AJ Scudiere Books in Order
Browse AJ Scudiere books in order, with quick summaries, series guides, standalone picks, and where to start with NightShade, Black Carbon, FORTUNE, and more.
Last updated: July 4, 2026
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Publication Order
30 books
Resonance
by AJ Scudiere
2008
Strange animal deaths, disease, and geological anomalies all point four scientists toward the same terrifying conclusion. As a polar reversal begins, the real question becomes who can be saved and at what cost.
Vengeance
by AJ Scudiere
2008
Sin has spent years preparing to destroy the Kurev crime family, and then Lee crashes into her plan with a vendetta of his own. Dark, fast, and built around two dangerous antiheroes.
God's Eye
by AJ Scudiere
2011
Katharine is caught in a struggle between angelic and demonic forces she barely understands. The setup feels epic, but the tension stays personal as she tries to decide who, if anyone, deserves her trust.
Phoenix
by AJ Scudiere
2012
Jason Mondy survived the fire that killed his mother and little brother, but the records do not add up. When he starts asking why Daniel has no death certificate, someone decides he should stop.
The Shadow Constant
by AJ Scudiere
2013
Kayla starts rebuilding a machine tied to Eli Whitney's death and quickly learns the design is worth killing for. Historical mystery, science, and present day danger all lock together here.
Retribution
by AJ Scudiere
2014
Hiding in plain sight as Will and Diana, Sin and Lee try to stay ahead of the violent family they wounded. The past does not stay buried, and the next generation of Kurevs wants payback.
Justice
by AJ Scudiere
2015
Sin has rebuilt herself more than once, but Lee's abduction rips away the last version of normal she had. The trilogy closes with revenge, reckoning, and nowhere left to hide.
Under Dark Skies
by AJ Scudiere
2015
Eleri Eames gets a second chance with NightShade, a secret FBI unit built for cases that do not fit anywhere else. Her first partnership with Donovan leads straight into cults, kidnappings, and dangerous secrets.
Fracture Five
by AJ Scudiere
2016
Eleri and Donovan head to Los Angeles to stop what looks like a terrorist plot, only to find competing cells and almost no clean answers. National security pressure meets NightShade weirdness.
Echo and Ember
by AJ Scudiere
2017
A run of arson murders would be enough trouble on its own, but NightShade is also reshuffling the team. Eleri must solve the case while navigating new agents, old tensions, and a shifting pecking order.
The Atlas Defect
by AJ Scudiere
2017
A strange skeleton vanishes before NightShade can examine it, and the two remains left behind only raise worse questions. Eleri and Donovan chase a forensic mystery that hints at something impossible.
FORTUNE (gray)
by AJ Scudiere
2018
Rafe is left trying to make sense of a family shattered by Fortune's disappearance and return. Told from his side, this companion thriller recasts the mystery through suspicion, grief, and the secrets Fortune carries herself.
FORTUNE (red)
by AJ Scudiere
2018
Mia's daughter vanishes from the front yard, and the search tears open secrets in every corner of her life. This half of the story leans into parental fear, shifting loyalties, and a family that may not be what it seems.
Garden of Bone
by AJ Scudiere
2018
When bones surface in New Orleans, Eleri is sure they connect to the sister she lost as a child. The case becomes a haunting mix of family history, buried truths, and dark city atmosphere.
Salvage
by AJ Scudiere
2018
Walter and GJ get the chance of a lifetime when NightShade opens the door to FBI badges, but the division's secrets come fast. A new team, a new case, and very little room for mistakes.
Dead Tide
by AJ Scudiere
2019
A former mermaid turns up dead, dragging Eleri into a case she should never have worked. Aboard a research vessel, with danger closing in, betrayal and deep water make this one of NightShade's most personal investigations.
Deliver Us From Email
by AJ Scudiere
2019
This Smart Chickens collection gathers short, funny essays about inbox disasters, family absurdities, spam, and everyday chaos. It is AJ Scudiere in comic mode, sharp, geeky, and very easy to dip into.
Dissonance
by AJ Scudiere
2019
Dr. Priya Sengupta answers a call about stranded dolphins and finds a mystery with far bigger implications. This tight companion thriller turns an unsettling natural event into the first warning of a larger collapse.
Omega Dog
by AJ Scudiere
2019
Grammar, pets, left-handedness, failed green living, and one possibly ghostly kitten all make an appearance here. Another Smart Chickens collection, it mixes small domestic disasters with nerdy humor.
Tele Me More
by AJ Scudiere
2019
Telemarketing, TV misunderstandings, glow in the dark puppies, and stray science obsessions fuel this brisk essay collection. It is playful, oddball, and built for quick laughs.
