Below is the complete list of Steve Berry books in order. For each series, the chronological reading order is the same as the order of publication.
Publication Order of Cotton Malone Books
Publication Order of Cassiopeia Vitt Adventure Books
with M.J. Rose
Publication Order of Luke Daniels Books
with Grant Blackwood
Publication Order of Standalone Books
Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas Books
- The Devils’ Due (2017)
Published in 2017, The Devils’ Due is listed as book #2 in the Short Stories/Novellas series.
Publication Order of The MatchUp Collection Books
Publication Order of Raymond Khoury Short Stories/Novellas Books
with Raymond Khoury
About Steve Berry
Steve Berry is an American thriller writer best known for historically driven suspense novels built around hidden documents, lost treasures, secret organizations, political danger, and unresolved questions from the past. His signature creation is Cotton Malone, a former U.S. Justice Department operative who has retired to Copenhagen as an antiquarian bookseller but is repeatedly drawn back into international crises. Berry’s books have made him a major figure in the historical-conspiracy thriller, with more than twenty-nine novels published, tens of millions of copies sold, and translations in dozens of languages.
Born and raised in Georgia, Berry trained as a lawyer and graduated from the Walter F. George School of Law at Mercer University. Before becoming a full-time novelist, he spent thirty years as a trial lawyer and held elective office for fourteen years. That background helps explain the structure of much of his fiction: legal documents, official institutions, government secrecy, procedural pressure, and questions of authority often matter as much as chases or violence. His books are action thrillers, but they are also built around arguments over evidence, authenticity, ownership, and who controls the accepted version of history.
Berry’s early published novels, including The Amber Room, The Romanov Prophecy, and The Third Secret, established his central territory before the Cotton Malone series became the core of his bibliography. These books showed his preference for combining modern suspense with historical mysteries that have contemporary consequences. Rather than using history as background color, Berry often turns it into the engine of the plot. A legend, relic, manuscript, royal secret, religious claim, or constitutional question becomes dangerous because someone in the present can use it to gain power.
The Cotton Malone books began with The Templar Legacy and developed into Berry’s most important continuing series. Cotton is a useful thriller protagonist because he belongs to several worlds at once: ex-operative, bookseller, historian by instinct, and reluctant participant in covert action. His Copenhagen bookshop gives him a civilian life, but his past with the Magellan Billet and his relationship with Stephanie Nelle keep pulling him into matters that cross borders and centuries. Cassiopeia Vitt, one of the series’ most important recurring figures, brings intelligence, wealth, independence, and emotional complexity to Malone’s world.
Berry’s bibliography has widened beyond Cotton Malone without abandoning the same historical interests. The Luke Daniels adventures, co-written with Grant Blackwood, extend his work into another action-thriller line, while the Cassiopeia Vitt novellas, co-written with M. J. Rose, give a major supporting character her own connected stories. Standalone novels such as The Omega Factor, The List, and The Medici Return show that Berry’s appeal does not depend solely on one recurring hero; his larger identity rests on the fusion of research-heavy historical mystery and contemporary danger.
Historic preservation is also central to Berry’s public career. With his wife, Elizabeth, he created History Matters, a foundation dedicated to helping preserve endangered historical sites and cultural heritage. That work is closely aligned with his fiction, where the past is rarely dead or decorative. It is fragile, contested, valuable, and often vulnerable to people who would exploit or erase it.
Across his career, Berry has built a bibliography that is best understood in clusters: the early standalones, the long-running Cotton Malone novels, the Cassiopeia Vitt stories, and the Luke Daniels collaborations. What connects them is a consistent belief that history still has force. In Berry’s novels, old secrets are not merely discovered; they become weapons, leverage, temptations, and tests of whether truth can survive the people determined to own it.