Tess Gerritsen Books in Order

Tess Gerritsen is a Chinese-American New York Times bestselling author and retired physician best known for the Rizzoli & Isles crime series, featuring Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Dr. Maura Isles. She has received an MD from the University of California, San Francisco, and that medical background shows in her books in the forensic and clinical details, which usually comes from someone who has worked in a hospital. Publishers Weekly called her the “medical suspense queen,” and Time magazine listed The Surgeon among the best mystery/thriller novels ever written. In 2024, the International Thriller Writers presented her with the ThrillerMaster Award, their career-achievement honor.

Her career took an unusual route. She started writing during maternity leave from her medical practice in the late 1980s, initially publishing romantic suspense novels before starting to write medical thrillers with Harvest in 1996, her first New York Times bestseller. She continued writing in the genre with The Rizzoli & Isles novels, starting with The Surgeon from 2001 onward, and the series had thirteen books before Tess Gerritsen launched the Martini Club spy thrillers in 2023. Her books have sold over 40 million copies in 40 countries.

This page lists all Tess Gerritsen books in order, including the Rizzoli & Isles series, the Martini Club thrillers, earlier standalone medical thrillers, romantic suspense novels, and short stories.

Latest Tess Gerritsen Books

The Shadow Friends
The Shadow Friends (Martini Club #3), August 2026
The Mysterious Bookshop Presents the Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2026
The Mysterious Bookshop Presents the Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2026, September 2026

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Where to Start with Tess Gerritsen

→ New to Gerritsen? Start with The Surgeon (Rizzoli & Isles #1). It introduces Jane Rizzoli and is the natural entry point into her best-known series.
→ Note on Maura Isles: She doesn’t appear until The Apprentice (book 2). If you specifically came for the Rizzoli & Isles duo you’ve seen promoted, book 2 is where both characters are in place.
→ Prefer a spy thriller over crime fiction? Start with The Spy Coast (Martini Club #1). It is separate from Rizzoli & Isles and has no connection to it.
→ Interested in her medical thrillers? Harvest (1996) is the starting point. It is a standalone, and the book that established her as a major medical thriller author.
→ The Rizzoli & Isles books are best read in order. The individual cases are self-contained, but Jane Rizzoli’s personal arc and the characters around her develop significantly as the series goes on.

Rizzoli and Isles Series (Books in Order)

The Rizzoli & Isles series follows Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Maura Isles as they investigate violent crimes in the city. Rizzoli works the cases from the police side, while Isles provides forensic pathology that often helps move the investigation forward. The two characters are very different from each other. Rizzoli is street-smart and instinct-driven, carrying the emotional weight of the cases. Isles is methodical and scientifically precise, maintaining a professional detachment to death due to her work. The author draws on her own medical background here, and the autopsy and clinical sequences feel authentic rather than skipping over details to advance the plot.

The series includes thirteen novels and was adapted into the TNT television series Rizzoli & Isles (2010–2016), starring Angie Harmon as Jane Rizzoli and Sasha Alexander as Maura Isles. The books are best read in publication order. While each novel contains a standalone case, the personal storylines, relationships, and character history build slowly throughout the series.

  1. The Surgeon, 2001
  2. The Apprentice, 2002
  3. The Sinner, 2003
  4. Body Double, 2004
  5. Vanish, 2005
  6. The Mephisto Club, 2006
  7. The Keepsake, 2008 (also titled Keeping The Dead)
  8. Ice Cold, 2010 (also titled The Killing Place)
  9. Freaks, 2011
  10. The Silent Girl, 2011
  11. John Doe, 2011
  12. Last to Die, 2012
  13. Die Again, 2014
  14. I Know a Secret, 2017
  15. Listen to Me, 2022

Tavistock Family Series (Books in Order)

The Tavistock Family series is an early romantic-suspense duology starting with Beryl Tavistock investigating the death of her parents that happened twenty years before. In the second book, Jordan Tavistock takes over as the main protagonist with reformed cat burglar Clea Rice as his love interest.

  1. In Their Footsteps, 1994
  2. Thief of Hearts, 1995 (also titled Stolen)

Martini Club Series (Books in Order)

The Martini Club series follows Maggie Bird, a retired CIA agent who settled in the small quiet town of Purity, Maine, after a mission went wrong. She started a book club called the Martini Club, with other retired spies as members. When she encounters trouble from her long-forgotten past, they are the only people she can ask for help. The series is different from Rizzoli & Isles in that it has quite a lot of characters, and it is set in a small town in Maine, which Tess Gerritsen used as inspiration since she lived there. It also has a dark comic feel at times. Tess Gerritsen mentioned that she got the idea after she learned that two of her neighbors were former CIA officers. Amazon Studios has picked up the series for television.

  1. The Spy Coast, 2023
  2. The Summer Guests, 2025
  3. The Shadow Friends, 2026

Standalone Novels

Short Story Collections & Anthologies

Tess Gerritsen Biography

Tess Gerritsen

Tess Gerritsen is an American author and retired physician whose work includes medical thrillers, crime fiction, and spy thrillers. She has published more than thirty novels since 1987, with over 40 million copies sold in 40 countries.
Official website: tessgerritsen.com

Tess Gerritsen was born as Terry Tom on June 12, 1953, in San Diego, California, to a Chinese immigrant father and a Chinese-American mother. She grew up wanting to write but chose medicine at her family’s encouragement. She studied anthropology at Stanford University, graduating in 1975. She then earned her MD from the University of California, San Francisco. She practiced as a doctor before leaving medicine to write full-time.

