 titles. No book is listed after 2021.

William Wallace Johnstone, October 28, 1938 to February 8, 2004, was an American author of westerns, horror and survivalist fiction. The Devil's Kiss opened the run in 1981, followed by The Last of the Dog Team (1981), Out of the Ashes (1983) and Anarchy in the Ashes (1984). Series filed under the name include Ashes, First Mountain Man, Smoke Jensen, Last Gunfighter, Blood Bond and Duff MacCallister, and subjects include outlaws, frontier and pioneer life, revenge and Texas. The catalogue carries 544 titles under the Johnstone name dated 1981 to 2026, well past the 2004 death date, and 400 of them carry a William W. Johnstone credit.

Elisabetta Dami

309 books• 22 series

Elisabetta Dami, born 1 January 1958, is an Italian children's author known for the Geronimo Stilton book series. The catalogue credits Dami with 309 books from 1998 to 2026. Titles from 2000 include Lost Treasure of the Emerald Eye, Attack Of The Bandit Cats and Four Mice Deep in the Jungle. Other listings include Geronimo Stilton: Thea Stilton, Mouseford Academy, Kingdom Of Fantasy, Geronimo Stilton Cavemice, Geronimo Stilton Spacemice and Creepella von Cacklefur. Subjects include mice, journalists, time travel and humorous stories. The Legend of Chocolate Hills (2026) is the newest title.

David Robbins is a Western writer, according to subject records that name Skye Fargo and Canyon O'Grady as fictitious characters and cite frontier and pioneer life, Colorado and Texas. Series listed under the name include Wilderness, Canyon O'Grady, White Apache, Mountain Majesty, Davy Crockett, Preacher's Law and Blood Feud, alongside Omega Sub and Battlefield Mars. Endworld is also among the linked names. Stalked (2020) is the most recent title in the listing.

Military aviation drives Dale Brown's technological thrillers. Patrick McLanahan and Brad McLanahan are the recurring characters across a catalogue of 52 books that opens with Flight of the Old Dog (1987) and reaches Devil's Fortress (2024). Dreamland, Puppet Master, Nick Flynn and the Jason Richter books are the named series. The United States Air Force, weapons systems, espionage and terrorism fill the subject tags.

Edgar Rice Burroughs

81 books• 12 series

Edgar Rice Burroughs (1 September 1875 to 19 March 1950) was an American writer of adventure, science fiction and fantasy, and the creator of Tarzan and John Carter. Burroughs wrote twenty-four Tarzan books and eleven books with John Carter as a recurring character, along with the Pellucidar and Amtor series and the Caspak trilogy. Tarzan also became a syndicated comic strip, films and merchandise. Catalogued titles begin in 1912 with A Princess of Mars and Tarzan of the Apes, followed by The Gods of Mars (1913), The Return of Tarzan (1913) and At the Earth's Core (1914). Subjects include extraterrestrial beings, Africa and Dejah Thoris.

James Rollins

48 books• 10 series

James Rollins is the pen name of James Paul Czajkowski, an American writer born August 20, 1961, who gave up a veterinary practice in Sacramento, California to write full time. Rollins writes action-adventure, mystery and techno-thriller novels, often set underground or underwater, drawing on experience as an amateur caver and certified scuba diver. The catalogue opens with Subterranean (1999) and Excavation (2000), counts 49 books through Trust No One (2026), and lists Into the Serpent's Nest for 2027. Series include Sigma Force, the Order of the Sanguines, Tucker Wayne and Jake Ransom. Under a second pen name, James Clemens, Czajkowski publishes fantasy.

Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, a ship's captain and a ship's physician, carry Patrick O'Brian's sea novels from Master and Commander (1969). The catalogue holds 41 books reaching back to Caesar (1930), with standalone novels, short stories and non-fiction beside the Aubrey/Maturin run. Naval history and sea adventure supply the material, and the 1990s were the densest decade.

Jon Land is an American thriller author whose Caitlin Strong novels follow a fifth-generation Texas Ranger. The Ben Kamal and Danielle Barnea books pair a Palestinian detective with a chief inspector of the Israeli police. Land is an emeritus board member of International Thriller Writers and sits on its marketing committee, and was a screenwriter for the film Dirty Deeds. The catalogue lists 55 books from The Doomsday Spiral (1983) to Icefall: The Rise of the Nine (2026), with Blaine McCracken, Jared Kimberlain and National Parks Thriller among the other series.

Espionage, terrorism and the Second World War supply Jack Higgins with his material. Higgins published the earliest of 76 catalogued books as Harry Patterson, among them Sad Wind from the Sea (1959), Cry of the Hunter (1960) and Hell Is Too Crowded (1962). Sean Dillon, Paul Chavasse, Liam Devlin and Martin Fallon head series of their own, alongside standalone thrillers. The Midnight Bell, published in 2016, closes the catalogue.

Erin Hunter is the name on 169 catalogued books, published from 2003 onward and filed as children's fantasy fiction. Into the Wild, Fire and Ice and Forest of Secrets (all 2003) are the earliest. Series listings include Warriors: The New Prophecy, Warriors: Power of Three, Warriors: Omen of the Stars, Warriors: Dawn of the Clans and Warriors: The Broken Code. Seekers, Survivors, Bravelands and Bamboo Kingdom also appear. Subjects include cats, feral cats, bears, dogs, adventure and manga. Darktail's Judgment (2026) is the newest, with False Dawn due in 2027.

Alistair MacLean

42 books• 5 series

Alistair MacLean (21 April 1922 to 2 February 1987) was a Scottish novelist of thrillers and adventure stories. MacLean's books have sold an estimated 150 million copies, placing MacLean among the best-selling fiction authors of all time. Service in the Royal Navy aboard HMS Royalist during the Second World War supplied the basis for the debut novel, H.M.S. Ulysses (1955). Many of the novels were filmed, above all The Guns of Navarone and Ice Station Zebra. Catalogued titles include South by Java Head (1958), Night Without End (1960) and Fear is the Key (1961). The author page also lists the Alistair MacLean's UNACO series and Lawrence of Arabia (1962).