Alex Kava Books In Order

New York Times Bestselling author Alex Kava is known for her Maggie O’Dell books and her related Ryder Creed series. Her first novel, A Perfect Evil was also my first encounter with her writing. I got hooked, seeking out the rest of the books as soon as they were published.

Here are the Alex Kava books in order of reading for her Maggie O’Dell series, Ryder Creed series, standalone novels, short stories, collections, and novellas.

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Maggie O’Dell Books in Publication Order

1. A Perfect Evil (#1), 2000
2. Split Second ( #2), 2001
3. The Soul Catcher (#3), 2002
4. Good Night, Sweet Mother (#3.1), 2003
5. At the Stroke of Madness (#4), 2003
6. A Necessary Evil (#5), 2006
7. Exposed (#6), 2008
8. Black Friday (#7), 2009
9. A Breath of Hot Air (#7.5), 2010 (with Patricia Bremmer)
10. Damaged (#8), 2010
11. Hotwire (#9), 2011
12. Slices of Night (#9.5), 2011 (with J.T. Ellison and Erica Spindler)
13. Fireproof (#10), 2012
14. Stranded (#11), 2013
15. Before Evil (#0.5), 2015

Maggie O’Dell Books in Chronological Order

1. Before Evil (#0.5), 2015
2. A Perfect Evil (#1), 2000
3. Split Second (#2), 2001
4. The Soul Catcher (#3), 2002
5. At the Stroke of Madness (#4), 2003
6. A Necessary Evil (#5), 2006
7. Exposed (#6), 2008
8. Black Friday (#7), 2009
9. Damaged (#8), 2010
10. Hotwire (#9), 2011
11. Fireproof (#10), 2012
12. Stranded (#11), 2013
13. Good Night, Sweet Mother (#3.1), 2003

Maggie O’Dell Short Stories and Novellas

originally published in the Off the Grid collection

• Goodnight, Sweet Mother, 2016
• A Breath of Hot Air, 2016
• Cold Metal Night, 2016
• Electric Blue, 2016
• After Dark, 2016

Maggie O’Dell Collections

• Off the Grid, 2016 – it includes short stories and a novella featuring Maggie O’Dell

Ryder Creed Books

The publication order is the same as the chronological order for this series

1. Breaking Creed, 2015
2. Silent Creed, 2015
3. Reckless Creed, 2016
4. Lost Creed, 2018
5. Desperate Creed, 2019
6. Hidden Creed, 2020
7. Fallen Creed, 2022
8. Midnight Creed, 2023

Standalone Novels in Publication Order

• One False Move, 2004
• Whitewash, 2007

Short Story Anthologies

• Thriller: Stories to Keep You Up All Night, 2006 (edited by James Patterson)
• First Thrills: Volume 4, 2011
• Gone Fishing and Other Stories, 2012
• Storm Season, 2012

Erica Spindler Short Stories

With Erica Spindler and J.T. Ellison. J.T. Ellison is the author of the popular Taylor Jackson books Erika Spindler is the author of the Stacy Killian books.

• Slices of Night, 2011 (Erica Spindler, J.T. Ellison)

Stacy Killian Books with Erica Spindler, J.T. Ellison

• See Jane Die, 2004 (Erica Spindler)
• Killer Takes All, 2005 (Erica Spindler)
• Last Known Victim, 2007 (Erica Spindler)
• Slices of Night, 2011 (Erica Spindler, J.T. Ellison)
• Watch Me Die, 2011 (Erica Spindler)

About the Ryder Creek Series – an Overview

The Ryder Creed set of books is a spin-off series from the main Alex Kava series, Maggie O’Dell, which features the famous profiler. Maggie O’Dell also appears in the series as a supporting character.

The first novel was released in 2014 with the title Breaking Creed, introducing to us Ryder Creed, an ex-marine who is focusing his time now on training rescue dogs. His company is called K9 Crimescents, which is quite fitting.

Creed has been quite popular recently due to his dogs that found a lot of drugs that were being smuggled at the Atlanta airport. Now Creed and his team is called to search aboard a commercial fishing vessel, where they found a secret compartment full of smuggled people.

While doing so, Ryder helped a teenage girl escape due to some old trauma at home (his little sister went missing many years ago).

