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Alex Scarrow Books in Order

Browse Alex Scarrow books in order, from TimeRiders to DCI Boyd, with quick summaries, series guides, and clear advice on where to start reading.

Last updated: July 1, 2026

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38 books

A Thousand Suns

by Alex Scarrow

2006

In 1945 the Nazis launch a desperate secret mission toward America. Decades later, a photographer investigating a wreck off New York uncovers bodies in German uniforms and a buried wartime conspiracy.

Afterlight

by Alex Scarrow

2007

Ten years after the oil crash, Jenny leads a fragile community on derelict North Sea rigs. As survivors push inland and rival visions of the future clash, rebuilding the world may prove as dangerous as losing it.

Last Light

by Alex Scarrow

2007

The world's oil supply is cut off almost overnight, and society starts collapsing within days. Separated from her children in London and her husband in Iraq, Jenny Sutherland must fight through a country sliding into chaos.

October Skies

by Alex Scarrow

2008

In present-day Wyoming, Julian Cooke finds traces of a wagon train that vanished in 1856. As he digs deeper, the story shifts back to snowbound settlers facing murder, fear, and something far worse in the woods.

Day of the Predator

by Alex Scarrow

2010

A mistake leaves Liam stranded 65 million years in the past, hunted by a deadly prehistoric predator. Saving him could shatter history, and the timeline is already beginning to twist.

TimeRiders

by Alex Scarrow

2010

Three teenagers snatched from death are recruited into a secret agency that protects history. From a hidden base in 2001 New York, they must stop time travel from turning the present into a nightmare.

The Doomsday Code

by Alex Scarrow

2011

A coded message hidden in a centuries-old manuscript sends the TimeRiders toward Robin Hood's England. Liam lands in the middle of a power struggle where myth, history, and time travel start to blur.

The Eternal War

by Alex Scarrow

2011

An accidental change pulls a young Abraham Lincoln into the present and throws American history off course. To stop a never-ending Civil War, the TimeRiders must put him back where he belongs.

Beneath the Neon Sky

by Alex Scarrow

2012

Ellie thinks she has finally found a way to make enough money to leave her world behind. Instead, her small crew attracts attention, and the hunter on her trail is getting dangerously close.

City of Shadows

by Alex Scarrow

2012

On the run in a changed 2001 America, the TimeRiders face relentless pursuit from deadly support units. The deeper they dig, the more they uncover about their enemies, their mission, and themselves.

Gates of Rome

by Alex Scarrow

2012

A disastrous time shift strands the team in ancient Rome under Caligula. With their base exposed and history badly contaminated, the TimeRiders have to survive the empire before they can save the future.

The Candle Man

by Alex Scarrow

2012

As the Titanic sinks, a mysterious man tells a young girl a story that begins in Whitechapel in 1888. In the shadow of the Ripper murders, stolen secrets and lost identities lead toward a buried scandal.

The Legend of Ellie Quin

by Alex Scarrow

2012

Ellie dreams of escaping her dull farm life, then learns her ordinary life was a lie. Hunted across human space, she discovers she may be the most dangerous girl in the universe.

The World According to Ellie Quin

by Alex Scarrow

2012

Ellie reaches the crowded domed city of New Haven and tries to build a life with her street-smart friend Jez. But a killer working for the Administration is closing in before they can get off-world.

Spore

by Alex Scarrow

2013

The Eighth Doctor lands in a desert town where an alien pathogen has turned people into black slime. To stop the infection from spreading, he must face a threat with terrifying links to the Time Lords' past.

The Mayan Prophecy

by Alex Scarrow

2013

As Maddy unlocks a secret Becks has been hiding, the TimeRiders start piecing together their real purpose. The search leads to a Mayan relic, old clues, and a crack in the team that could destroy them.

The Pirate Kings

by Alex Scarrow

2013

A trip to witness the Great Fire of London goes badly wrong, and Liam and Rashim are swept into the age of piracy. While the others race to find them, survival depends on outwitting fire, sea, and ruthless captains.

