Gregg Hurwitz Books in Order – Orphan X Complete List of Books

The Gregg Hurwitz books focus on three main series by the New York Times bestselling author, including the Tim Rackley series, his Orphan X series, and the Rains book series for young adults. In addition, he wrote several standalone novels (many included in the Marked Man series), novellas, and short stories that will be listed below as well.

Here are the Gregg Hurwitz books in order for his popular series and standalone novels. For the Orphan X books, the chronological order is the same as the publication order except for the short story Buy a Bullet. We will update the list with the publication order as they are released.

Latest Gregg Hurwitz Books

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases

Orphan X/Evan Smoak Series in Order of Publication

1. Orphan X (#1), 2016
2. Buy a Bullet (#1.5), 2016 (free short story)
3. The Nowhere Man (#2), 2017
4. Hellbent (#3), 2018
5. The Intern (#3.5), 2018
6. Out of the Dark (#4), 2019
7. Into the Fire (#5), 2020
8. The List (#5.5), 2020
9. Prodigal Son (#6), 2021
10. Dark Horse (#7), 2022
11. The Last Orphan (#8), 2023
12. The Recital (#8.5), 2023
13. Lone Wolf (#9), 2024
14. Nemesis (#10), 2025

Orphan X Short Stories in Order of Publication

1. Buy a Bullet, 2016
2. The Intern, 2018
3. The List, 2020
4. The Recital, 2023

Tim Rackley Series in Order of Publication

1. The Kill Clause, 2003
2. The Program, 2004
3. Troubleshooter, 2005
4. Last Shot, 2006

Rains Series in Order of Publication

1. The Rains, 2016
2. Last Chance, 2017

Marked Man Series in Order of Publication

The series is made of standalone novels that share similar themes: an ordinary person is forced into a dangerous situation.

1. Do No Harm, 2002
2. The Crime Writer (aka I See You), 2007
3. We Know (aka Trust No One), 2008
4. Or She Dies (aka They’re Watching), 2009
5. You’re Next, 2010
6. The Survivor, 2011
7. Tell No Lies, 2013
8. Don’t Look Back, 2014

Standalone Novels in Order of Publication

• The Tower, 1999
• Minutes to Burn, 2001
• Do No Harm, 2002
• Dirty Weather, 2006
• The Crime Writer (aka I See You), 2007
• We Know (aka Trust No One), 2008
• Or She Dies (aka They’re Watching), 2009
• You’re Next, 2010
• The Survivor, 2011
• Tell No Lies, 2013
• Don’t Look Back, 2014

Graphic Novels in Publication Order / DC Comics / Marvel Comics

1. Wolverine: Dangerous Games, 2008
2. Foolkiller: Fool’s Paradise, 2008
3. Foolkiller: White Angels, 2009
4. Wolverine: Flies to a Spider #1, 2009
5. Wolverine: Switchback #1, 2009
6. Vengeance of the Moon Knight, Vol 1, 2010
7. Vengeance of the Moon Knight, Vol. 2, 2010
8. Shadowland: Moon Knight, 2011
9. Penguin: Pain and Prejudice #1–5, 2011 (Penguin graphic novels)
10. Batman: The Dark Light Annual #1, 2011-2014
11. Detective Comics #0, 2011-2016
12. Detective Comics #27, 2011-2016
13. New Think, Vol. 1, 2022 (New Think graphic novels)

Collections and Anthologies in Order of Publication

• Show Business Is Murder, 2004
• Meeting Across the River, 2005
• Thriller: Stories to Keep You Up All Night, 2006
• Uncage Me, 2009
• First Thrills: Volume 3, 2011
• Gone Fishing and Other Stories, 2012
• Birds of Prey: The Harlan Coben Challenge, 2022 (with Kelley Armstrong, Ace Atkins, C J Box, Allison Brennan, Harlan Coben, S A Cosby, Robert Dugoni, Tess Gerritsen, Heather Graham, Kathy Reichs, and Hank Phillippi Ryan)

