Below is the complete list of Peter James books in order. For each series, the chronological reading order is the same as the order of publication.
Publication Order of Roy Grace Books
Publication Order of Roy Grace Short Stories/Novellas Books
Publication Order of Cold Hill Books
Publication Order of Max Flynn Books
Publication Order of Standalone Books
Publication Order of Short Story Collections Books
- Short Shockers: Collection One (2013)
Short Shockers: Collection One was published in 2013 and is listed as book #1 in the Short Story Collections series. - Short Shockers: Collection Two (2013)
Published in 2013, Short Shockers: Collection Two is listed as book #2 in the Short Story Collections series. 
Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas Books
- The Perfect Murder (2010)
The Perfect Murder was published in 2010 and is listed as book #1 in the Short Stories/Novellas series. 
Publication Order of Akashic Noir Books
Publication Order of The MatchUp Collection Books
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
Publication Order of Big Ideas Simply Explained Books
About Peter James
Peter James is a British crime and thriller novelist best known as the creator of Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, whose investigations have made Brighton and the surrounding Sussex landscape central to one of Britain’s longest-running contemporary police series. His fiction ranges beyond conventional detective work into psychological suspense, supernatural horror, science, genetics, religious mystery, and technological anxiety, reflecting interests that predate Roy Grace by decades. By 2026, his books had sold more than 24 million copies worldwide and been translated into 38 languages.
Born in Brighton in 1948, James grew up in Sussex and studied at Charterhouse before attending Ravensbourne Film School. He subsequently spent several years in North America, where he entered film and television, beginning in Canada and developing a career as a screenwriter and producer. He eventually worked as a producer or writer on more than twenty-five feature films as well as television projects. That background in visual storytelling would later become evident in novels built around rapidly shifting scenes, parallel viewpoints, and tightly controlled suspense.
James began publishing novels long before Roy Grace appeared. Early thrillers such as Dead Letter Drop, Atom Bomb Angel, and Billionaire were followed by books increasingly interested in supernatural and speculative possibilities. Possession, Dreamer, Sweet Heart, Prophecy, Host, Alchemist, and The Truth allowed him to explore psychic phenomena, near-death experiences, technology, religion, and questions about what might exist beyond conventional scientific understanding.
He continued working outside series fiction with novels including Perfect People, a thriller about genetic engineering and the ethical dangers surrounding designer children, and Absolute Proof, in which apparent evidence for the existence of God becomes valuable enough to provoke violence. The Cold Hill novels, beginning with The House on Cold Hill, bring his longstanding fascination with ghosts and unexplained phenomena into haunted-house fiction, while I Follow You moves into darker psychological territory through obsession and stalking.
The defining change in James’s career came with Dead Simple in 2005. The novel introduced Roy Grace, a Brighton detective whose procedural expertise coexists with a willingness to consider unconventional investigative methods. Grace’s professional life develops continuously alongside an unresolved personal mystery involving the disappearance of his wife, Sandy, giving the series a long emotional arc beneath its individual cases.
James’s close relationship with Sussex policing has helped give the Grace novels their procedural detail. The books draw heavily on research into homicide investigation, forensics, policing, courts, and criminal behavior, while Brighton provides a setting capable of shifting from fashionable seaside destination to nightlife, organized crime, suburban violence, and hidden communities. The series became the ITV drama Grace, starring John Simm, and several Grace stories have also been adapted successfully for the stage.
James has received numerous honors for his crime writing, including the Crime Writers’ Association Diamond Dagger. In 2026 he was appointed OBE for services to literature and charity.
Across an unusually varied bibliography, James has remained fascinated by ordinary lives suddenly destabilized by danger. Whether the threat comes from a murderer, obsessive lover, scientific experiment, supernatural presence, or apparently impossible piece of evidence, his novels repeatedly begin by removing the assumptions that make people feel safe. Roy Grace became his most enduring creation because that same uncertainty operates on both levels of the series: every investigation requires Grace to reconstruct what happened to someone else while his own life demonstrates how completely a person can disappear without leaving a satisfactory explanation.