Ira Levin Books In Order

Publication Order of Rosemary Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Standalone Plays

Ira Levin
Author Ira Levin was born August 27, 1929 in New York City, New York borough of Manhattan. He grew up in both The Bronx and Manhattan. His dad, Charles, was a toy importer, and Ira was educated at the private Horace Mann School in New York.

He went to Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa from 1946 until 1948 and then New York University, majoring in philosophy and English, graduating in 1950. then he served in the Army Signal Corps from 1953 until 1955.

At the age of fifteen, he decided on a career as a writer. His dad had wanted him to go into the family’s toy business, but agreed to support his son for two years as Ira pursued a writing career. Before this period was over, he was supporting himself as a writer for television.

After finishing college, he wrote training films and scripts for television and radio. The first of these was in 1951 for “Leda’s Portrait” for “Lights Out”.

His first produced play was “No Time for Sergeants”, which was adapted from a novel by Mac Hyman, and is a comedy about a hillbilly getting drafted into the United States Air Force.

“A Kiss Before Dying” won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel in the year 1954. His play “Deathtrap” won him his second Edgar Award and it was nominated for a Tony for Best Play. “This Perfect Day” won a Prometheus Hall of Fame Award in 1992.

Ira’s best known novel is “Rosemary’s Baby”, which has been adapted twice, once by Roman Polanski in 1968 that he was nominated for a screenwriting award for and again in 2014 as a two part miniseries. “A Kiss Before Dying” has also been adapted twice as a movie in 1956 and again in 1991. “The Stepford Wives” was adapted into two movies, one in 1975 and again in 2004. “The Boys From Brazil” was adapted into a film, released in 1978. Phillip Noyce adapted Ira’s 1991 novel “Sliver”, which starred Sharon Stone, Tom Berenger, and William Baldwin. “Deathtrap” was adapted into a movie that starred Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve.

Ira was married twice, the first time was to Gabrielle Aronsohn from 1960 until 1968, and he had three sons with her, named Adam, Jared, and Nicholas. He later married Phyllis Sugarman, who died in the year 2006, and they were married from 1979 until 1981. Ira had a total of four grandkids.

Ira died from a heart attack at the age of 78 at his home in Manhattan on November 12, 2007.

“A Kiss Before Dying” is the first stand alone novel and was released in the year 1953. This novel not only debuted Ira Levin’s talent to rave reviews, it also set a brand new standard in the art of suspense and mystery. Now it is considered a modern classic, just as gripping in its tautly plotted action as it is penetrating in its exploration of a criminal mind.

As it tells the stunning tale of a young guy that will stop at nothing, not even murder, in order to get where he wants to go. For he has plans, dreams. He also has sex appeal, charm, good looks, and intelligence. He’s also got a problem.

Her name’s Dorothy. She loves him and she is pregnant. The solution might just require a desperate measures. However, he looks like just the sort of guy that could get away with murder. Compellingly, step by determined step, the novel follows this young man during the execution of one plan that he had neither foreseen or dreamed. Nor does he foresee how inexorably he’s going to be enmeshed in the consequences of his own extreme deed.

“This Perfect Day” is the third stand alone novel and was released in the year 1970. This story is in a seemingly perfect global society. Uniformity is the one defining feature, there is just a single language and all the ethnic groups have been eugenically merged into a single race known as “The Family”.

The world is ruled by this central computer known as UniComp which has been programmed to keep every single human on Earth’s surface in check. People continually get drugged by means of regular injections so they’ll stay cooperative and satisfied. People are told when to eat, where to live, whom to marry, and even when to reproduce.

Even the basic facts of nature are subject to the will of UniComp. Women do not develop breasts, men do not grow facial hair, and it just rains at night.

“The Stepford Wives” is the third stand alone novel and was released in the year 1972. For Joanna, Walter (her husband), and their kids, the move to beautiful Stepford seems like it is almost too good to be true. That’s because it is. For behind this town’s idyllic facade lies a horrible secret, one so shattering that nobody that encounters it is ever going to remain the same.

At once both a masterpiece of psychological suspense as well as a savage commentary on a media-driven society which values the pursuit of beauty and youth at any cost. This is a novel so frightening in its final implications which the title itself has earned a spot in American lexicon.

“The Boys from Brazil” is the fourth stand alone novel and was released in the year 1976. The fiendish Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele, who is alive and hiding out in South America, gathers together a group of old colleagues for a terrifying project: creating the Fourth Reich. A young investigative journalist, named Barry Kohler, catches wind about this project and tells the famed Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman, however Kohler is murdered before he can relay the evidence.

Why would Mengele marked many of harmless aging young guys for murder?What interest can they possibly have for their killers: six ex-SS men dispatched from South America by the most wanted Nazi still living, the notorious “Angel of Death”? What’s the hidden connection that binds them to one another? There is one man that must answer all of these questions and stop the killings: Lieberman, who is himself aging and thought by a few to be losing his grip on reality.

At the heart of this novel lies a rather frightening contemporary nightmare, one that is both chilling. And all too possible.