Short Stories in Order of Publication

• All Said and Done, 2004 (included in Show Business is Murder), 2004
• The Real Thing, 2005 (included in Meeting Across the River)
• Dirty Weather, 2006 (included in Thriller)
• Back and Forth, 2009 (included in Uncage Me)
• The Thief, 2010 (included in First Thrills)

The Evan Smoak Series Overview

Orphan X

In the first book we meet Evan Smoak, a highly skilled and resourceful person who works for those in need. For free. His past is full of darkness and danger. He once was a member of a secret government organization known as the Orphans. The program’s goal was to train extremely lethal assassins. Evan, having enough of this life, escaped and disappeared, however, not without a trace. Someone, just as skilled as he is, managed to find him. This person is just as dangerous as he is, and he is hell bent in finding him and killing him.

The Nowhere Man

As a boy, Evan Smoak was taken from a children’s home, raised and trained as part of a secret government initiative buried so deep that virtually no one knows it exists. But he broke with the programme, choosing instead to vanish off grid and use his formidable skill set to help those unable to protect themselves.

Ambushed, drugged, and spirited away, Evan wakes up in a locked room with no idea where he is or who has captured him. As he tries to piece together what’s happened, testing his gilded prison and its highly trained guards for weaknesses, he receives a desperate call for help.

With time running out, he will need to out-think, out-manoeuvre, and out-fight an opponent the likes of whom he’s never encountered to have any chance of escape. He’s got to save himself to protect those whose lives depend on him. Or die trying . . .

Hellbent

To some he was Orphan X. Others knew him as the Nowhere Man. But to Jack Johns he was a boy named Evan Smoak. Taken from an orphanage, Evan was raised inside a top-secret government programme and trained to become a lethal weapon. By Jack. And yet for all the dangerous skill he instilled in his young charge, Jack Jones cared for Evan like a son.

But Jack knew too much about a programme that had gone rotten – he was a loose end that needed to be dealt with. But if you go after the only person who ever treated him like a human being, you can guarantee that the Nowhere Man will be coming for you. Hellbent on making things right . . .

Out of the Dark

Someone at the very highest level of government has been trying to eliminate every trace of the Orphan Program by killing all the remaining Orphans and their trainers. After Evan’s mentor and the only father he ever knew was killed, he decided to strike back. His target is the man who started the program and who is now the most heavily guarded person in the world: the President of the United States.

But President Bennett knows that Orphan X is after him and, using weapons of his own, he’s decided to counter-attack. Bennett activates the one man who has the skills and experience to track down and take out Orphan X―the first recruit of the program, Orphan A.

Into the Fire

Max Merriweather is at the end of his rope. Separated from the woman he loves and barely scraping by, Max is a disappointment to everyone in his life. Then his very successful cousin Grant is brutally murdered. Two months before, Grant left Max an envelope with instructions to take it to a reporter if anything happened to him. Now the reporter is missing and Max’s apartment is ransacked. A man at the end of his rope, he calls The Nowhere Man.

With mixed feelings, Evan takes on this mission, easily finding the men who are after Max and executing a plan to keep him safe. But it isn’t as obvious as it seems—and Evan finds himself enmeshed in one of the most challenging missions of his life, one that he can’t survive on his own. With the help of Joey Morales, a genius-level hacker and the last Orphan recruited into the Program, and the brilliant, off-the-books gunsmith, Tommy Stojack, Orphan X once more heads…Into the Fire

Prodigal Son

One day, Evan gets a call for help from the one person he never expected. A woman claiming to have given him up for adoption, a woman he never knew—his mother. Her unlikely request: help Andrew Duran—a man whose life has gone off the rails, who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, bringing him to the deadly attention of very powerful figures. Now a brutal brother & sister assassination team are after him and with no one to turn to, and no safe place to hide, Evan is Duran’s only option. But when the hidden cabal catches on to what Evan is doing, everything he’s fought for is on the line—including his own life.

