Douglas Preston Books in Order

Douglas Preston is best known for the Pendergast series that he wrote with Lincoln Child. Their collaboration began with Relic in 1995, and over the years, they created the Pendergast series, Nora Kelly, and Gideon Crew series. He also writes series and standalone novels solo, including the Wyman Ford series and nonfiction books such as The Lost City of the Monkey God, and more recently co-writes the Cash & Colcord series with his daughter, Aletheia Preston.

Below are all Douglas Preston books in order, including his collaborations with Lincoln Child, solo novels, short stories, and nonfiction books.

A printable book list is available below. You can print it or save it as a PDF.

Latest and Upcoming Douglas Preston Books

• Dead Man’s Journey (Nora Kelly #3, January 26, 2027)
• Resurrection (Cash & Colcord #3, June 1, 2027)

How the Series Connect

The Pendergast and Nora Kelly series are part of the same Pendergast universe. Nora Kelly first appeared in the standalone novel Thunderhead in 1999, and then became a member of the Pendergast series. Corrie Swanson, another regular in the series, was introduced in Still Life with Crows. She became the main character of the series with Nora Kelly in Old Bones.

You can read the Nora Kelly series if you’ve picked up the books before Pendergast, but there is a lot of history from the main series that will spoil various events.

Gideon Crew has no connection to Pendergast and Nora Kelly, but Beyond the Ice Limit directly continues the story started in the standalone novel The Ice Limit.

Adaptations and Screen Work

• Relic – adapted as the feature film The Relic (1997)
• Jennie – adapted as the Disney television film The Jennie Project (2001)
• The Lost City of the Monkey God – documentary about the expedition covered in the book (2018); Douglas Preston was one of the narration writers

About Douglas Preston

Douglas Preston is a journalist and New York Times bestselling author, best known for co-creating the long-running FBI Agent Pendergast series with Lincoln Child.

Author website: prestonchild.com

Jerome Douglas Preston was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1956, and grew up in Wellesley. He graduated in 1978 from Pomona College in Claremont, California with a degree in English literature, and that college later awarded him an honorary Doctor of Letters in 2011.

His career started at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where he worked between 1978 and 1985 as a writer, editor, and eventually manager of publications. That job was the inspiration for his first book, the nonfiction Dinosaurs in the Attic (1986), and introduced him to Lincoln Child, then an editor at St. Martin’s Press, as this meeting would forever change their lives. The two connected over a midnight tour Douglas Preston gave Lincoln Child of the empty museum, and the novel they eventually wrote from that experience was Relic (1995), the book that launched the bestselling Pendergast series.

Relic was adapted into a feature film by Paramount Pictures in 1997, though Pendergast himself didn’t appear in that version, much to all book fans’ disappointment. The novel and the sequel, Cabinet of Curiosities, were both chosen by NPR readers as among the 100 greatest thrillers ever written. Their last twenty novels in a row have immediately went up on the New York Times bestseller list, several reaching the #1 position.

Douglas Preston also wrote solo novels, including the Wyman Ford techno-thriller series and the Cash & Colcord series, co-authored with this daughter Aletheia Preston, and has published multiple nonfiction books that are based on his journalism career. He writes regularly for The New Yorker, National Geographic, and Smithsonian, on topics such as archaeology, paleontology, and exploration. His nonfiction book The Monster of Florence (2008), about an Italian serial killer case that got the authory into a legal controversy, was four months on the New York Times list. The Lost City of the Monkey God (2017), about the discovery of a prehistoric city in an unexplored Honduran valley, hit the well-deserved #1 on the list.

He was one of the early founders of International Thriller Writers and served as its Co-President. In 2014, he founded Authors United during a high-profile dispute between Amazon and publisher Hachette, which united hundreds of authors in protest. He has also served as President of the Authors Guild, and was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He has participated in USO tours supporting U.S. service members overseas, and was elected to the Long Riders Guild.

Douglas Preston lives in New Mexico.

Major Awards and Honors

• Brimstone – Audie Award for Abridged Fiction (2005)
• The Monster of Florence – Black Quill Award, Dark Genre Book of Non-Fiction, Editors’ Choice (2008)
• Impact – New England Book Festival, Science Fiction (2010)
• Honorary Doctor of Letters, Pomona College (2011)
• White Fire – International Thriller Writers Award finalist, Best Hardcover Novel (2014)

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