Kathy Reichs Books in Order

Kathy Reichs is a crime writer best known for the Temperance Brennan series, and Tempe shares her profession: forensic anthropology. She is a board-certified forensic anthropologist who spent years consulting for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in North Carolina and Quebec’s provincial forensic laboratory. Temperance Brennan works in those same two places, examining bones and other human remains to identify victims and help reconstruct how they died.

She introduced Temperance in Déjà Dead in 1997 and became a #1 New York Times bestselling author. Her novels and forensic career inspired the television series Bones, where she served as a producer. The television version of Brennan is a separate character from the one in the books, and the episodes do not adapt the novels one by one.

This page lists all Kathy Reichs books in order, including the Temperance Brennan novels through Evil Bones, along with the shorter Tempe stories. It also covers the Virals young adult series co-written with Brendan Reichs, the standalone Two Nights, collaborative books, selected contributions, and her edited academic work.

Where to Start with Kathy Reichs

• Start with Déjà Dead for the Temperance Brennan series. It introduces the book version of Tempe and begins the personal story that continues alongside the cases.
• If you discovered Temperance through Bones, start with Déjà Dead too. The novels give Tempe a different family and working life from the television character. Seeley Booth and the Jeffersonian team belong only to the TV series and don’t appear in the books.
• Virals is the starting point for the young adult series Reichs co-wrote with Brendan Reichs. It follows Tempe’s great-niece, Tory Brennan, and a separate group of characters.

The Temperance Brennan series is best if read in publication order. While each book has its own investigations, with Tempe being the main character throughout, her life, and relationships, especially with Andrew Ryan, change and evolve in the next books.

First Bones takes place before Déjà Dead, but Reichs published it much later. It’s best read after you’ve got to know Tempe and her surroundings.

Temperance Brennan Series (Books in Order)

Forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance Brennan is usually called in when a body is difficult to identify because the remains are decomposed, burned, buried, or badly damaged. She studies the bones and other evidence, works out who the victim was, and helps police understand what happened before and after death. Depending on the case, she also works with pathologists, archaeologists, detectives, and other specialists.

The numbered list below contains the 24 full-length Temperance Brennan novels in publication order. The shorter Tempe stories, collection, and crossover are listed separately afterward.

1. Déjà Dead, 1997
2. Death du Jour, 1999
3. Deadly Decisions, 2000
4. Fatal Voyage, 2001
5. Grave Secrets, 2002
6. Bare Bones, 2003
7. Monday Mourning, 2004
8. Cross Bones, 2005
9. Break No Bones, 2006
10. Bones to Ashes, 2007
11. Devil Bones, 2008
12. 206 Bones, 2009
13. Spider Bones, 2010
14. Flash and Bones, 2011
15. Bones Are Forever, 2012
16. Bones of the Lost, 2013
17. Bones Never Lie, 2014
18. Speaking in Bones, 2015
19. A Conspiracy of Bones, 2020
20. The Bone Code, 2021
21. Cold, Cold Bones, 2022
22. The Bone Hacker, 2023
23. Fire and Bones, 2024
24. Evil Bones, 2025

Alternate-title note: Spider Bones was published as Mortal Remains in its original UK hardcover edition.

Temperance Brennan Short Stories and Novellas

• Bones in Her Pocket, 2013
• Swamp Bones, 2014
• Bones on Ice, 2015
• First Bones, 2016

First Bones takes place before Déjà Dead, but it was published last and works better after readers already know Tempe.

Temperance Brennan Collection and Crossover

• The Bone Collection, 2016 (short story collection)
• Faking a Murderer, 2017 (crossover short story with Lee Child)

The Bone Collection brings together Bones in Her Pocket, Swamp Bones, Bones on Ice, and First Bones. The first three stories had been published separately; First Bones was new to the collection.

Faking a Murderer brings Temperance Brennan together with Lee Child’s Jack Reacher. It first appeared in the anthology MatchUp in 2017 and was released as a separate ebook in 2019. Both editions contain the same story.

Bones Television Tie-in Novel

• Bones: Buried Deep, 2006 (written by Max Allan Collins)

Bones: Buried Deep is an original novel based on the television series. It features the screen versions of Temperance Brennan, Seeley Booth, and the Jeffersonian team. Kathy Reichs is sometimes included in the credits because Bones was inspired by her work, but Max Allan Collins wrote the tie-in novel.