She started writing during maternity leave in the mid-1980s. At first, she wrote romantic suspense novels for Harlequin Intrigue and used the pen name Tess, a female version of her given name Terry, for the romantic genre, and she kept it as her permanent writing name. Her first novel, Call After Midnight, was published in 1987, followed by several more romantic thrillers over the next few years. She also wrote the screenplay for Adrift, a 1993 CBS Movie of the Week starring Kate Jackson.

She switched to medical thrillers in 1996 with Harvest, a story inspired by reports of children being sold for organ trafficking she had heard from a retired homicide detective. It was her first hardcover and her first time being on the New York Times bestseller list. Three more standalone medical thrillers followed, Life Support, Bloodstream, and Gravity, before she created Jane Rizzoli in The Surgeon in 2001. Her partner, medical examiner Dr. Maura Isles was introduced in Apprentice. The Rizzoli & Isles series, with currently thirteen novels written, became the basis for TNT’s Rizzoli & Isles TV series, which ran between 2010 and 2016. In 2023, Tess Gerritsen started a new series with The Spy Coast, the first Martini Club novel, which Amazon Studios picked up for television. She also co-produced the horror film Island Zero in 2018 with her son Josh Gerritsen.

She has also written several standalone novels, including the historical medical thriller The Bone Garden, and the Tavistock Family romantic-suspense duology. She lives in Maine with her husband, Dr. Jacob Gerritsen.

Tess Gerritsen Book Adaptations

  • Rizzoli & Isles series – adapted into the crime drama TV series Rizzoli & Isles (TNT, 2010–2016), starring Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander
  • The Spy Coast (Martini Club #1) – optioned by Amazon Studios for a television series
  • Adrift – original screenplay by Tess Gerritsen, aired as a CBS Movie of the Week (1993), starring Kate Jackson
  • Island Zero (2018) – horror film with screenplay by Tess Gerritsen and co-produced with her son Josh Gerritsen

Tess Gerritsen Awards and Honors

Awards

  • The Surgeon – RITA Award for Best Romantic Suspense Novel (2002)
  • Vanish – Nero Wolfe Award (Nero Award) for Best Mystery Novel (2006)
  • ThrillerMaster Award (International Thriller Writers) (2024)

Nominations and Shortlists

  • Vanish – Edgar Award for Best Novel (2006)
  • Vanish – Macavity Award for Best Novel (2006)
  • The Mephisto Club – CrimeFest: Sounds of Crime Award (2008)
  • The Bone Garden – CrimeFest Sounds of Crime Award (2009)
  • Ice Cold (The Killing Place) – Nero Award, Best Mystery Novel (2011)
  • The Silent Girl – Suspense Magazine Award, Best Suspense Thriller (2011)
  • No Rest for the Dead – Suspense Magazine Award, Best Anthology (2011)
  • Last to Die – Nero Award, Best Mystery Novel (2012)
  • Playing With Fire – ITW Award for Best Hardcover Novel (2016)
  • The Spy Coast – ITW Award for Best Paperback original (2024)
  • The Spy Coast – CWA Whodunnit Dagger (2025)

Edited by

Marika

Founder of Mystery Sequels, a reference site focused on listing mystery and thriller books in the correct reading order. I maintain and update the site’s bibliographies as new titles are released, ensuring accuracy and consistency across author and series pages.

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11 Comments

  1. My favorite author. I love the Jane Rizzoli character if she was real I would love 2 meet her ! I would like 2 have Thanksgiving at the Rizzoli table. I’d have some talks with Frankie junior. 👍

  2. Can we get notified when book 3 in the spy series is released – hooked on these characters

  3. Just finished spy coast, picked up randomly at library, title caught my attention. Going to put name on list for summer guests and pick up 3 or 4 of whatever is available. Read everything by Michael Conley and David baldacci, was looking for a new favorite author, after only one book, I think I’ve found her!

  4. I have been a keen reader of Tess Gerritsen books; I have read The Rizzoli & Isles Books 1 to 12 and have just got the 13th & 14th books which I am now looking forward to reading. I have thought that all of these were good to very good reading. I have read 3 of the medical books, but to me, they were not quite so engaging as the R&I series. I do not read the short story books.

    1. I just read the #2 book called The Summer Guests. I finished it in 2 days, I couldn’t put it down. I’m going back to get the #1 book. I hope we don’t have to wait another two years for a 3rd book.

  6. Read three of her books and found them to be very interesting.hope to read the entire series if money permits.

    1. Just read Freaks. It’s a short story, roughly 25 pages. I found it at the back of the paperback version of “The Silent Girl”

  8. I just read the first 3 R&I books. I love the TV series. I like the books also. There is a Whoopie Goldberg movie named Fatal Beauty. Her character name is Rizzoli and she is a detective. In the books I hear the TV Isles voice although she is described more like Abby in NCIS! Rizzoli on the other hand, sounds very much rougher than the TV Rizzoli. I hear Whoopie’s voice even through the 3rd book. Since the movie preceded the books by more than 10 yrs, I wonder if Mrs Gerritsen wrote the Rizzoli character with more of the roughness of the movie Rizzoli?

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