The Camelot Gambit
by AJ Scudiere
2019
Eleri and Donovan go undercover in a Nebraska town built for geniuses, where nearly every resident could be a murderer. Solving the case is hard enough. Blending in may be impossible.
The Hunted
by AJ Scudiere
2019
Joule and Cage Mazur think darkness and locked doors are the only things keeping their family alive. When they fight back against the creatures hunting their neighborhood, survival becomes a full time job.
We're Not Like Other Families
by AJ Scudiere
2019
More than forty comic essays tackle weird relatives, sportsball, voicemail, and the sort of stories every family swears are normal. Light, offbeat, and happily self-aware.
The Surface
by AJ Scudiere
2020
After floodwaters swallow a campus, Joule and Cage discover the water brought something lethal with it. Rising water, no rescue, and nowhere safe make this a claustrophobic survival thriller.
Sabotage
by AJ Scudiere
2021
Christina Pines goes off-book to hunt escaped convict Dr. Murray Marks, using her strange talent to stay one step ahead. But the deeper she goes, the more it seems Marks is not the only danger stalking the wolves.
The Tempest
by AJ Scudiere
2021
What starts as strange wind quickly becomes a relentless tornado threat as Joule and Cage are split apart. They must survive on their own and still find a way to help everyone in the storm's path.
Vanishing Point
by AJ Scudiere
2021
Bodies are turning up in the Florida Everglades, but the clues keep vanishing before Eleri and Donovan can build a profile. A brutal serial case collides with growing unease inside NightShade.
Beneath Memory
by AJ Scudiere
2022
A young woman somehow knows details of a decades old heist she should not know, sending Eleri into a case tangled with robberies, buried bodies, and Donovan's fate. The clues point inward, toward NightShade itself.
The Swarm
by AJ Scudiere
2022
A bug bite turns deadly on what should have been a simple outing, and Cage and Joule race to understand the threat before it spreads. Fast science based suspense, with no safe place to hide.
The Taken
by AJ Scudiere
2023
Cage and Joule plunge back into survival mode when Sarah disappears and human cruelty starts to look deadlier than the disasters around them. This Black Carbon entry shifts the threat from nature to people.
Where should I start?
For supernatural FBI cases: Under Dark Skies → Fracture Five → The Atlas Defect
For science driven apocalypse suspense: The Hunted → The Surface → The Tempest
For dark revenge thrillers: Vengeance → Retribution → Justice
For big idea science suspense: Dissonance → Resonance
For a twisty family mystery: FORTUNE (red) → FORTUNE (gray)
Author bio
AJ Scudiere writes suspense with one foot in hard science and the other in the strange. On her author pages she calls herself a nerdgirl, and that label fits. Her books like to ask what happens when smart people meet the kind of danger that should not quite be possible, then force them to solve it anyway.
She came to stories early. In interviews, Scudiere has said she was reading adult suspense when she was still very young, and by eight she was already writing her own fiction. Later, after reading a novel so bad she threw it across the room, she decided it was time to stop daydreaming about publication and get serious about writing books herself.
Science never left the picture.
Scudiere studied psychobiology as an undergraduate, earned a master's in physiological science at UCLA, and later completed a master's in human forensic identification. She has also written about studying forensics in Tennessee, and that training shows up all over her fiction, from autopsies and trace evidence to the way her investigators build a case one clue at a time.
She also spent years teaching math, science, and writing, from junior high through graduate level, along with curriculum design and test prep work. That background may help explain one of the nicest things about her novels: even when the premise gets wild, the storytelling stays clear. She wants readers to keep up with the logic, not stand at a distance and admire the fog.
Smart characters matter here.
A good place to see her range is in books like Under Dark Skies, The Hunted, Resonance, Vengeance, and God's Eye. Under Dark Skies opens the NightShade world with FBI procedure, cult violence, and supernatural trouble all landing in the same case file. The Hunted turns ecological collapse into tight survival suspense. Resonance goes bigger, following scientists who realize the planet itself may be shifting under their feet.
She can go darker too. Vengeance and the rest of the Sin trilogy ask readers to follow antiheroes instead of clean handed cops, while God's Eye and Phoenix show how comfortable she is mixing suspense with spiritual or psychological unease. Across very different setups, her stories keep coming back to the same pleasures: clues that were there all along, people under pressure, and the uneasy feeling that the world is a little stranger than it first looked.
Her work has picked up Audie nominations, options for film and television, and more than twenty Best Suspense or Best Fiction of the Year awards. She is also a USA Today bestselling author, but the more useful thing to know is simpler. She likes momentum, and she respects the reader's intelligence.
She still talks shop with readers through her author site and blog, where she writes about forensics myths, fight scenes, research, and books she loves. That ongoing conversation fits the fiction. AJ Scudiere writes for readers who like puzzles, pressure, and just enough science to make the danger feel possible.
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