Virals Series (Books in Order)

Kathy Reichs co-wrote the Virals series with her son, Brendan Reichs. The young adult mysteries follow Tory Brennan, Temperance Brennan’s great-niece, and her friends on Morris Island near Charleston. After exposure to an experimental strain of canine parvovirus alters their DNA, Tory and the others develop heightened abilities. They use them while getting involved in crimes, disappearances, and other mysteries.

1. Virals, 2010
2. Seizure, 2011
3. Code, 2013
4. Exposure, 2014
5. Terminal, 2015

Terminal ends the five-novel series. The Virals spin-off series has a family connection with Temperance Brennan, but you don’t need to read the Tempe novels first.

Virals Short Stories and Collection

• Shift, 2013
• Swipe, 2013
• Shock, 2015
• Spike, 2016
• Trace Evidence, 2016 (short-story collection)

The shorter works are optional. Shock takes place before Virals, while Spike is set after Terminal. Neither needs a fractional series number.

Trace Evidence includes all four stories. Shift, Swipe, and Shock had previously appeared separately. Spike was new to the collection. It is a companion volume, not a sixth full-length Virals novel.

Standalone Novel

• Two Nights, 2017

Multi-Author Serial Novels

• I’d Kill for That, 2004
• No Rest for the Dead, 2011

Kathy Reichs contributed to both novels alongside several other mystery and thriller writers. Each author wrote part of the story before passing it to the next contributor, so these are collaborative novels and not conventional co-written books. Neither belongs to the Temperance Brennan or Virals series.

Fiction Anthology Contributions

• MatchUp, 2017 (edited by Lee Child; includes Faking a Murderer, written with Lee Child)
• Birds of Prey: The Harlan Coben Challenge, 2022 (project editor C.J. Box; includes Owl)

Birds of Prey: The Harlan Coben Challenge first appeared as an audio anthology in 2022. A print edition titled Birds of Prey followed in 2026 and contains the same Kathy Reichs story, not a new contribution.

Essays and Other Contributions

• Books to Die For: The World’s Greatest Mystery Writers on the World’s Greatest Mystery Novels, 2012 (edited by John Connolly and Declan Burke; includes Reichs’s essay on Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs)
• The Killer Cookbook, 2012 (edited by Caro Ramsay; includes a recipe contributed by Reichs)

The Killer Cookbook supported Million for a Morgue, a University of Dundee campaign to fund a new forensic-anatomy facility.

Edited Academic Books

• Hominid Origins: Inquiries Past and Present, 1983 (editor)
• Forensic Osteology: Advances in the Identification of Human Remains, 1986 (editor as Kathleen J. Reichs, first edition)
• Forensic Osteology: Advances in the Identification of Human Remains, 1998 (editor as Kathleen J. Reichs, expanded second edition)

About Kathy Reichs

Before creating Temperance Brennan, Kathy Reichs had already spent years working as a forensic anthropologist in universities, laboratories, and criminal investigations.

Official website: kathyreichs.com

Kathy Reichs grew up in Chicago and studied anthropology at American University. She later earned a master’s degree and PhD in physical anthropology from Northwestern University. She began teaching at Northern Illinois University in 1974 and later joined the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where she is now professor emerita. In 1986, the American Board of Forensic Anthropology certified her as a diplomate.

Alongside her university work, she consulted on criminal cases in North Carolina and Quebec and taught FBI and Royal Canadian Mounted Police personnel how to recover human remains. She helped identify war dead, testified before the United Nations tribunal investigating the Rwandan genocide, took part in the exhumation of a mass grave in Guatemala, and worked with a disaster mortuary team after the September 11 attacks.

Kathy Reichs began writing Déjà Dead in 1994 after working on a serial murder investigation in Montreal. At the time, forensic anthropology was still unfamiliar to many readers, and she wanted to bring the science to a wider audience. Real cases and professional experiences continued to provide starting points for Tempe’s investigations.

Her work in Guatemala helped inspire Grave Secrets. Her disaster-recovery experience provided the basis for Fatal Voyage, which sends Tempe to an airline crash as part of a DMORT team. The author later joined the Ground Zero recovery effort after the September 11 attacks; that work occurred after the novel was published.

When writing her books, Kathy Reichs does not reproduce real cases. Instead, she takes a detail, setting, procedure, or problem she has encountered and builds a fictional investigation around it.

Major Awards and Honors

• Déjà Dead – Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel (1998)
• International Thriller Writers Silver Bullet Award (2015)
• Member of the Order of Canada (2018)
• Distinguished Alumnae Award from The Alumnae of Northwestern University (2023)

Kathy Reichs Book Adaptations

• The Temperance Brennan novels and Kathy Reichs’s forensic career – inspired the television series Bones (2005-2017)

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