The Infinity Cage

by Alex Scarrow

2014

The final mission sends the TimeRiders into 2070 and then back to the roots of human history. What they learn about their purpose changes everything, and the fate of humanity is suddenly in their hands.

Plague Land

by Alex Scarrow

2016

Leon and his sister Grace have barely settled into London when a terrifying virus hits and people melt before their eyes. A month later, with most of the world gone, staying alive is only the first battle.

Reborn

by Alex Scarrow

2017

Eighteen months after the outbreak, Leon and Freya dare to hope the plague may finally be dying out. Then news of rescue draws them back into danger, and the virus returns smarter and more lethal than before.

No Escape

by Alex Scarrow

2018

The last survivors are scattered across the globe as the plague evolves again. With Leon, Grace, and Freya separated, humanity faces its bleakest choice yet, resistance, surrender, or extinction.

Ellie Quin in Wonder World

by Alex Scarrow

2020

Ellie and Jez escape as stowaways and end up on WonderLand, an abandoned luxury resort drifting in space. It looks like a lucky break, until Ellie realizes something on the station is badly wrong.

Girl Reborn

by Alex Scarrow

2020

Marooned on WonderLand, Ellie and Jez uncover the dark history buried beneath its strange attractions. At the same time, the hunt for Ellie tightens, and old secrets about what she really is come rushing back.

A Burning Truth

by Alex Scarrow

2021

When a fire kills a famous old politician in Hastings, Boyd is faced with a long list of suspects. Family grudges, old loyalties, and public image all get in the way of the truth.

Old Bones New Bones

by Alex Scarrow

2021

A skeleton found beside an A-road reopens the case of a killer believed dead for decades. Boyd soon suspects there are more bodies waiting to be found, and more than one lie buried with them.

Silent Tide

by Alex Scarrow

2021

DCI Bill Boyd's first Hastings case begins with a drifting yacht and two bodies in the Channel. The deeper he digs, the more a digital trail pulls the danger toward his own daughter.

The Last Train

by Alex Scarrow

2021

Boyd boards the last train home expecting an ordinary journey and ends up at the center of a sensational case. What happened on that carriage is tangled up with a far darker story than the headlines first suggest.

Argyle House

by Alex Scarrow

2022

When a body turns up in a notorious housing block, Boyd sends his team into a building full of anger, neglect, and suspicion. It soon looks as if almost anyone there could have been the real target.

Gone to Ground

by Alex Scarrow

2022

Club doorman Jay Turner overhears a murder plot and is suddenly wanted by both the police and a killer with money to burn. Boyd must keep him alive long enough to prove who is really being hunted.

The Safe Place

by Alex Scarrow

2022

Work on an old Martello tower uncovers human remains in a flooded basement. As Boyd's team digs into local myths and the tower's real past, the investigation turns far more disturbing than a ghost story.

The Archive

by Alex Scarrow

2023

With Boyd recovering and the department stretched thin, DC Okeke takes on a hanging, a house fire, and an old woman's death. The cases link up in unsettling ways and wake a secret left buried for sixty years.

The Lock Up

by Alex Scarrow

2023

A storage auction uncovers three dismembered bodies inside a single unit. While the police fear a serial killer, Boyd suspects the explanation may be stranger, and more tangled, than it first appears.

A Monster Among Us

by Alex Scarrow

2024

Okeke gets a desperate call about a troubled thirteen-year-old girl who says a monster is coming for her. What starts as a welfare concern turns into a race toward something very real and very dangerous.

The Vanishing

by Alex Scarrow

2024

A middle-aged woman disappears in broad daylight on a busy Hastings street. At first it looks ordinary, but as questions mount around her husband, Boyd and Okeke begin to suspect they are hunting a murder.

