Below is the complete list of Alex Kava books in order. For each series, the chronological reading order is the same as the order of publication.
Publication Order of Maggie O’Dell Books
Publication Order of Maggie O’Dell Short Stories/Novellas Books
Publication Order of Maggie O’Dell Collections Books
Publication Order of Ryder Creed Books
- Chasing Creed (2026)
In the Ryder Creed series, Chasing Creed is book #9 and was published in 2026.
Publication Order of Standalone Books
Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas Books
Publication Order of Erica Spindler Short Stories/Novellas Books
with Erica Spindler, J.T. Ellison
About Alex Kava
Alex Kava is an American crime and thriller writer whose fiction is most closely associated with two recurring investigators: FBI profiler Maggie O’Dell and K-9 handler Ryder Creed. Her novels combine psychological suspense with procedural investigation, often placing specialized knowledge—criminal profiling, forensic evidence, scent detection, search work, and law-enforcement procedure—at the center of fast-moving stories. Over a career extending from the beginning of the 2000s, Kava has built an interconnected body of work that moves comfortably between serial-killer suspense, crime investigation, disaster scenarios, and K-9 mysteries.
Raised in rural Nebraska near Silver Creek, Kava studied art and English at the College of Saint Mary in Omaha. Before establishing herself as a novelist, she worked in advertising, marketing, graphic design, and public relations, including running her own design business. She eventually left her public-relations career to devote more attention to writing fiction. Her first published novel, A Perfect Evil, appeared in 2000 and introduced Maggie O’Dell, the character who would become the foundation of her early career.
The Maggie O’Dell novels established Kava’s reputation for thrillers built around the psychological and practical details of violent-crime investigations. Maggie is an FBI profiler whose cases repeatedly require her to interpret the behavior of dangerous offenders while dealing with the personal consequences of work that keeps her close to extreme violence. Representative novels such as Split Second, A Necessary Evil, Black Friday, and Stranded show the range Kava developed within the series, moving beyond a single type of crime while retaining Maggie as the continuing point of reference. Before Evil later returned to an earlier period in Maggie’s history as a prequel.
Kava broadened that fictional world with Ryder Creed, a former Marine and specialist K-9 handler whose dogs are trained for scent detection and search work. Ryder became the lead of his own series beginning with Breaking Creed. The shift gave Kava another way to construct investigations, emphasizing what trained dogs can locate, recognize, and communicate through their behavior. The Creed books are not completely separate from the Maggie O’Dell novels: Ryder and his dog Grace were introduced to Maggie in Stranded, and Maggie subsequently became part of the Creed series as well. That crossover makes the two series complementary parts of Kava’s larger fictional universe rather than unrelated bodies of work.
Although suspense drives her novels, Kava’s approach depends heavily on method. Profiling, evidence gathering, field searches, environmental conditions, and the capabilities of working dogs frequently matter as much as the identity of a villain. Her storytelling tends toward direct pacing and escalating danger, but the investigative framework gives the books a procedural backbone. Readers following either major series also encounter continuing characters and smaller storylines that develop between individual cases, even though Kava has described the novels as being written so that they can still be enjoyed independently.
Outside those series, Kava has written stand-alone thrillers including One False Move and Whitewash, along with novellas and shorter fiction. Her career has earned two Nebraska Book Awards, a Florida Book Award, and the Mari Sandoz Award, while her books have reached readers internationally.
Kava’s bibliography is therefore most naturally understood through the relationship between Maggie O’Dell and Ryder Creed. Maggie represents the psychological-profiling and FBI side of her fiction; Creed expands the same suspense territory through K-9 detection and search expertise. Together they define Kava’s particular brand of thriller writing: investigations grounded in specialized skills, recurring characters who accumulate history over time, and dangers designed to feel plausible rather than remote.