Below is the complete list of Rex Stout books in order. For each series, the chronological reading order is the same as the order of publication.
Publication Order of Nero Wolfe Books
Publication Order of Nero Wolfe Short Stories/Novellas Books
- Bitter End (1997)
Published in 1997, Bitter End is listed as book #2 in the Nero Wolfe Short Stories/Novellas series. - Booby Trap (2013)
Booby Trap is a 2013 release and appears as book #3 in the Nero Wolfe Short Stories/Novellas series. - Cordially Invited to Meet Death (2014)
In the Nero Wolfe Short Stories/Novellas series, Cordially Invited to Meet Death is book #4 and was published in 2014. 
Publication Order of Tecumseh Fox Books
Publication Order of Standalone Books
Publication Order of Short Story Collections Books
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
About Rex Stout
Rex Stout was an American mystery writer best known as the creator of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, one of detective fiction’s most distinctive investigative partnerships. Beginning with Fer-de-Lance in 1934, the Nero Wolfe stories combine the intellectual puzzle of the classic detective novel with the pace and streetwise narration of American crime fiction. Stout also created detectives Tecumseh Fox, Alphabet Hicks, and Dol Bonner, and wrote novels outside the mystery genre, but Wolfe and Archie became the foundation of his literary reputation.
Born Rex Todhunter Stout in Noblesville, Indiana, in 1886, Stout grew up largely in Kansas in a Quaker family. He displayed exceptional ability with mathematics and language from childhood and briefly attended the University of Kansas before serving in the U.S. Navy. During the years before he became a full-time novelist, he held numerous jobs and devised a successful school banking system that gave him the financial independence to travel and write.
Stout initially regarded himself as a writer of serious literary fiction. His early work included short stories and experimental novels, with How Like a God and The President Vanishes among the books preceding Nero Wolfe. The enormous success of Fer-de-Lance, however, established the direction his career would take for the next four decades.
Nero Wolfe is an eccentric private detective who conducts most of his work from a Manhattan brownstone. Brilliant, wealthy, irritable, and famously reluctant to leave home, Wolfe prefers books, beer, elaborate meals, and the thousands of orchids cultivated in his rooftop plant rooms. Physical investigation is largely delegated to Archie Goodwin, his assistant, investigator, secretary, and narrator.
Archie provides the energy Wolfe deliberately avoids. He interviews witnesses, follows suspects, deals with the police, gathers evidence, and reports everything back to Wolfe. His witty first-person narration gives the series much of its character, while the contrast between Archie’s mobility and Wolfe’s sedentary reasoning creates an unusual hybrid of detective traditions. Wolfe resembles the cerebral detectives of classic mystery fiction; Archie brings the language and immediacy of the American private eye.
Inspector Cramer of New York Homicide becomes a recurring adversary and reluctant collaborator, while Saul Panzer is Wolfe’s most trusted freelance operative. Chef Fritz Brenner and orchid expert Theodore Horstmann complete the household, creating a remarkably stable fictional environment even as cases and decades change around them.
Stout ultimately wrote dozens of Wolfe novels and novellas, including The League of Frightened Men, Some Buried Caesar, The Silent Speaker, In the Best Families, Might as Well Be Dead, and A Family Affair. The stories generally preserve Wolfe and Archie at roughly the same ages despite contemporary references that move with the times.
Outside Wolfe, Stout developed several other investigators. Tecumseh Fox appears in three novels, while The Alphabet Hicks features a private investigator with a legal background. Dol Bonner, a female private detective introduced in The Hand in the Glove, also appears in later Stout fiction and occasionally crosses into Wolfe’s world.
Stout was additionally prominent in American public life. During World War II he became an outspoken opponent of Nazi Germany and worked extensively with organizations supporting the Allied war effort. His political engagement continued after the war through advocacy concerning democracy, civil liberties, and international affairs.
He received major recognition from the mystery-writing community, including the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award in 1959. Stout died in 1975 at the age of 88, shortly after completing his final Nero Wolfe novel.
His lasting achievement lies in the balance between Wolfe and Archie. One rarely leaves his chair; the other rarely stops moving. Together they allowed Stout to combine deduction, comedy, character, and hard-edged investigation in a form that remained remarkably consistent for more than forty years.