Crooked Books in Order

Crooked is a science fiction crime anthology series built around the pleasures of capers, smuggling jobs, investigators, double-crosses, and criminals trying to keep one step ahead of the law. Rather than following one detective or one universe, each volume gathers different writers and lets them bring crime-fiction energy into speculative settings.

The result is a broad mix of stories. Some lean toward space opera, some toward cyberpunk, some toward alien encounters or future noir. What connects them is the criminal pressure at the center: someone wants money, information, revenge, escape, or one last clean score, and the plan is rarely as clean as promised.

Mark Teppo appears in the first volume, Crooked V.1, with "The Celedonia Sunset Job." His story follows operatives Maisi and Nome as a kidnapping job aimed at a criminal enterprise goes sideways. Their target turns out to be more important, and more complicated, than the pair expected, forcing them to get inventive if they want to survive the job.

That premise fits the larger series well. Crooked is interested in characters who live in the gray space between institutions: smugglers, hustlers, mercenaries, thieves, investigators, and people who are not exactly heroes but may still have a line they will not cross. The speculative settings let the stories change the tools of crime, from ships and artificial intelligence to strange technologies and nonhuman societies, while keeping the human problem recognizable.

The first volume is a good place to begin because it establishes the series' basic promise, a collection of fast, crime-driven science fiction. Later volumes continue the anthology format with new contributors and new approaches to the theme, so readers do not need to worry about a single continuing plot.

Every job has a catch.

Start with Crooked V.1 for Teppo's contribution and for the clearest introduction to the project. Move on to Crooked V.2 and Crooked V.3 for more standalone stories in the same broad genre space. This is a series for readers who like their science fiction with a locked door, a stolen package, a suspicious client, and at least one exit strategy that will not work as planned.