Dark Horse

Aragon Urrea is a kingpin of a major drug-dealing operation in South Texas. He’s also the patron of the local area—supplying employment in legitimate operations, providing help to the helpless, rough justice to the downtrodden, and a future to a people normally with little hope. He’s complicated—a not completely good man, who does bad things for often good reasons. However, for all his money and power, he is helpless when one of the most vicious cartels kidnaps his innocent eighteen year old daughter, spiriting her away into the armored complex that is their headquarters in Mexico. With no other way to rescue his daughter, he turns to The Nowhere Man.

Now not only must Evan figure out how to get into the impregnable fortress of a heavily armed, deeply paranoid cartel leader, but he must decide if he should help a very bad man—no matter how just the cause.

The Last Orphan

When he remade himself as The Nowhere Man, dedicated to helping the most desperate in their times of trouble, Evan found himself slowly back on the government’s radar. Having eliminated most of the Orphans in the program, the government will stop at nothing to eliminate the threat they see in Evan. But Orphan X has always been several steps ahead of his pursuers.

Until he makes one little mistake…

Now the President has him in her control and offers Evan a deal – eliminate a rich, powerful man she says is too dangerous to live and, in turn, she’ll let Evan survive. But when Evan left the Program he swore to only use his skills against those who really deserve it. Now he has to decide what’s more important – his principles or his life.

Lone Wolf

Not his usual mission, and not one Evan embraces with enthusiasm, but this unlikely, tiny job quickly explodes into his biggest mission yet. one that finds him battered between twisted AI technocrat billionaires, a mysterious female assassin who seems a mirror of himself, and personal stakes so gut-wrenching he can scarcely make sense of them .

Evan’s mission pushes him to his limit – he must find and take down the assassin known only as the Wolf, before she succeeds in completing her mission and killing the people who can identify her – a teenaged daughter of her last target, and Evan himself. Matched skill for skill, instinct for instinct, Evan must outwit an opponent who will literally stop at nothing if he is to survive.

Gregg Hurwitz Biography – About the Author

The crime thriller author Gregg Andrew Hurwitz was born in 1973 in San Francisco Bay Area where he also grew up among a family of physicians. So he got used early on to talk about severed fingers, blood all over the place and mutilations (aka surgery), which is something many of his books reflect as well. He attended the Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose, following which, he enrolled at Harvard University from where he received his Bachelor of arts degree in 1995.  During this time, he worked on the first draft of his novel, The Tower, a psychological thriller set in San Francisco.

Next, the author Gregg Hurwitz attended Trinity College in Oxford, where he received his Master’s Degree in 1996 in Shakespearean tragedy. During that year, he became an undergraduate scholar-athlete of the year at Harvard for pole vaulting. While in England on the Frank Knox Fellowship, he also played college football (soccer).

His first standalone novel, The Tower, was published in 1999. Two years later, he followed it with other standalone novels such as Minutes to Burn, and Do No Harm. In an interview, he mentioned that he always wanted to write, it was his life passion. He started reading books at a very young age, reading Stephen King and Peter Benchley and feeling all the emotions those authors evoked in him. He then wanted to, one day, also evoke the same strong emotions in his own readers by writing captivating books.

Many of the author Gregg Hurwitz’s books have been shortlisted for best novel of the year by ITW (International Thriller Writer), and were nominated for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger. In addition, books by Gregg Hurwitz were picks for Book Sense (which later became IndieBound) and were selected as feature books by many literary book clubs.

The Gregg Hurwitz books have so far been published in 30 languages. Currently, there are over 25 Gregg Hurwitz novels. A new Orphan X novel was released in early 2024 with the title Lone Wolf.

He is rightfully called a critically acclaimed American crime novelist/crime writer and comic book writer / graphic novels writer and a New York Times bestselling author.

When researching his books, Gregg is very thorough, and he picks up interesting ideas that he can incorporate into his novels. For example, for the Orphan X series, he read an article about a medical product that doctors use to track insulin levels in diabetes patients, and through this article, the author got the idea of using something similar as a GPS tracker.

