Douglas Preston Books In Order

Publication Order of Pendergast Books

Publication Order of Wyman Ford Books

Publication Order of Gideon Crew Books

Publication Order of Nora Kelly Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Mysterious Profiles Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Douglas Preston is an American journalist and author best known for writing crime/investigative thrillers. Preston is a native of Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he lived for much of his childhood in the quiet suburb of Wellesley. He would attend several public schools where the threat of expulsion for the headstrong child was always looming but he finally graduated from the Cambridge School of Weston. Due to his stubborn and curious nature, he had fought several times with his brother Richard and lost his two front teeth before losing a fingertip to a bike. His brother would go on to write “The Cobra Event” and “The Hot Zone, which better explain what it was like growing up with Douglas Preston. The two brothers would often roam the quiet streets of their small suburb and terrorize the residents with their home-made combustible devices and rockets that they manufactured from chemistry sets or ordered in the mail from the many comic books they read.

After he was denied admission to Stanford for reasons he could not explain, he decided to attend California’s Pomona College where he studied English literature. After graduation, he got a job in New York at the American Museum of Natural History while he taught non-fiction at Princeton. It was while he was working at the museum that he started writing penning his first nonfiction work “Dinosaurs in the Attic.” The work as edited by Lincoln Child then an unknown star at St. Martins Press. The two became friends during this time and “The Relic” the first novel of the Agent Pendergast series was conceived when Preston gave Child a tour of the museum. In 1986. he moved to Santa Fe, California to try his hand at becoming a full-time author. After traveling on horseback alongside photographer Walter Nelson for more than 1000 miles retracing the exploration route across New Mexico and Arizona he published “Cities of Gold” in 1992. During this time, he reestablished contact with Lincoln Child and they teamed up to write “The Relic” that introduced Preston’s most celebrated modern detective A.X.L. Pendergast. Since then, he has written more than thirty-five novels in the Agent Pendergast, Wyman Ford, and Nora Kelly among several single standing titles. Some of the Pendergast series of novels such as “The Cabinet of Curiosities” are in development for adaptation into movies and TV series.

Preston is still an active journalist and his work on paleontology, history, and archeology has been featured on the Atlantic, New Yorker magazine, Harpers, Smithsonian, and the National Geographic among others. As a journalist, he has had quite the checkered career as he has explored the jungles of Cambodia looking for lost temples and became one of the very first people to enter a tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. He is also a member of the Long Riders Guild after he rode for thousands of miles on horseback across the Southwest. He is also a prominent organizer in literary circles as he founded “Authors United” and is one of the cofounders of International Thriller Writers. For his efforts, he has been granted several awards and recognitions including the Doctor of Letters by Pomona College his alma mater a PCA, National Award, an Edgar and an NPR Reader among several others. He is also a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and when he is not reading or writing he loves to hike, climb mountains, and ski. He currently divides his time between Maine and New Mexico.

Douglas Preston’s “The Relic” is a story set in a mysterious jungle where a local tribe just got some of its most valuable objects stolen. Some cultural anthropologists and archeologists from the Museum of Natural History in New York found the objects that they are now taking back home. A few years later, all the team is dead but the crates from the expedition arrived in New York years later. Their find will form part of a new exhibition but once it is all set up, New York starts experiencing a string of murders. The creature doing the killing has bizarre claws and no one knows whether it is animal or human. The engrossing yet creepy story follows several museum employees as they try to figure out the mystery of the killer creature. They are not having any success until Agent Pendergast of the FBI comes into the picture. Taking place over a week, it takes its reader through a warren of tunnels underneath the Big Apple and rooms full of dusty old relics as the agent tries to find clues and resolve one of the biggest mysteries of his time.

“Reliquary” by Douglas Preston sees the survivors of the debut novel make a comeback. The monster may have been killed but the experiments of a mad scientist have resulted in the “Wrinklers.” These are human hybrid creatures that are now exponentially increasing in numbers deep below the surface. The creatures crave the plant life that the expedition team had stolen from the Brazilian jungles and brought back to New York. The problem is not only confined to the underground caverns beneath the city as the homeless who live in the tunnels are suddenly turning up dead and headless on the surface. Pendergast soon learns that when the bizarre creatures cannot find their preferred plant, they will eat the human hypothalamus above anything else. But they have to kill and break skulls to find this food. It is a supervillain that will require the combined thinking power of Pendergast and city officials to root out.

Douglas Preston’s “The Cabinet of Curiosities” opens to the discovery of 36 bodies that had been dismembered beneath a construction site. The mystery is more than a century old and one of the bodies has her address and name sewn into her dress in blood. It seems that the woman knew that death was coming and decided to write her details into her dress for posterity. Agent Pendergast is interested in the case even though it seems like something for archeologists rather than investigative agents. He seeks out his friend Nora Kelly, an archeologist who has no idea that working with Pendergast may destroy her career, which is already on its last legs. There are dark and powerful forces controlling happenings from the shadows and they have to work hard to collect and protect the sparse evidence still to be found. It soon becomes apparent the murders from a century past may be connected to the recent serial killings by someone nicknamed “The Surgeon.”

2 Responses to “Douglas Preston”

1. Andria: 3 years ago

   Nora Kelly and Smithback are in the Nora Kelly books but they are also featured in some of the pendergrast books. It would be helpful to know which order to read those books

   Reply
2. Anthony w woods: 3 years ago

   Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child are truly a treasure!

   Reply