DJ Molles Books in Order
This page shows DJ Molles books in order, with short summaries, series guides, reading paths, and clear help on where to start with his main worlds.
Last updated: July 7, 2026
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Publication Order
22 books
Aftermath
by DJ Molles
2012
Wounded, stripped of his gear, and far from finishing Project Hometown, Lee Harden falls in with a group of survivors. Their help comes with fractures of its own, and a new enemy is willing to do anything to take what Lee has.
Refugees
by DJ Molles
2012
Three months after finding Camp Ryder, Lee Harden is close to turning it into a real refuge. But leadership fights, doubt over his methods, and alarming changes among the infected threaten to wreck everything he has built.
The Remaining
by DJ Molles
2012
Captain Lee Harden leaves his bunker after a bacterium turns most of humanity into hyper-aggressive killers. His mission is simple on paper, survive, rescue, rebuild, but the ruined world outside makes every step harder.
Fractured
by DJ Molles
2013
Camp Ryder has splintered, Lee Harden is missing, and his allies are scattered across the state. Inside the walls, a quiet power struggle is turning loud, and everyone has to choose what kind of future they still believe in.
Faith
by DJ Molles
2014
Clyde Bealey thinks he can protect his pregnant wife as a plague pushes the country into chaos. This novella follows one family's early fight for safety, and the price pride can make people pay.
Trust
by DJ Molles
2014
While Lee fights to keep Project Hometown alive, Major Abe Darabie is holding the line elsewhere. Torn between the mission and a new president's ambitions, he has to decide where duty ends and trust begins.
Allegiance
by DJ Molles
2015
Recovering from deep wounds, Lee Harden returns to Camp Ryder to keep rebuilding while the infected keep pressing in. Survival is no longer enough, he has to pull people together before the fragile future disappears.
Extinction
by DJ Molles
2015
As huge waves of infected sweep south, Lee Harden races to build a true safe haven before time runs out. New allies help, but the final stretch of the series asks whether anything lasting can survive this world.
Wolves
by DJ Molles
2016
Ten years after the collapse, Huxley loses his wife and daughter to slavers and heads into the wasteland after them. Joined by a violent drifter with his own grudge, he turns grief into a relentless trail of vengeance.
Renegades
by DJ Molles
2017
Walter Baucom is caught between rival resistance groups and a Coalition crackdown that keeps tightening. His attempt to save his father and recover a fighter he left behind turns into a desperate run through a country ready to explode.
Rocky River Bridge
by DJ Molles
2017
In this short prequel to A Grower's War, two boys cross a torn-up North Carolina town to reach Rocky River Bridge. What starts as a test of courage quickly becomes a hard lesson about the world around them.
Rogue Cell
by DJ Molles
2017
With the resistance faltering and Coalition forces closing in, Walter fights to survive in Durham while Carolyn searches for him with a mission that could change the war. A ruthless federal agent is hunting the Baucom family from every angle.
The Purge of District 89
by DJ Molles
2017
Walter Baucom has spent his life keeping his head down under Coalition occupation. When a Chinese captain is kidnapped, he gets dragged into a messy resistance fight where family, freedom, and survival all pull in different directions.
Harden
by DJ Molles
2018
Three years after the plague, Lee Harden is helping defend the United Eastern States when an ambush exposes a traitor. Wounded and hunted, he and his team have to find the leak before enemies and evolved predators finish the job.
Johnny
by DJ Molles
2018
Aubrey St. James wakes in a black-site cell because she helped a stranger pulled from the river. Whatever Johnny is, he is dangerous, hunted, and on a mission that could save humanity or crush it.
Breaking Gods
by DJ Molles
2019
Perry McGown survives by scavenging battlefields in a world ruled by demigods, hiding the fact that he deserted their endless war. When a bar fight turns fatal, he goes on the run and uncovers truths that could shake the gods themselves.
Southlands
by DJ Molles
2019
Sent south to court an alliance with Texas, Lee Harden finds fresh enemies, shaky allies, and more trouble than expected. Back home, the fight inside the Fort Bragg Safe Zone grows sharper and bloodier.
