Journalists book series in reading order

by Lilian Jackson Braun

by John Morgan Wilson

by Richard Castle

by Michael Connelly

by Christopher Brookmyre

by Robert Kroese

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.

Lilian Jackson Braun wrote the Cat Who mysteries, in which the journalist Jim Qwilleran solves crimes alongside his Siamese cats, Koko and Yum Yum. 32 catalogued books span 1966 to 2007, among them The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern (1967), The Cat Who Turned On And Off (1968), The Cat Who Saw Red (1986), The Cat Who Played Brahms (1987) and The Cat Who Played Post Office (1987). The last catalogued title is The Cat Who Had 60 Whiskers, and short stories sit alongside the novels.

Jack McMorrow, a journalist working in Maine, is the recurring investigator in Gerry Boyle's mysteries; a second series follows Brandon Blake. Investigative reporting and Maine settings shape the books. Deadline opened the catalogue in 1993, and The Ossuary extended it to 18 books in 2026.

Rick Mofina

44 books• 8 series

Journalists and police investigators share the work in Rick Mofina's thrillers. If Angels Fall (2000) opens the Tom Reed and Walt Sydowski series, and Jack Gannon, Kate Page and Ray Wyatt head later runs. Missing persons, kidnapping, murder and terrorism supply the cases. Forty-four titles are catalogued, reaching One Second Away in 2026.

Hunter S. Thompson

21 books• 4 series

Hunter Stockton Thompson (July 18, 1937 to February 20, 2005) was an American journalist and author, counted with Gay Talese, Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, Joan Didion and Tom Wolfe as a pioneer of New Journalism. To write Hell's Angels, Thompson spent a year with the Hells Angels motorcycle club. A 1970 Scanlan's Monthly article, "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved", raised Thompson's countercultural profile. Catalogued titles include Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971), The Great Shark Hunt (1979) and The Rum Diary (1998).

John Morgan Wilson

10 books• 2 series

John Morgan Wilson, born on September 19, 1945, is an American journalist and crime writer. Wilson's Benjamin Justice novels follow a reclusive former reporter, brought down by a Pulitzer scandal and marked by personal loss, who works out of West Hollywood and is drawn into murder cases around Los Angeles. Simple Justice (1996), the first of them, won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America. Six of the eight Justice books received Lambda Literary Award nominations for Best Gay Men's Mystery, and three won. The catalogue also lists the Philip Damon Mystery series, and Spider Season (2008) is the newest title.

Linwood Barclay

37 books• 9 series

Linwood Barclay, born in 1955, is an American-born Canadian novelist, humorist and former columnist. Barclay's detective novels have been bestsellers in Canada and abroad since No Time for Goodbye (2007). The catalogue holds 37 Barclay books, reaching back to Father Knows Zilch (1996) and forward to Not a Word (2026). Series include Promise Falls, Zack Walker, Keisha Ceylon and Chase, and the subjects take in suspense, missing persons, journalists, families and humor.

David Downing

37 books• 5 series

David Downing, born 1946, is a British author of mystery novels and nonfiction whose fiction depicts World War II and Berlin. The John Russell espionage thrillers, known as the Station Series, follow an Anglo-American character in 1940s Germany and take their titles from railway stations, most of them in Berlin. Jack McColl is a second series. The 37 catalogued books begin with Future Rock (1976) and include titles on film actors such as Clint Eastwood (1977), and Union Station (2024) is the newest.

Brendan DuBois writes mystery fiction and alternate history. Born around 1959, DuBois is an American author best known for the 1999 novel Resurrection Day. Lewis Cole is the recurring character of the longest series, opening with Dead Sand (1994), and journalism and New Hampshire recur as subjects; Empire of the North and Dark Victory are the other named series. Forty-six books are catalogued, from Fire Burning Bright (1989) to Terminal Surf (2024).

Jim Kelly is a British crime novelist and journalist. The Philip Dryden books put a journalist at the centre of cases set in Cambridgeshire, start with The Water Clock (2002), and earned Kelly the Crime Writers' Association Dagger in the Library in 2006. A second sequence follows DI Peter Shaw and DS George Valentine along the North Norfolk coast and the port of Lynn, and its second book, Death Watch (2010), took the New Angle prize for literature. Kelly has 19 catalogued crime novels, reaching The American Suspect in 2026.

William F. Buckley, Jr.

55 books• 1 series

William F. Buckley, Jr. (1925-2008) was an American conservative writer, commentator and novelist. God and Man at Yale (1951) opens the catalogue, a year after Buckley graduated from Yale with honours; two years at the Central Intelligence Agency followed. Espionage and the Central Intelligence Agency sit among the recorded subjects, carried by the Blackford Oakes novels, the one recorded series. Politics, conservatism and journalism fill the rest. 55 titles are catalogued through to A Torch Kept Lit (2016), averaging 295 pages.

Richard Castle is a fictional novelist from the ABC crime series Castle, and the name doubles as a pseudonym for real books about Nikki Heat and Derrick Storm modelled on the novels mentioned in the show. Screenwriter Tom Straw wrote the books, and actor Nathan Fillion serves as the public face of Richard Castle on the books and at signings. The catalogue lists 17 titles from Heat Wave (2008) to Crashing Heat (2019), including Naked Heat (2010), Heat Rises (2011) and Storm Front (2013). The Richard Castle books became New York Times bestsellers.

