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Janet Evanovich Books in Order

Below is the complete list of Janet Evanovich books in order of publication. This is the recommended reading sequence for the series.

Stephanie Plum Series

  1. One for the Money (1994)
  2. Two for the Dough (1996)
  3. Three to Get Deadly (1997)
  4. Four to Score (1998)
  5. High Five (1999)
  6. Hot Six (2000)
  7. Seven Up (2001)
  8. Hard Eight (2002)
  9. To the Nines (2003)
  10. Ten Big Ones (2004)
  11. Eleven on Top (2005)
  12. Twelve Sharp (2006)
  13. Lean Mean Thirteen (2007)
  14. Fearless Fourteen (2008)
  15. Finger Lickin’ Fifteen (2009)
  16. Sizzling Sixteen (2009)
  17. Smokin’ Seventeen (2011)
  18. Explosive Eighteen (2011)
  19. Notorious Nineteen (2012)
  20. Takedown Twenty (2013)
  21. Top Secret Twenty-One (2014)
  22. Tricky Twenty-Two (2015)
  23. Turbo Twenty-Three (2016)
  24. Hardcore Twenty-Four (2017)
  25. Look Alive Twenty-Five (2018)
  26. Twisted Twenty-Six (2019)
  27. Fortune and Glory (2020)
  28. Game On (2021)
  29. Going Rogue (2022)
  30. Dirty Thirty (2023)
  31. Now or Never (2024)
  32. Split Second: Thirty-Two Switcheroo (2026)

Stephanie Plum Between the Numbers/Holiday Novels Series

  1. Visions of Sugar Plums (2002)
  2. Plum Lovin’ (2007)
  3. Plum Lucky (2008)
  4. Plum Spooky (2009)

Alexandra Barnaby Series

  1. Metro Girl (2004)
  2. Motor Mouth (2006)
  3. Troublemaker (2007)
  4. Troublemaker 2 (2010)

Culhane Family Series
with Dorien Kelly

  1. Love in a Nutshell (2012)
  2. The Husband List (2012)

Elsie Hawkins Series

  1. Back to the Bedroom (1989)
  2. Smitten (1990)
  3. Wife for Hire (1990)
  4. The Rocky Road to Romance (1991)

Full/Max Holt Series
with Charlotte Hughes

  1. Full House (1981)
  2. Full Tilt (2002)
  3. Full Speed (2003)
  4. Full Blast (2004)
  5. Full Bloom (2005)
  6. Full Scoop (2006)

Gabriella Rose Series

  1. The Recovery Agent (2022)
  2. The King’s Ransom (2025)

Hot/Cate Madigan Series

  1. Hot Stuff (2007)

Lizzy & Diesel Series
with Phoef Sutton

  1. Wicked Appetite (2009)
  2. Wicked Business (2012)
  3. Wicked Charms (2015)
    (With Phoef Sutton)

Kate O’Hare & Nicolas Fox Series

  1. The Caper (2013)
  2. Pros and Cons (2013)
    (With Lee Goldberg)
  3. The Heist (2013)
    (With Lee Goldberg)
  4. The Chase (2014)
    (With Lee Goldberg)
  5. The Shell Game (2014)
    (With Lee Goldberg)
  6. The Job (2014)
    (With Lee Goldberg)
  7. The Scam (2015)
    (With Lee Goldberg)
  8. The Pursuit (2016)
    (With Lee Goldberg)
  9. The Big Kahuna (2019)
    (With Peter Evanovich)
  10. The Bounty (2021)
    (With Steve Hamilton)

Knight and Moon Series
with Phoef Sutton

  1. Curious Minds (2016)
    (With Phoef Sutton)
  2. Dangerous Minds (2017)

Standalone Novels Series

  1. Hero at Large (1987)
    (As: Steffie Hall)
  2. Thanksgiving (1988)
  3. The Grand Finale (1988)
  4. Manhunt (1988)
  5. Foul Play (1989)
    (As: Steffie Hall)
  6. Love Overboard / Ivan Takes a Wife (1989)
  7. Naughty Neighbor (1992)

Non-Fiction Series

  1. How I Write: Secrets of a Bestselling Author (2006)

About Janet Evanovich

Janet Evanovich built one of the most recognizable careers in modern commercial fiction by combining mystery, romance, slapstick disaster, and a distinctly New Jersey sense of attitude. Her official site identifies her as a #1 New York Times bestselling author, and both her own pages and her publisher make clear that the Stephanie Plum novels remain the center of her career, even as her bibliography has expanded into multiple additional series and collaborations. She was born in South River, New Jersey, and her first published novel was Hero at Large, long before Stephanie Plum made her a publishing phenomenon.

The clearest way to understand Evanovich’s bibliography is in phases. She began by writing romance, including books published under the name Steffie Hall, and that early background matters because the emotional rhythm of romance never really disappeared from her later work. Even in her crime novels, attraction, banter, and relationship chaos remain central. Her official novel list still separates out pre-Plum romance novels and co-authored romance novels, which is a useful reminder that the comic-mystery voice readers now associate with her grew out of a broader commercial-writing foundation.

Everything changed with Stephanie Plum. That series became not only Evanovich’s signature success but one of the defining long-running comic mystery franchises in American popular fiction. Stephanie is a Trenton bounty hunter by necessity rather than calling, and the books thrive on that mismatch between the danger of the job and the barely controlled chaos of the heroine’s life. Evanovich’s official site gives the Plum books pride of place, and her publisher continues to market them as the core of her list. Recent and upcoming titles make clear that the series is still active, with Now or Never as book 31 and Split Second: Thirty-Two Switcheroo announced for November 10, 2026.

What made Evanovich last was that she never relied on plot alone. Plenty of mystery writers can build a caper or a chase, but Evanovich built a reading experience around voice. Her books are fast, irreverent, flirtatious, and openly comic, yet they are structured with enough discipline that the farce never fully loses momentum. Stephanie Plum may be the most famous vehicle for that style, but it carries over into other lines too, including the Fox and O’Hare books, the Lizzy and Diesel novels, the Knight and Moon books, the Alexandra Barnaby novels, and more recently the Recovery Agent series. Her publisher’s biography and her official novels pages both show how wide that second half of her career has become.

That broader bibliography is important because Evanovich is not just “the Plum author,” even if Plum is the center of gravity. She has repeatedly used collaboration and side series to test variations on the same strengths: witty dialogue, mismatched partners, high-energy pursuit, treasure-hunt plotting, and a heroine or hero whose competence is often tangled up with improvisation. The Recovery Agent novels, for example, show her still expanding into adventure-thriller territory, with publisher pages already listing the second book, The King’s Ransom, for November 2025.

The best way to understand Janet Evanovich’s bibliography, then, is as the work of a writer who found a comic suspense voice durable enough to sustain decades of variation. She began in romance, broke through in mystery, and then built a body of work that keeps returning to the same pleasures: momentum, chemistry, wisecracks, trouble, and characters who are rarely as prepared as they need to be. Her books are meant to entertain, but the consistency of that entertainment is its own kind of achievement. She did not just create a bestselling series. She created a tone readers know almost instantly, and that tone is what holds her shelf together.

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