Assassination book series in reading order

by Yūsei Matsui

by William Harrington

by David Hagberg

Yusei Matsui is a manga creator with three main series. Majin Tantei Nogami Neuro began in 2005 and runs to 23 volumes in the catalogue, followed by Assassination Classroom, in which a junior high class is tasked with killing its own teacher, and then The Elusive Samurai, a historical series reaching volume 13 in 2024. Matsui's 57 catalogued volumes span 2005 to 2024, at a median of 200 pages each. Volumes read in numbered order.

Bill O’Reilly

39 books• 4 series

Bill O'Reilly is an American journalist, conservative commentator and television host, born in 1949. O'Reilly anchored Inside Edition from 1989 to 1995, joined Fox News in 1996, and hosted the commentary programme The O'Reilly Factor there until 2017. The book catalogue holds 39 titles published between 1998 and 2026, beginning with the novel Those Who Trespass (1998) and reaching Confronting America: What Has to Change (2026). Politics and government, American history, biography, assassination and the presidents supply the subject matter. The catalogue groups titles into the Killing, Legends and Lies, and Confronting series.

William Harrington has 25 books catalogued from 1963 to 2025. The first is Which the Justice, Which the Thief (1963). Harrington's series is Columbo, featuring the police lieutenant of that name, and the subjects also include political crimes, assassination, labor unions and California. Earlier novels include Trial (1970), Scorpio 5 (1974) and Partners (1981).

James Patterson

510 books• 73 series

James Patterson, born on March 22, 1947, is an American writer whose catalogue here holds 514 books published from 1976 to 2027. The run opens with The Thomas Berryman Number (1976), and Along Came a Spider (1992) and Kiss the Girls (1995) follow later. Alex Cross, Michael Bennett, Maximum Ride, Daniel X, Witch & Wizard, NYPD Red, Private, Middle School and the Women's Murder Club are among the Patterson series, alongside standalone thrillers, non-fiction and romance. Marshall Karp shares the credit on 5 of the books. Patterson's sales exceed 425 million copies, and Patterson was the first person to sell one million e-books. Forbes ranked Patterson the highest-paid author in 2016, for a third year running, and the National Book Foundation gave Patterson the Literarian Award in November 2015. 27 Stars is scheduled for 2027.

David Baldacci

71 books• 16 series

David Baldacci is an American novelist, born on 5 August 1960, who trained as an attorney and writes mostly suspense fiction and legal thrillers. The catalogue lists 72 Baldacci books, starting with Absolute Power (1996); All In appeared in 2026 and Boom Town is scheduled for 2027. Recurring leads include Amos Decker, Will Robie, John Puller, Atlee Pine and Aloysius Archer, alongside the Camel Club and the Sean King & Michelle Maxwell books. Baldacci novels have been published in more than 80 countries and 45 languages, with worldwide sales above 130 million copies.

Stephen King

223 books• 25 series

Horror fiction is the field most closely tied to Stephen King, an American author born on September 21, 1947, and nicknamed the "King of Horror". King's work also reaches into suspense, crime, science fiction, fantasy and mystery, and includes roughly 200 short stories, most later gathered in collections. Carrie (1974) was the debut that set King in horror; Different Seasons (1982), four novellas in one volume, marked the first major step outside it. The catalogue lists 223 books from 1971 to 2026, starting with The Blue Air Compressor, a short story, and reaching Other Worlds Than These (2026). Series on file include Holly Gibney, the Bill Hodges Trilogy, Green Mile, Shining and Talisman.

Brad Meltzer

85 books• 14 series

Brad Meltzer, born April 1, 1970, is an American novelist, non-fiction author, television creator and comic book writer. The novels span political thrillers, legal thrillers and conspiracy fiction. Meltzer has written superhero comics for DC Comics and, at times, Marvel, and a run of short biographies of well-known people for young readers. The catalogue holds 86 titles from The Tenth Justice (1997) to We are the Wright Brothers (2026), and I am Taylor Swift is scheduled for 2027. Series include Ordinary People Change the World, Beecher White/Culper Ring and Escape Artist/Zig & Nola. Other titles include Identity Crisis (2004) and The Book of Fate (2006).

