Reading Order

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Start with Lay Down My Sword and Shield and continue through all 13 books in the listed reading order.

13 books

Published 1971 to 2022

Status: Likely complete

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Start with Lay Down My Sword and Shield

Book 1 by James Lee Burke • Published 1971

In 1960s Texas, lawyer and Korean War veteran Hackberry Holland is urged to run for Congress but finds more meaning defending a former cellmate and helping migrant workers. His involvement with civil rights protests a...

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Complete List

Holland Family Universe reading order

Ends with Every Cloak Rolled in Blood

1
Book 1:Lay Down My Sword and Shield
James Lee Burke • 1971
In 1960s Texas, lawyer and Korean War veteran Hackberry Holland is urged to run for Congress but finds more meaning defending a former cellmate and helping migrant workers. His involvement with civil rights protests a...
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2
Book 2:Two for Texas
James Lee Burke • 1982
Falsely convicted and chained to a brutal Louisiana prison camp, Son Holland escapes with a fellow inmate and a Native American woman. Fleeing into Texas, they find their only cover in the chaos of the fight for indep...
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3
Book 3:Cimarron Rose
James Lee Burke • 1997
In Deaf Smith, Texas, attorney and ex Ranger Billy Bob Holland defends nineteen year old Lucas Smothers, accused of raping and murdering a local girl. The case exposes small town corruption, a psychopathic enemy, and...
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4
Book 4:Heartwood
James Lee Burke • 1999
Billy Bob Holland takes on the defense of a rodeo cowboy accused of stealing bonds from ruthless land baron Earl Deitrich. As secrets from Billy Bob's old affair with Deitrich's wife surface, the fight in court turns...
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5
Book 5:Bitterroot
James Lee Burke • 2001
On a visit to Montana, Billy Bob Holland tries to help his friend Doc Voss, an environmentalist clashing with a mining operation. Soon he is facing a vengeful ex con, violent bikers, and a mob connected predator, all...
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6
Book 6:In the Moon of Red Ponies
James Lee Burke • 2004
Now practicing law in Missoula, Billy Bob Holland defends Johnny American Horse, a Native American activist charged with double murder. The case draws in a senator's daughter, a dangerously obsessed detective, and sha...
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7
Book 7:Rain Gods
James Lee Burke • 2009
After nine murdered women are found in a shallow grave near a dusty border town, aging sheriff Hackberry Holland hunts the killers. An Iraq war veteran on the run, federal agents, a crime boss, and a soft spoken hit m...
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8
Book 8:Feast Day of Fools
James Lee Burke • 2011
Sheriff Hackberry Holland's quiet Texas county becomes a crossroads for smugglers, intelligence operatives, and a mysterious figure pursued by multiple factions. As bodies fall and Preacher Jack Collins returns, Hack...
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9
Book 9:Wayfaring Stranger
James Lee Burke
Use the reading order above to move through the series in the intended sequence.
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10
Book 10:House of the Rising Sun
James Lee Burke • 2015
In revolutionary Mexico and postwar Texas, Texas Ranger Hackberry Holland steals a mysterious chalice from an arms dealer and goes searching for his estranged son. Their struggle to reunite plays out against gunrunner...
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11
Book 11:The Jealous Kind
James Lee Burke • 2016
Houston, 1952. Seventeen year old Aaron Holland Broussard falls for Valerie Epstein and crosses a rich bully with mob ties. A missing Cadillac, stolen money, and simmering class warfare pull Aaron into a violent under...
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12
Book 12:Another Kind of Eden
James Lee Burke • 2021
In the early 1960s, drifting writer Aaron Holland Broussard hops a boxcar to Colorado and takes a farm job. His romance with a gifted art student draws the ire of a sadistic businessman, a cultish professor, and somet...
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13
Book 13:Every Cloak Rolled in Blood
James Lee Burke • 2022
Grieving his daughter’s death, elderly novelist Aaron Holland Broussard retreats to rural Montana, only to clash with racist vandals and a network of violent men. Guided by his daughter’s ghost and a state trooper all...
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