Reading Order
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Start with Déjà Dead and continue through all 27 books in the listed reading order.
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Start with Déjà Dead
Book 1 by Kathy Reichs • Published 1997
Temperance Brennan, newly in charge of forensic anthropology in Quebec, is called when a dismembered body turns up in an abandoned Montreal monastery. As more women vanish, her bone-deep evidence points to a serial ki...
Complete List
Temperance Brennan reading order
Ends with Evil Bones
- 1
Book 1:Déjà Dead
Kathy Reichs • 1997
Temperance Brennan, newly in charge of forensic anthropology in Quebec, is called when a dismembered body turns up in an abandoned Montreal monastery. As more women vanish, her bone-deep evidence points to a serial ki...
- 2
Book 2:Death du Jour
Kathy Reichs • 1999
Exhuming a nun proposed for sainthood in a frozen Montreal church should be routine, but hours later Tempe is pulled into a fatal arson and a trail of cult violence that stretches from Quebec to South Carolina, puttin...
- 3
Book 3:Deadly Decisions
Kathy Reichs • 2000
Summoned from Quantico back to Montreal, Tempe joins a task force tackling a vicious biker gang war. When a young girl’s bones surface at a gang clubhouse and her teenage nephew starts flirting with biker culture, the...
- 4
Book 4:Fatal Voyage
Kathy Reichs • 2001
After a passenger plane explodes over the North Carolina mountains, Tempe helps sift scattered remains from the crash site. A lone severed foot that does not fit any victim list draws her toward a hidden cult and a co...
- 5
Book 5:Grave Secrets
Kathy Reichs • 2002
Working in Guatemala on exhumations from a brutal civil war, Tempe is drawn into a new case when bodies are found in a hotel septic tank. As missing young women and political secrets collide, she must navigate gunfire...
- 6
Book 6:Bare Bones
Kathy Reichs • 2003
A routine case involving a newborn’s skeleton in a wood stove spirals when Tempe links it to a drug-running plane crash and animal smuggling in the Carolinas. With rare bones and human remains mixing together, she unc...
- 7
Book 7:Monday Mourning
Kathy Reichs • 2004
Three young women’s skeletons are found bricked into a Montreal pizza-parlor basement. Detectives dismiss them as ancient, but Tempe’s science says otherwise. Following faint clues through bitter winter streets, she e...
- 8
Book 8:Cross Bones
Kathy Reichs • 2005
An antiques dealer is found shot in Montreal, his death tied to a mysterious skeleton from an Israeli dig. Tempe travels to Jerusalem with detective Andrew Ryan and biblical archaeologist Jake Drum, chasing clues that...
- 9
Book 9:Break No Bones
Kathy Reichs • 2006
Teaching field school on a South Carolina barrier island, Tempe uncovers a fresh skeleton among ancient graves. Other bodies follow, marked by subtle cuts that hint at an illicit trade in human remains, while her divi...
- 10
Book 10:Bones to Ashes
Kathy Reichs • 2007
A box of old bones pulls Tempe back to the disappearance of her childhood friend from the Acadian coast. As she helps investigate missing girls and a brutal child-exploitation ring, long-buried memories collide with a...
- 11
Book 11:Devil Bones
Kathy Reichs • 2008
Renovation work in Charlotte uncovers a hidden cellar filled with ritual objects and the skull of a teenage girl. When a headless boy turns up nearby, Tempe must separate folk religion from true evil while political a...
- 12
Book 12:206 Bones
Kathy Reichs • 2009
Tempe wakes trapped in a dark, icy space with no memory of how she got there. Rewinding to a Quebec winter case involving murdered elderly women and missing bones from the lab, she realizes a colleague is sabotaging h...
- 13
Book 13:Spider Bones
Kathy Reichs • 2010
A body pulled from a Quebec river is identified as a Vietnam soldier who supposedly died decades earlier. Tempe travels to Hawaii with her daughter Katy and detective Andrew Ryan to untangle military records, family s...
- 14
Book 14:Flash and Bones
Kathy Reichs • 2011
When a body encased in asphalt is discovered beside the Charlotte Motor Speedway just as Race Week begins, Tempe is plunged into a case involving an old disappearance, extremist militias, and a toxic substance the aut...