Lots of research is done directly in the field by him going to locations and talking to people who walk the talk (snipers, operatives, etc.), shadowing key people on stunt planets, or in deep water surrounded by sharks, or sneaking onto demolition ranges. This way, Evan Smoak feels genuine to the core.

The series’s main character is Evan Smoak, a deadly operative who got out from the undercover organization and now lives in the shadows doing good, helping all those who can’t help themselves. Maybe even trying to atone for some of his past sins.

Evan was taken from the orphanage, raised, and trained to become one of the most deadly assassins alive today. For the longest time, he was part of the Orphan Program, which trained him to become a highly skilled government assassin.

But when he wanted something else from life, he used everything he was taught to disappear and become The Nowhere Man. Because one does not simply leave the Orphan Program unless in a body bag. But Evan did it, knowing that he will never be safe from those who want to find him and take him down for good.

We first meet him in Orphan X, where we learn about his past and trajectory. We also learn that he left the Project and is now helping people. Except there is someone after him who knows he is The Nowhere Man and wants to eliminate him. For good.

In The Nowhere Man, Evan wakes up in a gilded prison, and he has to figure out what happened, why he is there, and how can he ever leave.

In Hellbent, we first meet Joey, a recurrent character in the series, whom Evan has to save and protect. This was Jack’s last wish for Evan, one that he simply has to abide by.

In Out of the Dark, someone has decided to get rid of the whole Program and make everyone involved in it disappear. So now Evan has to go after the very person who started the program in the first place: the U.S. President.

In addition to novels, he has also written screenplays for movies and TV series (such as V and Black Flags) for various networks, including the film The Book of Henry, a movie drama released in 2017 featuring Naomi Watts, and Sweet Girl, released in 2021 with Jason Momoa.

In 2012, the author became the comic book writer / graphic novels writer of Batman: The Dark Knight for DC Comics. He is also writing comic books for Marvel, including Wolverine and Punisher, many along with David Finch.

Gregg Hurwitz got involved with Marvel when the editor-in-chief of Marvel read some of his books and, as many dealt with violent vigilante topics, which were quite in line with many Marvel graphic novels, proposed him the offer to work on a Marvel character.

He is an author who can safely say he wrote in every medium he could: books of his own, comic books, and scripts for TV series and movies.

The Orphan X book will be soon turned into a TV show. The film rights were bought by Warner Bros, and Bradley Cooper was to star in the main role, but the movie never got made, so now it will become a TV show. In 2018, Makeready, an Indie Studio bought the rights, so we will see how and when things will start moving in the right direction.

His Rains books feature the Rains brothers, Chance and Patrick Rains, and it is a post-apocalyptic series, while the Tim Rackley books are a thriller series about a U.S. Marshall whose life gets turned upside down when his daughter is killed.

The Greg Hurwitz Marked Man books consisting of eight standalone novels have been optioned by Paramount Players for a feature film series.

Gregg Hurwitz currently lives with his wife and two daughters in Los Angeles, where he is working on his next book and plays soccer in his spare time.

Gregg Hurwitz Awards and Nominations

• ITW Thriller Award for Best YA Novel, 2018 for The Rains
• SCIBA Best Mystery Finalist for Orphan X
• SCIBA Best Mystery Finalist for Hellbent
• Capital Crime Award, Best Thriller, 2019 for Out of the Dark
• Midlisted for the Skoutz Award in Germany for Into the Fire
• International Thriller Writers Awards finalist in the Best Audiobook category, 2022 for Prodigal Son
• Nominee – Society of Voice Arts Awards/Best Audiobook Narration -Thrillers category, 2022 for Prodigal Son

In addition, his books have been instant bestsellers, were listed on the New York Times Bestseller lists numerous times, and were top sellers on Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble, Audible, and were listed on the bestselling lists of Wall Street Journal, UK Sunday Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Publisher Weekly, Library Journal, the Book Reporter.