Douglas Preston Books in Order

Douglas Preston explores the American Museum of Natural History's collections, including specimens rarely displayed to visitors. Stories of expeditions, scientific discoveries, unusual artifacts, and the people who acquired them reveal the institution's history behind its exhibition halls.

Douglas Preston and photographer Walter Nelson travel on horseback across Arizona and New Mexico, retracing Coronado's search for the Seven Cities of Gold. Their difficult journey connects the modern landscape with Indigenous history and the consequences of European exploration.

Dr. Hugo Archibald brings an orphaned chimpanzee home from Africa and raises her with his children. Jennie's participation in a sign-language experiment deepens the family's attachment while raising difficult questions about her place between human and animal worlds.

Douglas Preston recounts a horseback journey with his wife and daughter through Navajo country in Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. Following the route of a Navajo deity, they encounter a landscape shaped by sacred stories and different cultural understandings.

Treasure hunter Maxwell Broadbent disappears with his fortune, leaving his sons a challenge to locate his hidden tomb. An ancient Mayan medical manuscript among the valuables draws ruthless competitors into the hunt for their inheritance.

A Tyrannosaurus fossil discovered in a New Mexico canyon holds a clue to dinosaur extinction. Scientists, a secretive government agency, and others compete to control the find, turning its possible implications into a dangerous struggle.

Douglas Preston and journalist Mario Spezi investigate the serial murders attributed to the Monster of Florence. Their effort to identify the killer becomes increasingly fraught when Italian authorities turn their suspicions toward the two investigators themselves.

A team of scientists activates a massive Arizona supercollider designed to investigate the universe's creation. Former monk and CIA operative Wyman Ford is sent to uncover their concealed discovery as scientific ambition and religious opposition collide.

Wyman Ford investigates unusual gemstones in Cambodia while a woman in Maine searches for a fallen meteorite. A scientist's murder and mysterious gamma rays link the apparently separate events to a threat reaching beyond Earth.

Harry Bosch flies to Boston chasing a lead in a long-cold murder while local PI Patrick Kenzie hunts the same man over a missing seventh-grader. When their paths collide outside the suspect's house, each detective must trade information and instincts to solve both crimes.

FBI agent Aloysius Pendergast encounters Slappy, the sinister ventriloquist's dummy, at Stony Mountain Sanatorium. This crossover story brings the detective's unruffled methods up against a supernatural opponent whose strength and malicious personality make the investigation unusually difficult.

An artificial intelligence built for a NASA mission escapes into the internet after a testing disaster. Wyman Ford and programmer Melissa Shepherd search for it while financial traders pursue the code for their own purposes.

Douglas Preston joins an expedition searching the Honduran rainforest for the legendary White City. His account follows aerial mapping, archaeological exploration, and the dangers faced by the team, including a serious disease contracted during their journey.

Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child explore the origins of FBI agent Aloysius Pendergast in this nonfiction essay. They discuss his mysterious history, the development of his character, and the writing partnership behind his investigations.

Douglas Preston recounts true investigations of ancient burials, archaeological mysteries, and notorious crimes. From an Egyptian tomb to ruins in the American Southwest and the Monster of Florence case, these accounts explore discoveries that expose disturbing human histories.

During the first weeks of COVID lockdown, tenants in a rundown Lower East Side building gather on the roof and tell stories night after night. This collaborative novel turns isolation into connection, with Celeste Ng among its many contributors.