Below is the complete list of Laurell K. Hamilton books in order. For each series, the chronological reading order is the same as the order of publication.
Publication Order of Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Collections Books
Publication Order of Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Graphic Novels Books
Publication Order of Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Books
- A Girl, a Goat, and a Zombie (2016)
A Girl, a Goat, and a Zombie is a 2016 release and appears as book #28 in the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series.
Publication Order of Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Short Stories/Novellas Books
Publication Order of Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter: Circus of the Damned Graphic Novels Books
Publication Order of Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter: The Laughing Corpse Graphic Novels Books
Publication Order of Merry Gentry Books
Publication Order of Zaniel Havelock Books
Publication Order of Standalone Books
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
Publication Order of Ravenloft Books
Publication Order of Smart Pop Books
Publication Order of Star Trek: The Next Generation Books
About Laurell K. Hamilton
Laurell K. Hamilton is an American author best known for the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series, one of the defining long-running works in modern urban fantasy and paranormal romance. Her fiction blends horror, crime, mythology, erotic power dynamics, supernatural politics, and heroine-centered action, often pushing genre boundaries in ways that influenced a generation of vampire, shapeshifter, and faerie-focused fiction. Her official biography identifies her as the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Anita Blake series and the Merry Gentry, Fey Detective series, with more than forty novels published across her career.
Hamilton’s first novel, Nightseer, appeared in 1992 and introduced her as a fantasy writer interested in magic, violence, revenge, and morally dangerous power. Her career changed decisively with Guilty Pleasures in 1993, the first Anita Blake novel. Anita begins as a professional animator who raises the dead for legal and personal purposes, while also working as a licensed vampire executioner and supernatural consultant. That premise gave the series its original force: a hard-edged crime heroine in a world where vampires, zombies, werecreatures, and magic are not hidden fairy-tale elements but part of law, policing, religion, celebrity, and daily danger.
The early Anita Blake books are especially important to urban fantasy because they combine noir investigation with supernatural horror. Anita is sarcastic, violent when necessary, morally stubborn, and often uncomfortable with the increasingly complicated supernatural world that gathers around her. As the sequence develops, the books shift from monster investigations and vampire politics toward erotic supernatural bonds, polyamorous relationships, metaphysical power structures, and extended emotional negotiation among Anita, Jean-Claude, Richard, Micah, Nathaniel, Edward, and many others. That evolution has made the series both popular and debated, but it is also part of why it remains distinctive. Hamilton did not keep Anita frozen in her original template; she let the series become stranger, more intimate, and more controversial as it grew.
In 2000, Hamilton launched the Merry Gentry series with A Kiss of Shadows. Merry, also known as Meredith NicEssus, is a faerie princess working as a private investigator in Los Angeles while avoiding the lethal politics of the Unseelie Court. The series draws on Celtic myth, royal succession, fertility, glamour, bloodline power, and the uneasy relationship between faerie immortality and modern human culture. Where Anita Blake often begins from crime and necromancy, Merry Gentry begins from court intrigue, sexuality, exile, and the question of who has the right to rule. Hamilton’s current official catalogue continues to list new Merry Gentry entries, including A Glimmer of Death and A Ghost of Daylight.
Hamilton’s later work includes the Zaniel Havelock novels, beginning with A Terrible Fall of Angels, which introduced a detective able to communicate with angels in a world where divine and demonic forces are real. This series shows her returning to investigative structure while using a different supernatural framework from vampires or faerie courts. Penguin Random House also lists Zaniel Havelock alongside her better-known Anita Blake and Merry Gentry series.
Hamilton’s background in English and biology has often suited her fiction. Her monsters are not merely decorative; they have bodies, instincts, hierarchies, appetites, laws, and social consequences. Across her bibliography, she writes about power as something physical, political, sexual, magical, and emotional at once. Her work endures because it helped make supernatural fiction feel adult, dangerous, and socially complex, giving readers heroines who survive not by remaining untouched by darkness, but by learning how much of it they can command without losing themselves.