Joanne Pence writes culinary mysteries. The amateur sleuth is Angie Amalfi, an underemployed food writer and gourmet chef in San Francisco, and Amalfi's romance with homicide inspector Paavo Smith runs alongside the cases; the flavour is humorous, screwball adventure. Born Joanne Lopez in San Francisco, Pence attended the University of California, Berkeley and managed operations analysis at the Social Security administration from 1970 to 1998. The catalogue lists 58 titles, opening with Dangerous Journey (1987) and Something's Cooking (1993) and reaching Deadly Ever After in 2025. Series include Cook and Inspector Mysteries, Inspector Rebecca Mayfield Mystery, Angie & Friends Food & Spirits Mysteries and Donnelly Cabin Inn.

G.M. Ford writes hard-boiled mysteries, with Seattle and Washington State among the settings, across 21 books from 1995 to 2019. Ford's two series feature Leo Waterman and Frank Corso, and private investigators and journalists appear among the subjects. Who In Hell Is Wanda Fuca? (1995) is the first title, followed by books such as The Bum's Rush (1997), Fury (2001) and Black River (2002). Heavy on the Dead (2019) is the last catalogued book.

Neil White writes police procedurals and thrillers, with England among the recorded subjects. Series include Jack Garrett & Laura McGanity, Joe & Sam Parker and the Dan Grant Trilogy. The catalogue holds 14 books from Fallen Idols (2007) to The Photograph (2023), with Lost Souls (2008), Dead Silent (2010), The Death Collector (2014) and From the Shadows (2017) among them. Subjects include journalists, police investigation and murder.

William L. Shirer

14 books• 2 series

William L. Shirer (1904 to 1993) was an American journalist, war correspondent and historian. The Chicago Tribune hired Shirer in 1925; later came the International News Service, and Shirer became Edward R. Murrow's first hire for the CBS radio team called Murrow's Boys. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960) is Shirer's history of Nazi Germany. The catalogue spans 14 books, from Berlin Diary (1941) to This Is Berlin (2014), and includes the 20th Century Journey series.

Lisa Jackson

189 books• 27 series

Lisa Jackson, born Susan Lisa Jackson in 1952, is an American author of romance and romantic suspense novels, with more than 75 to that name. The catalogue holds 189 Lisa Jackson books, from A Twist of Fate (1983) to Not What It Seems (2026). Subjects across the list include serial murders, women detectives, Montana and contemporary romance. Jackson's series include Selena Alvarez/Regan Pescoli, McCaffertys, Cahills / San Francisco, Savannah and the Dark Jewels Trilogy, plus a historical trilogy issued as Susan Lynn Crose. New Jackson titles continue to appear.

John Feinstein (1955-2025) was an American sportswriter and commentator, for many years a reporter at the Washington Post. A Season on the Brink (1986) is his best known book, an account of a season inside Bob Knight's Indiana Hoosiers basketball programme, and it opens a catalogue of 51 titles reaching The Ancient Eight (2024). Basketball, golf, football and college sport run through the nonfiction, and the Sports Beat, Benchwarmers and Bobby Kelleher series were written for younger readers.

Dan Starkey, a journalist, is Colin Bateman's longest-running character, introduced in Divorcing Jack (1995) and Cycle of Violence (1995). Mystery Man heads a second series, with Papercuts, Eddie and the Gang With No Name, Martin Murphy, SOS Adventures and Titanic 2020 alongside, the last two for younger readers. Booksellers, private investigators and survival recur as subjects, and Northern Ireland is the standing setting. Bateman, from Bangor in County Down, worked as a journalist before the fiction and also writes for the screen, publishing under the single name Bateman. Forty-two books date from 1995 to 2016, at a median 314 pages.

Jason Pinter, born in 1979, is an American thriller novelist. Henry Parker, a New York journalist, carries his first series, from The Mark (2007) through The Guilty, The Stolen, The Darkness and The Fury; the Rachel Marin thrillers and the Zeke Bartholomew books follow. Twelve titles reach Past Crimes (2024), and Pinter is listed as ongoing.

Geronimo Stilton is the pen name on a children's series written by Elisabetta Dami, an Italian author born in 1958. The books are aimed at grades 1 to 3 and follow a mouse journalist through humorous mystery and adventure. 50 catalogued titles run from Four Mice Deep in the Jungle (2004) to The Search for the Secret Garden (2025), taking in The Wild, Wild West, The Great Diamond Robbery and Mouse in Space!. The median book runs 128 pages.

Martyn Waites writes mystery, detective and thriller fiction set in England. Three series are catalogued to the name: Stephen Larkin, Joe Donovan and Tom Killgannon, and Joe Donovan is listed as a fictitious character. Recorded subjects include journalists, investigative reporting, drug traffic, political corruption and suicide. Sixteen books run from Mary's Prayer (1997) to a 2026 title issued as C.B. Everett, taking in Candleland (2000), The White Room (2004), The Mercy Seat (2006) and Bone Machine (2007). Waites is still publishing.

Crime fiction about journalists runs through the catalogue of R.G. Belsky, which spans 14 books from Loverboy (1997) to The Vanishers (2026). Belsky writes the Clare Carlson and Gil Malloy series. Subject tags include women journalists, women sleuths, New York, serial murderers and assassins. Titles include The Kennedy Connection (2014), Yesterday's News (2018) and The Last Scoop (2020).

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.