Soviet Union book series in reading order

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.

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).