This novel brought the main character to people’s eyes, and Creed became a huge success from this very story. He is a likable guy, but he has his own shadows from his time spent in Afghanistan. Spending time with his dogs and training them is a healing time and measure for him, helping him wake up from the past nightmares.

In Silent Creed, published in 2015, our main character and one of his dogs is called to a mudslide in North Carolina. While sifting through the debris to find any lost humans, a second mudslide occurs, and Ryder is buried alive. His dog, Bolo, escapes, and he finally leads the rescue team to the place where Ryder is located, aiding the team in fishing Creed out from the debris.

Alex Kava Biography

New York Times bestselling author, and American author, Alex Kava was born in 1960 in Silver Creek, Nebraska. She wanted to write books from a young age, however, her parents, while valuing education, classified reading books that were not part of study rather frivolous.

Reading for fun was not encouraged in the family. So Alex (born Sharon Kava) wrote her stories on the backs of calendars and only shared them with her brother.

So her parents would not see her writings, she hid everything she wrote during her young years in a shoe box under her bed.

Alex Kava went on a scholarship to the College of Saint Mary in Omaha, Nebraska, from where in 1982 she graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in art and English.

After leaving college she got several jobs, some of them in the fields of marketing and advertising. Eventually, she started her own graphic design firm called Square One where she designed logos, food packages, wrote brochures and newsletters for major corporations.

In 1992, Alex Kava started to work as director of public relations of her attending college, where she remained until 1996, which is when she switched to writing books.

The American author published her debut novel in 2000, titled A Perfect Evil, which would become the first in the Maggie O’Dell series.

Initially, the author chose the pseudonym Alex to disguise her gender, however, while she keeps writing under the name Alex Kava, she now no longer hides who she is.

The author Alex Kava is a member of the  International Thriller Writers as well as the Nebraska Writers Guild and her books have been so far sold all over the world in over 4 million copies.

Her popular crime mystery series focuses onFBI profiler Maggie O’Dell in Nebraska, who is called in to profile sadistic serial killers and hardened criminals all over the country, and does much more than simply profiling.

In the first book, A Perfect Evil, first introduces us to Maggie. When a small town gets a serial killer who is targeting kids, the local sheriff, Nick Morelli, knows he’s way out of his league, so he calls in the big guns.

Maggie is an FBI expert profiler who is sent to check out the situation. While the two are trying to solve the case, they also get strongly attracted to each other. Except, Maggie is married.

I’ve read pretty much all the American author’s. I love books with twisted, sadistic and ruthless serial killers and reading about those who catch them. If you enjoy reading gory and chilling novels, this series by Alex Kava totally fits the bill. It’s definitely not a cozy, and you’d better have a fondness for uber- suspenseful books, in which case the Maggie O’Dell series will become a dear favorite.

My only gripe with this Alex Kava series is that I wish the romance between Maggie and Nick Morelli (what a great name!) were going in the direction I wanted it to. But one can only hope…(and no, this is not a romantic suspense series, the romance aspect is almost non-existent).

The author’s latest series features Ryder, an ex-marine who is now working as a K9 search-and-rescue dog trainer who, every now and then, teams up with Maggie to solve cases.

Ryder was first introduced to us in Stranded, the last Maggie O’Dell book. He suffers from PTDS from his tour in Afghanistan and is now trying to put his life back together. Hannah, his good friend, and Grace, the abandoned dog that Creed finds and starts working with, are there to help him go through the tough times.

In Breaking Creed, the first book in the series, Ryder gets involved in a case of human trafficking which put a target on his back. The Cartel has a list with his name on it and he might be just their next kill.

The author Alex Kava loves dogs, she had and has dogs, so it felt easy for her to introduce a new series that features dogs as main characters. Also, she even gave Maggie a dog in one of the books.

The Alex Kava books have sold over 6 million copies worldwide, and they have been so far translated into several languages, and have been published in over 30 countries. She has been made a bestselling author not only in the US but also in Poland, Australia, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Italy.

Alex Kava Awards and Nominations

• Mari Sandoz Award
• 2016 Florida Book Award
• 2016 Nebraska Book Award

Alex Kava is a member of International Thriller Writers and the Nebraska Writers Guild.