- 15
Book 15:Bones Are Forever
Kathy Reichs • 2012
Three dead infants are found concealed in a shabby Montreal apartment, all linked to a vanished young mother with multiple aliases. Following her trail to Edmonton and a remote diamond-mining town, Tempe uncovers expl...
- 16
Book 16:Bones of the Lost
Kathy Reichs • 2013
A teenage girl is run down on a lonely North Carolina highway, and Tempe sees evidence of far more than a hit and run. As she investigates Peruvian dog mummies for Customs and worries over daughter Katy’s deployment,...
- 17
Book 17:Bones in Her Pocket
Kathy Reichs • 2013
A canvas bag surfaces in Mountain Island Lake, holding the decomposed body of a young woman and a small cache of animal bones. Tempe and detective Skinny Slidell trace the victim to an artist colony, where eco activis...
- 18
Book 18:Bones Never Lie
Kathy Reichs • 2014
DNA from new child murders matches Anique Pomerleau, a sadistic killer Tempe and Andrew Ryan once failed to catch. Drawn into cold cases from Vermont to North Carolina, Tempe must pull Ryan out of exile and confront b...
- 19
Book 19:Swamp Bones
Kathy Reichs • 2014
Visiting a friend who studies invasive Burmese pythons in the Florida Everglades, Tempe helps dissect an eighteen foot snake and finds unmistakably human bones inside. The grisly discovery pulls her into a wetlands mu...
- 20
Book 20:Speaking in Bones
Kathy Reichs • 2015
A passionate web sleuth arrives with a chilling audio file of a girl being tormented and a theory that one of Tempe’s unidentified skeletons is missing teenager Cora Teague. The trail leads into the Blue Ridge backwoo...
- 22
Book 22:The Bone Collection
Kathy Reichs • 2016
This collection gathers four Temperance Brennan novellas, including the story of her very first case, plus investigations set in the Florida Everglades, the North Carolina foothills, and on Mount Everest. It is a comp...
- 23
Book 23:A Conspiracy of Bones
Kathy Reichs • 2018
Still recovering from brain surgery and doubting her own perceptions, Tempe begins receiving anonymous texts showing a faceless corpse. Blocked by a hostile new boss and nagging migraines, she quietly investigates, li...
- 24
Book 24:The Bone Code
Kathy Reichs • 2021
A storm washes a medical-waste container onto a South Carolina beach, holding two decomposed bodies wrapped and wired in plastic. Tempe recognizes details from an old Quebec cold case, just as a flesh-eating bacterial...
- 25
Book 25:Cold, Cold Bones
Kathy Reichs • 2022
Back home in North Carolina, Tempe receives a box on her porch containing a freshly removed human eyeball etched with coordinates. A series of murders staged to mimic her old cases follows, and when her daughter vanis...
- 26
Book 26:The Bone Hacker
Kathy Reichs • 2023
Asked to examine a man apparently killed by lightning, Tempe traces an unusual tattoo from the remains to the Turks and Caicos Islands. There she links the case to missing young male tourists and a tech driven scheme...
- 27
Book 27:Fire and Bones
Kathy Reichs • 2024
Called to Washington, DC, after a townhouse fire yields charred remains, Tempe uncovers links between the victim and a long defunct Prohibition era gang. Teaming up with reporter Ivy Doyle, she follows a trail from Fo...
- 28
Book 28:Evil Bones
Kathy Reichs • 2025
In Charlotte, small animals begin turning up mutilated and posed in eerie displays, then the violence escalates to human victims. As Tempe works with forensic veterinarians and local police, she tracks a killer obsess...
Quick Answers
Temperance Brennan FAQ
What is the best order to read the Temperance Brennan series?
The recommended reading order is the numbered order shown on this page, starting with Déjà Dead.
How many books are in the Temperance Brennan series?
There are 27 books currently listed in the Temperance Brennan series on GurusReads.
Where should I start with the Temperance Brennan series?
New readers should start with Déjà Dead, the first book in the reading order.
Is the Temperance Brennan series complete?
Based on the publication years we have, the series appears possibly ongoing and spans releases from 1997 to 2025.