Russia (federation) book series in reading order

Boris Akunin

30 books• 5 series

Boris Akunin is the pen name of Grigori Chkhartishvili, a Georgian and Russian writer resident in the United Kingdom. Historical fiction is the ground, and the Erast Fandorin detective novels are the best known part of it, with Nicholas Fandorin and Sister Pelagia heading further series. Thirty books are catalogued between 1998 and 2023, four of them in 1998 alone, The Winter Queen, The Turkish Gambit, The Death of Achilles and Murder on the Leviathan, and several appear under their Russian titles. Pit (2023) is the newest. Moscow, Russia and private investigators recur as subjects.

Stuart M. Kaminsky (29 September 1934 to 9 October 2009) was an American mystery novelist who also taught film. Four mystery series carry the name: Toby Peters, a private eye in 1940s Hollywood; Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, a Moscow police inspector; Abe Lieberman, a Chicago police officer; and Lew Fonesca, a process server in Sarasota, Florida. A Cold Red Sunrise, a Rostnikov novel, won the Edgar Award for Best Novel in 1989. The catalogue holds 85 books from 1974 to 2011, and its earliest entries are American Film Genres (1974) and Don Siegel: Director (1974).

Brian Freemantle (10 June 1936 – 23 December 2024) was an English writer of thrillers and nonfiction, known for the 1977 spy novel Charlie Muffin. The catalogue opens with The Touchables (1969) and ends with The Cloud Collector (2015). Charlie Muffin is a recurring character, and Cowley and Danilov and Sebastian Holmes are further series. Espionage, intelligence services, Great Britain, Russia and the Soviet Union are recorded subjects. Other titles include Goodbye To An Old Friend (1973), Face Me When You Walk Away (1976) and The Inscrutable Charlie Muffin (1979).

Sven Hassel was the pen name of Borge Willy Redsted Pedersen, a Danish writer who lived from 1917 to 2012 and published in Denmark as Sven Hazel. The novels follow German soldiers through the Second World War, across the Soviet Union, Italy, Poland and Germany. Legion of the Damned (1953) opens a run of 16 catalogued books, among them Wheels of Terror (1958), Assignment Gestapo (1963), Monte Cassino (1963), Liquidate Paris (1967), SS General (1969) and Reign of Hell (1973), with a comic book adaptation following in 2019. Hassel presented himself as a Wehrmacht veteran who fought at the Battle of Berlin in 1945, but post-war investigations established those claims as fabrications. Hassel ranks among the bestselling Danish authors.

Tom Clancy

72 books• 9 series

Tom Clancy, born Thomas Leo Clancy Jr. on April 12, 1947 and dead on October 1, 2013, was an American writer of techno-thrillers, a form that carries technical detail about espionage and military science. An insurance agent before publishing, Clancy debuted with The Hunt for Red October in 1984. The Ryanverse books follow Jack Ryan, an analyst with the Central Intelligence Agency. Subjects across the listing include terrorism, suspense and espionage. The catalogue carries 72 titles under the Clancy name dated 1984 to 2023, with Bill McCay, Grant Blackwood and Peter Telep credited on one or two each.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

38 books• 5 series

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) was a Russian novelist, short-story writer, essayist, journalist and philosopher. Dostoevsky's fiction engages philosophical and religious themes within the political, social and spiritual conditions of 19th-century Russia. The most acclaimed of the novels are The Brothers Karamazov (1880), Crime and Punishment (1866), Demons (1872), The Idiot (1869) and The Adolescent (1875). This catalogue lists 38 titles dated from Poor Folk and Other Stories (1845) to a 2022 edition of A Bad Business, among them The Double (1846), White Nights (1848), Netochka Nezvanova (1849) and The House of the Dead (1862). Translations into English and Russian fiction lead the catalogue subjects.

