Anthony Price Books in Order
Explore Anthony Price books in order, with David Audley reading order, short summaries, series background, and clear advice on where to start.
Last updated: July 5, 2026
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Publication Order
20 books
The Labyrinth Makers
by Anthony Price
1970
When a drained lake reveals a wartime aircraft, a dead pilot, and unusual Soviet interest, backroom researcher David Audley is pushed into the field. His investigation uncovers an old secret with sharp modern consequences.
The Alamut Ambush
by Anthony Price
1971
A car bomb kills the wrong man, or perhaps exactly the right one. As Hugh Roskill investigates on Audley's behalf, a puzzle of Middle Eastern politics, assassination, and hidden agendas turns steadily darker.
Colonel Butler's Wolf
by Anthony Price
1972
At Hadrian's Wall and beyond, Audley uses colleague Jack Butler as bait in a hunt for a Soviet recruiter moving through British academic life. The result is a sly, dangerous contest built on patience, misdirection, and divided identities.
October Men
by Anthony Price
1973
British Intelligence begins to fear that David Audley may have defected. As British and Italian operatives follow the trail, the search turns into a tense chase through old grudges, uncertain loyalties, and half-seen motives.
Other Paths to Glory
by Anthony Price
1974
World War I researcher Paul Mitchell is drawn out of the library when Audley starts asking about a forgotten Somme battle. Attempts on Mitchell's life make it clear that the past is not just being studied, it is being defended with murder.
Our Man in Camelot
by Anthony Price
1975
When a US Air Force plane vanishes, the missing pilot's obsession with King Arthur looks like a red herring. Audley soon learns that Arthurian scholarship, Soviet interest, and CIA worries are tangled together in one dangerous deception.
War Game
by Anthony Price
1976
A Civil War reenactment in rural England leaves behind a very real corpse and talk of hidden Cromwell treasure. Audley follows the trail into a clever collision of seventeenth-century history and contemporary espionage.
The '44 Vintage
by Anthony Price
1978
A few weeks after D-Day, a ruthless major leads a mission behind German lines for reasons he will not explain. Young Audley and Butler are swept into the hunt, learning early just how treacherous allies can be.
Tomorrow's Ghost
by Anthony Price
1979
Young intelligence officer Frances Fitzgibbon is asked to dig into Jack Butler's past just as his career reaches a critical moment. Her quiet inquiry opens onto murder, Irish militants, Soviet interest, and secrets Butler would rather leave buried.
Eyes of the Fleet
by Anthony Price
1980
Price turns from fiction to naval history in this lively look at frigates and the captains who commanded them. It follows the ships' role as the fleet's scouts, messengers, and fast-moving eyes at sea.
The Hour Of The Donkey
by Anthony Price
1980
During the chaos of May 1940, two young British officers find themselves stranded behind German lines after seeing something they should not have seen. Their scramble back toward safety becomes a tense wartime mystery with huge consequences.
Soldier No More
by Anthony Price
1981
In 1957, a British officer who is secretly working both sides wants out. Instead he is sent to draw David Audley back into intelligence, only to discover that everyone around him is playing a deeper game than he understood.
The Old Vengeful
by Anthony Price
1982
A historian is sent to research an obscure naval episode from 1812 and a KGB project called The Old Vengeful. What looks like dusty archive work becomes a dangerous hunt in which Napoleonic history starts throwing light on a modern spy operation.
Gunner Kelly
by Anthony Price
1983
A harmless-seeming advertisement by a retired general stirs up trouble in a sleepy English village. Soon Audley is dealing with terrorists, foreign intelligence services, and a conspiracy that turns local oddities into something much more dangerous.
Sion Crossing
by Anthony Price
1984
A British intelligence officer jumps at a chance to stand in for Audley on an American assignment tied to buried Confederate gold. Instead he walks into a trap involving a dead CIA man, a KGB operator, and a rescue planned from England.
Here Be Monsters
by Anthony Price
1985
On the fortieth anniversary of D-Day, an American veteran dies in Normandy and British Intelligence starts asking hard questions. Junior operative Elizabeth Loftus uncovers links to old wartime investigations, possible Soviet penetration, and even doubts about Audley himself.