Brent Weeks

12 books• 3 series

Brent Weeks writes epic fantasy. The Night Angel books put assassins at the front, with wetboy among the subject terms, opening with The Way of Shadows, Shadow's Edge and Beyond the Shadows (2008); the Lightbringer series follows with The Black Prism (2010), The Blinding Knife (2012), The Broken Eye (2014) and The Blood Mirror (2015). Twelve books are catalogued, Night Angel Nemesis is the most recent, and the catalogue has been dormant since 2023.

Marie Lu

29 books• 11 series

Marie Lu, born Xiwei Lu on 11 July 1984, is an American author of young adult science fiction and fantasy. The Legend series, set in a dystopian and militarised future, is Lu's best known work, alongside Young Elites, Warcross and Batman: Nightwalker in the DC Icons line. The catalogue lists 30 books from Legend (2011) to Rebel (2026), with Silver Dawn listed for 2027. Skyhunter, Stars and Smoke and New Alchemists are further series. Subjects include resistance to government, plague, fugitives, soldiers and the supernatural.

Kotaro Isaka is a Japanese author of mystery and crime fiction whose work has crossed into manga and film. His hitman novels include 3 Assassins, filmed in Japan as Grasshopper in 2015, and Maria Beetle, published in English as Bullet Train in 2021 and filmed under that title in 2022. The Maoh: Juvenile Remix volumes account for much of the 15-title catalogue listed here, which runs from Remote Control (2007) to Seesaw Monster (2025). Assassination, vigilantes, high school students and prime ministers turn up repeatedly in Isaka's subject matter.

Vince Flynn

26 books• 2 series

Vince Flynn, an American political thriller novelist born April 6, 1966, built a series around Mitch Rapp, a fictional assassin. The catalogue opens with Term Limits (1997), followed by Transfer of Power (1999), The Third Option (2000), Separation of Power (2001) and Executive Power (2003). Terrorism, intelligence officers, presidents and Washington, D.C. are among the recorded subjects. Flynn also worked as a story consultant on the fifth season of the television series 24, and died of prostate cancer on June 19, 2013. The listing carries titles dated well after that year, up to Double Tap (2026).

Terry Pratchett

148 books• 18 series

Terry Pratchett (28 April 1948 to 12 March 2015) was an English author, humorist and satirist. Discworld, a run of 41 comic fantasy novels published from 1983 to 2015, is the work most associated with Pratchett, together with Good Omens (1990), written with Neil Gaiman. The Carpet People (1971) was the first Pratchett novel, and The Colour of Magic (1983) opened Discworld. The Shepherd's Crown, the last Discworld novel, came out in August 2015, five months after Pratchett's death. The catalogue also lists the Long Earth, Bromeliad Trilogy and Johnny Maxwell series, with The Discworld Bestiary dated 2026.

David Hagberg (October 9, 1942 to September 8, 2019) was an American novelist of techno-thrillers. Kirk McGarvey, a super-spy, is the character most associated with Hagberg. The listing also carries the Wallace Mahoney, Magic Man, Bill Lane and Nate Osborne and Ashley Borden series, Flash Gordon novels and non-fiction. Espionage, terrorism, intelligence officers and assassins are among the subjects, and Traitor (2022) is the newest listed title.

Max Allan Collins

199 books• 34 series

Max Allan Collins, born March 3, 1948, is an American mystery writer who also works in comics, graphic novels and screenplays. Collins created the Ms. Tree and Road to Perdition comics, the second of which became a film, and the series characters Quarry, a hitman, Nolan, a thief, and private investigator Nate Heller. Collins wrote the Dick Tracy newspaper strip for years, and the Mystery Writers of America named Collins a Grand Master in 2017. Catalogue entries run from Bait Money (1973) to Quarry's Reunion (2026), with Eliot Ness, Mallory and Disaster among the other series.

