Below is the complete list of Alex Kava’s Ryder Creed books in order. For this series, the chronological reading order is the same as the order of publication.
Publication Order of Ryder Creed Books
- Chasing Creed (2026)
In the Ryder Creed series, Chasing Creed is book #9 and was published in 2026.
About Ryder Creed
Alex Kava’s Ryder Creed series shifts the investigative focus of her thrillers from criminal profiling to the highly specialized world of working scent dogs. Creed is a former Marine K-9 handler who operates his own canine search-and-rescue and detection business, using dogs trained to locate people, human remains, drugs, explosives, and other targets. The series combines that expertise with Kava’s established crime-thriller style, creating stories in which a dog’s ability to follow scent can become as important to solving a case as forensic evidence or conventional police work.
Creed’s connection to Kava’s earlier fiction predates the first book carrying his name. He and his scent dog Grace encounter FBI profiler Maggie O’Dell in Stranded, an installment of the Maggie O’Dell series. Breaking Creed then places him at the center of his own books while retaining Maggie as an important recurring character. This crossover is fundamental to the shape of the series: Ryder Creed is not a detached spin-off protagonist but part of the same investigative world Kava had already developed around Maggie.
Where Maggie’s profession revolves around interpreting criminal behavior, Creed’s work is physical, observational, and dependent on his understanding of dogs. Kava gives considerable attention to the relationship between handler and animal—the signals Creed notices, the trust required during a search, and the limits as well as remarkable capabilities of canine scent detection. Grace is especially closely associated with him, but the series develops a broader working-dog environment rather than relying on a single animal as a recurring device. The dogs have specific jobs and abilities, giving the K-9 element a practical role within the mysteries instead of functioning primarily as decoration.
The cases themselves range well beyond straightforward missing-person searches. Silent Creed places Creed and Maggie together again in a dangerous investigation, while later novels broaden the series through crimes, disasters, disappearances, and situations in which Creed’s dogs provide access to evidence that human investigators might otherwise miss. Kava retains the brisk pacing and escalating danger of her Maggie O’Dell books, but the Creed novels often add wilderness, disaster, or search environments that make the physical setting a significant part of the suspense.
Creed’s personal life also becomes increasingly important as the series develops. One of its major continuing threads involves his sister Brodie, whose disappearance had profoundly affected him and whose story becomes especially significant around Lost Creed and Desperate Creed. Rather than resetting Creed completely after each investigation, Kava allows these personal developments to carry forward alongside recurring professional relationships. Maggie’s continued involvement strengthens that continuity and makes the Creed books feel like an expansion of an established fictional community.
The novels are nevertheless structured so individual cases can largely stand on their own. Kava has stated that both the Maggie O’Dell and Ryder Creed books are written to remain accessible to readers entering in the middle, although continuing characters and smaller storylines gain more significance when encountered progressively. That balance suits a series in which each book needs a distinct thriller plot while Creed’s relationships, history, and working partnership with his dogs continue to evolve.
As of August 2026, the Ryder Creed line extends through Midnight Creed, with the ninth novel, Chasing Creed, scheduled for retail release in September 2026. The continuing series has gradually moved beyond its initial crossover premise to establish Creed as a protagonist in his own right, while Maggie O’Dell remains an important bridge to Kava’s earlier work. Its defining feature is the way canine expertise is integrated into serious investigative suspense, making the dogs active participants in how information is discovered and danger is confronted rather than simply companions accompanying the human characters.