For the Good of the State
by Anthony Price
1986
A young British agent is assigned to protect David Audley before a delicate meeting with a senior Soviet officer. Then shots are fired, rival services start maneuvering, and the real danger may be coming from Audley's own side.
A New Kind of War
by Anthony Price
1987
In Greece and occupied Germany in 1945, Captain Fred Fattorini keeps crossing paths with a young David Audley and a secretive British unit. What begins as wartime confusion turns into a ruthless struggle over scientists, loyalty, and the first shadows of the Cold War.
A Prospect of Vengeance
by Anthony Price
1988
When a body resurfaces near an old cottage, two journalists reopen a buried scandal from the late 1970s. Their digging leads toward David Audley, an old cover-up, and motives that reach far beyond the obvious.
The Memory Trap
by Anthony Price
1989
Audley is pulled into a strange chain of events stretching from Germany and Italy to the Welsh border, where terrorism is rewriting the rules of late Cold War espionage. It is a fittingly tangled final case.
Where should I start?
If you want the classic entry point: The Labyrinth Makers → The Alamut Ambush → Colonel Butler's Wolf
If you want the prize-winning highlight: Other Paths to Glory → War Game → Our Man in Camelot
If you want the wartime backstory: The '44 Vintage → The Hour Of The Donkey → A New Kind of War
If you want later, layered intrigue: Tomorrow's Ghost → For the Good of the State → A Prospect of Vengeance
Author bio
Anthony Price was born in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, in 1928, after his parents had returned from India, where his father worked as a civil engineer. His mother died when he was seven, and his childhood was unsettled after that. He was raised first by an aunt, then by a stepmother from whom he later became estranged.
At King's School, Canterbury, he did well enough for the headmaster to take a serious interest in him. When money problems threatened his final year, the headmaster's wife paid his fees, and Price paid back that faith by winning a scholarship to Merton College, Oxford.
First came the army.
He completed national service from 1947 to 1949, serving first in the Royal Signals and then in the Education Corps, and left with the rank of captain. After that he read history at Merton, a subject that would sit at the center of his fiction for the rest of his career.
Oxford turned into home ground for a long time. He stayed in the city after university, met Ann Stone, a nurse, and went into journalism. He worked for the Westminster Press and later became editor of the Oxford Times. As a young reporter he was asked to review what he was told was just a children's book by a local author. The book turned out to be The Fellowship of the Ring.
That mix of newsroom discipline, historical curiosity, and close reading fed straight into the novels. In 1968 he was asked whether he wanted to write a history of the crime novel. He passed on the assignment, but said he had an idea for a novel of his own instead. That became The Labyrinth Makers in 1970, the first David Audley book, and it won a Silver Dagger.
He kept building from there. Other Paths to Glory won the Gold Dagger, and books such as Our Man in Camelot, The Hour Of The Donkey, and A Prospect of Vengeance showed the shape of his best work. Readers tend to come to Price for the way he lets old battles, old documents, and old loyalties drive present-day danger. His spies are often historians, researchers, soldiers, or civil servants, people who think for a living and know that institutions have long memories.
History never sits quietly in a Price novel.
Roman frontiers, Arthurian legend, the Somme, Dunkirk, Normandy, and the uneasy politics of the postwar years keep breaking into the present in his books. He also liked shifting the viewpoint from one recurring character to another, which makes the Audley series feel like a real working intelligence world instead of a one-man show. Even when David Audley is at the center, Jack Butler, Hugh Roskill, Paul Mitchell, Frances Fitzgibbon, Elizabeth Loftus, and others matter just as much to the life of the series.
Price also wrote nonfiction, including Eyes of the Fleet, a history of frigates and the captains who sailed them. His early Audley novels later reached the screen in the 1983 television series Chessgame, and The Labyrinth Makers and Other Paths to Glory were adapted for radio as well.
After his wife died in 2012, Price moved to Blackheath in London. He died there in 2019. He left nineteen espionage novels behind him, and they still feel fresh if you like spy fiction with brains, memory, and a strong sense that the past is never really over.
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