A Guardian Angel

by Alex Scarrow

2025

A fire in Hastings' historic net huts reveals mummified remains hidden inside. Boyd is determined to give the dead a name, but the case reaches into old wounds and unexpected connections.

The Fool

by Alex Scarrow

2025

With the Hastings CID stretched thin, the focus shifts to Jay Turner in Florida. A cash-in-hand private job for a British businessman looks easy money, until Jay realizes he may be badly out of his depth.

New

Let's Play

by Alex Scarrow

2026

The fourteenth DCI Boyd novel continues Alex Scarrow's Hastings crime series. Full plot details were still scarce when this page was updated.

Coming Soon

The Good Doctor

by Alex Scarrow

2027

An upcoming DCI Boyd novel from Alex Scarrow. Plot details had not been widely released when this page was updated.

Where should I start?

If you want big YA time-travel adventures: TimeRidersDay of the PredatorThe Doomsday CodeThe Eternal War
If you want near-future disaster thrillers: Last LightAfterlight
If you want crime on the Sussex coast: Silent TideOld Bones New BonesA Burning Truth
If you want space adventure with a rebellious teen lead: The Legend of Ellie QuinThe World According to Ellie QuinBeneath the Neon Sky
If you want virus-driven YA horror: Plague LandRebornNo Escape

Author bio

Alex Scarrow did not take a straight path into novels. Before readers knew him for time travel, pandemics, and high-pressure thrillers, he spent about a decade chasing a career in music as a rock guitarist. After that came graphic art and then computer games design, work that taught him how to build worlds, set rules, and keep a story moving.

Writing came later.

He first aimed at screenwriting. When the film business proved hard to break into, he turned one of his strongest scripts into a novel, A Thousand Suns. That became his debut and set the pattern for a lot of what followed: big ideas, ordinary people caught inside dangerous systems, and plots that do not like standing still.

His early adult books lean hard into high-concept suspense. Last Light imagines what happens when oil supplies collapse and daily life comes apart with frightening speed. Afterlight returns to that ruined world years later. October Skies mixes a present-day mystery with a terrible story from the American frontier, while The Candle Man heads into Victorian London and the sinking Titanic. Last Light later became a television drama, which makes sense, it already reads with the pressure and pace of a screen story.

Then came the series that made him especially well known to younger readers, TimeRiders. The setup is clean and instantly gripping: teenagers rescued from death at the last second are recruited to protect history from people meddling with time. The books bounce from the Titanic to dinosaurs, Robin Hood, the American Civil War, and ancient Rome, but they never lose sight of character. That mix of history, science fiction, and cliffhanger plotting helped the series travel widely and pick up awards.

He clearly enjoys asking 'what if?' and then making the answer as messy as possible.

Scarrow has kept moving between lanes. The Ellie Quin books push into space opera, following a girl who learns she is far from ordinary and becomes the target of forces much bigger than herself. His ReMade trilogy, later also published under Plague titles, turns to body-horror apocalypse, with young survivors facing a virus that can think, adapt, and absorb the world around it. Even when the setting changes, his interests stay recognizable: pressure, systems breaking down, and people forced to improvise fast.

You can also see his games background all over the work. His books tend to have clear stakes, strong momentum, and a solid sense of place, whether that place is a ruined London street, a secret base in 2001 New York, or a dusty world on the edge of human space. He likes machinery, logistics, and consequences. He also likes putting characters in very bad positions and seeing what they do next.

These days he lives in East Anglia with his wife. When he is not writing, he has said he spends time painting and getting lost in VR, and his website makes room for regular appearances from his dogs too. It feels fitting. Even off the page, he seems drawn to making things, tinkering with ideas, and following curiosity wherever it goes.

Edited by

Richard Reis

Software engineer whose passion for tracking book recommendations from podcasts inspired the creation of MRB.

Anurag Ramdasan

Lead investor at 3one4 Capital whose startup expertise and love for books helped shaped MRB and its growth.

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