Robert K. Tanenbaum was an American trial attorney who also served as mayor of Beverly Hills. The Butch Karp and Marlene Ciampi legal thrillers are his main sequence, catalogued under public prosecutors, women lawyers, murder trials and New York City. Tanenbaum's 34 books run from Badge of the Assassin (1979) and No Lesser Plea (1987) through Depraved Indifference (1989) and Justice Denied (1994) to That Day in Dallas (2025), and the catalogue also holds non-fiction.

Lauran Paine (1916-2001) was an American author of Western fiction, born Lawrence Kerfman Duby Jr. The catalogue holds 306 titles dated 1957 to 2022, opening with The Farthest Frontier and The Long Law Trail in 1957. Ranch life, cattle drives, outlaws and frontier settlement run through the subject list, with detective and suspense titles alongside. Paine also published as Mark Carrel, the name on Wagon Train (1957) and Case Of The Innocent Witness (1959). Books average 191 pages.

Troy Denning

48 books• 24 series

Troy Denning writes fantasy and science fiction and also works as a game designer. The catalogue holds 49 books, from Cosmos Cubed (1988) to Outcasts (2023), with Fireteam Noble due in 2027. Series include Dark Sun: Prism Pentad, Forgotten Realms: Twilight Giants, Forgotten Realms: Return of the Archwizards, Halo: The Ferrets and Halo: A Master Chief Story. The Verdant Passage (1991), The Crimson Legion (1992) and The Cerulean Storm (1993) are among the early titles.

Carl Bowen has 41 books in the catalogue, from Project Utopia (1999) to Gods and Thunder (2017). Special forces, soldiers and terrorism appear among the subject headings, alongside graphic novels and adaptations. The Bowen series are Shadow Squadron, Firestormers, Werewolf: The Apocalypse: Tribe Novel and Aberrant. Predator & Prey: Vampire (2000) and Silent Striders & Black Furies (2001) are early titles.

Thomas Mallon is an American novelist, essayist and critic born on 2 November 1951. Mallon has written ten works of fiction, among them Aurora 7, Henry and Clara, Dewey Defeats Truman, Watergate and Fellow Travelers, the last of which became a television miniseries. Mallon's nonfiction covers plagiarism in Stolen Words, diaries in A Book of One's Own and the Kennedy assassination in Mrs. Paine's Garage. The catalogue lists 19 books from Edmund Blunden (1983) to The Very Heart of It: New York Diaries, 1983-1994 (2025).

John Weisman's 14 catalogued books span 1973 to 2011, starting with Guerrilla Theater: Scenarios for Revolution (1973). Weisman's named series is Headhunters. Subjects include thrillers, spies, assassination and the Central Intelligence Agency, and the list takes in Shadow Warrior (1989) and KBL: Kill Bin Laden (2011). The catalogue for Weisman is likely complete.

Richard Jay Belzer, born August 4, 1944 and died February 19, 2023, was an American actor, comedian and author. For 23 years Belzer played the detective John Munch on NBC's Homicide: Life on the Street and on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, with guest appearances in the role on other series. The catalogue holds 10 books published between 1988 and 2017, opening with How to Be a Stand-Up Comic (1988). Conspiracy theories account for much of the rest: UFOs, JFK & Elvis (1999), Dead Wrong (2012), Hit List (2013), Someone Is Hiding Something (2015) and Corporate Conspiracies (2017). Stand-up comedy, comedians and assassination sit among the recorded subjects.

Leif G.W. Persson

8 books• 3 series

Leif Gustav Willy Persson, born on 12 March 1945, is a Swedish criminologist and novelist. Crime fiction dominates the catalogue: subjects record murder, assassination, terrorism investigation, detective and mystery stories, and settings in Sweden and Stockholm. Three series carry the Persson name, Story Of A Crime, Evert Bäckström, and Jarnebring & Johansson. The 8 catalogued books run from The Pillars of Society (1982) to The Sword of Justice (2013), taking in Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End (2002), Another Time, Another Life (2003), Linda, As in the Linda Murder (2005), Falling Freely, as If in a Dream and He Who Kills the Dragon (both 2007) and The Dying Detective (2010). One of Persson's four children, Malin Persson Giolito, is also a crime writer.