Defiant
by DJ Molles
2020
Recalled from Texas and shoved into high command, Lee Harden has to lead while the United Eastern States unravels. Safe zones are falling, the primals are changing, and every alliance feels one bad choice from collapse.
Primal
by DJ Molles
2020
Lee wages a private war against the cartel while the United Eastern States starts to crack from within. At the same time, strange new behaviour among the primals hints that the infected are becoming far more dangerous.
The Nine
by DJ Molles
2020
Perry McGown pushes deeper into a world of myths, lies, and hidden power as he hunts for the Source. With Stuber, Teran, and Sagum beside him, the stakes jump from survival to the fate of the whole world.
Unbowed
by DJ Molles
2021
The United Eastern States has fallen, and Lee Harden must decide whether to strike back or disappear. As civil war pulls rival factions together and apart, he faces brutal odds and the darker parts of himself.
Terminus
by DJ Molles
2022
Lee Harden reaches Greeley with an army at his back and almost no room for error. As Sam Ryder is trapped inside the city and every ally makes dangerous choices, the siege drives the series to its breaking point.
Where should I start?
If you want the full outbreak story: The Remaining → Aftermath → Refugees → Fractured
If you want a later, military-heavy entry point: Harden → Southlands → Primal
If you want dark science fantasy: Breaking Gods → The Nine
If you want occupation and resistance: The Purge of District 89 → Renegades → Rogue Cell
If you want a standalone revenge tale: Wolves
Author bio
D.J. Molles built his career the hard way. He was working full time as a police officer when his fiction started finding readers, and that mix of day-job grit and after-hours stubbornness still feels close to his books. His stories move fast, but they also make room for fear, guilt, duty, and the messy bonds between people under pressure.
Before the novels, Molles published two short stories, Darkness and Survive, both recognized in a Writer's Digest short fiction contest. Then came the part a lot of writers know too well, rejection. He stepped away from trying to publish for a while, kept busy with police work, and eventually returned to writing with a different plan. Instead of chasing trends, he started writing the kind of story he wanted to read and posted chapters online to see if anyone cared.
People definitely cared.
That experiment became The Remaining in 2012, the book that kicked off his best-known universe. It was first self-published, later picked up by Orbit, and helped turn Molles into a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author while he was still wearing a badge. The novel opens with Special Forces Captain Lee Harden alone in a bunker while a bacterium tears through the country, then grows into a bigger story about rebuilding, leadership, and the cost of staying human when the world has lost its mind.
Readers who stay with Molles usually point to that mix of action and emotional fallout. He kept building on Lee Harden's world with the later The Remaining books, then widened it with the Harden sequence, including Southlands and Terminus. Those novels push from survival into politics, alliances, and civil conflict, but they still stay close to the people doing the fighting. Even when the stakes get larger, Molles seems most interested in what pressure does to a person and what leadership costs when every choice hurts someone.
He likes pressure-cooker stories.
You can see that outside the Remaining universe too. Wolves is a brutal revenge story built around a father tracking slavers across a ruined landscape. Johnny starts like a locked-room thriller and turns into stranger science fiction. Breaking Gods and The Nine show another side of his work, mixing myth, gunfire, and a damaged underdog hero. The Purge of District 89 shifts into occupation, resistance, and family loyalty. The settings change, but the engine is familiar: ordinary certainty falls apart, and people have to decide what they still believe in.
Molles has described his approach as a balance between character-driven fiction and page-turning action, and that fits. His books are rarely interested in spectacle alone. He comes back again and again to responsibility, trust, sacrifice, and the stubborn hope that small groups of people can build something decent in a broken place. Even his roughest stories usually have a human center, which is probably why readers who come for the firefights often end up staying for the people.
These days he writes full time after trading his badge for a keyboard, and his catalog has grown well past the early bunker books. He lives in North Carolina with his family and has said he spends time making his property more self-sustainable. He also talks about music, drawing, cooking, and riding his Onewheel, which feels very on brand. The man writes about survival, then goes outside and practices his own version of it.
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