Journalists book series in reading order

by Lilian Jackson Braun

by Richard Castle

by Michael Connelly

by Christopher Brookmyre

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

Michael Connelly

60 books• 10 series

Michael Connelly is an American crime novelist, born July 21, 1956. The catalogue lists 60 Connelly books, running from The Black Echo (1992) to Ironwood (2026). LAPD detective Harry Bosch and defence attorney Mickey Haller are the recurring leads, and the listed series include Bosch Universe, Lincoln Lawyer and Safe Man. The Black Echo won the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best First Novel. Clint Eastwood directed and starred in a 2002 film of Blood Work. Subject headings cover police procedurals, legal fiction, serial murder and Los Angeles.

George Orwell

67 books• 3 series

George Orwell's catalogue divides between fiction and reportage: Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), Burmese Days (1934), The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), Homage to Catalonia (1938) and Animal Farm (1945) stand among the titles. Essays, diaries and correspondence account for much of the rest, gathered in the Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters. Sixty-six titles are catalogued, the earliest A Hanging (1931) and the latest an edition dated 2022.

Seanan McGuire

160 books• 32 series

Seanan McGuire, born January 5, 1978, is an American writer and filker known for urban fantasy. McGuire writes science fiction and horror as Mira Grant, and the Up-and-Under children's portal fantasy series as A. Deborah Baker. McGuire received the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2010, and the work has earned the Alex, Hugo, Locus and Nebula awards. The catalogue records 162 titles, starting with Rosemary and Rue (2009) and A Local Habitation (2010), with A Divided Duty (2026) the newest and A Song of Sugar Sparrows due in 2027. Series include October Daye, InCryptid, Wayward Children, Newsflesh, Velveteen, Alchemical Journeys and Parasitology.

Women journalists investigate in Hank Phillippi Ryan's crime fiction, with television reporting among the recorded subjects. Charlotte McNally heads the first series from Prime Time (2007), and the Jane Ryland books follow with The Other Woman (2012). Eighteen catalogued titles reach Mother Daughter Sister Stranger in 2026, set largely in Boston.

H.G. Wells

152 books• 8 series

H.G. Wells, born Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946), was an English writer of more than forty novels and dozens of short stories. Science fiction novels are the work Wells is most known for today, and Wells shares the title of father of science fiction with Jules Verne and Hugo Gernsback. The non-fiction covers social commentary, politics, history, popular science, satire, biography and autobiography. The catalogue opens with The Chronic Argonauts (1888) and includes The Time Machine (1895), The Wonderful Visit (1895) and The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896). Utopias, civilization and philosophy appear among the subjects.

Rick Bragg

13 books

Rick Bragg's 13 catalogued books run from All Over But the Shoutin' (1997) to The Speckled Beauty: A Dog and His People, Lost and Found (2021). Bragg writes nonfiction about the American South: memoir, biography, reported essays and the social history of working-class white families. Ava's Man (2001), The Prince of Frogtown (2008), The Most They Ever Had (2009) and Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story (2014) fall inside that run. Bragg took a Pulitzer Prize in 1996 for his journalism at The New York Times, and his books return often to his own family in Alabama. Nothing new has been catalogued since 2021.

Evelyn Waugh

47 books• 2 series

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) was an English novelist, biographer and travel writer who also worked as a journalist and book reviewer. The satires Decline and Fall (1928) and A Handful of Dust (1934) came early; Brideshead Revisited followed in 1945, and the Sword of Honour trilogy between 1952 and 1961. Waugh's catalogue holds 47 titles across fiction, travel and biography, with editions dated as late as 2005. Waugh was educated at Lancing College and at Hertford College, Oxford, and taught school briefly before writing full time.

Edna Buchanan covered the police beat in Miami and won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for General News Reporting for that work. Her non-fiction, including The Corpse Had a Familiar Face (1987) and Vice: Life and Death on the Streets of Miami (1992), came out of the same city. Buchanan then turned to crime fiction: the Britt Montero novels follow a Miami woman journalist, and the Craig Burch and Michael Venturi books follow. Twenty catalogued titles end at Dead Man's Daughter (2017).

David Lagercrantz

15 books• 5 series

David Lagercrantz, born on 4 September 1962, is a Swedish journalist and bestselling writer and a columnist for the newspaper Expressen. I Am Zlatan (2014) and The Girl in the Spider's Web (2015) are the works Lagercrantz is known for, and the catalogue records Millennium among the associated series; Lagercrantz wrote the fourth through sixth Millennium installments. The catalogue lists 15 books from Ultimate High (1997) to Post Mortem (2026), including Fall of Man in Wilmslow (2009). Rekke & Vargas is the Lagercrantz series on record. Subjects include hackers, journalists, Stockholm, inventors and soccer players.