Soviet Union book series in reading order

by Edward Wilson

Paul Watkins, born in 1964, is an American novelist who wrote Night Over Day Over Night (1988) at the age of 16. Educated at the Dragon School, Eton and Yale, Watkins teaches and is writer-in-residence at The Peddie School, and lives in Hightstown, New Jersey. Stand Before Your God recalls the Dragon School and Eton years. The 20-book list includes The Promise of Light and Archangel, plus the Inspector Pekkala series, and The Elegant Lie (2019) carries the name Sam Eastland.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

38 books• 2 series

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) was a Soviet and Russian writer and dissident whose work forced global attention onto political repression and the Gulag prison system. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962), Cancer Ward (1967) and In the First Circle (1968) sit early in a catalogue of 38 titles that opens with Candle in the Wind (1960). Two cycles anchor the later work, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956 and the Red Wheel, which reached April 1917: The Red Wheel, Node IV, Book 1 in 2025. Solzhenitsyn took the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Robert Littell, born 8 January 1935 in Brooklyn to a family of Russian Jewish origin, writes spy fiction. Littell's novels turn on the CIA and the Soviet Union, drawing on a working life that took in a 1956 degree from Alfred University, four years in the US Navy as navigator, antisubmarine warfare officer and communications officer, and years at Newsweek during the Cold War, including a posting as foreign correspondent from 1965 to 1970. Littell lives in France. The catalogue holds 26 books, from If Israel Lost the War (1969) to Bronshtein in the Bronx (2025).

Tom Rob Smith

6 books• 1 series

Tom Rob Smith, born in 1979, is an English author, screenwriter and producer. Child 44 (2008) made his name, a novel about an investigation into child murders in the Soviet Union, later adapted into a film of the same title. Leo Demidov returns in two sequels, The Secret Speech (2009) and Agent 6 (2011). The Farm (2014) was Smith's first standalone novel, followed by London Spy (2016) and Cold People (2023); six books stand in the catalogue and none since.

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).

Andrey Kurkov

16 books• 2 series

Andrey Kurkov is a Ukrainian novelist and public intellectual who writes in Russian and Ukrainian. Death and the Penguin (2001) is his best known book and has a sequel, Penguin Lost (2004). The Samson Kolechko investigations make up his Kyiv mystery series, and subjects across the catalogue cover Ukraine, the Soviet Union, satire, politics and the conflict running since 2014. Kurkov has 16 catalogued titles dated 2001 to 2026, ending at The Lost Soldiers, and his work is translated into 37 languages.

Ted Allbeury, born Theodore Edward le Bouthillier Allbeury, was a British writer of espionage fiction who lived from 24 October 1917 to 4 December 2005. From 1940 to 1947 Allbeury served as an intelligence officer in the Special Operations Executive and rose to lieutenant colonel. Allbeury is thought to be the only British secret agent to parachute into Nazi Germany during the war, staying until the Allied armies arrived. During the Cold War, Allbeury was captured and tortured while running agents across the border between East and West Germany. The catalogue opens with A Choice Of Enemies (1973) and Snowball (1974), includes a title published as Richard Butler, and lists the Tad Anders series.

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.

Anthony Horowitz

106 books• 23 series

Anthony Horowitz is an English novelist and screenwriter, born 5 April 1955, who specialises in mystery and suspense. For children and young adults Horowitz created Alex Rider, a 14-year-old British boy who spies for MI6, along with The Power of Five (titled The Gatekeepers in the US) and The Diamond Brothers. The catalogue holds 106 Horowitz books from Enter Frederick K. Bower (1978) to A Deadly Episode (2026). Other listed series include Detective Daniel Hawthorne, Susan Ryeland, Groosham Grange and the Pentagram Chronicles. Horowitz is still publishing.

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.

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.

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).

John Gardner (20 November 1926 – 3 August 2007) was an English author of spy and thriller novels, best known for continuing the James Bond books. Gardner also wrote the Boysie Oakes series and three novels featuring Professor Moriarty, the villain created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Gardner joined the Home Guard at 13 during the Second World War and went on to serve in the Fleet Air Arm and the Royal Marines; after demobilisation Gardner studied theology at St John's College, Cambridge, and was ordained a Church of England priest in 1953. The Liquidator (1964) opens a catalogue of 60 books that includes Understrike (1965), Amber Nine (1966), Madrigal (1967) and Traitor's Exit (1970) and ends with Moriarty (2008). Herbie Kruger, Derek Torry and Detective Sergeant Suzie Mountford are further series.

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.

Dennis Wheatley

71 books• 7 series

Dennis Wheatley was an English writer of thrillers and occult novels, and among the world's best-selling authors from the 1930s to the 1960s. Series in the catalogue are Black Magic, Roger Brook, Gregory Sallust, Julian Day, Lost World and Molly Fountain, with Roger Brook and the Duke de Richleau as recurring characters. Titles include The Forbidden Territory (1933), The Devil Rides Out (1934), The Eunuch of Stamboul (1935) and They Found Atlantis (1936). The catalogue holds 71 books, from Such Power Is Dangerous (1933) to The Deception Planners (1980).

Clive Egleton (1927-2006) was a British author of spy and crime novels who also wrote as John Tarrant and Patrick Blake. The Peter Ashton books follow an intelligence officer, and separate sequences cover David Garnett and Charles Winter. Egleton's 44 catalogued titles run from A Piece of Resistance (1970) to Pandora's Box (2008), with the 1970s the busiest decade and espionage the steady subject.

Ralph Peters writes military fiction and history, and publishes his American Civil War fiction as Owen Parry. The Abel Jones series belongs to the Owen Parry name and begins with Faded Coat of Blue (1999). Under Peters, the catalogue holds military thrillers such as Bravo Romeo (1981), Red Army (1989) and The War in 2020 (1991), and later Civil War novels including the Battle Hymn Cycle and Darkness at Chancellorsville (2020), the newest of 33 books. Soldiers, military policy and the war on terrorism supply the nonfiction subjects.

Edward Wilson writes espionage thrillers. The Catesby series is recorded against the name, and subjects across the 9 catalogued books cover MI6, the Soviet Union, the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, the Vietnam War and London. A River In May (2002) opens the listing and Farewell Dinner for a Spy (2024) is the newest entry, by way of The Envoy, The Darkling Spy, The Midnight Swimmer, Whitehall Mandarin and A Very British Ending.