Eric Flint's catalogue opens with Mother of Demons (1997) and runs to 1637: The Pilgrim's Passage (2026). 1632 appeared in 2000, alongside Fortune's Stroke and Rats, Bats & Vats, and In the Heart of Darkness (1998) and Destiny's Shield (1999) came before it. Series include Ring of Fire: Assiti Shards, Grantville Gazette, Belisarius, Jao, Boundary, Pyramid, Demon Rift and Rats, Bats & Vats, and two short fiction lines carry Dave Freer's name alongside Flint's. Subjects include time travel, alternate history, West Virginia, Europe, the Thirty Years' War and life on other planets.

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.

Leo Kessler wrote war fiction set in World War II, with Germany, Russia, Africa and military campaigns among the catalogued subjects. The 81 books begin in 1974 with SS Panzer Battalion, Claws of Steel and Death's Head. Kessler's series include SS Wotan, Stormtroop Edelweiss, Otto Stahl, Black Cossacks, Submarine and Rommel. From Tyranny to Freedom (2008) is the last listed title, and Eric Taylor is co-credited on 1 book.

Constance Heaven (1911-1995) wrote romance novels under three names: the maiden name Constance Fecher, a married name, and the pseudonym Christina Merlin. The Fecher titles open the catalogue - The Leopard Dagger (1963), Queen's Delight (1966), King's Legacy (1967) - and work English history, the theatre and the lives of actresses. The House Of Kuragin won Romantic Novel of the Year in 1973, and the Kuragin and Ravensley series carry the Heaven name. Heaven was the eleventh elected Chairman of the Romantic Novelists' Association, serving from 1981 to 1983. 33 titles are catalogued through 2013.

Mikhail Bulgakov

27 books

Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940) was a Russian and Soviet novelist and playwright. The Master and Margarita, published only after Bulgakov's death, is ranked among the great novels of the twentieth century. The White Guard is another of his novels, and the plays Ivan Vasilievich, Flight and The Days of the Turbins belong to his stage work. The catalogue lists 27 books in English, from The Fatal Eggs (1923) and A Dog's Heart to A Country Doctor's Notebook and a Molière biography.

Tim Sebastian, born 13 March 1952, is an English television journalist and novelist. Sebastian moderates Conflict Zone and New Arab Debates on Deutsche Welle, and at the BBC hosted Doha Debates and became the first presenter of HARDtalk. BAFTA gave Sebastian the Richard Dimbleby Award in 1981, and the Royal Television Society named Sebastian Interviewer of the Year in 2000 and 2001. The 12 catalogued books run from Nice Promises (1985) to Fatal Ally (2019), including The Spy In Question, Spy Shadow and Special Relations. Subject tags list espionage thrillers, Russia and Polish politics.

Lionel Davidson (1922-2009) was an English novelist who wrote spy thrillers. Davidson took the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award once and the Gold Dagger three times. Nine catalogued books span 1960 to 1994, opening with The Night of Wenceslas (1960) and ending with Kolymsky Heights (1994). Subjects recorded include espionage, suspense, Russia and China, and Nicholas Whistler is logged as a recurring fictional character. Eight books have a recorded length, at a median of 293 pages.

Thrillers lead the subject headings on the 8 books catalogued for George Galdorisi, alongside history, terrorism, action and adventure, and war and military writing; Russia, Ukraine and the United States Air Force also appear. Galdorisi is credited on all 8, published between 1998 and 2021, and the Rick Holden series is listed under the name. The Coronado Conspiracy (1998) opens the catalogue, Out of the Ashes (2014) and When the Killer Man Comes (2018) follow, and AI at War (2021), on big data and machine learning in naval warfare, closes it.

Jason Matthews (1951-2021) was an American espionage novelist and a former CIA officer. Matthews wrote three books, forming one trilogy: Red Sparrow (2013), Palace of Treason (2015) and The Kremlin's Candidate (2018). Dominika Egorova and Nathaniel Nash carry the story across all three, which turn on Russian intelligence, women spies, extortion and an American presidential election. The novels are long, near 470 pages each, and the sequence closed in 2018.